_{Jamie Balfour's}Personal blog

I have updated my search box on my site four times since the start of 2013, and I'm never entirely sure what design to go with. I currently like the design of my search box but it is so flawed that it's become such a site hinderance. Even now, as browsers get better and better, things just don't always work the way you planned with websites. 

Tomorrow evening I will begin a new search box. You can tell me what you think in the feedback form.

I have noticed this time and time again, but for all you people who have never experienced the Mac experience, this is how your PC looks from a Mac's Finder:

This is how Macs see PCs

In just under 30 minutes, my Halloween theme for my website will be coming down and the site will return to the normal form. 

I hope you have enjoyed my site in it's 2014 Halloween form. As always mid November it turns to a Christmas theme. 

It also should change automatically without me needing to do anything, provided the time on the local computer is correct, as I chose to write this in JavaScript rather than on the server - giving your computer more work, not mine!

In somewhat sad news, Motorola, one of the largest chip manufacturers in the world, has been bought by Lenovo.

You can read more at Lenovo's blog found here.

The following is another simple to use BlackRabbit Script sample.

//Copyright JBALFOURDTP//28/10/2014
//BlackRabbit Script version: 2.2.2.467

function main()
    //main method goes here
    output("Hello world");

    $x = 11
    $y = 11

    if($x == $y)
        output(True)
    else
        output(False)
    endif

    //Incrementing variables will not instantiate them. They must be instantiated prior to use.
    $i = 0
    while($i < 10)
        $i++
        output($i)
    endwhile

endfunction

Whilst not necessary, I do build a lot of customisation features into my website. One such feature is the Invert Colour feature that inverts the colour of the page and it's contents - using a black background and white text making it easier to read. All features are used throughout the browsing session of the site or you can choose to store them in a cookie on your computer so that every time you visit the site these features are enabled.

Now I'm adding another customisable feature to my site with Dark Mode. Dark Mode is a similar functionality to Invert Colour. The only difference is that it only affects the menu. Please take a look at this:

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.