Assume that the universe is a formal system. Godel showed that in any formal system, there are propositions that are true but cannot be proven within the framework of the system. It could be possible for God to exist, and yet the Existence to be unprovable. Namely, if one characteristic of God is existence itself, this would be difficult to prove.
I disagree. Given that the movie is already 3 hours long, and that is probably the upper limit of what it could be, I thought the editorial choices were good ones. It already took them about 1.5 screen-hours to get to Rivendell. I would contend that there was pretty much no hobbit character development in the first book --- it was pretty much the group running from one plot location to another. We will see (hopefully) the hobbit changes in the coming movies.
Left out the "whole story" of the Mines of Moria? I don't understand. I did miss the Gimli-Legolas interaction, but I hear that was filmed, and will be back in the DVD edition. To say that the story changes were "criminal" and "butchered" the original story is a little hyperbolic.
Well, I'm enough of a geek to see it twice today. I'm well-acquainted with the books, but not such a nut that I've read the Silmarillion. Smiley. Here are some observations, with spoilers:
Honestly, I was a little disappointed the first time. The reasons may have been personal, since I know the books pretty well, but I nevertheless had this feeling. Some nitpicks --- the direction seemed too choppy in some places, to the extent that I wasn't buying a reasonable passage of time. Gandalf leaves the Shire, and is suddenly at Gondor (which was unnamed --- probably a mystery to any newbies). He then shows up back in the Shire. In the books, this takes something like 17 years before he pieces together evidence for Bilbo's ring to be the One. It is nowhere near that long here, but how long was it? Gandalf says the march through Moria will take 4 days, but it really seems like the same day that they emerge. I know we can't tell the passage of time easily in the mines, but maybe there could have been some short shots of eating and sleeping. My wife, a LOTR newbie, thought that they were only in Lothlorien overnight, when they were supposed to have been there a couple of weeks to rest and mourn. These are nitpicky things, but they added up to a rushed feel. There was no mention made that the Sword that was Broken was reforged. Maybe this is revealed later. It would have been nice to make more obvious how the Elves fate is bound to the quest --- that much of their power is derived from the 3 rings they own, and that will end when/if the One is destroyed. At Bree, Strider never mentions that he is Gandalf's friend, so one could wonder what the heck he is doing there, and why the hobbits should follow him at all. The thing that bothered me perhaps more than the others is the allegiance between Saruman and Sauron. Saruman even uses the Palantir to "talk" to Sauron and do his bidding. Didn't Saruman want the ring for himself in the books? It is much more interesting that way, and I can't imagine why that was changed.
All those nitpicks aside, the second viewing was wonderful. I knew the discrepancies the second time, and could sit back and enjoy the scenery and the score. The books are so dear to me that it is really hard to give the movie some kind of objective rating. Other than small things like the above, the movie matched very well my imaginings. It is now one of my favorites of all time, but that hasn't as much meaning as it would normally because I would probably love a movie consisting of two guys in t-shirts reading the book to each other. I have a hunch that with the next two, the pacing will improve. There just aren't as many different scenes and landscapes to cover, as well as no need for as much introductory material. The finished trilogy should be nothing short of tremendous.
My experience with Blender goes back only about a year or so, I don't know what it was like then. The interface actually is geared for speed. It took about a day or so before I had some idea where everything was. Now, I spend much more time modelling than pulling down menus (it has a really efficient hotkey + mouse combination). The rendering engine is scanline-based, not raytracing, but the results are pretty good. It also has the advantage of speed over a purely raytraced renderer. There are now plugins developed for export to external raytracing engines.
The "official" manual is $35, and two really helpful tutorial books are $20 each. I've never seen any manual for $199, though.
Recent improvements include a new "bones" animation system including weighted deformation values per vertex, C-C subdiv surfaces, and a python scripting interface for procedural modelling and animation.
Try this 3D modelling and animation app. It's free, and remarkably full-featured. There are links on the site to some tutorials, as the UI is non-standard. To quickly see what can be done, browse the user gallery and webpages, also linked from the main page.
I am developing a cross-platform OpenGL scientific vis application in linux, and using the Qt library, I can cvs checkout my code on my WindowsXP laptop under Cygwin and create an executable without changing a line of code. You do have to buy the Qt license, but I have found the cross-platform ease to be worth it. My app uses networking, but no threading or serial communications. You don't really have to use Cygwin --- Qt's make system can generate msvc project files, but I am just more at home with the command-line.
