February 2004
February 25
After eight years of subscribing to F1 Racing (from issue one) with no problems, I was quite concerned when it didn’t pop through the letter box by the beginning of the month. In a phone call to the subscriptions department, I was told my [only recently renewed, and confirmed] subscription had been cancelled.
Why? Well apparently the magazine was undeliverable and thus returned to sender. Instead of phoning to clarify the matter, it’s their policy to wait until the subscriber rings up; in this case three weeks. Absurd.
They re-sent it, and it arrived within a week, but minus the Editors subscriber-exclusive letter and a free wall chart. What annoyed me most though was that the spine had two complete rips through the entire “bumper-issue” magazine…
So another phone call, asking them to re-send it, making sure to include all contents, and to ensure it doesn’t get ripped to shreds in transit. Today I finally took delivery of the March 2004 issue — out on the streets three weeks ago — posted four weeks ago to subscribers like myself.
What a palaver. The only good to come out of it is that my subscription has been extended by a month for my troubles, though they’re yet to confirm this in writing.
February 12
Thanks to a great bunch of friends, who all made it to The Carriers Arms in East Bergholt to celebrate my birthday (bar Danielle, who had work commitments at the hospital; she managed to phone up though, which was nice). The regular pool games were played, and pints sunk, as well as a new favourite pool game of ours involving everybody — ‘Killer Pool’ — providing lots of entertainment.
Continuing a trend started on my eighteenth birthday, Tom, Rob and Ian very kindly chipped in to get me a present. A fancy gold watch was chosen, and well chosen it was too… it’s a beautiful Sekonda, which I proudly displayed on my wrist straight away.
February 2
Rob has been given the raw deal at work — harmless banter between colleagues has resulted in suspension.
Due to meet Manager’s at 12 O’clock, I wish Rob the best of luck in this wholey unfair investigation.
February 1
I thought I would run the new pages through a script that determines the total text content percentage (visible text — including the alt, summary and title attributes). The results were a disapointment:
| Old | New | |
|---|---|---|
| Average | 65.71 | 64.85 |
| About | 72.07 | 73.37 |
| Photos | 59.83 | 54.97 |
| Review | 79.93 | 78.73 |
| CV | 45.65 | 43.68 |
| Projects | 66.59 | 64.49 |
| Speakers | 79.73 | 79.88 |
| Story | 83.28 | 80.07 |
| Links | 38.63 | 43.58 |
This test has really just shown me how “economical” my last layout was. I knew it was going to be close, but to get a consistently worse percentage with a simpler, even more economical layout (or so I thought) was a little deflatory, especially since I was expecting it to be the other way around.
The results are not as conclusive as they would first appear however. During the layout change I completely stripped down and restructed the whole site content and made changes to the text formatting. Making proper use of —, the &quo;’s and the like were important to me this time around.
Whether the addition of those character references is enough to make the html code heavier, I don’t know… but I suspect so.