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 In the case of Karate Kid, I have to admit the original is pretty outdated, and if you ask anybody under the age of 16, chances are most haven’t seen it or at least aren’t as attached to it as my generation.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.

It’s been a bit of a quiet week here, I’ve been a bit caught up in work and shopping. After winning the family football (yay, me!) I decided to go on a bit of a shopping spree last Wednesday, which was the same day as the Knomo sample sale I mentioned in a previous post. Completely unexpected I got a bit of a sneak preview of Knomo’s upcoming collection:

I ended up buying this gorgeous black leather bag and it turns out this model doesn’t even exist yet! It’s a sample of the Helena bag which is a new product for Knomo’s Autumn/Winter collection. The final product will be a bit different than this one, so this bag is truly a one-of-a-kind!

Besides being a gorgeous leather bag, it actually fits my laptop AND my DSLR plus two lenses. I’m so super pleased with this bag! Here are some photos of me and my shiny new Helena:

I can’t wait to see the rest of Knomo’s next collection. If they’re as pretty as this one, I know what I’ll be asking for with Christmas!

I recently got to see M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender and although I can’t talk about that (it’s embargoed until August), I can talk about the original TV series it was based on. I looooved that show, and I still think it’s one of the best TV shows from the past couple of years, even compared to ‘grownup’ shows.

If you haven’t seen it yet, now’s the time to do so (and if you do, stick with it for a couple of episodes. The first couple are a little on the silly side, but the story is good). Nothing has been officially been confirmed yet, but there are rumours of a new TV show called Avatar: The Legend of Korra.

I did some investigating to see if there was any truth at all in this, and I think there is. For starters, Viacom trademarked Nickelodeon Avatar: The Legend of Korra two months ago, which seems to indicate this isn’t completely pulled out of thin air. Besides that at a signing for the artwork book about the TV show, the site Racebending.com managed to ask some questions to the creators of the original. Their reply: they couldn’t say anything at the signing, but to expect an announcement, soon.

I’m guessing and hoping that we’ll hear something official about it at Comic-Con. So far it looks like it will be set 100 years after the events of the Last Airbender and will star the titular charactar Korra, a female waterbending Avatar. She’d be joined by two other new characters Meelo and Wei Bei.

Cool news, if this all turns out to be true. So what do you think? I’m guessing that by now Aang and everyone else is dead. And maybe one of Aangs kids will become Korra’s airbending teacher? (although that would be the final element she’d have to master) Also I’m wondering whether we’ll finally see some of the unanswered questions of the original show in flashbacks here.

These are cute! I wish they’d be a bit smaller though; I love the concept, but not sure if I’d actually end up wearing this ever:

These headbands are available in different types of colour combinations for $22. The same etsy store also sells the following two fascinators:

The bottom one is stunning, but it’s $125… a little bit out my price range alas. I’m not sure how much the top one is (it’s not in stock at the moment).

Check out more designs at Janine Basil’s etsy store.

I’m feeling pretty chuffed with myself right now! I just solved the postcard puzzle from Tron, without having all the pieces 🙂

I wrote about the retro arcade game postcards last week, and each card came with a black strip on the back. Under UV light each design showed a different series of dots. The idea was to layer these dots to spell out something. Up until today there were only 4 designs and we couldn’t get closer to solving the puzzle.

Today 2 new cards were released though, and I managed to figure it out with only 1 of those. The letters spelled out ENCOMGAMES-OT– with the dashes being unknown letters. I guessed that it would have to be ENCOMGAMES DOT something something, leading to some url, so started trying out different letter combos. Pretty quickly I stumbled on the solution! ENCOMGAMES.JP

It’s completely in Japanese (of course) and leads to a new Flash game: Circuit Cycles. Give it a go, it gets pretty tricky quickly. On to the next puzzle!

As I mentioned in last week’s laptop bag review (the Slim from Knomo), I’d take some time this week to check out the Lima Max from From Knomo. Unlike the Slim this one is a proper bag with space to fit your laptop.

The Lima Max is a 13″ cross-body bag that comes in black quilted nylon. On the inside there are 2 compartments: one for your laptop and one to hold all your other stuff. I was hoping it would be a bit more roomier; I managed to get my phones and wallet in, but it was all a pretty tight fit. On the outside there are both front and back pockets for stuff you easily want to reach.

I didn’t find this the most pleasant bag to use on a daily basis. Because of the vertical design, you have to ‘dig quite deep’ until you find what you’re looking for. Also being a bit on the short side, it felt too large for me; even though I’ve had bigger bags before, this vertical design makes it feel larger and not that suited for my length. I think if you’re taller than me, you won’t find it that much of a problem, but for me it really didn’t feel right.

The Lima Max is a pretty bag, but not one suited for my needs. If you’re only carrying laptop and papers with you, I think this could be a good fit. It’s a sleek elegant laptop bag, but if you want to carry a bit more, I suggest looking for another design.

The Lima Max is available at the Knomo store for £59.99.

Shale is the lowest of the low-an outcast from a poor village in the heart of the desert. In the desert water is life, and currency, and Shale has none. But he has a secret. It’s the one thing that keeps him alive and may save all the cities of the Quartern in the days to come. If it doesn’t get him killed first…

Terelle is a slave fleeing a life as a courtesan. She finds shelter in the home of an elderly painter but as she learns the strange and powerful secrets of his art she fears she may have traded a life of servitude for something far more perilous…

The Stormlord is dying in his tower and there is no one, by accident or design, to take his place. He brings the rain from the distant seas to his people. Without a Stormlord, the cities of the Quartern will wither and die.

Their civilization is at the brink of disaster. If Shale and Terelle can find a way to save themselves, they may just save them all. Water is life and the wells are running dry…

I always love it when a fantasy book has some proper world building. Instead of going down the familiar route of alternative middle ages, I prefer it when fantasy series try something a little different. In The Last Stormlord it’s all about water.

Water has become so rare that the entire community is built around it. There once was a time when people were dependent on random rain and they barely survived that era. Then the Stormlords came and water became regulated. The Stormlords would pull water from the clouds and shift them to the cities that needed it. Each city and each citizen receives an alloted amount of water, unless you live on the outskirts or in the slums and aren’t a ‘proper’ citizen.

But at the start of this book we find out the current Stormlord is dying and there is no replacement. As the Stormlord grows weaker decisions have to be made: which cities get water and which get cut off? It’s an interesting premise and Larke does a great job describing the class divide and the harsh choices the characters must make.

There are 3 different story lines at the start, which (of course) all merge at a certain point. The first is about those around the failing Stormlord: his son Nealrith, rainlord in his own right, but not strong enough to be a stormlord; and Ryka and Kaneth, two rainlords who are forced to marry to heighten their chances of a Stormlord offspring. The second is about Terelle, a girl sold to a ‘snuggery’ (read: whorehouse) but flees before she’s forced into a life she doesn’t want. And then there’s Shale, a boy with water powers, enough to maybe be a Stormlord some day.

I really enjoyed this book, although it was a whole lot bleaker than I expected it to be. Larke raises some interesting moral dilemmas and makes you wonder what you’d do in that type of situation. I can’t wait till the next book comes out! I so want to know how this story continues…

The Last Stormlord by Glenda Larke is available on Amazon.co.uk for £5.58 and on Amazon.com for $7.99