Following their debut hit single, they went on to produce an immediate hit – “Everybody in love” which also went to number one. Louis Walsh mentored the band and is very pleased to have them storming the charts. Louis says, “I am very proud of the lads, they are nice on stage and off stage”. The X Factor launched their career as an impressive 14.52 million viewer’s watch on the Saturday show alone.

JLS are one of the most popular bands of the year; even before entering on the X Factor, they won best Unsigned act at Urban Awards. Their adoring fans continue to buy JLS merchandise (i.e. JLS hoodies) which increases their profits. JLS are going to start touring with their album called “JLS” starting in November.

JLS album track list –

 Beat Again (first single)
02. Everybody In Love (second single)
03. Keep You
04. Crazy For You
05. Heal This Heartbreak
06. Close To You
07. Only Tonight
08. One Shot
09. Private
10. Don’t Go
11. Only Making Love
12. Kickstart
13. Tightrope
By Sophie Wilford

This drama centres around 5 teenagers on community service. The series starts off when the teens get caught in a strange storm which they then find out they have received superpowers. Think skins meets heroes and you get Misfits. 

The 4^th episode is airing Thursday 3^rd December. You can catch up on any episodes by logging on to www.channel4.com/programmes/misfits/4od.

The second episode centred around Nathan and an O.A.P’s tea-dance, as part of their community service. Things take a good turn for Nathan as he befriends a beautiful young volunteer.

The link for this episode is:  http://www.channel4.com/programmes/misfits/4od#3010165

Misfits is said to be the number one UK teen drama of the year. Will Misfits be more popular than skins?

Mr Oake a local farmer had some Jack Russel puppies he needed to sell. He painted a large sign advertising the pups and set about nailing it to a post on the edge of his drive. As he was driving the last nail into the post, he felt a tug on his overalls. He looked down into the eyes of a little boy called Tim.

Many of our parents, however, are still getting to grips with using Excel and emailing, let alone comprehending why we’re so adamant we can’t go near Internet Explorer.

Some people like to divide the world into two categories – those who can, and those who can’t. Some call them Passionates and Non-Passionates*, some call them simply ‘them‘ (that works both ways) and some like to exploit the other.

Take, for example, the flashy monitor we had last year. By flashy I don’t mean suave, sophisticated or a bit of a show-off; I mean that it was black, then white, then black, then white, then black, then showing signs of Windows XP for all of a few seconds, then black… The problem was the monitor. How do I know? I just know, ok! If that’s not enough of a reason, the computer was working fine, and I could input whilst the monitor was flashing (although not without a headache). My mother, in a fit of hysteria, and without my advice, took the issue to the computer shop, where the problem was diagnosed and a prognosis given.
Your hard drive is shot, you need a new one.
My mother, running her own business, would like to have the files transferred to the new hard drive from the old one. It’s been done before.
Impossible.
So my mother shells out for a new hard drive. All our files are lost; not a tragedy, I’ll admit, since we back them all up, but a nuisance. Just imagine her frustration when, all shiny hard drived up, the monitor keeps flashing.

The point of this story, is that I would not have been taken in by this blasted computer man. I would have borrowed a monitor from a friend, replaced my flashy one and confirmed that the monitor was at fault. I would then have bought a new monitor (something we did a few months later and – wow! – we’re back in business) and retained all my lovely files and settings.
But my mother isn’t me, and she trusts that this chap has more knowledge than she does, and takes him at his word. Something that 70%** of other 40-something people would have done.

Now, I cannot understand why people have trouble attaching documents to emails, printing photographs, or copying files to CD. I really cannot, as it is the simplest thing in the world to me. But that doesn’t give anyone the right to exploit those people who don’t find it obvious – whether they’re Non-Passionates, Normals, Non-Geeks, or a miriad of other labels.

None of this, however, makes it any more forgivable for a middle-aged woman to declare that she ‘just can’t email’ and expect it to be accepted… Meet us half way, people!

*Which I think is a little unfair, don’t you?
**Not a real statistic…

For those of you who don’t know, Spore is essentially a mash up of many game types, with the basis being evolution of a species, your species. Yes that’s right, you start the game as a singular cell in a 2D world. This stage is similar to Pac Man but with no boundaries, just fluid dynamics to guide you. As you eat more and collect body parts you are able to “evolve” your creature to the next level by adding new parts or rearranging old ones. Everything is procedurally generated on the fly, and at some point you will have control over everything, the plants, trees, rocks, water, music, creatures, colour of the planet and even its shape. Also added to this is the massively single player experience where other peoples creatures and buildings are added to your game depending on how you play and how you design your creature. This means that there is always stuff that can kill you along with stuff you can kill.

Eventually you progress onto land and into a 3D environment, where your main objective is to ally or defeat other nests of creatures, this is done through a rather simplistic button bash style game and is one of the main areas where spore fails to deliver on its vision. This leads onto a 3^rd tribal stage which is the same but in a grander scale with instruments and weapons coming in to play. After this you progress onto the penultimate stage, the civ stage.

