Martin Geisler Online

We had a huge Christmas Party here at Skejbygård]] yesterday… it was fun. We started Saturday evening and did not stop until Sunday morning — or some of us did not stop :-) I wont mention names, but who said anything about linking ;-) Just kidding, she had to work the next day, so it’s perfectly understandable that she “only” lasted until 4:00 in the morning.

Anyway, it was a fun party. We started with a nice Christmas Feast on our floor with Jesper Klintø, Camilla Johnsen, Mia Schneider, Olle Hansen, Kenn, and Søren. We were later joined by Sine and Katrine who just stopped by — we found out later, that Katrine knew Mia, and that Sine knew Christina, who came back from her babysitting in time to get some of the leftovers. We also found out, that Olle had met [Mia when he had been to London... it's a small world we live in!

I live in one of the two towers that make up Skejbygård][], and the bar is placed under the other tower. A couple of hours after it opened we moved down there, and continued the party. There was quite a few people there and a great atmosphere.

The really great thing about living at [Skejbygård][] is the sheer number of people you get to know. One of the guys I talked with was BjarkeSkjernaa who is in the network group here at [Skejbygård][]. We talked a little about the homepage (don’t go to http://www.skejbygaardkollegiet.dk/ yet — the page isn’t ready) and about TÅGEKAMMERET who arranges the parties at the Department of Mathematics at University of Aarhus.

I was also lucky enough to get a few dances with [Mia, Nina Ratenburg, and Mette Bukhave — really nice! Later I had a great talk with [Jesper about Life, the Universe and Everything…

Or something like that :-) I’ve just bought a ticket to The Party 2002, subtitled “The Party of Your Life”. I’ll be going with Thomas Mølhave and a friend of his, Christian. This is the second year in a row that I’ll be at The Party — last year was my first, and I was very impressed by the demos I saw.

The focus of The Party has shifted gradualy through the years from hardcore demo-making to people playing games, simply because there’s so many more gamers out there than sceners. And this year is no exception: the prizes for the scene competitions (compos) are much lower than for the game compos… The first price in scene compos is € 1000, but the first price in the game compos is € 4000. It doesn’t matter much for me, for I wont win either price, but it’s still sad that there’s fewer and fewer people who make demos.

In case you don’t know what a “demo” is, then I would suggest that you download the awesome Back to BASICs WiLD demo from http://www.hybrisNEMESIS.com/. -[Martin Geisler][4]

That is not an ordinary demo, it is a WiLD demo, which basicly has to do with the fact that it is prerendered. If you want to see a real demo try checking http://www.pouet.net/ . The demo “vip2″ listed in the “top 10 prods” bar on the lower left is cool. -Thomas Mølhave

!!!Problems with MySql — a solution is underway

There’s been some problems with the MySql server that holds the data for this WikiWikiWeb lately — some of you have probably seen this error when you tried to access the site:

• DB Error: unknown error

• (LOCK TABLES phpwiki_page WRITE, phpwiki_version WRITE, phpwiki_link WRITE, phpwiki_recent WRITE, phpwiki_nonempty WRITE ~[nativecode=1017 ** Can't find file: './gimpster/phpwiki_page.frm' (errno: 24)])

I’ve just received a mail from NetSite where they tell me that a new server is on it’s way, and that they have found a temporary solution to the problem. And indeed it seams that things are working again now, since I can write this piece of news.

Hohoho! It’s christmas again, and GimpsterDotCom has been dressed up for the event with a snowy background and red colours all around.

It was particularly easy for me to change the background this year, because the little images that make the rounded corners are alpha-blended [PNG][] images. The [PNG][] format is truly great: it supports 8-bit alpha-channels, which makes it possible to have real antialiasing that work on any background. My images blend from white to transparent, not from white to say blue as the old GIF images did. So when I change the background colour, then the antialiasing still works. [PNG][] images also compress better than GIF and the format is open and free of ugly patents, something which cannot be said about GIF images.

Today we had the anual election for the board here at [Skejbygård][]. I’ve only been to one of these meetings before, but it’s usually fun because we get to discuss the daily life here at [Skejbygård][]. Last year we had a big discussion about whether our janitar BjarneBørresen should use salt or sand to keep the snow away from our sidewalks. We argued back and forth until someone finally gave up…

This year I had decided to run for election — I’m now the treasurer! We’re an almost entirely new board, it’s only Martin Justesen who survived the election. The chairman is Svenne, and then we have Mette Bukhave and Tine. I’ve never tried to be in a board before, so I’m pretty excited. But I know that both Svenne and Martin Justesen has tried it before, so I’m in good hands.

Today I was skating together with Torben Classen, Jesper Klintø, Camilla Johnsen, Nina Ratenburg, Mette Bukhave, Søren, Hilmar Magnusson, and Sif, all of Skejbygård]] fame :-)

This was the first time I’ve been skating in a couple of years, so I had almost forgot how it worked. The nice thing about ice skating is, that you can move slowly in your own pace to keep the balance, and then take on more speed as your confidence grows. The people who don’t know how to brake (like me!) are generally moving slowly, and the people the people who run around the ice rink playing catch know how to both brake and turn :-) So everybody gets along without problems.

I managed to stay on my feet the whole time, although I almost fell a couple of times, including one where Mette Bukhave thought she could grab my arm for support — that almost made me loose my balance. But by bashing my arms wildly around and probably also making some scared noises, I avoided it :-)

[Jesper and [Torben were rather good at skating: I saw them move backward (controlled that is) at one time. When I moved backward, then it was with panic written all over my face...