Open Source: Sun Microsystems

The seminar held by representatives from Sun Microsystem a week ago or so, was both really entertaing and educational. They were really good. Good at holding a lecture in front of many students and had a lot of knowledge of what they were talking about and working with. The one to set off the seminar was Matt Thompson, a Senior Director for the Developer Outreach & Open Source Programs Office. He was accompanied by two others, a woman and a guy. I remember only the guy`s name, Simon Rittinger and that is because I noticed that under the name he had written "Technology Evangelist". I found that very amusing but he was in many ways that. He preached about things to come and how good his own company`s programming tools are. Anyway, their job was mainly to build and toy with new things, program them and see if they could build the thigns that they fantasised about. What a job. Their boss, Matt Thompson, meant they had the dream job!

Simon Rittinger and his partner presented to us a glove which could be used as a mouse in a particuar interface they had developed. She put on the glove and with arm movements in an interface pretty similar to that in the movie Minority Report, she opened windows and manipulated them around. She used an interface developed by themselfes, which was a desktop in 3D called Project Looking Glass. You moved to the left and right and up and down. It was really impressive.

Besides that, they presented their own Operative System, called Solaris. That looked like a good OS although I am at the moment, I`m sorry to say, too dependent on Microsoft with regards to especially games. And also they presented to us programming tools like Netbeans in particular and adviced us to start using those. Do any of you have any experience in programming with that? Let me know!

They gave us a good presentation and the pizza along with a bottle of coke afterwords was great. They handed also out "Sun"-sweaters and cd`s with Solaris and Netbeans. The sweater was a killer. See you! Next week Microsoft is throwing a seminar in Trondheim. I think I will show up there as well.

About to settle now I hope

The dust has now settled and we are now well into our year at Gloshaugen. I have enrolled into different classes, one more interesting than the other. A course in Japanes economy and politics is one that I have high hopes for. And I registered myself to a class where we learn japanese language as well and that is the most interesting lecture I have now. It is very cool the moment you feel you master those funny and to us, weird asian symbols and find out what they mean.

My situation as faculty representative goes on without any trouble. I like the work and the responsibility that comes with it. My colleague with me as faculty representative is very cool and in fact he studies the same as me, computer science at the moment. I said at the moment, because he is ont sure he is going to continue his grade on computer science yet. Also my volounteer work with www.dragvolportalen.no is going great. Today I visited Dragvoll, one of the two major campuses in Trondheim to ask people and to take their picture for a small story. I asked them what their internet-habits were as to visiting our site, dragvollportalen.no and using the interactive tools integrated on the web for students at NTNU. I got the idea for asking them since I heard that some students never use NTNU its own interactive learning tools in their education. But all I spoke with up at dragvoll use them. All though some have not yet visited dragvollportalen.no. Too bad.

And then there is plenty of seminars to follow for anyone who is intersted. And if there is free lunch, why not? Free food and an opportunity to learn something! Last week, on friday, I attended a seminar on the topic wether or not Japan`s economy has rebounded or not since the last down-period. Many great lecturers from Norwegian Foreign Affairs to Universities in Japan and North-America. It lasted all day and we were quite tired at the end of the day.

Today Sun Microsystems and JAVA are arranging a seminar at Gloshaugen. I am going, there is pizza served at 16.30. And then at five o`clock the japanese language course begins.

Stones rocked the house!

Amzaingly great performance from The Rolling Stones last night in Bergen. Absolutely amazing. Mick Jagger greeted the audience in norwegian while they entered the stage before the first song, "Jumpin` Jack Flash". From there on it went only one way. It looked like The Rolling Stones had a blast on stage. Check out this video from one of the local newspapers in Bergen.

The Rolling Stones LIVE from Bergen, Norway.

I now must cure my huge hangover. Water, please!

Start me up!

-"if you start me up I`ll never stop!"

They arrived last night at Bergen airport twenty minutes after we had touched the ground at Bergen airport. And as I sit here and write this entry it is six hours until they open the gates at the arena. I don`t know what to say. I do not have words to describe it anymore. I have to let it sink in a few days so that you next week may get a statement out of me then. I am too excited. Right now I am ready for all the "Satisfaction" I can get tonight!