The civ and space stages are mostly the same, just on a different level of control, the civ stage allows you to do most things but the space stage allows you to do almost anything you like. This is the most accurately depicted stage of spore, you take control of a single space ship and fly round the 50,000 star systems in the galaxy, that’s endless hours of fun, with tools such as the genesis device and tractor beam.

It promised to be the most open ended game ever created and to a large extent it is, but in many ways its so simple (easy to get from cell to space in less than 4 hours) which lets it down. Although Will has now said that this was intentional as to persuade casual gamers it seems die hard fans of his work will be disappointed. It is more open ended than The Sims or Sim City but some how seems more of a tech demo or proof of concept rather than a game.

In conclusion it is a great concept and fun to play with, but far too simple to impress the hard core gamer.

Read more here

My entry for this crazy short story thing. Word limit is 500 so I use 499, you can check if you want!

[Editor's note: this story is for grown-up readers only.]

Roy was born under a cloud of bad feeling, a heroin addicted mother and no home, each factor making the other one seem worse. His Mum, Janet, loved her child very much and although she could not offer him a permanent home or future, she gave him all the love she could.
It was a Sunday when things got really bad, Roy wouldn’t sleep and Janet needed to get him down for the night so she could go into town and make some money. With the scraps of her last hit still lingering, Janet gave Roy some sleeping pills and ran out into the cold rain. The water fell onto her body and cascaded down her, she was hardly wearing any clothes and she was freezing, the umbrella she had was broken and tattered, a mirror image of her life. She stumbled onto her usual ‘spot’ where she waited and waited, a car pulled up.
Several hours later, Janet was dropped off on the same street corner, chucked out like rubbish, no love, no care, no feeling. Janet felt sick, she bent down to vomit in the drain but then the thought of Roy entered her mind and there was a moment where she felt at peace… Swallowing the sick that sat at the deep crevasse at the back of her throat, she collected herself and ran to see her son.
It wasn’t long before she was home and although the urge for a fix was too much to bear, she had to make sure her son was well. The thought that she may have made a massive mistake consumed her, but so did the thought of heroin.
Her worst fears were realised, as much as she shook, shouted or screamed she could not wake Roy up. She thought he was dead. The one thing in her life that was pure and innocent had gone. She had killed her son; killed the one thing that she would kill others to protect. Going to sell her body to get heroin tokens had sold her son to the afterlife.
Janet grabbed a knife, she would not let herself be treated like rubbish by this life, man after man had raped her of her dignity; now she would find dignity in death. She cut into her wrist and severed the veins, the meat clinging to her bone split open with ease and the blood started to pour out. As her life faded away, she heard a cry and a scream, it was Roy. He was not dead.
It was too late, Janet’s life started to fade away, the pain of her wrists was matched only by that of the fact that she knew her beloved Roy’s life would be a waste. She bit her thumb.
Two weeks past until anyone noticed anything was wrong. The police crashed through the door, only to see two rotting corpses. Arranged like meat in an abattoir, like meat on a counter, like rubbish in a bin.

My own company was beginning to dwell on me as I sat in solitude amidst the general clutter of my room. Time to make a move in order to lose, if only for a while, my troglodyte status. So in to the daylight I ventured…

I enjoyed the Sun’s beautiful rays as I head out towards the railway line. It made a change from the usual rain and wind that harrows old people as they use all their strength to fight with gales going about their usual business. This generally involves wandering aimlessly and moaning about things that I find very trivial. But then the weather is trivial I suppose. It’s when you think about it and embrace it that it becomes more than a neglected detail of every day life.

Railway Maintenance had repaired the barbed wire fence that helped fend off individuals who intended to cause a variety of careless vandalism. I, on the other hand, am not one of these yobs and I only choose to go down onto the railway line to reflect on my feelings and take pleasure in the seclusion that it offers. It isn’t very often that you get a chance to sit down in the gleaming sunlight without a soul in sight.

I kept walking along all the while finding excellent angles to capture the odd snap; some of nature, some of obscure things that bequeathed meaning.

After a while the obligatory train came by and I stopped to feel the cannonade of fresh air explode onto my face. In fact it wasn’t really all that fresh, I mean it was full of petrol fumes, but if I held my breathe it felt fresh and pleasingly cool.

As I progressed along the track something rare occurred: I saw a man who was, like me, alone. I always thought that this track was mine. I was like its ruler. If I saw some litter I would pick it up and take it away with me; if I came across weeds nestling amongst the poppies and foxgloves I would tear them out. This man had violated my kingdom.

I held up my camera and zoomed in on the lonely character. He was old and appeared disturbed. He was talking to himself and moving his arms frantically about his body scratching his greying hair violently. He then stopped, removed a concealed Bible from his jacket and clutched it, still muttering uncontrollably. I was confused by the spectacle; if I’d have seen him in town I wouldn’t have given him a second glance but here, alone, he became an exhibition.

Again I heard a train rumbling along the tracks. It got closer and as it did the man became more hysterical. Then at once he ran out onto the railway line and cast his Bible into the sky. I screamed, the train screamed to a halt and the man was knocked off the track… The man did not scream, alone in the ditch…