Mon 26 Aug 2002
August 26, 2002
Been looking into BibTeX briefly today, and started to build a BibTeX references file. This will be very useful not only for my 3rd year project report, but also for courseworks in the final year. There’s only a few references in the file as of yet, but it should grow as the final year progresses.
Went to the shop and bought washing-up liquid, washing powder and bathroom foam in addition to milk and garlic sausages. Afterwards I washed (parts of) the bathroom—the parts that were mouldy. Yuck. I actually took the bathroom cupboard over the sink off the wall and washed behind it (and in it). Got standing ovations from house mates afterwards.
Sun 25 Aug 2002
August 25, 2002
Had a “McTasteless” and a “McYuck” at McDonalds Edgeware.
Sat 24 Aug 2002
August 24, 2002
I just finished my first program in GTK+ (more of an exercise, really). It basically just displays a window with a button in it, popping up a new window when the button is pressed. This new window also has a button in it. When this button is pressed, the program terminates.
Fri 23 Aug 2002
August 23, 2002
Saw “Reign of Fire” in the Harrow Cinema with Nadia and her brother. I liked it, although the ‘weak Europeans’ had to be saved by the bloody Americans again :( The dragons were very cool though.
Thu 22 Aug 2002
August 22, 2002
Going to try to blag a free cinema ticket from someone I know works at the Cinema today. Will prove interesting—I don’t know if the person is even at work today though.
Wed 21 Aug 2002
August 21, 2002
Gave will his wedding present, only 3 weeks too late. Also went to the Spice in Brick Lane with the usual crowd for curry.
Downloaded GTK+ tutorial and will be trying to learn a bit GUI programming before uni starts again. Nothing fancy, I just want to be able to create basic interfaces so that my project looks a bit more flashy when it’s time for that to be handed it. Ncurses interfaces are many things, but particularly eye-candy they are not.
Sun 11 Aug 2002
August 11, 2002
Met Kim and Janet at The Hope, then joined up with a couple of friends of theirs. Off to the hare and tortoise for a meal in the evening. Had ice cream for dessert, and briefly visited Kim and Janet’s place before I went home again.
Met an old blind man on the tube station, and talked about many things. I didn’t get to finish reading my book, but it was nice talking to him. I forgot to ask whether he go to the movies =)
Wed 07 Aug 2002
August 7, 2002
Monster’s Ball
Booooring. A one hour and forty five minutes yawn. Despite showing off Halle Berry naked, this film had nothing worth watching. Shallow and predictable story, seen-it-before American blurb characters.
Austin Powers: Goldmember
Well, we’ve seen it all before. After a while though, the crazy gags get to you and you laugh anyway. And, not to forget, there’s a lot of scantily clad, nice-looking young women to rest your eyes on for the male half of the population.
MIB-II
A pretty alien, a whole bunch of butt-ugly aliens and a Tommy Lee Jones in shorts. Sequels are always hard, but this film seemed to build up to some grand finale that never was delivered. Still, it had some ridiculously funny scenes, and I found it worth watching (despite Will Smith’s overly lame character).
One Night at McCool’s
Apart from a stunning Liv Tyler, this film really didn’t have that much to offer. The plot didn’t hold; it seemed thought out, although I think it was supposed to appear that it was improvised all the way through.
Ocean’s Eleven
This film is basically digging up the `grand-robbery dead-and-buried horse to kick it around some more, but it amazingly pulls it off. However, the film has the ugly American film syndrome that the ‘good guys’ (which—technically–are bad; they’re thieves) win everything AND the girl.
Some of the characters are so stereotyped that you really just have to laugh. A pleasant twist is that not everything goes according to the plans. However, so much goes wrong that it is amazing they don’t abandon all plans altogether. The near-mix-ups are very numerous and homogeneous — (iirc) all members of the team are involved in a troublesome situation, but only once each.
Rock Star
The key plot outline is a bit of a long shot. There’s quite a lot of great music though.
Supernova
Not bad. I quite liked this one, although the AI on board controlling computer got a bit annoying at times. However, I like virtually all Sci-Fi, so I may be a bit biased.
It has too much of the traditional Americanism though, the characters are stereotypes to a certain degree at least, and boy gets girl who initially hates him etc.
Mon 05 Aug 2002
August 5, 2002
Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell;
– Paradise Lost, John Milton (book iv. line 73).
I am at an emotional all-time low at the moment. I’m struggling to see the point of it all… I desperately want to talk to someone, but have no-one to talk to. Maybe I will go back to Norway for the rest of the summer break. I have nothing here now.
