Spore official release date set

It's official! There was some speculation in previous months, but September 7th has now been confirmed as the day when you can finally get your hands on Will Wright's long-awaited game, Spore.

Tags: Spore, game

Chinese New Year

It's Chinese New Year 4706! Have a good one :)

Related: Chinese, New Year

Surfing kickflip trick

So Close! Apparently Volcom are offering $10K to the first person who can prove they've nailed this trick. Get practising!

Who will win Super Tuesday?

More predictions... I realise that my crystal ball got it wrong for the Superbowl, but hey, what a great game and I'm glad about the result!

So, Clinton vs Obama and McCain vs Romney. It's going to be a hard one to call. Most of my interest in American politics has come from watching the West Wing, so I'm no expert, but surely McCain will win outright and get the Republican nomination. I expect there won't be a clear winner for the Democrats though. This one's probably going to go on till March 4th. Who would've have thought it two months ago? Hillary was drafting her inauguration. Any theories?

Tags: West Wing, politics

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Sports related Facebook apps

A new little Facebook application I've created is a widget that lists current and upcoming events on our sister site Sportomaniac. With the African Nations Cup going on, Six Nations Rugby, SuperBowl and staple of Premiership football, there's loads going on!

Related: sport, Facebook

Online tax deadline today

More than 150000 people filed their tax returns on deadline day last year. Looks like it's a similar story this time round - the website is "temporarily unavailable". So perhaps it's a good time to review some of the common errors made on self-assessment forms:

Common errors:

Failure to complete a separate supplementary page for each individual employment.
Entering employee personal pension premiums net instead of gross.
Entering the figure for capital expenditure allowances in box 3.14 of the self-employment pages instead of the figure for capital allowances.
Failure to complete Q19 of the main tax return where a repayment is due.If you do not opt for immediate repayment, the Revenue will leave the overpaid amount on your account and set that amount against future liabilities.
Entering your pay in box 1.8 of the employment pages but not entering tax deducted in box 1.11

Common reasons for rejecting a tax return:

Entering a "yes" tick on one of the questions 1 to 9 on page 2 of the tax return but failing to forward the relevant supplementary page.
Failure to complete the self-employment pages, particularly from box 3.74 onwards.
Putting detailed information on separate schedules instead of including the information.
Entering handwritten notes, such as "per accounts" or "information to follow", instead of entering actual figures.
Failure to sign and date the return.

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Watch Live Super Bowl XLII

New York Giants vs New England Patriots is the billing at Super Bowl XLII this Sunday. What with the flu the NY squad got this week (conspiracy anyone?), I don't think they have a hope, so that's who I'm supporting. US folk who are big fans of this annual event will probably be out at some party, but those of us in UK (and most other countries) will just have to be content with the coverage on BBC 2, what with it being on in the middle of the night... If you're up and also following the game (and perhaps trying to work out the rules), check out Sportomaniac for some live sports chat and armchair refereeing! Kick-off 23:15 GMT.

Tags: Super Bowl

Software to detect plagiarism

I recently saw an article about the growing problem of plagiarism among students and so I've written a little piece of software as a tool to aid teachers in the fight against it. The application is called Collusion and allows users to select a folder on their hard drive that contains the students' essays. These are then checked against each other for evidence of "copy-and-paste".

This is version 1.0. All feedback, via the contact form or the Nimisis software Google group, would be greatly appreciated!

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