Over the past couple of weeks I have been working on a former academic supervisor's pet project. It involves creating a new set of CSS code for his website to slowly drag it out of the dark ages (the late '90's when we still designed websites using tables). The first stage is to implement CSS rules and to discard the tables that currently hold the site together.
The task which at first seemed simple has turned out to be a giant monster that will seemingly never end. It took me roughly a week just get my head around how it worked. It's built around a database and perl code and is different from any other project I have worked on and it has been so: frustrating; fun; enlightening; educational; emotionally draining (depending on situation). Fortunately for me this is the kind of project I love working on :-)
Hand coding into a terminal window again reminds of how I built my first site on an Apple Mac I (yes, the 1984 one) at university in 1996. It was a amazing time with 56.6K modems and ytalk that allowed you to chat to other people on the network that was 'logged on'. I can't think of a word that is large enough to describe how much things have changed since then in technology. Anyway, back to this website that was built around that time... :-) I haven't put a link to the site because it would be nice to work on it until it has been totally overhauled and redesigned.
So, last night I finally got out with my camera, and took a trip up to North Queensferry to try and get a moody shot of the Forth Bridge. Little did I realise that almost every route to North Queensferry would provide challenges. The route going through Kincardine was closed, and it wasn't possible to go back across the Kincardine Bridge, which I did not realise and ended up going around Kincardine twice. Eventually drove across the Clackmannanshire bridge along to the Forth Road Bridge missing my turn off on the Fife side due to the sat nav not recognising all the new roads built for the Queensferry Crossing. Thought I would be able to via Inverkeithing but alas the road was also closed here, for some reason that a local chap explained to me in an accent that was more alien than Scottish, of which I understood a couple of words.
Thankfully when I got there it was still a bit misty and heavy rain. All for this photograph. Soaked through to my skin the Albert Hotel then charged me £2.50 for the worst (instant) coffee that I have ever had.
Totally worth the hassle for this photograph though.