In a few hours I will leave for the Scandinavian Workshop on Algorithm Theory (SWAT 2006) with Allan. We will take the bus to Aarhus Airport and fly via Copenhagen to Riga. It figures that we are leaving Denmark just when the summer is peaking ;|. Apparantly Copenhagen Airport is rather crowded these days due to added security requirements and low staffing, I hope we will make our connecting flight. Anyways, have a nice week everybody ;)
Summer School
Not much is happening on the planet now. This is most likely because the usual suspects (Mikkel, Rune, Martin, Mirka and I) are attending the BRICS summer school in game theory. So far we have seen some good material and a lot of other probably very neato, but weakly presented, material.
Good News Everyone!
While this is not the first time I have reported something like this, I will give it a shot again. It seems that 13 new episodes of Futurama is going to be produced! YAY! This time it is not just based on some random board posting by a member of the cast (like the previous rumor), this one even made The New York Post. We will have to wait for 2008 though ;|
LaTeX and XFig Troubles
Are any LaTeX experts reading this blog? I want to create a simple figure in xfig and use it in my LaTeX document with proper LaTeX math fonts. I have tried the supposedly standard way of marking text “special” and use LaTeX fonts in XFig and export the figure in name.pstex and name.pstex_t files. I then use \input{name.pstex_t} inside a figure enviroment to actually use the figure. The result is weird, the text is fine but the overlayed postscript included from the pstex_t file is not shown, instead a bounding box and a label is drawn. I have tried to open the pstex file in a postscript viewer, and that looks correct.
Here is the LaTeX code:
\begin{figure}[tbh]
\centerline {
\input{isect.pstex_t}
}
\caption{Finding intersectings}
\label{fig:correctness}
\end{figure}
And the output can be seen in the attached screenshot.
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The body of the pstex_t file includes the pstex file by starting a picture enviroment and then use \includegraphics:
\begin{picture}(0,0)%
\includegraphics{isect.pstex}%
\end{picture}%
Playing With the Language
I am pretty sure this exchange could easily have taken place between Mikkel and I, no?
<Guo_Si> Hey, you know what sucks?
<TheXPhial> vaccuums
<Guo_Si> Hey, you know what sucks in a metaphorical sense?
<TheXPhial> black holes
<Guo_Si> Hey, you know what just isn’t cool?
<TheXPhial> lava?
Dramatic Game
Wow, I am watching the Italy-USA game. The first half is just about done and we’ve already had 2 goals by the italians (one was an own goal) and two red cards. What a game, I am really looking forward to the next half.
Who will win?
Concurrently with this match, the Lemans grand prix 2006 is on its way. It is now going well for Tom Kristensen in Audi number 7. According to the live score the car is way back in the standings. Apparently they had some serious motor problems. :|
EDIT: One more american sent off..
Busy Days
Mikoline arrived on thursday, we met up at the irish pub Tir Na Nog in downtown Århus with some people from the university for the weekly pub quiz.
Friday I went to the annual party of the Department of Natural Science along with Martin, Stephanie and Mikoline. Steffen Brandt from the danish band TV-2 performed for about 2 hours with some good music mixed with jokes. There were around 600 guests I think, so the place was quite packed. Initially there were some special lectures and the presentation of a honary price, during this I guess we were among the only people there younger than 35 :), luckily there were more ph.d.-students present at the dinner so were not completely “alone”. Marting and I were the only students from the computer science department though :|
Saturday I went to the university for a couple of hours to study sigma protocols with Martin, I then went home and showered and took Mikoline out to eat at Restaurant Lotus, which was very nice. They have this buffet thing were you pick some meat and accessories and hand it over to a bunch of guys frying the food in a wok. Afterwards we went to see The Da Vinci Code, it was not as bad as we had feared.
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Sunday I went with Christian, Gabi, Mirka, Phillip and Christine to the island of Samsø. We went to the Samsø Maze and spent about two hourse there, before taking a bus to some town for food. It was a very nice, and very hot trip. When we returned in the evening Chris, Philipp, Gabi and I played some ultimate in the university park.
It will be nice with a relaxing week now :)
Air to Ground Chemical Weapon Practice
Apparently I was the target of a chemical air to ground missile practice test on my bike to the university this morning. The weapon industry is getting quite inventive regarding fighter planes and the plane dropping its load on me were very, if not completely, similar to a standard small danish bird, and the projectile was indistinguishable from ordinary bird droppings. Just think what kind of damage this weapon could cause in a major city, the plane-to-bird and missile-to-turd disguises were excellent.
On the other hand, I might be that I just got hit by an actual bird taking an actual dump on my way to the university this morning. Coincidence??Â? I think NOT!
Volleyball Saturday
So, we are planning on playing some volleyball this saturday. We meet at 13:00 at the mathematics department. Who is coming?