Finally got a chance to check out LOTR tonight. Although I am somewhat biased since I have read the book so many times, I thought it was well done. Here are my gripes tho:

• Elrond is not nearly as anal, in my opinion, as Peter Jackson made him out to be.
• Arwen flooding the River Bree while fleeing from Ringwraiths? hrummph
• Sam Gamgee is made out to be somewhat simple, but Merry and Pippen were well done, so that's even
• Saruman was made out to be simply evil, not nearly as pragmatic as the character really is in the book. IMHO, Saruman wanted to control the Ring, play for both teams as it were. That doesn't come across at all in the movie. Although, Michelle pointed one thing out to me, that never occured to me during the movie. Saruman, maintains his white robes throughout, which might seem minor, but he is no longer Saruman of Many Colors, right? She explained to me that the implication was that he was playing both sides, just making a bad judgement call in attempting to take control back later on. hmmm...that is interesting.
• No Tom Bombadil, oh well, although it is small plot point, I believe it is a large statement for the book. To me, it is all about TB being possibly more powerful than the power of the Rings, and he is wiser and non-affected, yet aloof to the world outside his realm. He does speak alot to me about arrogance and being aloof to things...

All in all, I was highly impressed with Peter Jackson's interpretation of the book. There is just so much there, that condensing it into a hollywood flick is simply impossible. But for once, thank god, fantasy has not been simplified down to the level of a 3 year old. The elves are elvish without being panzies running around in stockings, as most films depict elves.

Special effects, battle scenes...well...sweet...

I usually look for points in a movie where in a few years I'll look back and *sigh* at the cheesie special effects. Only found one bad looking scene. When the Fellowship are running from the demon in Moria, they turn a corner and there are flames behind them. Looks really cheesie. But one 15 second scene in 3 hours is damn fine :)

Had to say, all in all ...loved it...well, time for some Tribes 2 and bed...

I could have sworn that I posted a journal entry yesterday...

hmmm....unless I am slowly losing my mind, which is entirely possible too...

Ok, so today my boss...whom I also have endearing job of marking for (you can shove grammar you know where at midnight'ish)...came to me today with a few papers that students sent back for re-marking.

It suffices to say that he didn't want to have anything to do with them. Seriously in 2 years of god-awful pain of having to mark this course, I have never seen a downright worse group of morons.

Oh well, I'm not gonna go on and on about it. I just realized when a (minimum) 2nd year Computer Science student can't do Gaussian Elimination on 3x3 matrix and then solve the determinant, then there is something seriously , ass cracking wrong with them. I mean hell, the first time around I was nice, all they had to do was solve the damn things and they would have gotten a good chunk of the marks. Now, unfortunatley, they forced me to waste my time. In kind fashion, I will oblige them by thoroughly remarking their papers, step by step, in fine detail.

Sucks to be them I suppose

Ok, I was whining yesterday, maybe I was tired, cranky, pms'ie...whatever.

Ported the win32 version of my project to Linux today, thank the gods I don't have to work in windows for a bit. I mean I have done everything I can to customize my win32 environment, from litestep, xeamcs, gvim, cygwin tools (complete install). So it kinda looks like I am working in a unix'ie environment. But it's just functionally to different to make completely comfortable. I am accustomed to a POSIX system. It's how I think, how I enjoy working, everything about it makes me feel in control of the system. Which may be a perceptual thing, however I don't think it is. I have far more control over my Linux or BSD box than I ever have had or ever will. The thing I like is my window manager switching capabilities.

If i want a nicely integrated desktop, I use KDE, antialiasing and everything. If I am debugging code, I switch to blackbox, no distractions minimal resources. If I am compiling a kernel, I go into text mode and have all my fun tools to while away the time, mpg123, lynx, licq console...

I know I am a junkie but there are some valid reasons here.

When I code, I am always in debug mode until ready for some kind of release. VC++ has a bad debugger, IMHO anyhow. The code should run the same through a debugger as it does on it's own. However I have noticed some remarkable differences between the two 'configurations' in Windows. I also have the fairly frequent IDE crash in VC++.

In my opinion, DDD or even kdbg are superior systems for debugging, I can more detailed, accurate information from these two debuggers.

As a developer (ie code monkey) by trade, I do not have the luxery of working in specifically one OS. Wish that were the case, however , one of the reasons I have a love affair with QT is the portability. I can develop 95% of my app in Linux. A superior development platform and port changes to win32 later.

I could care less about GTK. Say what you want, it was a kludge then and it's a kludge now. I don't mind GTK apps, in fact i like them. But the framework is flawed and needs revision.

