So I have read the book. Now, I have watched the movie. My feeling? I want the whole series to be over soon. The reason? Come on, the actors and actresses are all grown up. I think that they should be well on their way to act in different genre.

After so many years of Harry Potter, I guess I need to have a different type of addiction. Perhaps to Twilight, although I do like Twilight books for the moment (why for the moment? because I don’t fancy the movie but will be waiting for the second movie, in case it is going to change my mind).

As I have said many times, I love books more than the movies (when movies are based on books).

Lord of The Ring is one movie saga that I didn’t read the books at all (but I might find the time to actually read it now that I have watched the movies and the movies are way back years ago).

What do I think about HBP?

Overall, it is quite good. The only thing is that it reminded me of Gandalf scene “you shall not pass”, something like that. To be honest, I find that movies like Harry Potter and Narnia borrowed scenes from LOTR although this is just my opinion. You should refer to Narnia (2nd movie) where there is a scene at the end with the river flowing down to drown the bad guys.

I love for the fact that the romance between Harry and Ginny is not over-reacting. It is simply clean and very romantic. I also like it when Hermione was jealous of Ron for dating someone else.

Let us not forget about Draco, joining the dark side. Snape killing Dumbledore. (I know Dumbledore knew he had to die – I still feel rather sad). There are other details such as the death of Aragog, but I like the scene when Hermione, Ron and Harry are in the bar having Butterbeer. Gotta look at Ron’s face when he saw Ginny kissing.

The whole movie is long enough to cover as much details as possible.

As for the last book, Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, I cannot imagine how they are going to make the movie into 2 parts. However, I would be happy to wait for the movies to be out. I just wish they could release both together although it is very unlikely. So, the year 2011 would be the end for Harry Potter saga. By that time, I would 24. Way too old for magic tricks – I guess. Maybe not.

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A very cool quiz, just in time for the release of HBP movie.

The What Hogwarts House Would the Sorting Hat Put You In? quiz

Every time I asked for money, they replied, “Get your own money, son. You are too old to depend on your folks.” I would protest, “You have given me everything since I was young and now you are going to cut off my expense? It is like cutting off my oxygen supply. I can die.” Seriously, at one point I thought I was going to die without money. After all I have been fed with all the money they can give me. I began to think of 10 things I wish they told me about money.

I wish they had told me that “earning money is difficult”. That would have stop me from lazing around the town spending every dime I had in every toy stores or fast food restaurants. If only they had told me that “money is very important”, I would have saved all my money in a piggy bank so that I can use it when I grew older.

If they had told me “to get money I must work”, I would have find a job to earn more money than loitering around doing nothing but wasting time. How I wish they had told me that “people will not give you money for nothing”, then I would have tried to sell off some of my own stuff to generate some income rather than throwing away most of my precious toys whenever I don’t like them.

If they had told me that “poor people cannot eat because they don’t have money”, then I would have give some of my share to my friends so they can afford to eat. I also wish they had told me about the “no money, no talk” syndrome, as it really affects me badly when I need to get to the college and I need to pay for my own college fees.

Somehow, I figured that if they had told me that “I need to pay to use the toilet”, then I would have saved all the coins I had rather than just leaving it all over the place and someone had took it. If money is so important, then I wish they had told me to “invest some money in the bank” so I get to collect some interest from the savings.

However, nothing is more important than telling me, “property is money”. Then I could have bought my own house rather than renting, which has taken a large sum of my money every month paying for a house that is not my own. The last thing I wish they had told me is, “there is no free lunch in this world.” Then, I would not give anyone a free lunch as I did in school, treating my friends to scrumptious feast and all.

How I wish they had told me earlier everything about money.

Update 18 June 2010: Well, with so many choices such as Toy Story 3, Shrek 4 and The Losers, it is definitely difficult to choose.

Watchmen (2009)

The Adventures of Food Boy (2008)

Race to Witch Mountain (2009

Outlander (2008)

The Last House on the Left (2009)

It (1990) (TV)

Quantum of Solace (2008)

Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

Wushu (2008)

300 (2006)

Gran Torino (2008)

Låt den rätte komma in (2008)

Coraline (2009)

Coco avant Chanel (2009)

The Last House on the Left (1972)

Rachel Getting Married (2008)

The International (2009)

Sunshine Cleaning (2008)

Terminator Salvation (2009)

Trainspotting (1996)

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Update 17/07/09: Upgrading to version 2.8 and 2.8.1 is a total breeze.

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WordPress

I have a new blog at Writing Consultation (WC) and I decided to upgrade WordPress 2.7 to 2.7.1 but unfortunately things didn’t work out the way I expected earlier.

First of all, I thought that I can use the Automatic Update but it didn’t work at all.

