Jamie Balfour

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Jamie Balfour'sPersonal blog

Saturday the 18th of October 2014 is the date set for the Apple Store's opening in Edinburgh. The Princes Street store has been long awaited and is set to be a wonderful addition to all the Apple Stores across the world. I cannot wait myself!

Posted in Tech news
apple
princes
street
opening
18
october
2014

It's not new news that Apple is having it's next major product event on the 16th this month. I along with others am very excited and cannot wait to see what gets released.

For starters, the iPad will probably receive an update. Some believe that the way Apple will amalgamate the MacBook and iPad is by releasing an 'iPad Pro' - a larger and more powerful iPad. Others believe it also may run on a combination of Mac OS X and perhaps iOS as well.

Another major announcement could be the final release of Mac OS X Yosemite (for those who do not know, this is pronounced yo-sem-it-ee) which is currently in it's 5th beta release. 

Another possible release is the iMac with Retina display. This has been a long awaited upgrade for the iMacs which are falling behind their mobile counterparts because of this. A Retina display would up the resolution on the 21 inch model to about 3840 by 2160 and the resolution on the 27 inch to about 5120 by 2880 if they doubled pixel density again.

A final possiblity is the release of a new Mac Mini. Apple's affordable bring your own keyboard, mouse and display Mac for all has not been updated since 2012. It's a shame for me because I really wanted a small Mac desktop that I can use particularly for storing data safely. If the Mac Mini is re-designed, it will likely look like a small version of the (in my opinion) ugly Mac Pro, which will likely mean that all ways of expanding the system will be completely removed - which would be sad.

Until then, we'll just have to wait, only three days to go!

Posted in Tech news
next
apple
event
2014

For the last few days, until today, my website has been suffering from some troubles due to server problems. I would like to say that the server is running fine now and my website displays correctly. 

I have not been adding a lot of content to my site because of the fact that I have resumed university, but I would like to point out that the Python tutorials are coming along now.

Posted in Website news
server
problems

Within the next year or so I intend to extend my tutorials further by adding 10 new tutorials in the following:

  • Apache webservers
  • BlackRabbit Script
  • C#
  • CodeIgniter
  • CSS
  • Java
  • JavaScript
  • Java Server Pages
  • Latex
  • Python (I'm learning more about this day by day)
Posted in Website news
plans
for
tutorials
website
learn

My last post mentioned that Minecraft 1.8 was released just two weeks ago this Wednesday. Now in a slightly saddening way Microsoft announced it had bought the company behind it - Mojang.

Now this is not necessarily a bad thing, just a worrying thing (there is no way to tell which way it will go at the moment). Minecraft has been nice as an indie game, albeit a very successful one, but now it will just join another collection of games Microsoft produces. 

I have written numerous times that Microsoft try too hard to enter every marketplace and product range out there.In my opinion, they ruined some of their best products out there such as integrating Windows Live Messenger with Skype, Nokia by giving them Windows Phone and my personal favourite, Rare or "RareWare" back in the day by transforming them from a small company to one that works for Microsoft.

Analysts have said that Microsoft should break up into smaller companies but unfortunately they are still not going that way and obtaining more and more smaller companies.

I just hope that Mojang and Minecraft are not consumed by Microsoft and become a tiny little project nobody works on.

Click here for Microsoft's take on the aquisition

Posted in Gaming
minecraft
microsoft
purchase
sad
day

Although it was some few days ago, on the 2nd September Minecraft 1.8 was released! I just wanted to mention this on my blog!

Posted in Gaming
minecraft
version
1.8
release

Links are now fully working as demonstrated in some of the other posts that have links. This works with updates and new posts. Here is a nice link: apple.com. The update page is also fixed now meaning that posts can be updated properly.

Coming soon:

  • Multi-blog post (inspired by the fact I post JBlogs posts on two blogs)
  • Delete a post from admin pages
  • Create user page
  • Subscribe page
  • Install page
  • Better information architecture
  • Better image support
  • Banner photos from the post page
Posted in BalfBlog
jblogs
links

I'm afraid that I am having some issues with TinyMCE and links at the moment. I will have this fixed soon, hopefully. The problem appears to be related to the links in both the update section and new post section.

The update section is also not working, regardless of links. I have spent too much time looking into this tonight so I will try and fix this tomorrow.

Today a couple of significant photos were posted about the full character roster in Super Smash Bros for 3DS and Wii U. The photo confirmed characters not featured on the Smash Bros website but apparently a Japanese demo was released with the full character roster.

To me the proof of this is found on the Smash Bros wiki. This seems to have a collection of all the characters confirmed.

The characters Nintendo has not yet confirmed to be returning to the new Smash Bros game from Brawl are as follows:

  • Falco
  • Game and Watch
  • Ganondorf
  • Jigglypuff
  • Ness
  • Wario

Also returning is the Melee favourite Dr Mario! What a surprise this was too! Also note, the Jigglypuff and Wario both do not appear in Mashable's picture, but others have posted pictures of them. 

New characters that have apparently leaked include:

  • Dark Pit (!)
  • Duck Hunt Dog

To see an outline of all the characters, the Wiki is best for this.

All Smash Bros characters released in Japan

This photo was taken from a Japanese copy of the demo

To see the whole post have a look at this post on Mashable

Posted in Gaming
super
smash
bros
character
roster
3ds
wii
u
wiiu
Site

After Apple's launch of the new Apple Watch, they have chosen to update their website.

Posted in Tech news
apple
apple.com
website
updates
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