Martin Geisler Online

Then try The Love Search made by my friend Svend. It’s an interactive sorting-interface to something called A Foreign Affair, which is a site which specialized in mail-order brides from Eastern Europe and Asia.

I must say that I find the concept of ordering a bride per mail somewhat disturbing, but maybe that’s just because I’m lucky enough to live in one of the worlds most richest states — you can interpret “live in” as both Switzerland and Denmark, it doesn’t really change things… :-)

Maybe I wouldn’t find it so strange if it weren’t for all the girls there who literally sell themselves to find a future husband from the West. I mean, is it really necessary to pose in a swimsuit to attract your future husband?! Or to show a cleavage all the way down to your belly botton? Apparently it is — those 16 years that have passed since the fall of the Berlin Wall have not stopped people from wanting to come to the West.

To me it looks very cheap, fake and made-up, and that’s definitely not the kind of qualities I would be looking for in a future bride. Not that I’m looking… I have already found the most wonderful girl in Stéphanie — who is both beautiful, honest, and smart!

What is interesting about Svend’s site (from a technical point of view) is the interactive sorting — you basically conduct a merge sort on the photos of the women. It works pretty well, and should be useful for other things as well. Maybe someone could write a plugin for Gallery2 to allow visitors to sort the images like that…

I had my last exam last Friday, so now I’m finally done with the first semester here at the ETH. Two of the exams were written tests, and the remaining four were oral exams.

The written tests was in OOSC and LBS. In OOSC we made the Object Spyglass project and then had a 45 minute multiple choice test. I have not quite made up my mind as to whether or not I like such tests — on one hand you can quickly answer a lot of questions when it’s just a matter of ticking some boxes, but on the other hand it’s very rigid and you cannot really express yourself in such a test. For the project I got the grade 6 together with Peter Brandt, and for the exam I got 5.75. Since the project counts 60% my final grade for the course was 6! :-)

The test in LBS was much more like what I’ve had back in Denmark: a two hour written test with lots of varied questions from the entire curriculum. I got 5.75 for that test which I’m very pleased with since I think the course was interesting.

The oral exams were more different than what I’m used to. First of all they were shorter: just 15 minutes and without preparation time. I like exams without preparation time for then you’re tested on what you really know and not on what you can memorize in the preparation time. It makes the whole exam much more natural and relaxed since you’re basically just talking about the stuff like if you had bumped into a friend in the cafeteria. I mean — we’re not supposed to have to use 15 minutes to think before we can explain how a quorum system or Shamir secret sharing works. We’re supposed to have learned that stuff. Of course one cannot expect you to just remember huge proofs and to recite them of the top of your head — for that it’s very fair to get some preparation time. But for testing if people actually have learned anything from a course, then I think it’s best to just simply ask them.

With all oral exams you have the little ceremony where you select your questions. And here at the ETH they all seemed to have their favorite little game for doing this… At the E-privacy exam the questions were written on some small pieces of paper and I had to choose two (I think). I don’t remember the questions anymore, but they gave me a 6, so I must have been able to remember both the questions and some suitable answers then…

The PDDBS was more simple: the professor simply asked me about what kinds of partitioning systems we had seen in the lecture, and when we went from there with him picking the questions. I still haven’t gotten a grade for that exam, but I believe I did well.

At the SS exam Nathalie Weiler took a long time to explain me the system, probably because I was an exchange student and she wanted me to feel comfortable. I had to pick the area of the first question and then she would ask me something. After that it went as usual with her asking questions from other parts of the curriculum. I talked and talked and got a 6, so I must have said something right :-)

My final exam was SFT and Christian Cachin has deviced a cunning system for picking the questions. First I had to pick three numbers between 1 and 20 (I picked 5, 13, and 17). Then the surpice came in the form of a secret offset! Whua! :-) So in the end I got questions 7, 15, and 19 which now got titles attached to them: Quorum Systems, Secret Sharing, and Broadcast with Byzantine Failures. But the game wasn’t done by then — I could choose to drop one of them. So I dropped the third and we could finally get started :-) For that exam I’m also waiting for my grade.

So now I’m looking forward to next semester. I still haven’t decided which courses I’m going to take, I’ll have to do that before November 6th.

I’ve just had my exam in Parallel and Distributed Database Systems and I think it went very well. Except for the beginning where they told me that I basically doesn’t exist — I’m not in their list of students, not in the computer, I’m nowhere…

But they did give me an exam, and then I’ll have to figure out to whom my lecturer can send the grade. I now have ten days until my next exam, so today (at least) I wont be studying, instead Stéphanie and I will go to Berne to have launch with her parents.

My final three exams for this semester are approaching fast:

• Parallel and Distributed Database Systems: September 30th,
• System Security: October 10th, and
• Security and Fault-tolerance in Distributed Systems: October 14th.

So if you don’t hear from me, then you can assume that I’m busy reading slides or papers for one of the exams…

So… I’ve finally got a new monitor for my machine! After reading tons of online reviews I decided for the NEC MultiSync LCD2070NX, a 20″ LCD display with a native resolution of 1600 × 1200 pixels. Take a look at it:

The monitor comes in two colors: all grey (which they probably call “silver” :-) and black/grey. Mine is the black/grey one — I don’t know why it was cheaper than the all grey one?

I picked it up at Digitec Friday afternoon and hurried home as fast as I could! Connecting it was easy and after adjusting my X server I got a nice, crystal-clear image with 1600 × 1200 pixels running at 71 Hz. The new display is increadibly sharp compared to my aging PHILIPS 201P (which I bought in August 2000). It is actually almost too sharp, at least that was what I thought at first, but now I’m getting used to it! :-)

Since this is my first LCD monitor I had been reading a lot of reviews and tests online. Finding such tests proved more difficult that one would expect because of all the idiotic price comparison sites out there. They all write something like “Prices and reviews for ⟨product⟩ at ⟨site⟩”, meaning that Google will list them first when you search for the product number together with words like “review” or “test”. The problem is that these sites almost always lie by claiming to have reviews but in reality there are none.

Searching the newsgroups was more effective, as was searching specific sites such as Anandtech and Tom’s Hardware Guide, so in the end I did find some reviews. Reading through the reviews for big LCDs was strange: there always seemed to be something wrong with them! They would either be too slow for gaming (not a concern for me) and movies (a bigger concern for me, especially since we’re using my computer as our TV), or they would have poor colors / contrast / brightness! Reading the very comprehensive Contemporary LCD Monitor Parameters and Characteristics guide at X-bit didn’t really help: it explains how the characteristics of LCD panels are much worse than what we’re used to from good old CRT monitors, and how the manufactures constantly try to make their products look better by inflating the specifications. Sigh!

But since I couldn’t keep using my computer through an SSH connection from Stéphanie’s laptop I bought one anyways :-) And I’m very pleased with it! I’ve checked it for dead pixels with some online test images and I haven’t found any — all 1.92 million pixels (5.76 million subpixels) seems to be in order! The image is — as already mentioned :-) — very sharp, and that is with a normal VGA cable, not DVI. The credit (once again) for this goes to Matrox for making the amazing G400 graphics card! I’ve had it for almost five years now and it’s still one of the best for 2D graphics: fanless (a must!) and sharp.

One day I’ll probably upgrade to a G550 Dual-DVI or something similar to get DVI output, but it will only be if the G400 burns out or I buy a second monitor… for now what I have it just great!