I have apparently forgotten that I wanted to have a site to blog because I have stuff I wanted to say. I haven't blogged for over a month because I've had no where to do so because I was waiting and hoping that Luke would get things up and running again soon. It's just too long and I shouldn't rely on freebies. So, while I sort out proper hosting with customer services who'll rightly hear my wrath if things break because I'm paying for the pleasure, I've set up home here. Priority one is to blog.

I am taking recommendations for hosting though, if anyone has one.

Dear Readers,

I apologise for the downtime. This was due to an effort to create a more reliable experience for you. Packets were lost and words were exchanged between the server that shall not be repeated, but replacements have now been found and something like a normal service will now resume. Thank you for your patience.

Yours truely,

Frances

In other news, I have finished one job to start another in my absense. The brief version is as follows;

Having spent almost a year and a half at Volume and learning as much as I could and generally having a pretty good experience, I thought it was about time to move on. Kind of an odd time to do so in hindsight, because as I was leaving they were just picking up into a new phase and have a shedload of work (this is a good thing) and new clients. I’m sure they’ll do well.

<p>Fortunately, the opportunity to do something new came my way and I can now be found loitering at the <a href="http://bbc.co.uk">BBC</a> as a client-side developer.  I’ve been at the BBC a week so far, and am pleased!  I can’t imagine I’ll blog anymore about that than I did the last job mind you, so this is just an “FYI”.  </p>
<p>I was sad to leave <a href="http://www.paulcripps.co.uk" rel="friend met colleague">DJ Pauly C</a> who was the most active in making my stay  at Volume enjoyable, but I’m sure he’ll forgive me in time.</p>

Last week I attended my first ever @media. After offering to pretty much sell a kidney to go last year, I was extra chuffed to get to go and help out too! Plus, it was a double treat for me in that I got to see the results of Patrick’s hard work over the last few months (which I’ve somewhat had the pleasure of seeing from behind the scenes) as well as of course having the opportunity to see a host top presenters.

Highlight for me? Joe Clark, easily. I like his take-no-prisoners attitude and that he speaks his mind. I gather a few people may not agree with him, but that’s cool - I think what he does especially well is just give you another point-of-view to look a problem from and encourages you to really evaluate what the real issue is.

<p>I also enjoyed <a href="http://www.allinthehead.com" rel="friend met colleague">Drew</a> and <a href="http://www.colly.com" rel="acquaintance colleague met">Colly</a>’s High Noon Shoot-out.  Not only was it funny, but it did have an underlying point that compromise and knowing your audience is really important. </p>
<p>I’m really want the podcasts to be available <strong>now</strong>, because I never remember to take any notes.</p>
<p>Ah, but the best bit is that the @media fun does not end there.  <a href="http://www.vivabit.com/atmediaajax/">@media Ajax</a> has been announced for later this year in November!</p>
<p>Best swag of the event?  My personalised <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/dexterperrin/537446975/" title="Link to a photo of my awesome shirt with ptg and paul"><strong>green</strong> @media logo shirt</a>, of course.

I’m always looking for new and innovative ways to completely waste my time online, so when I met Justin Hall at SxSW this year and heard about some of the cool things he was doing with games and user-surfing patterns, I knew his PMOG would probably be for me as someone who has been addicted to various MMORPGs and is a bit of a statistics collector.

He and his team’s specific PMOG can be found over at Bud.com, and you can find me as Phae.

The general premise is that it’s a world and game that you’re interacting with and in all of the time that you’re surfing about on the web. In it’s simplest terms, this is currently done by installing a plug-in onto Firefox and letting it collect the URLs you visit. The type of interaction you do with the web and the type of sites you visit determine your alignment and class.

That might seem a bit invasive to some, but that’s another kettle of fish - this is just for fun uses, not subterfuge and you can flick the plug-in off if you’d rather spend a bit of time without it logging you.

Now, surfing the web rewards you with XP - much like the traditional RPG - journeying means you’re experiencing. The only difference is you don’t actively have to do much - there’s no beasties to battle along the way (yet?) or keys to find or any other such fantasy. You’re just rewarded for being an active internet user.

<p>That’s the passive part.</p>
<p>The really interesting bit about this to me is the not-so-passive layer they’re adding.  You can start to interact and do more of the game part.  This is done via the traditional <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quest_%28gaming%29">Quest</a> formula.  <a href="http://bud.com/quests/">Quests in a PMOG universe</a> mean visiting a group of pre-determined links on a theme and getting some extra XP for doing so.  Along the way you might find some fun new sites or, heaven forbid, learn something new.  The Quests are created by other users, so there’s a variety of themes.</p>
<p>Then there’s <a href="http://bud.com/bazaar/">other things</a> like Portals - which allow a player to send another player to a new URL (like a hint, or trick, to get them to visit something new) by attaching a portal to a specific site.  Another fun item is Mines - which can be planted on a URL, so that when a player visits the URL they step on the mine and forfeit some of their Datapoints (the currency of PMOG, gained passively over time).  Other special items are in the works.</p>
<p>Now, the really fun part for me and the bit that’s really piqued my interest is the Items.  <a href="http://pmog.devjavu.com/projects/pmog/wiki/MicroFormat">Items in this universe</a> will be embedded into websites via HTML using standardised class names and values.  </p>
<p>What’s that?  </p>
<p>Yep - microformatting to give richer mark-up and machine readable, extractable, data which in this case will be magic items that can be collected (and probably in the future sold, swapped, used or combined).  </p>
<p>OK, I admit, it’s a bit of microformat’s principle no-no in that most likely these items will be hidden away and forgotten about in various websites that want to be richer parts of the PMOG universe, and also not human readable in the first instance, but what a fun use of <a href="http://microformats.org">microformats</a>!</p>
<p>One thing that is missing from the PMOG universe at the moment is <acronym title="Non-Player Characters">NPCs</acronym> - but they could be set up just as easily as items using <a href="http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard">hCard</a>, and then they can guide players off to new Quests and Items.  Or something like that, anyway.  Lots of potential.</p>
<p>I’m quite keen on following what they’re going to do with this on the grander scale.  Sometimes it’s nice to feel like you’re part of a big game and have everything you’re doing have another level of use (all be it just a fun, and intensely nerdy, one) and with real-life and internet social network lines blurring more every day, why not start blurring that one between gaming aswell?

By very popular request, here is an update. I didn’t want to do it.

Back to work after a brief trip to definitely not-so-sunny Cornwall for Flora Day. I didn’t take as many photos as last year, because, well… it’s pretty much the same deal every year. Feel free to browse last year’s shots with a grey and rainy filter to imagine you were there yourself.

Here’s my version of events through the medium of interpretive dance… or just flash photography…:

<p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/phae_/sets/72157600186522567/">See more photos at Flickr</a></p>