I’m in the Netherlands for the next 3 weeks (reason behind the lack of posts here the past week) cat and house sitting while my mum’s on holiday in Indonesia. I was only gone for 2 days, when Cristiano tweeted “Is alone as @mseckington is in NL for 3.5 weeks. Realising I more and more want a cat.” And someone responded with 2 cats that needed a new home…

So we now have adopted 2 adorable brothers! Meet Casey:

And meet Dusty:

Casey is apparently settling in fine (as the below photo shows), while Dusty is still a little bit shy and quiet.

I can’t wait to meet these cats in 3 weeks time, although I love spending time now cat sitting Tasha, who you’ve seen in previous posts. Expect more photos soon!

Aw, these soaps are so cute! And they seem to smell nice too!

Avatar Bending Soaps – $5.50 (per single bar)

I love how they’ve actually put some thought behind the smells of these soaps! The orange Fire Nation soap is scented with a spicy orange, cinnamon and clove fragrance. The green Earth Nation soap smells like fresh cut grass. The yellow Air Nation soap is scented with nag’champa incense. And the blue Water Nation soap has a lemon verbena mint fragrance.

Browncoat Field Ration – $4.99

Ooh, this one sounds so good!

“A message to the last remaining members of the resistance: take care of yourself. Whether you’re out on that newly terraformed moon, or flying solo through the ‘verse, civility is what separates us from those savages on the fringe. This Browncoat field ration contains a combination of brown sugar scrub on one side, and a creamy apple cinnamon soap on the other. Each bar has 2 whole spoonfuls of real brown sugar.”

The TARDI-soap (caramel and apple fragrance) – $7.00

This one comes in a caramel and apple fragrance and is made of only vegan products!

Soap Dice – $5.50

These come in different colours and smells: Blue – Coconut, Pink – Cherry Lemonade, Orange – Lime Mandarin, Yellow – Banana, Green – Cucumber Melon, White – Unscented, Black – MANLY (Bergamot, Sandalwood & Musk). Ooh, the cherry lemonade and the cucumber melon sounds delicious!

There are more geeky soaps listed on Geeky Clean’s etsy page, like the Dharma Initiative and the Stargate portal (but the above 4 are my favourites).

Okay, this looks awesome:

I loved Zack Synder’s previous two movies (300, Watchmen) and again the style of this movie looks great.

Here’s the description from Wikipedia:

Set in the 1950s, it tells the story of Baby Doll (Browning), who is trying to hide from the pain caused by her evil stepfather and lobotomy. She ends up in mental institution in Brattleboro, Vermont and while there she starts to imagine alternative reality. She plans to escape from that imaginary world but to do that she needs to steal five objects before she is caught by a vile man. She has 5 days to escape before being lobotomized. In order to cope with the situation, she enters the hyper-real world of her imagination, and the lines between reality and dream begin to blur.

As I’m in an Avatar: The Last Airbender mood anyway today, this video made me smile:

Nickelodeon finally officially announced the sequel to Avatar: The Last Airbender! It (as expected) will be called The Legend of Korra and will feature the female waterbending Avatar, Korra.

You can see the full press release here. What’s mainly got me excited is this bit though:

Her quest leads her to the epicenter of the modern “Avatar” world, Republic City – a metropolis that is fueled by steampunk technology. It is a virtual melting pot where benders and non-benders from all nations live and thrive.

Steampunk!!!! Squeeeee!!!!

I know, I know, that was far too many exclamation points, but the fangirl in me couldn’t resist. I already was looking forward to this show, but with the added element (pun not intended) of steampunk it’s now pretty high on my MUSTSEECANTWAITFORTHIS list.

In 2014, two experimental viruses—a genetically engineered flu strain designed by Dr. Alexander Kellis, intended to act as a cure for the common cold, and a cancer-killing strain of Marburg, known as “Marburg Amberlee”—escaped the lab and combined to form a single airborne pathogen that swept around the world in a matter of days. It cured cancer. It stopped a thousand cold and flu viruses in their tracks.

I’ve seen my fair share of zombie movies, but when it comes to books, I’ve never actually read any zombie-themed stories (although I’m not counting fantasy series with living dead type monsters, I mean proper zombies-in-our-universe). So I don’t have that much to compare this book to besides the movies. One thing though that almost always annoys me in zombie films is that most characters have no idea how to deal with zombies or have never even heard of them. It’s as if they’re in a world where zombie movies don’t exist. Or it’s set in a apocalyptic future where zombies are threatening to take over.

In Feed that’s quite different. It’s set 20 years after a “zombie” outbreak; this is a world where people grew up with zombie movies and have adapted to a different way of living to deal with the outbreak. The zombie virus is dormant in every living person and can get activated when it comes in contact with the live virus (aka the zombies). Besides that it also gets activated if you die. Now think about it: how would this change the world you live in?

