Today I discovered why I am studying Physics and not one of those other arty subjects. "Website design and programming" is such an innocent sounding title, isn't it? But in reality it belongs in one of those bad nightmares that only really mad people would ever consider entering.

The übungen today consisted of us (Geir and myself) along with the rest of the class, looking at two posters put up on the wall of one of the rooms in the ZDV and nodding our heads approvingly at what supposedly was a good layout plan, or shaking our heads at the so called poor thought that had gone into the navigation of them (hold on. navigation of a poster?? what are they on about?? is there some hyperlink to a fifth dimension that I missed??).
But that was not all. Oh no. The second half of the lesson consisted of us getting some cut out pictures from magazines, sticking them on a piece of paper (reminding anyone of primary school yet), showing where text should be, and calling it a masterpiece in webdesign. Then they were all put up on the wall in place of the two previous posters, and the same umming and ahhing was done all over again for 30 minutes.
Our suspicions should have first been arised when we visited the website for this course. It is an excellent example of how NOT to build a site.

Anyway, that's the reason we're not studying art design. It requires thinking !

A couple of cool new features have been added to this site.
Firstly, if you click on "Contact : Email" in the navigation bar, yuo will be taken to a page that allows you to send me an email, also allowing you to disclose your contact details.
Secondly, you can now send an email to the address cited on the "Email" page, and whatever you put in the header will be sent by SMS to my phone - ideal if you need to contact me urgently.

Well, I am coming to the end of another day at work. Slowly getting back to a normal time schedule. Should be going off to Wiesbaden (about 20kms away from here) for the first time tomorrow !!

I had another thought today. Yes, really. I have come to the conclusion that despite the amount of money every student pays to the public transport sytem here, the buses never seem to have enough room for you, especially when you are already running late for class. I hope they send round a questionnaire about the service sometime...

Anyway, I am starting to feel the effects of not sleeping now, so I will have to get back to this over the weekend, or monday.

Update ! Update !

All the photos (inclusive those from the carnival in Mainz, and the dressing up that happened around this time) are now fixed and so will enlarge when you click on them.
These photos can be found under the heading "Photos : Others" in the navigation bar to the left of the page.

As many of you might have noticed, there has been a bit of a change of my accent in spanish recently. The reason for this would be the arrival of Marilo's boyfriend from spain, calling himself july (sorry, Julio). In fact, after being here only a few weeks he's managed to become part of the family of Mainz (although, this might have been helped by his bringing of aperitives from Spain, or from his washing-up he does every night after we have all eaten).

Anyway, this Julio celebrated his birthday yesterday. And you want to know what he did? He gave up smoking. Well, nearly. He will be leaving back for spain on sunday, so we hope that he's had a good time with us all, and maybe misses us a little ???

So, I'm going to be working again tonight, which means there's got to be a party somewhere for me to miss. Who knows?

If anyone would like any changes/has any questions about this site, please send an email to the adress provided under the heading "Contact : Email" and I'll see if I can incorporate it into my site.

Signing off for now

This entry will have to be short, as I have to go and eat. However a longer one should appear later today with more of the usual.

If you didn't get an email from me telling you of the new updates to this site, it's because you're not on the list. To get on the list, send an email with the the subject line "subscribe" to the following address: marcus.lloyd@gmx.net.

The new photos can be found under the "Places" link in the bar on the left hand side of the page. There you will see my trip to spain, plus the photos of the places we've visited in germany over the last couple of weeks.

Happy hunting.

Just thought you might like to know that the tiredness is slowly catching up on me.

This hasn't stopped me managing to visit Geir's website and to find out that he now has tickets to see Rammstein in concert sometime soon.

My timetable will be put up here sometime this week, along with the other photos that I am presently in the process of scanning.

If you have any suggestions for the website, what should be included etc, don't hesitate to send me an email at marcus.lloyd@gmx.net.

Well, better get on with something else now, signing off for the weekend.

OK, now I'm getting mad. Haven't received any emails from anyone except a couple of friends back in birmingham. And to think that I'm slaving away trying to get this site up and running so you can all see the photos.

That'S it, I'm going to ignore all the people here in Mainz and see what the reaction is like. I mean, if I send an SMS, the least they can do is respond, no?

Well, how about this then - see a picture of Jordi and Luca like never before, here!!

Working again tonight, so can't go to Fatima's birthday party. Always the same - I work, everyone else parties.

Well, spanish party last night. Met up with most people that I hadn't seen since coming back this semester.

Am wondering why no-one is writing in the guestbook any more. It is working you know !!

In case you haven't noticed, some of the things on this website that I've changed are: the languages are now set up, and there are archives of all the diary entries previously written.


Bye for now.

First of all I would like to apologise to all of you who can't live without your daily intake of my babbling in this diary. I have unfortunately (and surprisingly for most of you) been very busy of late.
As I spent 4 weeks off work (on holiday) I am having to do about 4 shifts a week to catch up on the hours that I missed. Also, we've had visitors from spain coming to see Mavi, Marilo, and Jordi, so we've been going out and about showing them germany in a nutshell.

Another thing you might notice is that not all the links are working properly yet. This is currently being rectified, and should be up to it's proper standard within this week.

As for more photos, everything from my holiday in spain has been developed, it is just awaiting to be scanned in, as are any other photos taken since march. A bit of pacience and everything should be "fix und fertig" very soon.

In the meantime, I would like you to glance your eyes across Geir's site (also found in the navigation bar to the left), and read his stories and adventures. But I warn you, you have to possess a sense of humour :)

Well, off to update the site, and await the arrival of the other erasmusians (Gloria and Ethel).

Seeing as I haven't slept in about 40 hours, I'm going to keep this short.

I am at present at a stage of major renovation of this website, so it is possible that during the next couple of days not everything will work correctly (or at all).
Please be patient, as it will be worth the wait.

ml.

Sunburnt I return to Mainz to start the second semester here. How I wish I was still in Spain. As you might guess by the time of this entry, I am on another nightshift at work. However, as there is a lot of things to do to get this website spick-and-span I will cut short at this point and leave the news for another time.
Signing off for now.