Dark Tower: 8 books to 1 film?

Credits: all images courtesy of Sony.

On the side of a bus the other day, I saw an ad for the upcoming film The Dark Tower. For the Stephen King fans out there I do not need to explain what The Dark Tower series is but just in case you do need to know, its one of King’s masterpieces.

But then it hit me, I found myself asking, how can they compress 8 wonderful books into a film? as did the author of this blog .  A similar thought occurred to me when I saw that there were to be 3 Lord of the Rings films but hey, 3 books, 3 films and Jackson did a wonderful job of making each one fit.  … but 8 books into 1 film? I’m intreagued as to how that will be done and I cant wait to see the film.

I won’t spoil the story for you but if you need to know anything about the books and the story, read this wonderful blog explaining the film  (and I guess the books as well 😀 ).  It certainly covers the main characters and the essence of the story.

I for one can’t wait to see the movie.  More to add to this blog when I have… its due for its Australian premier on 17 August 2017.  Not sure if I’ll be able to walk the red carpet on the night 😉 but I wont wait too long to see it after it premiers.  Here is a link to the trailer in case you want to get a taste. from the trailer it looks quite different but also familiar … I guess that must be part of the 8 books into 1 film formula.  never the less, I am really looking forward to it…oh boy, oh boy, oh boy…this is going to be great!  :)… [to quote a line from “Animal House”.

Data Modelling: Anchor/Buoy is dead, long live…

I admit it, I’m a data modeller at heart, having been inspired by Graeme Simsion of “Data Modelling Essentials” fame and more recently “The Rose Project” series and “The Best of Adam Sharp”.

Years ago I came across a modelling technique called “Anchor/Buoy” (‘A/B modelling’ for short) on a web site called xxx.  It intregued me and I used the technique on a few personal projects, mostly with Apple’s FileMaker.

Browsing some old research stuff I now find that A/B modelling is “dead” and it’s long live “selector/connector” modelling instead.  The details are in this blog “life after anchor/buoy”.

Most recently I have become very interested in “Data Vault” but this new modelling technique (new to me at least) is very interesting to me.  It has a number of concepts and ideas that really add something to the whole data modelling meta-verse 🙂

If you,like me, are a data modeller at heart, take a look and let me know what you think.

 

Comment ça va?

For this blog I thought I would reminisce about my reasons for wanting to learn French and to talk a little bit about my progress so far.

Years ago a friend took me to see a move, Amelie, with Audrey Tatou.  The movie had English subtitles but the language spoken by the actors was French.  It was really lovely to listen to and it just seemed to flow from the screen like silk.  I was so enchanted by the experience (and Audrey 😉 ) that I decided I would like to learn French.

After a few failed attempts to teach myself with books and CD’s I found Babbel and started studying French (and a few other languages) ousing my iPad and iPhone.  I found ut to be very convenient being able to do it on the bus, having a coffee or whenever I had some ‘spare time’.

But then work got in the way…and moving house… and, and and… and I slipped behind and forgot a lot of what I had learnt.

So, a few weeks ago I started again and repeated the beginner’s course again.  I was surprised that it seemend pretty easy, I must have remembered more than I thought.  now I am most of the way through the 3rd Beginner’s course (there are 6 in all) and I am enjoying it all over again.

I hope to be finished the beginner’s courses before I go on my next holiday and doing the intermediate courses.

For anyone wanting to learn a language I would certainly recommend Babbel.  However, I must also say that I thinking of taking up an external course as well so I can be with other people learing the same language.  Its nice and convenient to learn on Babbel but I also think I need to practice with other people as well.

New Themify.me Builder addon

Another short post about an update to a favourite WordPress Addon from Themify.me – the new Builder addon.  This follows up my previous post on the new slideshow addon (about a week ago).

I use Builder on just about all the WordPress sites I have developed so far, I find it very flexible in terms of its layout options and range of widgets.  I’m aware there are a number of similar addons out there but I like Builder as its ‘built in’ to the Themify.me themes I use and also allows me to create my own layouts on pages I create.

In a way it reminds me of the Rapidweaver ‘stacks’ I used to use when I started creating web sites with Rapidweaver.

These days most of the stuff I do is in WordPress and I still like the ability to drop widgets into place and create a layout without having to dive into HTML and CSS most of the time and still be able to do this when I need to.

The main features I like in the update are the new, cleaner and simpler ‘front end’ (combined with live preview, to see how I am going as I do my layout) and the increase in the number and options available for widgets in the back end.

If you are new to WordPress, I can recommend Themify.me for the variety of what they offer as a member.  You may not need it all at first but in my own experience I have used quite a lot over the past few years since I’ve been a member and the membership has paid for itself.

See a Penny pick it up…

You know the old saying “see a penny, pick it up, all the day you’ll have good luck!”  Let me tell you, its not true ;’-)

The other day coming home from the airport, I saw a ‘penny’ (actually it was a 1 euro cent piece) lying on the ground at the bus station, where I was hoping to catch the next bus home.

I bent down to pick it up, the old saying ‘played’ in my head, I smiled, looking forward to the good luck coming my way.

Ten minutes later I discovered I had lost my bus ticket (my Opal pass with about $40 credit on it) and about $100 out of my pocket.  ‘Good luck’ my ^$$! 😀

Some say it was ‘good luck’ I discovered that I had lost my bus ticket so quickly, as I was able to cancel it straight away, preventing it being used and preserving my balance

Some say it was ‘lucky’ I didn’t lose all the money in my wallet and my iPhone, which was in the same pocket as the money I lost, as I was able to buy another ticket to get home

I say “I don’t know what planet you are from?!!” but I did not have ‘good luck’ that day!

I still have the ‘penny’, maybe I should throw it away before it causes me any more ‘good luck’ but I am superstitious and am afraid that will cause even more bad luck.

One thing for sure, its going to stay lying on a table at home.  I won’t be picking that ‘penny’ up again!

 

I have a dream…er, a tech learning goal = Bachelor or WordPress

Here’s another ‘tech learning’ goal to add to my (growing) bucket list in terms of new and different tech skills I want to equip myself with…. Bachelor of WordPress! Sounds impressive, right? 🙂

Many months ago, I started doing some online learning courses at WPMU DEV’s Academy and I really enjoyed them.  The one problem was, I had to keep up with the week by week lesson pace and complete the assignments before moving on and I just found that I fell behind on some weeks and found it hard to catch up again.

That is why I am delighted that the Academy has gone ‘on demand’ (all except the one course called dream small market big dont do it this way – which sounds interesting too).

So its off to the Academy again this weekend to start the Bachelor of WordPress course and do it at my own pace.  I’ll be qualified in no time   a few years hopefully some day! 😉

WooCommerce 3.x : I’m excited

Today I was catching up on some of my tech reading and one thing on the reading list was about the new release of WooCommerce – version 3.0

Some of the features I really like include:

• The addition of CRUD classes – yay for CRUD, the ability to Create, Read, Update and Delete WooCommerce ‘objects’
• A new CLI powered by the REST API – GUI’s are overrated, I love the ‘old school’ Command Line Interface approach, so fast to do stuff

The announcement was back in April (yes, that’s how far I am behind in my tech reading) and so now release 3.01 (at least) is now available, so I would not be on the ‘bleeding edge’ to install it.

For anyone else who is keen to try the instructions for updating your site can be found here.   If anyone has already installed the new release let me know of your experiences (good and bad) 🙂