Archive for December 2002

Live from TheParty!

I’m currently waiting for the Opening Ceremony here at The Party 2002. They’ve just fired a bunch of fireworks (prematurely?) so the air is thick with gun-powder or something like that… The good thing about this is, that it makes the laser beams show up nicely in the air :-) –Martin Geisler

Merry Christmas!

A modern
Santa Christmas is finally here! Tonight we’ll be having a nice meal, and afterwards we’ll dance around the christmas tree. When that’s done too, then we can get our presents. Here in Denmark we get our presents on the evening of the 24th and not the 25th in the morning as in the US and other countries.

So I would like to wish everybody a very Merry Christmas! This year has been the most fantastic year for me. I live with some truely amazing people here at [Skejbygård][], and I’ve received so much possitive feedback through GimpsterDotCom. Thanks a lot everybody!

I’ve seen IMDB:The Two Towers (2002)!

The Two Towers poster I’ve now seen the second film in the Tolkien triology — it’s a great film just like the first. You’ll find a lot of information about all three film at http://www.lordoftherings.net/.

If you don’t know this already, then this second act of the triology tells the story about how friendly people of Mittle-earth discovers the union between the Two Towers: Orthanc where the once-good wizard Saruman lives and Barad-dûr, around which the Dark Lord concentrates all evil in Mittle-earth. It is also in this film, that you hear about the journey of Frodo and Sam into Mordor, followed by the strange creature Gollum whoes real name is Sméagol.

The film has to keep track of all these events, many of which take place many miles apart. It does this by cutting back and forth the different groups of the shattered Fellowship. In the book you follow each group for a long time, and then switches to the other group, but that would probably feel akward in a film, so the way it’s done is probably the best way.

But I couldn’t help being distracted by the fact, that there’s so much going on in this film. I’ve read the books twice, so I knew the characters, but it must have been strange for some of the others that were with me. You’re introduced to a number of characters in the film, but you only get a little glimpse of their history. This is the weakness of the film-media: it would have taken a film many times longer than the current (already very long) films to present all the material in the books. I’m not blaming the films for being to short (although I already long for the extended version of this movie), I’m more blaming the media. But I guess it will always be this way with books: there’s so much depth that you just cannot show in a film — you have to read it yourself.

The special effects were good, and I really liked the Ents and Gollum, both fully computer generated characters. I’ve always had trouble visualizing the Ents because they aren’t described in that much detail in the books. So I wasn’t sure what to expect of the film, but I think the result is very good. The Ents look like very old trees and they talk very slowly and with much care. They also walk slowly, taking their time with each step, but because they take big steps, they’re able to travel quickly from one end of Fangorn Forest to another. Gollum, or Sméagol as he was once called, is fully computer generated and looks stunning! His face has the possible most lifelike computer-generated eyes ever seen in a film, and they really help convay his feelings when he is having discussions with himself.

The trip started out as a small one with just me and Mikkel Krøigård, but when I talked with people at [Skejbygård][], then they were interested too. So we ended up being Christina Strøhl, Camilla, Torben Classen, Camilla Johnsen, Nina Ratenburg, and Helene. After the movie Mikkel and I went to Andreas Danielsen to have a Christmas Lunch with the others from DAIMI:dArkOS. We ended up getting a little lost, so we came terribly late, but we did get some of the nice food people had made for the lunch. So it was a long and good day… –Martin Geisler

Christmas and TheParty is approaching

The C++ Programming Language Christmas Eve is coming quick now — just one day to go! I’ve made a lot of wishes this year, including ”The C++ Programming Langauge” by Bjarne Stroustrup; ISBN:0201700735, so that I can learn some C++. I’ve played with C++ before, see my entry for [/2001/10/29/], but it’s never been much. With this book, then there’s no excuse for me not to learn and use the language. And now that the The Party. I’ve been in Aalborg the last two days, but today I went back with my father to [Skejbygård][] in Århus to pick up my computer and Grandma. Everything should be ready for The Party — I have the ticket, my computer, an inflatable madras, and ear-plugs. Now I just need some CocaCola :-) I read on http://www.theparty.dk/ that the visitors consumed over 27.000 litres of Cola last year, and I’m sure that number will increase again this year… –Martin Geisler

!!!Adding redirects

Now that I’ve moved the WikiWikiWeb to a PhpWiki:PrettyWiki (see also [/2002/12/06/]) there was just one small glitch left: the first link on [Google:Martin Geisler] still points to =/phpwiki/index.php/~Martin Geisler=… The problem is, that this URI still works, and so Google wont remove the page from it’s database.

I’ve now made PhpWiki send out a =HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently= header whenever someone tries to access the WikiWeb using the old URL. I’ve simply added these eight lines to the top of =/phpwiki/index.php=:

if (substr($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], 0, 8) == ‘/phpwiki’) {
  /* This skips past ‘/phpwiki’ and possibly also over
   * ‘/index.php’ if it is present: */
  $url = substr($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], 19);
  header(’HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently’);
  header(’Location: http://’ . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . ‘/wiki/’ . $url);
  exit;
}

You can read about the HTTP/1.1 standard in RFC:2616. This should ensure that Google updates it’s links the next time it traverses GimpsterDotCom.

We’re the European Champions, again…

Denmark has just won the final in the European Handball Championship for Women — way to go! I haven’t paid much attention to the matches, but it’s always fun to watch when Denmark wins :-)