Confessions of a Professional Developer

Well, Im not one for blogging about general everyday stuff but after reading some of the reviews of Hitman I felt I had to my two penneth in. Firstly thes think about those other not-so-great films of computer games, Street Fighter, Tomb Raider, Mario Bros, Mortal Kombat (to a
lesser extent) were all, well, not to be unkind but quite poor. So by that benchmark given the genre anything better than quite poor is a big plus. OK, so nmow we have a general benchmark lets consider some other mitigating factors - whilst Hitman has some superb stunts, special
effects and action sequences you should not go to this film with "This is another Borne Identity/James Bond type of film", it not, firstly the main character is more reminiscent of Leon than either of the two previously mentioned, think World Cinema, Darkened Eastern
European/Russian location, think World Cinema with a bigger budget. There are also some nice "in jokes" - at one point Agent 47 crashes thru a window into a hotel room with two kids playing Hitman the game on the telly - quite amusing if you catch the reference. Now the leading lady
isn't your typical "Bond Girl" shes dark, damaged, sassy and gothic AND she appears partially naked now and again - in my book all these things make her much more intriguing and interesting and indeed more sexy than anything the Bond franchise has produced. The main character IS NOT A "GOODIE" as with Borne and Bond, this guy has been trained from birth to be an assassin and it is his sole purpose, no sleeping with anything that moves, no witty repartee just a case full of weaponry and some bad-ass hand to hand combat get this guy thru life. The gadgets whilst fanciful in places have at least the potential to exist and are generally believable and used judiciously. Personally I thought that this film was one of the best Ive seen so far this year and, even if you don't go and see it at the cinema its certainly worth a rental - especially if you have surround sound and a hi-def telly to enjoy all the gun fights and explosions! Its efinitely a lads movie but not so much your "I like guns and stuff blowing up me" type of lad film more a "Im interested in see some alternative characters play out an intercontinental game of cat and mouse with high violence and some reasonable character development". The leading man, though Ive forgotten his name, must have been able to memorise his lines in an afternoon - he remains mostly silent throughout the film, punctuated occaisionally by some direct instruction which generally either ends or saves someones life, this guy however is not devoid of character, you are left with the distinct impression that theres a world of torment and angst behind those eyes and that whilst he never expresses it in words his facial reactions say it all whilst giving away nothing!

All in all a FIVE STAR film - SEE IT NOW!

I’ve recently had to deal with some very run of the mill client side validation, namely validation a comma separated list of email addresses – I was so pleased with my cobble together of bits of code I found on the net that I thought Id post it here for the next time! Also a handy bit of script to “trim” a string in javascript and adding the trim method to the String object… NICE!

String.prototype.trim = function() { return this.replace(/^\s+\s+$/g, ''); }

function CheckEmailAddresses()
{
var recipients = document.getElementById('recipients').getAttribute('innerText').split(',');
var emailRegEx = /^(("[\w-\s]+")([\w-]+(?:\.[\w-]+)*)("[\w-\s]+")([\w-]+(?:\.[\w-]+)*))(@((?:[\w-]+\.)*\w[\w-]{0,66})\.([a-z]{2,6}(?:\.[a-z]{2})?)$)(@\[?((25[0-5]\.2[0-4][0-9]\.1[0-9]{2}\.[0-9]{1,2}\.))((25[0-5]2[0-4][0-9]1[0-9]{2}[0-9]{1,2})\.){2}(25[0-5]2[0-4][0-9]1[0-9]{2}[0-9]{1,2})\]?$)/i
for (var email in recipients)
{
if(emailRegEx.test(recipients[email].trim()))
{
alert('good');
} else {
alert('bad');
}
}
}

Thanx go to the following locations:
Trim function: http://www.nicknettleton.com/zine/javascript/trim-a-string-in-javascript
Email Regex: http://xyfer.blogspot.com/2005/01/javascript-regexp-email-validator.html

I just thought Id drop in a quick note about my new project, Brooba.com , the concept behind this site is quite simple - Why shoudl you have to pay extra fees when buying/selling/exchanging/searching for a house - this site puts users together giving them the tools necessary to end their Housing woes - do check it out and pre-register - more info to follow!

http://www,brooba.com

Please please please checkout my new creation for a friend of mine who's set up a landscape gardening business - the website I created for him can be found at www.newmanlandscapesltd.co.uk

Cheers!