I’ve made it a habit in recent times to steer clear of mentioning actual clients in actual blog posts, but as so much time and effort has gone into the complete re-skin and slew of new features, it’s only fair to give this one a bit of a nudge.

RateMyPlacement is one of my big ongoing and often more intensive projects, and today/just now, we proudly launch version two. Hence why I’m still sitting on the edge of a cup of very black Spanish coffee, six hours after I drank it, and it’s just gone midnight.

For those familiar with the concept, this paragraph is needless, but for everyone else, RateMyPlacement is a place for students looking for, and who have returned from, internships and placements. It allows users to rank and share their experiences with future ‘placementeers’ and is a resource peddled across universities and placement offices around the country.

There are a few bolts to be tightened and edges to be deburred, but on the whole it’s there.

One interesting day follows another - tomorrow I’m in Cheltenham teaching GCSE kids how to design a good logo. 

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Like Indiana Jones, yet potentially more action-packed, Multipack’s Geek In The Park 2008 makes a welcome return this year, and will be pitching camp in Royal Leamington Spa on Saturday 9th August.

The format will be the same as last time; an afternoon picnic in the wonderful Jepheson Park (friends and families welcome) will be followed later in the evening by a discussion based event, with some top-notch speakers. We’re not disclosing the line up yet, but rest assured, you won’t be disappointed.

And of course, there is one other reason why GITP is always worth a look in; once again it’s free of charge.

For those wondering how to get to Leamington Spa, it’s easily accessible from the motorway and regular, direct trains run from London Marylebone and Birmingham.

For more details and to sign up for a reminder, visit the Geek In The Park 2008 website, put together so masterfully by Trev and Lloydy.

I’ve been playing with this on and off for a few days, but have managed to finally get my photo collection back onto this site. Instead of hosting it (which was the headache), I’ve tapped into Flickr’s API which handily allows you to get your photos out (I used this PHP wrapper in the end - I was going to use Trev’s but it wasn’t quite baked yet...).

Using a little bit of wizardry I’ve also linked in Upcoming and Google Maps. Unfortunately, until the API supports collections you can’t browse in the exact way I’d like, but you can view by photoset, most recent, tag and individually. I’ve also dragged in comments and EXIF data for those who are interested.

It’ll probably see some tweaks in the coming months, but for the moment it’ll do. You can see it it here.

I’m really pleased to write about some exciting changes for the Midlands based web group, The Multipack.

The ‘Pack have been going strong for over two years now, and being a collection of web developers it seemed only right that after all that time we might be able to muster up an update to the logo, website, forum and set out a new direction for 2008.

Kudos to Paul Lloyd & Gareth Brown for the artwork and Trevor Morris & Ross Riley for the hardstuff. The new site is really refreshing and looks fantastic.

There have been some other changes too. Our key venue is now the Victorian splendour of The Old Joint Stock on the edge of Birmingham’s St. Philip’s Square, right between (and no more than one minute walk from) Snow Hill and (3 minute walk from) New Street stations.

There will be some more opportunities to meet with us further out in the West Midlands, as we are hoping to start venturing outwards once more.

Meetings are (as they have always been) open and free to anyone who wants to informally discuss, learn or network with other local developers, designers, experts and non-experts. We meet on the second Saturday of every month at 2.00pm over a few beers and a even occasionally a late lunch.

For more details about Multipack events (including our next meeting on Saturday 9th February), check out our new website and forum, or feel free to ask questions of any of the regulars such as myself - we’re always looking forward to meet and join up with others who want to learn, share and engage with other web professionals.

The run up to Christmas, Christmas itself and the aftermath have been a great big sticky pudding mix of socials, late night working sprees and over indulgence, and not really in that order.

You may also have noticed that things have changed here a bit.

The first thing to note is the reason that I haven’t posted for ages, probably the longest I’ve left it while still in the country, is that this website is no longer at it’s old slash-blog location. Although all the links still work, I’m now floating ‘Just Beyond The Bridge’ over on it’s own domain making it well and truly standalone.

AndyHiggs.co.uk may get it’s own blog back eventually as a different type of beast, but for all the usual stuff you now come here. Feed-reader users fear not, due to the wonder’s of feedburner you won’t notice a thing, except you now get all those photos too…

In more technical detail, what I’ve done is shifted everything that was on my old TextPattern installation over to ExpressionEngine. Well, you can never jump on a bandwagon too quickly I think, but of course it’s much better to arrive fashionably late.

I’m not entirely convinced by everything yet, although it does appear pretty flexible and have some nice facets; this is an exploration of the package as much as anything else, so bear with me while I bang around with the code, iron out the glitches and clean up the somewhat shabby code in places. There are some encoding issues I’ve discovered (where ‘Bent?’ read ‘Bentō’ for example) and maybe a few articles that don’t quite map as before. If you spot anything glaring, comments will be gratefully accepted below.

Rather surprisingly the Internet Explorer 6 hacks file was the smallest I’ve ever made for a site this size, but admittedly they don’t get all the opacity fun that you do on the full fat version. There is some jQuery image resize shizzle going on too for those of you viewing this on a GameBoy sized screen… it should look good down to quite small (give it a go if you like).

Design-wise, it’s no classic, but I wanted to get my photography back in here and hence at the moment (December 2007) you can see a panoramic view from the Tibetan plateau (taken on my last big excursion).

As I say, work in progress, but feel free to chip in, after all, you’re the ones that have to look at it.

What with Newsnight Review on tonight, I thought I’d entertain my own slice of culture on the blog today, and let you know that a good friend of mine recently completed work on a film project which he is hoping to get into the festivals with.

La Bella Figura was shot in Rome last summer and has taken one year to bring to the screen. Jimbo, a fellow Lufbrarian, was principle photographer/designer and so all the very impressive looking camera work is his.

As far as I know he hadn’t much film experience prior to starting the project, so this was a pretty cool introductory project to land. I’ve only seen the trailer, but it looks impressive on the whole, and I’m intrigued to see more.

You can watch the trailer here or visit the official site .

I’ve made it my policy over recent times not to overly-plug client projects for various reasons, but I’m willing to break with protocol to announce the launch of RateMyPlacement .

The concept is simple, if you have been on a placement year, share your experiences by filling in a review. This information becomes freely searchable and viewable, and it means that if you are looking for a placement year or opportunity, you can get honest perspectives on the companies you are applying to.

Before now, this sort of exchange wasn’t possible. People looking for internships had to rely on the patchy feedback that placement offices had to offer, but now this takes the rating of student work placements to a national level and will prove an invaluable tool for students and university placement offices alike.

I’m really pleased to be involved in this project and wish the guys running it all the success.

If you have been involved in a work placement in recent years, please add your review to the growing number already online. It only takes a couple of minutes, and if you have the time, please leave some additional comments alongside your ratings.