The year started just perfectly and then that. I’m just disappointed. It’s two weeks ago that I watched “Star Trek 10 - Nemesis” and I’m still disapointed. This new installment in the Star Trek series is as bad as or even worse than “Star Trek 5 - The Final Frontier”. The hope I’m having now is that getting crappy Star Trek movies will only occur when the number of the movie is a multiple of 5. That would make 4 good or at least not that bad movies to come.

It’s a pity that the crew around Jean-Luc Picard must take their leave in such a manner. They don’t deserve it, but this is how it goes and it cannot be unmade.

I won’t tell you the story here and take the least bit of fun out of it, but don’t expect too much of it.

I’ve finally finished reading David and Leigh Eddings’ “Regina’s Song”.

From one viewpoint this one is totally untypical for the Eddings’ people. The story does not take place in a fantasy world, is the first thing one notices. The place is the town Seattle in the USA and the time is the middle of the 1990s. You won’t meet any gods or sorcerers in this story. It’s normal everyday people you’ll meet here. As in every book, I’ve read from the Eddings’ - and that’s every book except “High Hunt” -, it’s the characters that are the real fun in the book. And as in every of those books, there are two types of characters that dominate the story.

The first one is the “Belgarath”-character type. People of this character type are always male, grumpy, somehow scatterbrained and have fun in their lives. They’ll wear two different shoes, because it’s more comfortable. And out of the same reason they’ll wear their socks inside-out.

The second one is the “Polgara”-character type. Those are female, commanding, saucy and sometimes really cute.

The names I’ve chosen for the character types are from the books of the Belgariad and Malloreon sagas, the first fantasy books they released. The funniest scenes are those, where Belgarath and Polgara are together. Their talking and their being so totally different produces tons of interesting situations.

I think that David Eddings was the model for Belgarath and Leigh Eddings was the one for Polgara. That’s probably why their books are so good, they have played all those scenes in their real live, in other settings, but nevertheless those scenes are not entirely made up. In each book after those in the Belgariad and the Malloreon you’ll find a Belgarath and a Polgara. They have other names, but it’s the same constellation and it never gets boring, because the books also have a gripping storyline.

Those always present Belgaraths and Polgaras make “Regina’s Song” a typical book for the Eddings’. It’s great and I love it as I love all those other books by David and Leigh Eddings.

Should I be more specific about the story itself? No, I don’t think so. I won’t spoil you the fun. Here is the one bit I’ll give you: The book is a thriller and one of the protagonists seems to be a descendant of Jack the Ripper.

So, what’s going on here?. It’s hot, that’s what’s going on here in Hamburg. Actually it’s not really hot. You don’t call 20 degrees Celsius hot. It’s rather humid than hot. Well, what ever it is, I’m sweating as if it were 40 degrees Celsius.

Seemed like the perfect weather for cleanup, so I’ve cleaned up my code. This page now conforms to HTML 4.01 strict. I could make it XHTML 1.0 strict conformant, but I don’t see any advantages in this. Well, one advantage would be that I would exclude Netscape 4.x from the Browsers that are capable of showing this page. It looks really bad in that browser. There is no support for transparent PNGs and the CSS-support is not that good. It will look worse now in it since the page now makes massive usage of CSS. So, at least I’ve partly excluded Netscape 4.x. I think Netscape 4.x is dead now that Mozilla 1.0 is out.

Now this page is pretty lightweight. Well, the most space on this page is taken up by my gossip. But that’s what a blog is for: gossiping on the web so that all that are interested in it or not can read it.

Anyway, I’m sort of puristic when it comes to this sorts of things. Ever noticed that well written code, be it HTML, Java or what ever, can be rather attractive? It surely looks better than crappy code. And if you not only write good code but also indent it the right way so that the structure can be seen without actually reading the code … perfect!

I’ll better cut of here or otherwise someone may get the thought that I am addicted to beautiful code. I’m not! Really! I swear! :)

Some five days ago Incors released the Alloy Look And Feel. It’s based on the famous Kunststoff Look And Feel and adds a kind of theming support. They take $199 for a developer license. I doubt that they will get rich with this, though. It does not seem to have great enhancements above the Kunststoff Look And Feel. The Alloy Look And Feel comes with five themes, but a gifted Java developer could make this without great problems with the Kunststoff Look And Feel as the base.

As far as I know it’s the first time someone tries to sell a Look And Feel lib. I wonder if there is a market for such a thing. There are some good Open Source Look And Feels around (See javootoo.com). I won’t buy it. It’s too expensive. They need to add something no other Look And Feel has, a killer feature. As long as they don’t, I do not see a future for the Alloy Look And Feel

I finally did it and am now one of the thousands of bloggers.

My blog entries will be irregular. You cannot count on having a new one every day, week …

So let’s start. What’s new? Oh well, the World Cup is going on and today the Germans won their match against Paraguay. I never understood – and probably never will – why so many people all over the world are so fascinated about this simple game. Twenty men are hunting for a ball. It’s a normal ball made of leather. It is not even made of gold or platinum. So they are hunting for this ball. But when one of them gets hold of the ball, he does not take it away. He starts kicking it to one end of the playing field. Now on both ends there is something called goal and and someone called goalkeeper is guarding this goal. The guy who is kicking the ball tries to kick it into the goal. Hey, some minutes ago he tried hard to get the ball, and now he wants to get rid of it. What’s going on here. Maybe he’s sick. Maybe it’s the schizophrenia. Poor guy. Or should I say “poor guys”, because all of those 20 hunters would do the same in a similar situation.

That’s football for you. Strange game, strange sport