The Karate Kid

I've just returned from watching a preview of the new karate kid film. I was a big fan of the original films, and I didn't know what to expect from this - it's getting lots of hype because of the appearance of Will Smith's son Jaden Smith... hype is not always a good thing!

This film really does live up to the hype though, and Jaden Smith is brilliant. Also on top form is Jackie Chan, as young Jaden's reluctant trainer... not called Mr Miagi thankfully.

I'd say it is a remake of the original Karate Kid, but, not just a remake. The idea is the same, but the situation is different and... it's not Karate but Kung-Fu!

I kid you not, this is a great film, well worth seeing.

How do you train a dragon?

No - it's got nothing to do with drugs... I'm talking about the new movie 'How to train your Dragon' that I have just been to see, once again as a result of responding to a request from www.seefilmfirst.com.

I'm nearly 40 (just 2 weeks to go!), so I'll be honest, I got tickets to see this mainly for my own kids, thinking they will absolutely love it. I got home and presented them with my spoils (the hunter gatherer instinct is alive and well in me) only to be told that it clashed with a 'boot fair' of all things, and that they'd rather go to that.

Undaunted, I went on my own to see the film, sheepishly explaining that my family had 'bailed on me'. The nice lady at the Southampton Odeon responded with "Well that's their loss - it's great!" and handed me a pair of glasses. I started to point out to her that, while it was very generous of her to offer me eyewear, I already had my own, what with being horribly long-sighted, then I realised that these were RealD-3D glasses... Cool, my first 3D film.

And what do you know... the nice lady was right, this fim is stunning, and the 3D really adds a lot to the action, swooping flight sequences, incredible explosions, glorious landscapes - 'How to train your Dragon' has the lot. It's even got humour and a love story mixed in for good measure.

Take my advice, point your dragon in the direction of the nearest Cinema, and press 'GO'.

Kick Ass

I've just got back from a preview screening of the new action movie 'Kick Ass', organised by those nice folks at www.seefilmfirst.com & www.tellten.co.uk.

Surely, any film with 'Ass' in the title (as in backside, not donkey) was going to be good. It's got a scuba gear wearing hero, an 11 year old crime fighting girl in a purple wig, and Nicholas Cage as... well, as batman! what more could you want?

Oh? You want guns, explosions, blood, fire and swearing? OK - you can have all of those too.

So... Does it kick ass? F*ck yeah

500 days of Basterds

Well - that was fun! (no, it really was fun!) I had a ticket for a preview of a movie called 500 days of Summer; a rom-com, which, mainly because it features Zooey Deschanel, I was really looking forward to seeing.

Now, it's not uncommon for me to be rushing to get to these seefilmfirst showings, because they're always at 6:30 PM and my time-keeping is abysmal, but for once I was there in plenty of time, and what happens? It gets cancelled!

All was not lost however - in recompense, the Odeon gave everyone a free ticket for anything else, which, considering it was going to be free in the first place, was pretty amazing of them.

A couple of weeks ago I missed out on the chance to see a preview of Inglourious Basterds, the new Quentin Tarantino movie, and, what do you know - it was one of the options... SCORE!

I'm just back from seeing it and, let me tell you, if you're a fan of QT's previous work, you'll love this, it's brutal, it's comic and for the most part, the bad guys get what they deserve. If you have two and a half hours to kill - and I do mean kill - I heartily recommend it!

As for Miss Deschanel, maybe she'll reschedule, maybe she'll get lucky and I'll go and see her... we'll see (it doesn't do to come across too needy, does it?)

RubyWMQ

I've been playing with ruby (and rails) for about a day now, and I'm starting to really like it. It's even beginning to collide with work, found a really useful interface into MQ - which is the product I work on, RubyWMQ. It's incredibly easy to use - the following, for example, connects to a queue manager and puts a 'Hello world' message:

require 'rubygems'
require 'wmq/wmq'

WMQ::QueueManager.connect(:q_mgr_name=>'RUBYQM') do |qmgr|
qmgr.put(:q_name=>'QL', :data => 'Hello World')
result = 'CC ' + qmgr.comp_code.to_s + ' RC ' + qmgr.reason_code.to_s
puts result
end

It even prints out the compcode and reason aswell!

