Archive for December, 2003

Traveling. More traveling.

Sunday, December 21st, 2003

Dear readers, I have been abroad much this month, and I will continue on this track with a visit to Finland from the 27th until the 5th of January. Before that I probably won’t have much time either, being occupied with pre-christmas tasks…
I hope to post some pictures of my trips to Paris and Milano before Christmas, but I can’t promise anything in this regard.

My first multimedia presentation.

Thursday, December 4th, 2003

At the end of the last semester I gave an oral presentation in the seminar “Space, Place, Power” offered by Helmuth Berking and Martina Löw – today I put the presentation file that I used on this server in form of a QuickTime movie file. (Of course I made the presentation with Apple’s Keynote, not with Microsoft’s PowerPoint, therefore the export to QuickTime’s .mov format is no hassle; if you cannot install the QuickTime Player on your machine or .mov don’t work for some other reason you should contact me.) It may be a bit spartanic and not too informative without an audio commentary. However, I want to wait until the college gets the microphones we ordered recently before I record the audio. Otherwise I would have to rely on the internal microphone of my PowerBook or the tacky headset that I have at home and there would be a lot of noise in the recording. So, if you’re interested take a look at it, otherwise it might be wise to wait a bit until I have done the audio (at that point I might also use a different format such as .mp4 or some such thing). As soon as that is done I will reannounce it here and then post links to the file on my static pages concerning my dissertation.

The presentation itself was intended to be a methodological and theoretical statement or manifesto. It succeeded, and we had a very lively discussion in the seminar, which helped me to orient myself and my project.

Le premier fois.

Thursday, December 4th, 2003

This weekend I will be in Paris for the first time! I have driven along the highway around Paris (never have I been so concentrated as in these 40 minutes driving through Paris rush hour traffic) but I have never ever set foot on the city’s grounds. La terre française. The trip is sponsored by the post-graduate college and we will make exkursions to two sites: Le Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers et La Vilette.

Well, we might also visit one or two cafés on the way…

Big cast. Good cast.

Wednesday, December 3rd, 2003

It took a while but yesterday Kerstin and I saw Love Actually. After being bombarded with trailers for the last couple of weeks or even months it seemed inevitable not to go and watch this movie. Also, I really like many of the actors: Heike Makatsch was fun even in the olden days, Keira Knightley is quite thin but also quite charming, Colin Firth fit his character very well, and Alan Rickman is one of my all time favorite actors; even when he is not playing a bad guy such as the sheriff of Notthingham in Robin Hood – The Prince of Thieves. Ah, the sheriff’s death scene. One of the best deaths in film history… *ehem* back to topic
Not every one of the storylines ends happily, which I liked, and there are still enough happy endings and funny moments to make this movie be a worthwile pre-winter entertainment. And I love to listen to Portuguese.