Cool Stuff: "The Dark Knight" & Some Great Batman Quotes

I have been looking forward to the trailer for this movie for quite a bit now....(and that's just the trailer...imagine when its movie release time in summer 2008).



Firstly, let me say Rest In Peace Mr. ledger......and I hope that your monumental acting talent and not your death brings this movie to Cult status.

The movie is the sequel to the much loved "Batman Begins", which was also directed by Christopher Nolan. For those who have not seen the first installment of the Batman movie remake, it is quite dark, and non-comical.....just the way you would imagine batman emerging from the billionaire playboyBruce Wayne. It is a must see/must own in my opinion.

It picks up from the last movie, where a new psychotic bank robber has begun a crime wave in Gotham. With the help of lieutenant Gordon (GaryOldman), and the new DA, Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart ), Batman (Christian Bale) has to raise the stakes in order to defeat the new mastermind, who has brought chaos and clown (in a terrifyingly interesting character portrayal) The Joker (Heath Ledger). The character of the joker looks absolute.......right down to the makeup, which does reflect the horrid nature of the Joker.........and clearly takes us away from the idea of a laughable clown gone evil. I wonder if the mysterious scarecrow will be back in the sequel, as he disappeared toward the end of Batman Begins...Now without giving away any of the movie it is quite obvious this is movie is not only an introduction to one of batman's first nemesis, but we also see the creation of his second in Harvey Dent a.k.a. Two Face.

I won't spoil anymore of the trailer or the movie, but want to leave you with my favorite batman quotes of all time:

Batman Movies & TV Shows:

"A guy who dresses in a bat suit clearly has issues" - Bruce Wayne

"Why Bats Sir?", "Bats frighten me. It's time my enemies share my dread." - Alfred & Bruce

"They told me there was nothing out there, nothing to fear. But the night my parents were murdered I caught a glimpse of something. I've looked for it ever since. I went around the world, searched in all the shadows. And there is something out there in the darkness, something terrifying, something that will not stop until it gets revenge... Me." - Bruce Wayne

"Where are you?.........Here" - Batman to thug

"Where'd you get a live fish, Batman?..............The true crime-fighter always carries everything he needs in his utility belt, Robin." - Robin & Batman

"Gosh, Batman, is there anything you don't know?........Oh yes, Robin. Several things, in fact." Batman & Robin

"You can never escape me. Bullets don't harm me. Nothing harms me. But I know pain. I know pain. Sometimes I share it. With someone like you." - Batman

"Ever dance with the devil by the pale moon light?" - Joker

"Why so serriiiooooussssss....." - Joker

"let's put a smiiiillleee on that FACE!!!" - Joker

"To conquer fear, you must become fear. You must bask in the fear of other men; and men fear most what they can not see." - Batman

Others:
Marge: Homer! There's someone here who can help you...
Homer: Is it Batman?
Marge: No, he's a scientist.
Homer: Batman's a scientist?!
Marge: It's not Batman!”

Cool Stuff: "The Art Of The Start" - Guy Kawasaki

I came across Guy Kawasaki's website, and stumbled onto his blog, where I found this great video and other interesting tid-bits on entrepreneurship and start-ups.....He has some of the best advice I have heard, and the speech in this video is absolutely fantastic...as it certainly got me thinking about some of my ideas.

The Art Of The Start speech is based on his book with the same title. I am looking forward to getting my hands on a copy....as it will no doubt be one of my bibles going forward...I particularly like the section about making meaning, making a mantra, and making a difference........it is just common sense that unfortunately can get lost in a jumble of business plans and models....and of course "the creation of the mission statement".

Guy's website is a must read for anyone thinking of start-ups....and checkout the rest of his blog, there is some great stuff there about a lot of things....a blog I would truly aspire to become.

Firefox 3 beta has been released...

An addition to the last post is that Firefox 3 beta has been released....I am sure it will be another couple of months before Mozilla release a stable product....it is supposed to have more usability enhancements such as an integrated add-on installer, which will save you having to search the website for firefox addons.....

Cool Stuff: The Must Have's of Internet Browsing....

(1) Firefox - enough said....just better at everything than internet explorer...........I will give you one example of firefox's brilliance....if for some reason the window crashes....internet explorer will kindly ask you to submit the findings of the crash to microsoft.....however firefox will additionally allow you to restore a session i.e. all the websites you were connected to before the crash......mind you it is very rare that firefox does crash for some reason....its only happened to me maybe 4 times in 3 years of using it....just pure internet browsing quality..

