Ultimate Gambit

I sent my first applications to Drama School today! I’m both really excited by this and really nervous It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for so long, but never really properly considered that it might actually happen, and now that it is, its quite scary!

Not least because of the cost of it – you’re looking at more than £10,000 for a years course! I really don’t know where i’m going to get the cash to cover it if i do get in… guess you may see me on a few street corners! Failing that, i guess i’ll have to take out some pretty hefty loans. Just hope it pays off!

Of course, i have to get in first, and competition in this industry isnt slim. Guess i’ll just have to keep my fingers crossed
The worst thing is that even before you get anywhere, you have to pay a £30 audition fee to these places – it seems the whole nature of the business involves shelling out money! It’s no wonder there are loads of unemployed and seriously broke actors out there! I can’t think of any other course that you have to pay purely to try for the chance of doing it. Not only that, but there’s the cost of the trains to the auditions, the time filling out the applications, and the days holiday i’m going to have to take to attend the auditions! Ah well – hopefully it will be worth it!

I have to find four monologues (two classical and two modern), no longer than two minutes each, within my age range. The classical ones have to be from Shakespeare (i hate that man! :p). So, if anyone has any advice on what to do, please help!

Well, after checking this thread on the Feedburner Plugin site, i realised that i had done something very silly, and fogotten to allow access to my .htaccess file, which meant the plugin wasnt working properly! D’oh! There was also an update to the plugin released yesterday, so I installed that too for good measure! It’s all up and running now, so feel free to subscribe to my feed!

I’ve also got gambituk.co.uk up and running, although at the moment it masks this site when it links here, so all you see in the address bar is http://www.gambituk.co.uk wherever you are on the site. I’m going to try and sort that, but if i cant, at least it points to the correct place!!

I’ve also just added a spoiler plugin which will hopefully be useful when writing reviews of MMA events/Movies/TV Shows! Just hover your mouse over it and you get to see what it says

I’ll hopefully have some more interesting posts for you soon!

I’ve been trying to set up feedburner on my RSS feed so that i can monitor how many people are reading my feed, and it isnt working. I can access the feed which i am getting feedburner to link to myself, but feedburner doesnt think it’s there?! I’ve tried loads of things, but while it recognised it initially and worked briefly (before i made a silly mistake and messed it up), whatever i do now, i cant get it to work!

How annoying. If you want to subscribe to my feed, please bear with me, (you can subscribe to the feed linked above for the time being!) and i’ll notify you when its up and running!

So, i’ve now bought a domain, i’ve set it up and it’s now live!

The link? http://www.gambituk.com

I’m going to buy www.gambituk.co.uk as well, so you should be able to get to it from that soon! The old site (gambit.wordpress.com) is no longer going to be used, so please make sure you use the new one from now on, and sign up to the feeds in the new location! It’ll be going through some changes, but it’ll still be in use

Enjoy

After my post the other day, FightOpinion.com has commented and pointed me to their thread here.

I was actually aware that the event had been cut thanks to John Griffin, but I wasnt aware of the full extent of the cuts.

It’s one thing when Japanese viewers who are getting an event free get a cut down version – at least they got to see highlights of most fights – but when paying viewers in the US don’t get to see what they paid for, i think thats pretty appauling. I really hope they get their act together for the next PPV. It also makes me angry as these fighters train for weeks and put everything into a fight and then it doesn’t even get seen by the majority of viewers!

I don’t know whether this regularally happens on Pride PPV’s – I would assume not – but it has only led to my opinion of Pride dropping further! Let’s hope they get it sorted for next time.
In the meantime – bring on the 4th February

After a few days of ummm-ing and ahhh-ing, i’ve finally decided to jump and bought a domain name and hosting package from SniffHost. Blogging is  bit addictive when it looks as good as this!
I don’t know what they’re like as I dont know anyone who’s used them, but they were definately the best value at £15 for one year’s hosting including a domain name. I wont reveal my domain name yet, but its pretty good

I’m also going to register the .co.uk version of the domain I’ve got for completion! I’ve really started getting into this blogging lark, and I feel its about time I owned a domain name – what’s a computer scientist without one ey!?!

Initially, i’m just going to forward those domains to here while i set up my blog on my host. It’s going to look a little different, but i’ll still be using WordPress and the current theme. Once thats set up, i’ll import all my stuff from here over to there, and run my blog off my host.

So, if my blog goes quiet for a few days, its because i’m setting up my host (although i’ll probably still be tempted to post!)

After saying that I defintely wasnt going to watch it, i ended up watching Pride last night, and all in all, i wasnt really that impressed.

In my mind, the best fight was the last fight of the night (Silva v Arona). In my mind Arona did the most work in that fight, but in the end he was robbed by a 2-1 judges decision.

Fedor v Zulu was amusing, purely beause of the way Fedor demolished Zulu! CroCop v Hunt was also a good fight to start with, but CroCop just seemed to lose interest in the final round, maybe when he realised that Hunt could just take whatever he could give! Hunt is a machine!

Anyways, being MMA, I did quite enjoy the event on the whole, but there is just something about Pride that I don’t like! I really wish i could say what it is, but I cant put my finger on it.

I got into MMA through the UFC, and maybe its the fact that in UFC you seem to learn a bit more of the back story to the fighters, and how they feel about each other etc. You really feel you can get behind the fighters due to the fact that you feel that you know them that little bit more! Having moved from a pro-wrestling addiction in the form of WWE onto MMA (although I’ve now started watching TNA, so am back to the wrestling), perhaps this insight into the back stories in UFC appeals to my pro-wrestling side, allowing me to gain an understanding with the fighters and actually care about the outcome of the match.

It probably also helps that having started watching UFC, I do know the fighters better, as I’ve seen them much more (whether it be on UFC PPV’s or on The Ultimate Fighter), and maybe this helps.
The only other thing i can think of is that the Octagon makes the event more exciting than having a generic ring? There is more space for the fighters to work in, and a barrier that they cant go through, but does this help the fight?! I really don’t know?!

Either way, I doubt you’ll find me raving about a Pride event on here in the same way you may hear about a UFC event, but you never know!
Finally, while I’m on MMA, if you havent already seen it, there is an amusing clip from K1 Figting of Heath Herring v Yoshihiro Nakao from last week on John Griffin’s blog. Deserved everything he got in my mind!!

Well, i’m back to Nottingham today as i start work tomorrow I do enjoy my job, but its still a drag to have to go back! Got crap loads to do on top of work too….
I’ve decided to apply to drama school, so i have the applications for that to do, and audition pieces to find. Not only that, i have a stag do to plan for my mate Jon and lines to learn for the G&S show! I dont begrudge any of it – in fact most of it I am looking forward to, but its still alot to have to do!

Guess i wont be catching up on all that tv for a while!!!

So, another year has passed, and it hasnt been a bad one! I’m enjoying my job (for which i beat 5 other people in an election to get), I got a 2:1 in my degree, I have a part on the G&S show, I have a fab girlfriend – everything is going well!

Saw in the new year at Emma’s house with a load of mates, and it was top stuff!

There’s a quite interesting article to bring in the new year on the BBC website – 100 things we didn’t know this time last year – i know alot of these type of things go around at this time of year, but its worth having a read through – there are some interesting (and shocking) things
in there!

My personal favorites are:
Number 2
Number 20
Number 36
Number 41
Number 52
Number 78