Christmas Time...

Hi everyone,

*I'll try posting a fitting photo or picture later - please bear with me, it worked the last time...*

it is almost Christmas again and since I think that I will probably continue to be busy the next days, I just wanted to wish everyone Happy Holidays or a Merry Christmas and of course a Happy New Year. I recommend watching the American Dad Christmas Episodes to get into the perfect mood for relaxed days, or for the girls or softer souls out there (those who may get offended easily) I'd rather recommend movies like Love Actually or (though it is not about Christmas) Music and Lyrics.


I'll try to blog a little more again, but I realize I already said that a few times before, so do not expect too much. I am finishing my doctoral thesis and that is taking a lot of time.

News:
I now have a Nintendo Wii and am a newly not yet celebrated Mii designer. I forsee good chances for my current Luigi implementation in the current pre-christmas Mii-challenge however. The Wii has proven a fun and pretty cool console, though other may of course note the lack of high-res graphics and the shifted focus on younger or older audiences that is also reflected in the games available. However I do really believe there are gems for everyone and almost any taste available, so long as you can just live with the Nintendo trademarks of Mario and Co. The Wii-Mote does however also have interesting side uses: See here

I am thinking about opening an account at Flickr. Lots of friends and colleagues already have one, but I never saw much need for myself to do so. I am starting to see certain benefits when taking a look at their libraries, which I will detail in a seperate post, if I decide to join 'that' community too.

Another thing I did, was open a StudiVZ account after my brother invited me. Again: I do not see much of the point for me, since I am no student anymore, but it is always interesting to find other people you know online. I haven't really put any effort into that so far however, but at least I gathered some knowledge about that phenomenon on my own.

Yesterday we went to the Christmas Market in Paderborn with a few friends and afterwards watched The golden Compass based on the first book in the Trilogy His dark materials by Philip Pullmann. I read the first book when it came out in 1995, though even then I thought some things were oversimplified, while other concepts like that of "Dust" as "Conscious Dark Matter" proved interesting points of reflection, as I had contemplated similar concepts when I was eleven or twelve. The movie's direction sometimes really suffered in my opinion. There were some really misplaced cuts and strange insertions.


I did however really like the actors. Nicole Kidman, convincingly playing the beautiful but still somehow erie, dangerous and creepy mother of the protagonist Lyra, shines especially here, but a lot of the other actors were chosen quite well too. I don't know if I can recommend the movie, I think you should rather read the books, but the others who had not read even one of them, all liked the movie. So make up your own mind, however I still think that they totally messed up that trailer. It was probably done by the same person who made those horrible cuts and transitions in the movie.

Again: Happy Holidays to y'all!

FromThe one and only