_{Jamie Balfour's}Personal blog

Aim: The aim of the latest update was to make the website more consistent across multiple platforms.

In the last major update prior to this (3.4), I changed the site to have multiple fonts across the different platforms: Helvetica was used on Macs and iOS devices and Segoe UI on Windows and Windows Phone devices. 

Today, I'm happy to announce a cross platform Open Sans font has been installed on to this website. As well as that there is a far more consistent search box on the site with no issues on any of the modern browsers.

Safari

Firefox

Chrome

Recently, the 50 things you should see that are coming to Super Smash Bros Wii U was released. 

I think the best couple of things to come to the game include:

• 6 and 8 player Smash! Play with up to 8 players in one match.
• Parallel stages or dual-plane stages. These are stages with multiple planes in them meaning that two kinds of battle can take place on the stage.
• The stage builder. This looks awesome. Draw using the Wii U tablet to create the stage, giving more flexibility.
• Bigger stages - Palutena's Temple looks awesome! 
• Danger Zones - this damages you or KO you if your damage is higher than 100%.
• The Great Cave Offensive - from Kirby, it looks really good.

The stage builder

Jungle Hijinx is a two plane stage.

Notes about controllers when playing 8-Player Smash:

• Wii U GamePad (Max 1)
• Wii Remote or Wii Remote Plus* (Max 7)
• Wii U Pro Controller (Max 7)
• Nintendo GameCube controller** (Max 8)
• Nintendo 3DS series system*** (Max 8)

* Includes expansion controllers (such as the Nunchuk or Classic Controller Pro).
** Two GameCube Controller Adapters for Wii U accessories are required to connect eight GameCube controllers (each sold separately)
*** In order to use a Nintendo 3DS as a controller, each Nintendo 3DS system must have Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS.

There is so much more, but I wanted to highlight the best things here. You can watch the whole video here.

Finally, I have brought the innovation of live blogging to my blogging system - now there is something that WordPress doesn't give you out of the box (although there are plugins for it).

The new liveblog system is something I used to have using some very basic technologies that was never fully implemented. Now that JBlogs is fully implemented on the front end (apart from subscriptions, which my site subscribe button handles at the moment anyway).

In today's post, I'm going to be talking about how I have improved BlackRabbit Script. Today I added the concept of global variables and local variables.

I have been planning this for sometime as it is found in many programming languages.

My next aim is to add parameter passing to functions.

BlackRabbit Script is now in version 2.3.

Nintendo never cease to amaze me (a bit like Apple, in some way) with the release of new games and it's no different with Super Smash Bros for Wii U and Super Smash Bros for 3DS.

I've got the game for the 3DS and I must say it works well and I was very pleasantly surprised by how well it works. It's also highly addictive and very good fun. But I'm still even further intrigued by the Wii U version which is to be released in late November.

Nintendo released a hugely shocking revelation today that caught me buy surprise - the release of a new character, coming to Wii U. To find out who this character is, watch the Nintendo Direct tomorrow (although I'll probably post about it here anyway).

Here's a snapshot of what to expect at the event:

It's finally happened and of course I was at the opening of it!

I'm just uploading a couple of images here.

It was also a lovely morning, a bit of a nice breeze but it was far from being cold (although just in case I was wearing my warm fuzzy hat). I've also been in several photos on Twitter.

Panorama taken on my iPhone of the Apple Store

Waiting outside wasn't too bad - the weather was really good, but I came prepared incase it wasn't.

We got free t-shirts as I hoped! :)

A photo taken on one of the Macs in store and emailed home.

And we didn't finish without finally updating my mum's iPad to an iPad Air! (as they are now cheaper than before as well)

It was finally time for my mum to get a new iPad.

Well of course the Apple Special Event tonight has excited me very much because Apple have satisfied my hopes for a new Mac mini!

Not only that, they have really gone out on it and updated it with the new Haswell CPUs, given it Thunderbolt 2 and removed FireWire 800 and replaced it with another Thunderbolt port and kept the RJ-45. They've given it 802.11ac (almost Gigabit WiFi, similar to my MacBook Pro, although I will not be using WiFi as I prefer to use Gigabit Ethernet so that I'm on my wired switch first and foremost).

One thing to note as well by the way is that there appear to only be dual-core versions of the new Mac mini, which may make it a lower performer than the previous models, but we will have to see what Apple does with these.

Of course they also released the iPad Air 2, the iPad mini 3 and the iMac with Retina display as well. They've really gone all out and that's what they should have done on the 30th Anniversary of the Mac.

I'm so happy to see the new Mac mini, but will Apple have gone for a closed system and stopped users changing the RAM as they have with all other Macs?

Tonight at 6pm Apple will live stream information about their latest releases including (probably) a release date for Yosemite, perhaps a new iPad Air and iPad mini, (perhaps) a new Mac Mini, a new Apple TV and more.

Will you be watching it? What excites you most about it?

As I did last year with my website, I have decided to theme my site based on events like Halloween. This year the site is totally different from last year with a special font for the top and the headers. The site will still work as before, only some parts will look different.

Enjoy.

Here is some very simple BlackRabbit Script code that is used to perform multiple tasks. Can you figure out from the simple commands what it does at each point?

//Copyright JBALFOURDTP
//13/10/2014
//BlackRabbit Script version: 2.2.2.467 
function main()
    //Main method goes here
    //Case insensitive welcome
    hey -> Welcome to my application
    name -> Jamie
    Name -> Balfour
    
    echo ("Hello")

    get_yes_no("hey name "Name". Press Yes to continue the program.")

    %result -> bb.*return

    get_yes_no("Result is "'%result')

    if(%result == "Yes")
        output("That is the desired result")
    else
        output("That is incorrect")
    endif
    
    $i = 0
    $y = $i
    
    output($y)
    
    while($i < 5)
        $i++
        call (message)
    endwhile

endfunction

function message()
    output("i is" $i "and y is" $y)
    $y = add($y, 5)
    $z = multiply($y, $i)
endfunction