I do feel that for various reasons that persons wanting to read this blog might have felt they haven’t been getting their money’s worth in December so here is a bumper round up to clear up what’s occurred during the time I’ve spent not writing very much.

Since Lufbra a couple of weeks ago I’ve been working hard on a number of projects that have been taking up large chunks of time, including building a big contact database for one client, and pushing through a series of refreshes on another of my larger projects. What with the stuff up in Sheffield too, it’s been manic, but I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been enjoying it.

Despite all this, I’ve tried not to neglect social stuff as best I can, so have recently had a good few meet ups with Will (talking about a potentially very nice bit of work), Steve, John and Tom, Raj, George, and Wii sessions over at other Tom’s (where on my first attempt to use the controller I managed to smash a glass all over his front room).

And further afield, last night I went out in Bank with Swan and Devito, one of two trips to London this week, as I’ll be down there again for new year as well. For the first time possibly ever, I’ve had so many invitations for things to do on 31st January I feel mortified that I’m having to turn people down… after all, the past three years have been very last-minute affairs.

Last night was very humorous. It involved age-old drinking games, posh bars, cheeseburgers, an Albanian, sore knuckles (not from fighting however), falling asleep on a bus for far too long and a Krispy Kreme doughnut. I then spent most of this morning nursing a ferocious headache while my mate’s 13 year old brother hurled insults at me on an etch-a-sketch. It wasn’t a conventional hangover recovery method, nor was it particularly effective.

Christmas itself was the usual family thing, and after having the main event here at home, the next day was over to the relatives in the country, and thankfully it was for lasagna and not for more turkey. Presents-wise I’ve done not too badly, although I’m chocolated up to my eyeballs and visits to the pool have become fewer and further between due to changes in the daily schedule. I’ve drawn up a list of things I need to purchase in the coming weeks, but have yet to venture to any sales. Internet shopping seems far more appealing.

I’m hoping that 2008 is going to be as good if not better than 2007. Still, 2003 is the year to beat in terms of greatness, so here’s to hoping and a belated Merry Christmas to you all.

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.

I tend to have found that even a year and a half after leaving the place, I have gravitated back to my place of university education, Loughborough, on a pretty regular basis. Once again this was demonstrated by a trip at the end of last week that has meant I swapped part of the week for pretty much the whole of my weekend. It’s 1.30am on a Sunday and I’ve just stopped working.

Mike and Swan met me in The Bridge and we took off via car to the ‘Boro for what was billed as probably the last time we’ll do it, at least for a good while. Although student nights out are very funny, cheap and a good place to catch up, they are also not aimed at people who are no longer students.

Most of the people we know are now gone, and over the two nights up there, we saw a handful of people we knew, but soon enough another generation will have passed completely through. It was good to make the most of the last crumbs of studenthood while it lasted though.

I got back on Friday and went for a brief drink with Will who appears to be really enjoying his time on placement. On Saturday it was yet another Multipack meet up and Stu, Trev, Matt and myself graced Lloyd’s on Broad Street for a couple of hours. Aside from these few hours with friends, the rest of time has been firmly planted in front of reams of code.

Of note, 24 Ways have been producing some really nice articles this year (on the most part) and the iPlayer has been updated (Stu – the question is, will I write about it…?). This whole Mac thing is getting easier every week.

I’ve got quite a lot to think about in the coming days; it’s going to be a busy one.

After my second trip to Sheffield at the beginning of the week, I found myself in Aberystwyth this weekend, and look set to be in Loughborough midweek.

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were pretty heavyweight affairs but I think everyone at Rattle was more than pleased with the result (me included). There’s nothing that can’t be fixed up with a craft knife, a roll of masking tape and a power drill (though I get the impression my ‘safety socks’ wouldn’t normally pass as workshop gear. They aren’t steel toe-capped or anything.

While up there I spent one evening trying to locate Tongy’s new flat. He’s been commuting to Barnsley from Loughborough everyday for the past few months and finally decided to get a place a little closer to work as a two-to-four hour commute twice a day is a little on the nasty side of sadistic. Apart from the issues with a lack of postcode (the place is brand spanking new) and most of the roads now part of a fantastic one way system (turns out no one had informed the GPS) we managed to catch up for an hour or so.

Being Sister One’s twenty first this week, I took the train out to Welsh Wales on Saturday and spent a festive night out in Aberystwyth town Despite being three years into her course, this is the first time I’ve managed to make it over there, but it was a good night and very, very cheap. Raj showed his face as well and I sampled the local speciality drink, an ‘Admiral’ which was more pleasant than I had been expecting.

I seem to remember there were quite a lot of hot looking elfish girls wandering around too; always a bonus.

Not content with one week in Northern climbs, I’m back on the motorway tomorrow morning and on my way back up to Sheffield for (the unplanned) stint two of the C4 project.

This last week has been manic – I made it up at about mid morning on Monday last and spent the next two and a half days at Rattle in a pile of black felt tips, pritt-stick, coloured paper and creativity.

Being as Sheffield isn’t on my usual list of destinations, I tried (with mixed success) to meet up with some folks. Huan was around and about on Monday evening, and we spent a couple of hours in a pub reminiscing about Nepal. On Tuesday, James and Emma invited us out for a Turkish meal then a few pints around and about the city. Despite this, productivity remained high on Wednesday.

Unfortunately I made the mistake of listening to the GPS on the way back down to the Midlands, and it sent me several times around a triangle shaped loop before I got annoyed, deviated from the suggested route, before it misled onto the M6 Toll. Cheers GPS, are you going to pay for that? I should have just stuck to the way I knew.

I have little recollection of Thursday or Friday, but they were much like Saturday and Sunday, spent working. It’s been relentless and it’s set to continue for a while, but I’m off to see Sister One this coming weekend, then have a night out with Swan and Mike in Lufbra a few days later, and finally hoping to catch up with Deako the following weekend.

Christmas? In how long?! Can’t believe it…