So, I decided to manually upgrade.

To make things worse, I messed up with the whole database and WC ended up down for some time.

What happened was:

• I deleted all the files in the server (I thought I was supposed to delete all the files)
• Thank goodness, I have a back up of everything I need to restore my blog so once I restored my blog, I took some time to read through WordPress guidelines over and over again.

Basically, what I did after reading the guidelines was to give it a try again (even though I spent hours just working through the trial-and-error).

Step-by-Step guideline from a noob:

1. Because I am using WordPress 2.7 so I need to keep these files intact:

• wp-content
• .htaccess
• wp-config

2. I also use Sitemap (XML) so I have to keep the file as well.

3. Everything else not mentioned here is to be deleted.

4. Deactivate all the plug-ins.

5. Download WordPress 2.7.1 and unzipped the file.

6. Upload all the missing files to the server (to replace those files that have been deleted).

7. Go back to http://site.com/wp-admin to check if everything is ok.

8. Activate plug-ins after you have updated those with new updates (or keep the old ones even if without new updates).

9. View your site to check for any errors.

10. If no errors, you are done! If there is any errors, check with WordPress Support.

Lorelle from WordPress helped me through the upgrade. If you have any questions, you can ask Lorelle on her blog.

Good luck in upgrading!

I love HP and all the hocus pocus magic around it.

With Professor Dumbledore and McGonagall, they are the type of teachers I like (unfortunately these teachers are practically non existence).

Although I can get the HP books for “free” now but it won’t be able to replace my first hand HP books that I bought using my own savings when I was a school kid.

Twilight isn’t much of my favourite except for Edward Cullen – he is cute. He is also the boy known as Cedric Diggory in HP. Since he is related to HP, I just can’t resist myself (sorry, my dear boy).

I love Underworld simply because I love the fight between Vampire and Werewolves. Kate Beckinsale is hot, just as hot as Rhona Mitra.

So, what is going on with these popular movies?

First of all, you will be happy to know that HP 6 (Harry Potter and The Half Blood Prince) is coming out soon.

*spoiler: If you are still wondering who is The Half Blood Prince – it is Professor Snape.

Secondly, it is said that Twilight will have a sequel coming out but not quite sure about the rumour yet. (update: Yes, it is known as New Moon – in November 2009)

Underworld 3 had just released so are you thinking what I am thinking? Underworld 4? What else to tell in the sequel? Basically nothing much is left unless if they want to talk of rubbish but then again, who knows what they might come up with later?

Ok, so here goes my movie ramblings. I love to watch movies. If only the movie tickets aren’t that expensive.

*sigh*

Update 17/07/09: I am so addicted to Twilight at one point I spent two sleepless nights just so I could read all 4 books as soon as possible. It was a while only though.

video removed – copyright

Better quality than the one above.

video removed – copyright

Sorry to say that the videos are no longer available thanks to Tina L for informing me.

Anyway, the video is supposed to show some scenes on Bellatrix Lestange and Dumbledore. It is all fiery and rather exciting.

Hellboy 2: The Golder Army – 5000+ views

Harry Potter Prequel and All Related to HP – 4000+ views

Animals Need Help – 1000+ views

Nicholas Rogers – Long Forgotten -  900+ views

Dirty Sexy Money Theme Song, Money by Jesca Hoop -  900+ views

So, there you go. Top 5 posts since April 2008.

I don’t have much readers but at least I have a space to rant about my life.

I really need to just release my anger in some form and perhaps this is the best way since I get to listen to myself as well (inner self).

I used to keep a traditional diary to jot down everything about my life. Now, with blogs being so popular, it is time to embrace the modern way of keeping a diary.

Still, I never forget to smell the flowers. Hopefully I will be able to keep on blogging.

Smell The Flowers - Live A Happy Life

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I am working at this moment (as I wrote this). Usually I listen to music when I am working but tonight, I am feeling that I need something other than music to accompany me tonight so I decided to search for free audio book on google and I got this list of results:

Top 3 results:

1. LibriVox

   LibriVox provides free audiobooks from the public domain.

2. AudioBooksForFree.com

   Text only page optimized for browsing audiobooks using text browsers or screen readers.

4. www.AudioBooksForFree.com entrypoint

   Audio Books in MP3 format. All audiobooks are FREE in 8 kb/s.

So, I decided to check out LibriVox and surprisingly, I found a large collection of Public Domain collection of books available in audio format.

I checked out L. Frank Baum’s work on The Enchanted Island of Yew.

It is simply amazing and I am so addicted to audio books now. There are so many titles and while these are published in the before the 90′s, they are worthwhile to be listened.

Give it a try and perhaps volunteer to lend your voice and be part of the LibriVox community.