Slashdot Mirror
Assume that the universe is a formal system. Godel showed that in any formal system, there are propositions that are true but cannot be proven within the framework of the system. It could be possible for God to exist, and yet the Existence to be unprovable. Namely, if one characteristic of God is existence itself, this would be difficult to prove.
I disagree. Given that the movie is already 3 hours long, and that is probably the upper limit of what it could be, I thought the editorial choices were good ones. It already took them about 1.5 screen-hours to get to Rivendell. I would contend that there was pretty much no hobbit character development in the first book --- it was pretty much the group running from one plot location to another. We will see (hopefully) the hobbit changes in the coming movies.
Left out the "whole story" of the Mines of Moria? I don't understand. I did miss the Gimli-Legolas interaction, but I hear that was filmed, and will be back in the DVD edition. To say that the story changes were "criminal" and "butchered" the original story is a little hyperbolic.
The win32 plugin was released 3 or so months ago.
Well, I'm enough of a geek to see it twice today. I'm well-acquainted with the books, but not such a nut that I've read the Silmarillion. Smiley. Here are some observations, with spoilers:
Honestly, I was a little disappointed the first time. The reasons may have been personal, since I know the books pretty well, but I nevertheless had this feeling. Some nitpicks --- the direction seemed too choppy in some places, to the extent that I wasn't buying a reasonable passage of time. Gandalf leaves the Shire, and is suddenly at Gondor (which was unnamed --- probably a mystery to any newbies). He then shows up back in the Shire. In the books, this takes something like 17 years before he pieces together evidence for Bilbo's ring to be the One. It is nowhere near that long here, but how long was it? Gandalf says the march through Moria will take 4 days, but it really seems like the same day that they emerge. I know we can't tell the passage of time easily in the mines, but maybe there could have been some short shots of eating and sleeping. My wife, a LOTR newbie, thought that they were only in Lothlorien overnight, when they were supposed to have been there a couple of weeks to rest and mourn. These are nitpicky things, but they added up to a rushed feel. There was no mention made that the Sword that was Broken was reforged. Maybe this is revealed later. It would have been nice to make more obvious how the Elves fate is bound to the quest --- that much of their power is derived from the 3 rings they own, and that will end when/if the One is destroyed. At Bree, Strider never mentions that he is Gandalf's friend, so one could wonder what the heck he is doing there, and why the hobbits should follow him at all. The thing that bothered me perhaps more than the others is the allegiance between Saruman and Sauron. Saruman even uses the Palantir to "talk" to Sauron and do his bidding. Didn't Saruman want the ring for himself in the books? It is much more interesting that way, and I can't imagine why that was changed.
All those nitpicks aside, the second viewing was wonderful. I knew the discrepancies the second time, and could sit back and enjoy the scenery and the score. The books are so dear to me that it is really hard to give the movie some kind of objective rating. Other than small things like the above, the movie matched very well my imaginings. It is now one of my favorites of all time, but that hasn't as much meaning as it would normally because I would probably love a movie consisting of two guys in t-shirts reading the book to each other. I have a hunch that with the next two, the pacing will improve. There just aren't as many different scenes and landscapes to cover, as well as no need for as much introductory material. The finished trilogy should be nothing short of tremendous.
My experience with Blender goes back only about a year or so, I don't know what it was like then. The interface actually is geared for speed. It took about a day or so before I had some idea where everything was. Now, I spend much more time modelling than pulling down menus (it has a really efficient hotkey + mouse combination). The rendering engine is scanline-based, not raytracing, but the results are pretty good. It also has the advantage of speed over a purely raytraced renderer. There are now plugins developed for export to external raytracing engines.
The "official" manual is $35, and two really helpful tutorial books are $20 each. I've never seen any manual for $199, though.
Recent improvements include a new "bones" animation system including weighted deformation values per vertex, C-C subdiv surfaces, and a python scripting interface for procedural modelling and animation.
http://www.blender.nl
Try this 3D modelling and animation app. It's free, and remarkably full-featured. There are links on the site to some tutorials, as the UI is non-standard. To quickly see what can be done, browse the user gallery and webpages, also linked from the main page.
I am developing a cross-platform OpenGL scientific vis application in linux, and using the Qt library, I can cvs checkout my code on my WindowsXP laptop under Cygwin and create an executable without changing a line of code. You do have to buy the Qt license, but I have found the cross-platform ease to be worth it. My app uses networking, but no threading or serial communications. You don't really have to use Cygwin --- Qt's make system can generate msvc project files, but I am just more at home with the command-line.
Sounds like the good Professor has read Gordon R. Dickson's *Tactics of Mistake*. Cool.