Hello, it’s me, Steven.

I’ve been away for so long that you may have forgotten who I in fact am, well let me remind you: I’m Steven Knight. I’m now 16 and I’ve run this website single handled for the past three years which I use to document my life and post bits of designing and developing work that I’ve done. I also now run Clear:Both, my brand new web development company in my spare time, when I’m not doing coursework, of course.

So, now that you know me once again, I think it’s time for a very overdue blessay. So, where should I start? Should I start from what I did over my summer, (or what I didn’t do for that matter), or from the beginning of my first year of Sixth Form, or from my miscellaneous observations? I suppose I shall start in chronological order, so, I it’s time to talk about the summer then.

My summer started off, well, not very summery to be honest. I ended school on May 15th, (which seems like a life time ago now), which marked the end of Year 11 and potentially the end of education all together. But, it’s not that simple; I still had to come back in to take exams for another month before I was completely free. I think the last exam I did was Design Technology, and after two hours: that was it, I was free – that marked the start of my 14 weeks off, (18 if you start counting from when school ended). Now, you’re probably reading this thinking, “14 weeks! How lucky!”, well you may be correct if I actually had anything to do for those 14 weeks. Besides setting up Clear:Both, which I designated as my summer project; going on the occasional walk in the sun with an audiobook playing and having the odd friend over, (odd as in less frequent, not that the friends I had over were literally odd, of course), I in fact did nothing at all. If anything, I was longing to go back to school because I was so bored. At one point, I realised that I had watched over 15 films that I hadn’t seen before in the space of two weeks, and by then, I knew that I was bored.

I would say as the summer started, it ended, but it didn’t: it carried on… and on. But, as the end of summer approached there was still one of blockade in my way: results day. August the 27th was a date that looked so far in the future when I finished my last exam in early June. However, time soon caught up with me, and there I was: at school with people I hadn’t seen for three months, queuing up standing nervously in line to be handed a sealed brown envelope with my name printed wonkily on a sticker in the all to familiar Times New Roman font face. To tell you the truth, I was one of the first in line. People were too nervous to go inside and simply queue, but there really is no point in putting it off, because it’s going to happen. Several seconds after being handed the aforementioned envelope, I briskly escorted myself outside into the optimistic sun light and found a quiet little area to peal open the seal and read what was basically my future. Now, I’ve been over my results in greater detail in another post, so I’ll go over it quickly here: 2 A*’s, 1 A, 3 B’s, 2 C’s, 2 D’s and 1 E. I had passed all of my major subjects, minus one or two minor disappointments, (which to be honest I wasn’t warranted because I did leave revision until the last week), I was very pleased with my results; and so were my family.

Less than two weeks after breathing a sigh of relief and signing up for Sixth Form, there I was standing outside the Andy Todd Sixth Form Center on September the 7th 2009, waiting eagerly to be taught exciting, new and prosperous subjects that would keep me happily occupied for the next two years. I had new pens, pencils, A4 pads, binders and plastic sheets while wearing brand new clothes with a crisp new hair cut, I was ready.

Oh, in case you don’t know what I did indeed chose to study for the next two years, I’ll tell you: English Language, Media, I.T and Psychology. According to various teachers, my choices were very varied, which I’ll assume is a good thing.

Even though I was at the same school that I had been for the past five years, (Wollaston Secondary School), with basically the same people, it for some reason felt like a completely new school. I don’t know what it was, perhaps it was the different lesson structure, or the extended responsibilities, or the greater trust between teachers and pupils, or the noticable absence of school uniform. What it is exactly will still keep me thinking, or perhaps it’s just an mixture of all of the above that’s resulted in an unidentifiable feeling.

Anyway, lets talk about the subjects. I’m only just getting started of course, so it’s too early to tell how things are going to pan out in the long term, but all of the subjects are living up to what I expected. English Language is as enjoyable, exciting and as informative as I imagined it to be, learning all sorts of rules and the rights and wrongs of Standard English and how this can differentiate between various dialects. Media is more or less the same as it was in GCSE, exploring the ways in which films are constructed to please their target audience and explaining how they accomplish this by using Media terminology. I.T is a dreary but as necessary as it has always been to me. We have to do more practical and real world things compared to GCSE, for example, for most of this year I have to come up with a 50 to 100 page report on how various companies use I.T in different ways, terrific. Psychology is the only subject that I haven’t done before, but it’s really interesting to study human behaviour on a different level compared to what we all do all the time, i.e. make judgements and assumptions about two peoples relationships based on body language.

Two weeks in and I’ve already adopted a lever arch file after a standard binder could no longer do the trick as the plastic sheets kept slipping off the metal rings when they were prised open to force more work on top of other sheets. I just hope that I can keep up with the work load, I’ve been doing well so far. All of my set homework’s have been completed on the same day as they were given out which of course leaves me more time to relax when I get home. It’s the little things I look forward to know, such as a nice meal that I know is coming my way or a T.V show that’s on later that night.

Speaking of T.V shows actually, it’s the Autumn T.V season, so lots of my favourite shows are coming back to keep me happy. Peep Show, Mock the Week and Shooting Stars are already back, with QI and Have I Got News For You are waiting to be broadcasted. T.V shows from over seas are also finding their way onto my desktop the day after they have been broadcasted, such as The Office and soon Family Guy will be doing the same. So yeah, it’s the little things that are keeping me going.

I think that I’ve gone over as much as I want to in this blessay without becoming boring and repetitive. I can’t promise that I’ll be doing this often because obviously I don’t know what I might have to do from day to day, coursework or otherwise. Thank you for reading, it’s just good to write about your own life experiences because you can go over certain parts and work things out, why don’t you try it?

Steven – Administrator.

Accept my apologies

I’m really sorry for the lack of posts on both of my blogs. I’ve just been really busy with starting Sixth Form and subsequently completing all of my work on time and so on and so fourth. I’ll promise that I’ll sit down with a cup of tea, (in my new Starbucks mug), and write a blessay about Sixth Form some time this weekend. It will be nice to write one of them – haven’t done so for a while. I’ve got a lot to talk about… I hope.

Check back this time next week. Steven – Administrator.

New tutorial on Clear:Both

Just finished my latest tutorial on Clear:Both which is about the basics of CSS coding. Here’s the first paragraph as always for you to read.

If you recall my last tutorial, I told you the basics of  how to make a practical HTML layout; I mentioned that I would write a follow up tutorial on the basics of CSS coding, well this is that very tutorial.

Clean and well organised CSS files can help with debugging so it’s good to get some practice. Lets get started.

If you want to follow on my from my last tutorial, then you can read the rest of the tutorial via this link.

Steven – Administrator.

Facebook 3.01 for the iPhone OS

Only a couple of days after the much awaited Facebook 3.01 update was released for the iPhone and iPod Touch, a follow up update was released earlier this week. The updates listed for 3.01 are numerous but are mainly bug and interface fixes based on user feedback after 3.01 was released.

In my opinion, I find this version a lot more usable than the previous version as it emulates the desktop and web versions better. You can do a lot more such as write comments on profiles, like people’s statuses and look at recent notifications. To show you the new update, I have taken screenshots of some of the improved parts of the application. Please click on a thumbnail below in order to see the full image as well as a description of what the feature and update actually is.

If you want to download the update, you can do so by visiting the App Store on your iPhone or iPod Touch where it will be listed under updates. You can write what you think about it in the comments below this post.

Steven – Administrator.