On the Rails

So, I thought I'd have a go at being all modern, I thought I'd try playing with Ruby and Rails, I'm following a book, and it looks like it ought to be really simple - it's not quite as simple as they say though, the book says that all I need to to is install Ruby then use ruby to install Rails, but actually to get something working you need to install Ruby, install Rails, Install the sqLite ruby support and download sqlite.

• Install Ruby
• gem install rails
• gem install sqlite3-ruby
• Download sqlite3.dll and copy it into the Ruby bin directory

This worked for me, at least - then create and serve a rails project with a welcome page:

• rails projectname
• cd projectname
• start ruby script/server
• ruby script/generate controller Welcome
• edit config/routes.rb to comment out the existing map.connect lines and replace with
  
  map.root :controller => "welcome"
  
  
• rake db:migrate
• ren public cilbup to get rid of the public index.html - this could equally well become a deletion.
  

I've Been Mugged

I honestly thought this would not happen for a few years yet...

IBM UK snuffs 'final salary' pensions

Not only that, but today is Michael Jackson's funeral...

I'm not looking forward to the 8th of August, and on the 9th of September, I'm hiding under the table.

Finger Lickin' good

Another classic from Simon over at Los 3 Gato Cypriato.

I think I might just head off to some island somewhere and blog about it; looks like fun.

Read all about it

I've just finished reading a phriends (scratch that, I don't work with him any more) friends new blog, The Three States if Cypriot Cats. It's a series of musings on the ex-pat life in a small Village in Cyprus.

It's well written, witty and well observed.

Southampton 90210

If anyone asks you, I don't live in the England, right? I'm from Beverly Hills.

See, I was listening to Keane's new album, Under the Iron Sea, and thinking to myself that I cannot think of any similar music.

Then it occurred to me that maybe I hadn't listened to enough music to decide that there wasn't any similar around!

I'd read something a while ago about Pandora. This site builds you personalized 'radio stations' that play music with similar musical qualities to music you tell it you like. The problem is, it needs you to be a US resident, asking for a ZIP code and I could only think of one.

I seeded the station with 'Crystal Ball' from Keane, and then added 'Spitting Games' by Snow Patrol. The result of that and some other decisions I made is Unrational Radio.

Wankers

Big Brother is over - and, no surprise, Pete (aka Tourrettes boy) won it.

Earlier I mentioned that I'd put bets on three of the housemates to win, Pete, Imogen and Glynn. I was hoping for Glynn to win it, purely and simply because I stood to make the most money out of him winning (£21). As it was, with Pete winning, I got £6, which is a measly £1 profit.

Shame you couldn't bet each-way on Big Brother.

eBay gum

It started small, with Tamagotchi batteries; you've got to get your Tamagotchi batteries from somewhere, right?

Then it got a little bigger, an Analogue cable TV receiver; every home should have one.

But I think I could have gone a little too far with the Porsche Boxter.

I'm sure Suzy will understand.

Ingerland

I've surprised myself, once again, at how my brain works. In short, it doesn't.

I see an opportunity to watch a nice football game at the pub with a few friends, fine, great even. Because it's a special occasion, I agree with my wife that it's OK if I go out for a few beers after the game with my friends, just to catch the other matches, fine, great.

So why is it that I went utterly mental?

I can't remember much past about 6 in the evening. I have a vague recollection of a guy called 'Rico' tagging along with us from the first pub, something about ending up in another pub 'after hours' and waking up at home with my shirt on in bed - but other than that, nothing.

Never again (well, until Thursday).

Shoulders

Am I a fetishist?

I find shoulders attractive. A good pair of shoulders, to me, is probably better than a good pair of legs - so why is it that shoulders get such a bad rap?

How many times have you heard someone say 'what a great pair of blades' ? I'll wager (uh-oh, gambling is back) that the answer is never. On the other hand, how many times have you heard someone say they will 'shoulder the blame' or be a 'shoulder to cry on'.

Shoulders are not for crying on, they are for rejoicing in.

Praise the maker.

Grandson of Gamblog

Monumentally bad day!

