Never Back Down…

I went to see Never Back Down on Saturday evening. The trailer looked like an episode of “The O.C.” or “One Tree Hill” with some fighting in, so I was expecting it to be really bad. On looking at the cast list, it turns out some of the cast have appeared in episodes of those shows, I wasn’t too far off the money.

The story is essentially just a remake of the Karate Kid movie, using Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) rather than Karate. Just like the Karate Kid movie, there wasn’t a great deal of martial arts in this film.

If you like vacuous shows like the O.C and On Tree Hill you will probably love this. If you go expecting to see a martial arts film you will be very disappointed. There were a few moments of interest, but for the most part it was well worth missing. 🙂

The trailer for Iron Man looks fantastic. Almost worth the cinema trip to see this trailer. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Fine-Grained Access to Network Services in 11g…

Continuing my OCP 11g upgrade campaign, I’ve been looking at Fine-Grained Access to Network Services in Oracle Database 11g Release 1.

This represents a pretty major security improvement for Oracle 11g. In previous versions the all-or-nothing security associated with database callouts was a little ham-fisted to say the least.

On the down side, I think it will confuse a few people when they are upgrading existing databases, but it’s a small price to pay for the peace of mind.

Cheers

Tim…

Back to normality…

Yesterday was so confusing. The obvious April fools day jokes were fine, but I found myself starting to doubt everything. Towards the end of the day I started to just mark posts as read because I couldn’t be bothered to try and decide if they were fictitious or not. If any one said anything really important yesterday and was expecting me to read it, I’m really sorry, but I probably missed it.

I sound like a right grumpy old sod now. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

WordPress 2.5…

There’s been a lot of fuss about WordPress 2.5 over the last few weeks, most of which seems to be negative press about bad design of the adminstration pages.

Well, it’s finally here, and if you are reading this then the upgrade of my blogs have been successful.

I can’t say I really like the new administration pages much myself, but the blogs look the same and seem to work fine so I guess I can’t complain. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Native Oracle XML DB Web Services…

I’ve been playing around with Native Oracle XML DB Web Services in Oracle 11g Release 1 for a while and I’ve finally decided to release the article.

One of the reasons it’s been on the back burner for some time is I’ve been having trouble with the anonymous access configuration. I’ve still not got this sorted, but I decided to open it up and leave that section as a work in progress. I’ll keep looking at it and update that section if I get a satisfactory solution.

Cheers

Tim…

Update: I received the following quote on Metalink from the “Global Technical Lead XML Database”:

“Anonymous access to web services is not possible. Direct PL/SQL access without authentication would be a massive security hole.”

American Gangster…

I went round to a friends house last night and watched American Gangster on DVD. I didn’t bother to see it at the cinema because it really didn’t appeal to me, but it was a pretty good film. Denzel Washington always does the job well, although I don’t think he’s as good as the critics make out. Russell Crowe was less annoying than usual, so don’t be put off by his presence.

There was nothing drastically different about this film to separate it from any other gangster film I’ve seen, but it was executed well, which made it worth watching in my random opinion. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

10,000 BC and Die Hard 4.0…

I’m not sure what I can say about 10,000 BC. It wan’t a terrible film, it just wasn’t all that good. As Noons pointed out, the time-line was very dubious to say the least.

The thing that bugged me the most was the galloping mammoths. As far as I can remember elephants, and therefore mammoths by extrapolation, can’t gallop like horses. They just walk really quickly. Turns out in 10,000 BC they can do a full-on gallop like a giant race horse. I was also surprised to see them in such hot conditions. I was under the impression they were a cold climate creature, hence the wooley coat. Turns out they were really happy building pyramids in 10,000 BC, even though everyone knows the pyramids were built by aliens. 🙂

Less annoying, but equally misleading was the shape of the sabre toothed tiger. Looked just like a modern tiger to me, but with long teeth. Not much like the sabre tooth tiger pictures I’ve seen before. I guess they were a bit different in 10,000 BC…

I realize I’m being really picky for what is meant to be a bit of entertainment, but I don’t see why you need to tamper with some of this stuff. A stampede of elephants/mammoths would look pretty impressive even without the galloping. As too would a sabre-toothed tiger in its original form. It’s another case of dumbing everything down so much that it no longer has any link to reality.

I watched Die Hard 4.0 on DVD the other night. This kinda passed me by on the cinema and I don’t really know why. Anyway, I really enjoyed it. Totally mindless and ridiculous, just like a Die Hard film should be. Don’t ask me why my standards change with every film I review. They just do. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

The economy killed by the press…

First, the press takes an issue and hypes it up to a point where regular Joe’s are rushing out to draw their money out of a successful bank for fear of it collapsing. Next, they start running stories about how low consumer confidence is one of the major factors affecting the economy at the moment.

Does anyone else not find this funny?

I’m not just talking about the gutter press here. Every morning I watch the BBC news and it makes me want to sell everything I own, convert the cash to gold and hide it in a cave.

Perhaps if the newspapers and TV would stop harping on about this stuff, regular people might get on with their lives and the economy might be OK.

Cheers

Tim…

PS. Looking for a suitable cave for my gold… 🙂

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