For what it's worth QT was initially designed properly and continues to grow due to those design decisions. A wonderful real world example of software engineering and it's future implications.

I am suffereing from boredom...maybe it's simply the drudgery of everyday life. Not that my life drudges (sp?) or anything, it's just that every once in a while I feel like I am in a bit of a rut. Then I get bitter :o) Constant bug fixing at work, same ol' routine in my spare time, life moving more slowly than I want it to. Things like that. Of course last week was so busy that my body literally shut down on Friday. My brother and his wife came into town friday. I felt ok when i got home from the office. But after waiting until 8pm for dinner (don't ask!) , I started feeling extrememly nauseous. Like hung over, drank a case of beer the night before nauseous. I have no idea why either. Maybe it was hunger, maybe it was stress. Regardless, it felt like someone forgot to pay the gravity bill and I was heaving gooey chunks at the alter of the porcelain god in no time. Damn, maybe I should have been drunk - at least I would have gotten something more out of the whole experience.

After my little episode, i went downstairs to lie down and ended up crashing at 9pm. 9pm on a Friday! Man - I am getting older, I must be. But it was great, thats the thing. Friday night:
go clubbing?
nope
strip club?
nope
pub?
nope
live music?
nope

....sleep in all its beauty and majesty.

Oh well, I never claimed to be exciting...

Woke up up at 7am on Saturday (another sign of advancing age) and did my normal thing, Slashdot browsing, Aliens versus Predator 2, coding. Lately coding has been driving me insane. My current project is fairly mature ie not alpha anymore. Therefore the bugs are smaller, more difficult to track and thus far more infuriating. Why me oh god...

;o)

Anyhow, wash rinse and repeat for Sunday, except I slept in until about 11am. Sundays are great for that - I actually tend to awake about 9am, but lie in bed and watch all the decorating and design shows on cable. Again, another sign of advancing age...

So here we are , sitting in office on Monday, filling in a journal entry. Oh yes, I managed to kill a plant in my cubby hole. Forgot to water it well on friday. It's a flower type thing, unlike the other low maintenace ferns and plants I have in here. Therefore requiring a touch more care. I should also point out, it's not fully dead-ified, just dropping badly. Maybe after afew dousings today it will pop back to life....here's to hoping I am not Death incarnate

=D

What a life...

Ok, today marking is blatantly falling behind once again. Oh well, I did manage to get my code back up to schedule. Which is somewhat nice for once - I now have a few minutes to breath. Woohoo. =P

What else is new? Not too damn much, still the normal hopes and dreams. Money, wealth, numerous skinny tall blondes banging down my door...

Oh ya, did another TOC for a guy opening a law firm. Don't really wanna do it, but I need mo money. Damn, Still shotting for that magic solid $80K. Getting there though. Wish I didn't have to make that a priority, but what are ya gonna do?

As for those knobs posting in the Open Source Companies going closed article. Grow up you asses , get a life. A company needs to make money, Open Source is not FSF, there's nothing wrong with a closed license so long as everything being done is above board and honest...

Gripe gripe bitch moan, just wait kids, until bringing home money to pay those bills becomes a priority...then you'll all be singing a different tune.

Ok, so after a couple of weeks of midterm, marking and work hell, it was finally my birthday yesterday. Although I spent the entire day studying, wrote an exam - after a few friends of the family came over and had a nice dinner, got some groovy tolkien stuff, have a few heinekens.

The coolest thing was michelle got me a day at a spa, the whole works baby. It was cool to be sitting in a hottub at 9am today....

Shaaawing...so therefore, got no work done today, but hell, it was worth it.

ok after having read 200 or so pages of perceptual psychology tonight (for my midterm, not for fun) , I think I can say with alot of confidence that reading psychology texts is not the funnest thing in the world to be doing.

Although I have had time to customize blackbox and gkrellm, install litestep for my w2k partition, in between paragraphs...

What a fulfilling life.

Can you believe I actually only just discovered this jornalling thing today? Damn, I am quicker than a lightening bolt on speed...

Ok newest news, I dropped all my (2) math courses. Forget it, they were pretty much a fairly useless exercise in the innane.

It frees up alot of time in my schedule to work on some projects, make money and code alot more. Thank ye gods. Thats ok, I don't think I have ever been more miserable in my 4 years at university as I was this year. And i do have my CS degree anyhow, the math was an interesting idea, whose time never came. Maybe someday when I am retired and have spare time I'll finish it.

For now I would much rather work on the Beowulf clustering research project...something just tells me it would be far more useful then combinatorics...