14:40 Goodwood - Mountain High £5 @ 8/11 lost
15:30 Newmarket - Lets Roll £5 @ 10/3 lost
15:40 Haydock - Escape Clause £6 @ 1/3 lost
16:10 Haydock - Pride Of Nation £5 @ 5/4 won 11.25
16:55 Goodwood Nicada £6.25 @ 17/2 lost

I've withdrawn a bunch of money now, so this is today:-

Movement: down £16 Account: £0 Hand: £42.75

I do have several bets outstanding though...

£5.00 on Germany (sorry) to win World Cup @ 7/1

Potential: £40 (£35)

£1.00 on Schumacher to win Monaco Grand Prix @ 15/8
£1.00 on Alonso to win Monaco Grand Prix @ 13/8

Potential: £2.62 (62p) - £2.87 (87p)

£2.00 on Pete to win Big Brother @ 2/1
£2.00 on Imogen to win Big Brother @ 8/1
£1.00 on Glyn to win Big Brother @ 20/1

Potential: £6 (0) - £21 (£16)

£3.00 on Wayne Rooney to be Top English goalscorer @ 7/1
£4.00 on Steven Gerrard to be Top English goalscorer @ 11/2
£1.75 on Theo Walcott to be Top English goalscorer @ 16/1
£2.00 on David Beckham to be Top English goalscorer @ 10/1
£5.00 on Frank Lampard to be Top English goalscorer @ 9/2

Potential: £22 (£6.25) - £29.75 (£14)

Total Potential: 0 (-£27.75) - £93.62 (£65.87)

All of this came from an initial £10 stake!!!! Great fun!

Big Borether

You should know something about me, I'm very faddy. I am guessing, that if you're reading this blog you probably already realised that I get heavily into something for a while, really enjoy it, and then get bored.

Well, it didn't take long, but I think I've reached the end of my teather with Big Brother. All the interesting people are walking, or have walked, out of the house. The ones that are left are tedious and not in the least bit compelling to watch.

From what I've seen, Pete is going to win it, he's the guy suffering from tourettes.

It's made me interested in finding out more about tourettes. I saw a really interesting looking book about it at Amazon, Don't think about Monkeys which I might get, but it hasn't made me want to sit glued to the TV for the next 3 months!

Fear not dear readers, I'm back.

Son of Gamblog

Bad day today.

20:35 Lingfield Kahlua Kiss £5.00 @ 12/1 lost
15:55 Ayr Secret Liaison £5.00 @ 5/1 lost
14:50 Ayr Deutschland £5.00 @ 6/4 won £12.50
14:40 Goodwood Corridor Creeper £5.00 @ SP lost
14:10 Goodwood Night Crescendo £5.00 @ 4/1 lost

I also put a very shameful bet on something else, which takes another £5 off the account

Movement: down £12.50 Account: £32.50 Hand: £25.00

Gamblog

I have had a roller coaster ride on the horses today (which, if you think about it is an odd image - a carousel ride would be much more fitting).

I have been playing some more with Ladbroke's money. Here are the highlights of today's action:

14:55 Kempton £10 on Fajr @ 9/4 (favourite) lost
15:25 Kempton £5 on Rezzago @ 8/1 (rebound!) lost
20:15 Sedgefield £20 on Heartstopper @ 6/4 (favourite) won £50

Movement: up £15 Account: £50 Hand: £25

Birds words

There is nothing worse in this world than a man using women's words.

I don't mean words about women, no, I mean words that have clearly been designed with ladies in mind. Words like tea-cake, smooch, and yummy.

There really should be a ban on the use of these words, by men, in public places. We have a smoking ban, and, whilst I find the smell of someone else's smoke on my clothes mildly annoying, I find the sound of a bloke telling his friends about the "Yummy tea-cake" he had the other day downright offensive.

In fact, it makes me want to sob.

BB7 Bio: Shahbaz

Age
37
Sex
Male
Occupation
One-time Rent boy
Hero
Patrick McGoohan
Music
Shirley Bassey
TV
Are You Being Served?

Shahbaz loathes hypocrisy, loves not sleeping and adores his mouth. His biggest ambition in life is to knit his own Kylie Minogue to wear to parties.