Today I went to Liverpool, for a few reasons. I went to see the new Liverpool One, which I thought was pretty good, quite reminiscent of Portuguese shopping centres (I love the open air!).

The other reason was because I wanted to see the Super Lamb Bananas. Because it’s the ‘Capital of Culture’ year in Liverpool, there have been 120 replicas of the massive Super Lamb Banana put around the city. They’ve all been designed by a different artist or community group. I’m going to try and take photos of as many as possible, hopefully all!

Today, I managed to get pictures of 34. I’m starting to (slowly!) upload them to my Flickr photostream. I’m also plotting them on a Google map. (The green pinpoints are the ones I’ve taken, the red ones are the ones I’ve not got yet!) Unfortunately, some clever person at the CoC decided to stick one of them down in Euston Station in London. My project to get photos of all the Super Lamb Bananas has just got a little more expensive!

Click here to see the map with pictures!

>Jordan

After the great big data loss we were pretty much back to square one with KidChat. No posts. No users. No existing site. So, we thought we might as well go ahead and put up what we’d planned for KidChat there and then.

Our solution was using Vanilla, an extendable open source forum application. It’s very plain and lacks some core functionality of a forum (memberlists, private messaging) in the beginning, but we added a lot of addons together and came up with what we now call “KidChat2″.

So what have we done? The first change you’ll probably notice is the News Blog. This is displayed to everyone on the homepage for the site. It helps us to let our users know what we’re doing with KidChat. Its prominent position means that users are more aware of the stuff we’re doing for them, and gives them the opportunity to ask us about things and suggest new ideas.

Then we’ve simplified the categories. No categories, no sub-forums etc, just forums. Vanilla, by default, lets users just browse the topics. It’s made it much more simple for our users. Replying is much easier to use and that’s been shown in the stats - over the last 5 days we’ve been running the new site, we’ve had 500 posts!

I hope that we’ve chosen the right direction for KidChat, and I’m sure that these new changes will encourage new members to join and for the forum to grow even more.

>Jordan

This game is absolutely amazing. I’ve not put another disc in my Xbox 360 since I bought it on Friday. It’s very fun to play, and it’s got a great story too.

You play as Preston Marlowe, a soldier in the US Army. He’s put in Bad Company, the unit of the army where all the idiots are put, “so they can put all their bad eggs in one basket”. They’re used when the privates and corporals are too expensive to waste. As you can probably expect, the result is very funny.

The story follows the unit as they discover Mercenaries and their greed for gold ensues. Bad Company ends up invading a neutral country and causing major chaos as they attempt to steal the Mercenaries’ gold. Great gameplay, not extremely hard but very fun to play.

And then there’s the online multiplayer. This takes the game to a completely new level. Almost (90%) fully-destructable environments can turn strategies on their head, nothing says chaos like being in a building one second, then being fully exposed to the enemies the next after someone blows the whole wall apart in front of you! The main game mode is Gold Rush, where you are either an Attacker or a Defender. The attackers need to blow up the metal cases where the gold is stored to steal it, and the defenders have to stop them. The attackers have limited respawns, and the defenders have unlimited. Think of it as CoD4‘’s Search And Destroy mode, but on a bigger scale and more destructive!

This game is fantastic, and one of the best I’ve ever played. The destruction factor adds a whole new dimension to the gameplay, and underneath it all is an amazing game engine. It’s called Frostbite and was developed by DICE. Bad Company is the first game that utilises it.

If you’re looking to get an awesome game this summer, this is the one to buy! You’ll have hours of fun playing the single player and then double the fun playing online. I thought it was impossible, but this game beats Call of Duty in all areas!

Let me know what you think!

>Jordan

So, I’ve lost KidChat, my website and a clients website too, and i ain’t happy. If these guys ever resurface then I won’t be even going near them. My advice is to choose a reputable host, as the consequences of not doing that are proven in my losses.

>Jordan

UPDATE: AceGX seem to be back online, with their homepage continually updating their status. They say they’ve suffered a major server outage and lost all their data. Well done AceGX, I won’t be staying with you any longer.

Here are some of the pictures I took at URBIS in Manchester yesterday. I took quite a few pictures, as I’m planning to make a model of the building for my final piece in Art. I also went into the museum, and saw a few cool exhibits too. Let me know what you think!