(2) Piclens plug-in (now available for firefox, internet explorer, or safari) - Once installed, this application will launch a slide-show of all the photos on a particular screen. The way it works it a small play button will appear at the corner of a photo, when it is compatible with piclens. If you click the play button, it takes over your screen to display all the photos in a slide-show. Now they have a cool scroll tool called the 3D wall, which is the wall that you can drag, highlight, and click over any of the pictures to expand them. The wall is made up of the thumbnails of each photo as offered by a website, and when you select a picture it will load the full version.......it is brilliant, and I can't tell you how much it comes in handy with the likes of Facebook photos for example. You can get the plug-in for internet explorer or safari, but why would you not use firefox.

(3) IEtab plug-in for Firefox - If you like firefox, but just can't open some pages and have to revert back to stinky internet explorer again, just get the IEtab plug-in from japan. It renders an IE window within a firefox window/tab....problem solved.

(4) Mouse Gestures for Firefox - This little plug-in saves so much time and is a lot of fun. With a simple motion of right click & moving your mouse up, you can open a new tab, move mouse down for a new window, move mouse left to go back a page, move mouse right to go forward and so on......i still haven't used the many other highly customisable gesture recognitions, but the possibilities are endless....

and many more...check out the Mozilla website for Firefox, and many many Firefox Addons.

On a side note, you should also checkout Mozilla's Thunderbird email client. If like me you use outlook and/or several other email accounts, it give you the option to consolidate then in the one client. You can log-in to Thunderbird and sync all the email addresses at the same time as far as I know.

Review: "World War Z: Oral History Of The Zombie War" by Max Brooks

As my first real post to the blog, I thought I would kick it off with a review of a book I read very recently as recommended by a few of my close friends. This book was released in 2006, so it is quite an old book, but I have only managed to get around to it now.

World War Z is a collection of fictional stories, memories in fact, from a variety of survivors from the Zombie War that resulted from the Zombie Apocalypse. The book follows a documentary style of writing, which is very intriguing and interesting to read. New york based Max Brooks (yes, I thought so too, and yes, he is the son of Mel Brooks) has also authored the more practical fiction novel "The Zombie Survival Guide" - a how to guide to kick zombie ass and how to survive, of course.

What really impressed me with this book, was the scientific nature of the story (you could be forgiven in thinking this is actually very plausible....today). The interviews with survivors are time-lined, but not linear. From this cinematic view, we can understand the story from the initial outbreaks, the complete dissolution of society, humanity overcoming their greatest adversaries (human nature, and the zombies), and the messy clean up job....didn't mention much about repopulating the planet however. The conceivable nature of this book, from the outbreaks of a virus, to the monumental un-readiness of the worlds governments (taken from the current state of society) to protects its people for such a global catastrophe is a terrifying thought. It does beg the question....can we as a society handle any global pandemic successfully..but that discussion is for another day. The un-readiness is even more visible, in certain parts of the stories, where zombies and soldiers stand-off (or where the soldiers stand, and the zombies shamble towards their prey), where the old Confucius saying "Do not use a bow and arrow to kill a mosquito" could have been put to better use. Some of the inventive methods of keeping the Z's at bay are scary in their effectiveness, and inhumanity (towards humans more so than zombies)...I won't mention any more details...as you should read it for yourself.

I would be an average science fiction admirer (not quite there enough to call myself a Trekkie..lol), but this book was a fantastic read. No wonder this book is being made into a film, as Max Brooks has managed to paint this documentary in such a cinematic fashion, that the screenplay writes itself. Let us hope this movie does not follow the long list of book to film adaptation failures that we have recently seen. A forethought for the production company who bought the rights to this books is to perhaps bring in the directorial talents of George Romero - the zombie genre guru (Dawn of the Dead and Land of the Dead) or J. J. Abrams (Director of the film Cloverfield), which would actually be the perfect style for this book. If you are any sort of science fiction fan or zombie apocalypse genre reader.....I would recommend it is as a must own. If you are just an average Joe, this is a thrilling read for an insight into what could come to pass....

It Starts....

Hi All,

After months of contemplation and thought, I decided my brain had too many things to say....about a lot of stuff....so I am going to start this blog - me, myself, and my blog. I am hoping to fill this blog with ideas, thoughts, my triathlons and training etc....so lots of exciting topics already.

I haven't yet decided if this is going to be a daily blog, but we can just play it by year...;-)

l8r,

Pras.