Mira Grant takes that idea and fleshes it out. Buildings require blood tests before entering, being a doctor is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world, and George, Georgina and Georgette are popular kids names (because of George Romero in case you didn’t get why). I loved discovering how this world works; Grant has created an interesting future and I wonder if there was a zombie outbreak how close to the truth this could be.

The story is about a blogger Georgia, who together with her brother Shaun and their friend Buffy, is invited to cover a senator’s presidential campaign. They slowly discover a conspiracy… Yeah, it sounds a bit cheesy, but before I knew it, I got so invested in Georgia’s story. First book in a long time that made me cry and that’s a tough thing to do.

What didn’t completely work for me was how the blogging and online world was explained. In the future every blogger fits a certain category; you have the Newsies, those who write up the news and are objective about it; the Stewarts, those who comment on the news; the Irwins, adventure/action/zombie-antagonizing bloggers; the Fictionals, those who write stories or poetry (including of course fan fiction); and finally the Aunties, recipe/mummy/lifestory bloggers. Then there was the way each blog had ratings and a spot in the uber list of rankings, as if it was more kindred to traditional broadcast media. Also: no mention of Twitter, but I’m guessing this book was written before that hit. It doesn’t diminish the reading experience, but I wished this was a little more similar to reality.

I really enjoyed Feed and I’m now really curious to what else Mira Grant has written (this is her first book as Grant, but she also writes as Seanan McGuire). Feed has a great story, which sucks you completely in. And it’s got a fascinating world to discover along the way.

Feed by Mira Grant – Available on Amazon.co.uk for £5.49 and on Amazon.com for $9.99.

Interesting links for July 15th through July 21st:

• Sebastian’s Trek – Aw, a Trekkie's quest for love!
• A Series of Collectable Star Wars Cereal Boxes – Cool post from Bleeding Cool who discovered some awesome Star Wars themed cereal boxes.
• "yeah thats not what I was looking for at all." – Girl looses cat, and asks designer to help make a "missing cat" poster…
• Good Night and Tough Luck – NYTimes.com – Getting a good night’s sleep is actually a lot more complicated than one would think.
• Guess-the-google – Try to guess what search term was used for the shown images! Trickier than you'd think.

For the past 8 years I’ve always had a swiss army knife on my keychain. It’s super handy to have with me! But I am the type of person who manages to forget to not have them in my hand luggage when traveling by plane… I had a A Life Less Ordinary pocketknife which I had found for only €1 at a sale and lost this at an airport. I still haven’t found an exact replacement (anyone got any tips?), but these summer designs look great:

They aren’t available anymore on the actual Swiss Army knife site, but there are quite a lot of online stores that still stock them. Just search for swiss army knife and the name of the design (Lobster, Summer Blue, Summer Green and Summer Lt Blue).

Remember how I said yesterday that I went on a small shopping spree? Well, one of the things I ended up buying was this dress from New Look:

I’ve got two other dresses with a similar cut, but when I saw the little bow pattern I couldn’t resist not getting it. And it was only £14!

Mini Bow Jersey Dress – £14 New Look

Yet another remake based on a beloved childhood movie. Will Hollywood ever get enough of remaking stuff? Anyhow, when I first heard there’d be a Karate Kid remake, I thought there was no way in hell it could ever be as good as the original. Turns out I was wrong.

The Karate Kid stars Jaden Smith (son of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith) as Dre Parker, a 12 year old boy who moves to Beijing with his mother (Taraji P. Henson). Dre falls for his classmate Mei Ying, but in the process makes an enemy out of Cheng, a kung fu prodigy. After getting beat up by them, Dre turns to the maintenance man Mr Han, who agrees to teach him kung fu.

The thing with remakes always is “why remake it?”. In the case of Karate Kid, I have to admit the original is pretty outdated, and if you ask anybody under the age of 16, chances are most haven’t seen it or at least aren’t as attached to it as my generation. The remake does a great job of modernizing the story, and recreating what we loved in the original for new audiences.

The story is pretty much the same: kid gets bullied, kid meets crazy old guy, kid learns martial arts, etc. But there are a couple of changes which work out right. For starters, the main character is younger; I saw the original when I was 11/12ish and would have loved it if the main character was the same age as me. Next to that the movie takes place in China; besides the gorgeous scenery, it gives the story a nice added backdrop.

Jaden Smith is great as Dre, and I do see quite a bit of his father in him. His character starts out as a tad annoying, but you slowly start liking him. I was scared that Jackie Chan’s portrayal as the martial arts teacher would be silly, but he plays the character straight without any goofyness.

I still find it weird that they just didn’t rename the movie to The Kung Fu Kid (I’m guessing the studio liked the name recognition of the original), cause there’s no karate in this movie at all. This does mean that the lessons (Wax on, wax off, etc) are given a new kung fu spin and it’s fun to watch Dre learn kung fu.

The Karate Kid is a fun movie and if you have kids a must see for this summer. It’s the good type of remake, taking what worked in the original and recreating it for modern audiences.