Archive for October, 2008
Posted on October 31, 2008 - by Jordan H
Halloween
Well it’s the last day of the month, and quite evident by the number of trick o’ treaters calling round tonight that it’s Halloween. All over the web there have been sites celebrating the occasion, from Google to Twitter.
I’ve had a few ideas going around my head over the past day about redesigning my blog, but creating my own theme from scratch rather than using a WooTheme (even though they’re superb).
Tonight, I’m off out to see the new Bond movie, Quantum of Solace tonight, and I’m really looking forward to it. I think I’ve grown out of Halloween now…
Posted on October 31, 2008 - by Jordan H
Blackpool
I was off to the good ol’ Illuminations last night. They seemed the same as usual, and then we went off for some fish and chips. Very cold, windy and wet though!
Posted on October 25, 2008 - by Jordan H
Xbox and Rails
Last night, I met up with Josh, Joseph, Mike, Francis and Sam and we had a great time playing Halo 3 together. Francis’ lack of experience was extremely funny - he only ended up killing people on his team - and we all had some Ice Tea. Considering I haven’t played Halo compulsively - in the time since I got my Xbox I’ve mainly played GTA IV and Battlefield: Bad Company - I did quite well. Our team won a lot of times and I got to the top of the scoreboard once.
Last night, I decided to get round to learning some Ruby on Rails. It’s been something I’ve planned for ages, and since I’ve got a week off now I thought I’d see about learning it. I got InstantRails and installed it on my computer and followed a myriad of tutorials to get “Hello, World!” up on my screen. Gonna see if I can make an app by the end of the week, so far I’ve got about 5 different “Test” apps with no apparrent way to delete them. Help? (:
Posted on October 15, 2008 - by Jordan H
How the little guy can do something…
It’s quite typical in this day and age to turn on the television and see yet another news report about starving children in Africa, people dying in Bangladesh or something similar, and it’s quite typical to disregard it as nothing much and flick over to another channel. It’s not hard to think that poverty is something that doesn’t affect us and is only a problem in third-world countries. I think it’s time we all thought again.
Poverty is something that can be very close to home. Albeit not to the extremes which are saw in places like Africa and Asia, it’s still there and something, which again, is very easy to turn a blind eye to. You may find these facts hard to believe, but one-fifth of the UK’s population don’t have enough to live on. That includes almost 4 million children. The amount of children in poverty has doubled since the last generation, despite advances in technology and availability of benefits.
We’ve all wore the white band, but has that actually meant something to us? Of course we can’t donate millions ourselves, and most of the time we can’t see an actual change, but there are tons of things we can do which, when done by a lot of people, can make a huge difference. There is a great list here of a small things you could do which could make a big difference on the lives of people in poverty all over the world.
Yes, your average Joe doesn’t have a million pounds to give away, but there’s nothing stopping him clicking a button or donating the money he’d spend on a coffee to help out those in need.
Today is Blog Action Day, and thousands of blogs around the world are joining together to make a combined effort to make people aware of world poverty. This is a great example of how many people can do a small thing, but when it’s combined together makes a massive difference.
There’s an endless amount of things you can do to help, and it’s amazing what the world can do when people pull together.
Photo from SamPac on Flickr. Statistics from Oxfam and JRF. Part of Blog Action Day 2008.
Posted on October 14, 2008 - by Jordan H
The New Macbooks
Despite being at the Chinese Buffet in Preston tonight, I still managed to follow Apple’s unveiling of the new MacBooks. They look pretty awesome, gonna get one soon! (:
Posted on October 12, 2008 - by Jordan H
Lifestreaming
Well, here’s my first attempt at lifestreaming. I coded it this evening in PHP and it pulls RSS feeds from twitter/flickr/my blog. I’ll be posting up a tutorial on JordanHatch.co.uk soon on how I did it.
There’s some styling I need to do with it, but other than that I think it’s pretty extendable. What do you think?
Posted on October 5, 2008 - by Jordan H
Burnout Bikes!
Well, I promised I’d give a review on the latest and greatest in Paradise City, and here it is (:
Burnout Paradise has been a totally awesome game from the start. I’m an avid fan, I bought it on day one and I’ve loved every bit of it. I’ve already given a review of the game a few months back, but that was before Criterion announced the Year of Paradise, where they dedicated a year to transforming Paradise City through free updates.
They released updates Bogart and Cagney a while back, and about a week or so ago they released Davis, the most recent free update for Burnout which included bikes! And they sure haven’t disappointed. (more…)
Posted on October 4, 2008 - by Jordan H
New Xbox Stuff
On the Gamerscore Blog, the Xbox team have revealed the new look Game Store as part of the New Xbox Experience. Looks pretty cool! (more…)