Martin Geisler Online

Cookie, Tais, and I drove to LinuxForum last year, and it was a great trip. This year Cookie and I will be returning by train. The conference begins this Saturday at 10 O’clock in the morning. But because Copenhagen is such a long way from both Aalborg and Århus, we leave tomorrow and spends the whole weekend there.

It looks like we’re going to hear some really interesting speeches this year: Eric S. Raymond will start out by giving a speech about The Zen of Unix: Unix’s design as philosophy, and vice versa. Apart from the speeches, there will be a lot of companies who wants to show us what they can do with Linux and BSD in all it’s flavors.

It’s expensive to live — I’ve just paid a total of 1,800 DKK (about 225 USD) in bills. And one of the bills was to Netsite, so that Gimpster.com can remain online for the next six months.

And then I’ve also bought books for the new term that has just begun. The most exciting new class is the one about algorithms and datastructures. It’s much more advanced than the introduction to Java we were presented with when we started last summer, and the book looks good too. The book is Algorithm Design — Foundations, Analysis, and Internet Examples by Michael Goodrich and Roberto Tamassia. It says in the introduction that it’s typeset with LaTeX so it can’t be all bad ;-) Although I think they’ve made the margins a bit to narrow, especially the right margin on the even pages (the pages that are to the right). But well… that’s how it goes when people insist on changing the standard layout LaTeX produces.

I had my first day at DAIMI today after the reading-holidays. I finished my exams about 14 days ago, so I haven’t been studying that much lately :-) But that didn’t seam to effect our lecturer — he just continued where he had stopped before Christmas.

It’s a little strange that we start on a Friday — I only found out about it yesterday. I thought we could wait until Monday, but no… So I was at the University this morning at 9 O’clock, where I found Manitou (Jérémy). But we were the only two that turned up — even our instructor did come! It was only around 12 O’clock that people started to arrive for the lecture. Two hours later we were finished, and wanted to have a piece of cake from MatKant. But they closed just before we came! So, as you can tell, it’s been a rough day :-)

The storm we had last night is over — it wasn’t that bad. The worst thing about it was, that it kept me awake so that I was kind of tired, earlier today, when I went to BioCity together with thoooms (Thomas), Manitou (Jérémy) and his girlfriend to see Lord of the Rings. The storm also caused some other damages: a section of the wooden fence, that I can see out of my window, is missing.

With regard to Lord of the Rings, then what is there left for me to say? Other people have probably already told you how great it is… But I’ll give it a try anyway :-)

So, let me start by saying that it’s a stunning movie — it’s really amazing to see how Peter Jackson has managed to visualize the book. Everything looks so real and feels so natural because it stays close to the book. And when you see the film again (as I did today :-) then you can really enjoy all the details, such as the over-sized carrots in Bilbo’s kitchen. I also love the scene where Frodo sees Arwen for the first time — the way she illuminates everything around her with her beauty. And when you hear them speak Elvish — it’s so beautiful. And I could go on and on and on…

It’s a great movie. I don’t know how it is if you haven’t read the books and therefore knows nothing about Hobbits, Elves, Dwarfs, Wizards, and Orcs, but I can imagine, that it must be a little strange at times.

One of the things that makes Tolkien so great, is that he has created an entire world in these books. And the world has it’s own myths and legends about the Ancient times. The different races that inhabit Middle-Earth all have their own characteristics: the Hobbits like to eat all the time, the Elves are beautiful and elegant, the Dwarfs are more “rough” and so on. The movie gives examples of all these things, but I can imagine that it’s easier to notice them, if you already knows about them :-)

If you want to hear other peoples oppenion about the film, then you should head over to IMBd where they have a lot of interesting reviews.

There’s a storm here in Denmark tonight — I can hear how the wind howls, as it sweeps past Skejbygaard. It’s kind of cozy to sit indoor and listen to the wind outside — not that I hear it that much, with XMMS running constantly on my computer…

I turn all my CD’s into Ogg Vorbis files using Grip. The latest addition to my collection is The Lord of the Rings Soundtrack which I got for my birthday. We can’t buy the film on DVD yet, but at least we can buy the soundtrack. When listening to it, you can see the film in your head — it’s actually very nice. Enya has made two of the tracks, which only makes things better :-)