Clearly mat hat party photos weren’t funny enough to warrant any comments – I shall have to put more hilarious photos up in future 🙂

More from a work perspective, elab (the part of IT Services responsible for Warwick Blogs, amongst other things) are going to stop the use of HTML in blog posts. This is clearly a bad thing because (a) lots of people know how to use HTML and the replacement Textile markup seems really unintuitive to me, (b) every other blog system I’ve come across allows you to post HTML in your posts, (c) it’s your blog and you should be able to do what you want with it!

Note that I’m posting this in my personal blog and not in my Warwick blog because this feels a lot more like my own personal space, whereas my small area of Warwick Blogs just doesn’t.

A lot of people are wary of the whole establishment at Warwick, given it’s enormous power in comparison to that of the student body, and it’s often blatant disregard for the needs of students and staff. I think Warwick Blogs is in danger of becoming seen as being a part of that, and as something that individuals have little or no control over. I say this because WB seems to be to becoming more and more of a non-standard blogging system that’s completely controlled (even down to the look and feel) by the University.

I’m also a bit worried that the system is becoming more and more of a closed system both in terms of it’s content (for instance when selecting the type of post you wish to create, the first option is now a “University only entry”, that presumably is only visable to members of the University) and in terms of it’s functionality. I’m concerned that the system is tightly controlled by a small group of people in elab, no matter how nice those of them who I’ve met do seem.

All of this is even more worrying considering that a number of departments are already asking their students to use their blog as part of their PDP assessment. What if you have to use Warwick Blogs? What if you’re not allowed to use your own personal blog to do this?

I like technologies that I have control over (open source being the best example of this), and I get worried when I see this being taken away. I’m getting worried now.