I don’t know how I did it but I did it, I did it.  I don’t know how I did it but indeed I did. (ref)

I’m talking about my run in Monte Carlo.  I only started training a month ago and ran a couple of times alongside the Colorado in Texas last week, but I wasn’t really ready for this.  Our last test run yesterday afternoon didn’t promise much good, as I had to rest just at around 5 km.

Yesterday was my mom’s birthday and I had flown her, my dad and my girlfriend in on friday, just after I had landed in Nice (coming from Austin through Dallas and London).  Needless to say I was exhausted beyond belief but the willpower was there to do this anyway.

This morning I got up after a nice celebration for mom yesterday.  We had driven to Ventimiglia in Italy and I had a guitarist sing and play “maaaaamaaaa” at lunch.  She had teared up instantly.  But I was saying I got up this morning after that celebration and yesterday already I had felt quite feverish.  Just before going to bed, I had taken a Dafalgan Codeine (prescription) to lower the incredible fever.  Lorenzo’s (Italian here in Monaco) was very hot inside and that hadn’t helped.

Besides the fever this morning, the plumbing had stopped working.  And I don’t mean in the kitchen.  Actually, it hadn’t stopped, it worked too fast!  4 immodiums later, I had a virtual cork stuffed up there and 2 perdolans later, the headache had gone as well (I’ve been taking perdolan for days now, to counter the migraine after flying back from Austin).  Drugged beyond reason and jetlagged bigtime, I was ready for the run in Monte Carlo at 9:45 am. I felt like crap (what a choice of words in this case, too!)

My parents and our lovely hosts Anny and John were sure I wouldn’t make it to the finish, given my condition.  John had placed a bet I would have a stroke when I put my shoes on.  But I told them the word “quit” wasn’t in my vocabulary.  All the hope was put into Griet (girlfriend) who was completely up to the challenge and fit as ever, to save the face of the nation.  I let her start a couple hundred contestants before me so she could run at her pace and figured that 6 miles an hour would be fast enough this morning.

I found out the hard way that “Monte” in Monte Carlo means “mountain”: the parcours goes up and down ALL the time.  But nevertheless, I made it to the finish in Stade Louis II.  The Prince (Albert) was there to support us and we got a medal for the effort we had all done.  Mind you, if anyone would have known about my condition, they would have given me the gold medal.  Don’t know what rank I got at the finish yet, I’ll have to check the website.  Griet had arrived about 10 minutes earlier and was there waiting for me at the finish.

Thank you all those who have called me during the run or had texted me before.  I was running with “Caz – welcome to your weekend“, a podcast from the Netherlands in my ears, on my iPhone so friends and family could call me during the run.  It was effortless to pick up and usher a few words . Average heartbeat was 178 (yaay) with peaks (for over 10 minutes) of 189 (that’s 98% of my capacity). That’s what we’re made for, anyway. Long story short: I’ve done a huge effort here.

We’ve all decided that this was a great thrill and that we’ll be back next year. WE DID IT!

Attended the premiere of Objectified, a new film by Gary Hustwit (director of the famous “Helvetica”) yesterday.  Check it out!

See the trailer on youtube.

Change has come to America and I…’ve just landed in America. The first transatlantic journey of the year brings me to the biggest web conference in the world, woodstock for geeks, South-by-Southwest.
I’m looking forward to a week of geeking out, learning and meeting new ideas and new people, enjoying real Texan BBQ and seeing the sun for the first time in weeks! .
SXSW09 brings a new element: I’ll be combining the interactive and film part of the conference, in view of my participation in Producer’s Utopia. Clients and friends in the homeland, subscribe to my twitter feed, flickr stream and facebook roll for continuous updates!

And I shall be prepared.

It’s a well-kept secret that I always build the automation to generate the election graphs at our local TV station.  They’ll have to convince me to do it again this year, cause it’s a hell of a job in impossible circumstances, but I’ve started R&D already, nevertheless.

Instead of generating the graphs with ImageMagick, driven by a PHP-based web portal (where the live show’s continuity system is also maintained), as I do every year, I’m considering generating Keynote APXL directly and creating graphs as shown below. I’ve got plenty of time to master APXL, as the elections are on June 7.
They’ve finally gone widescreen across the programming, so my graphs will have to be 16:9 too. I’m looking into a replacement for the traditional scan convertor too, in the form of a proper SDI graphics card. Tips are welcome!

Utah-based KBYU TV station attempted this before.
This is what I have so far (generated! not manually edited)

Inspired by Jeremy Keith’s post about PaperCamp, I though I’d build my own little microprinter.
Easy enough: my girlfriend owns a shop that has a lot of old junk in the attic. So do I. These are times where that comes in handy. Her old Epson TM 88 receipt printer was only a phone call away. She’s switched to a more modern USB-based printer and this serial port one is of no use to her.

My attic sports a whole selection of boxes with random cables, adapters and gadgets. A targus serial-to-usb convertor was in one of them.
I connected both on my macbook pro and sure enough, the printer was immediately recognised and some legacy Epson 9-pin printer drivers (roughly) do the job. This wasn’t good enough though. Since working at XS4ALL in the mid-90s, I learned to ban any printer directly connected to a computer. 5 minutes later, I couldn’t help but smiling when the second test print rolled out the Epson, which was now connected to my Airport Extreme / Time Capsule base station (still through the serial-to-usb convertor, which was now connected to a – i again refer to my attic – usb hub, to still allow an extra external harddrive to be connected).
Some 20 minutes later, I had a rough “good morning” generator, including the weather (through the weather.com API) and the latest tweets (through the twitter API).

The code is quick and dirty, I’ll have to clean it up one day (the same day I’ll clear out the attic), but it works:
function get_forecasts($location) {
$url = "http://xoap.weather.com/weather/local/".$location."?cc=*&dayf=5&link=xoap&prod=xoap&par=1100278982&key=[mykey]";
$xml = simplexml_load_file($url);
$forecasts = $xml->dayf[0];
$firstday = $forecasts->day[0];
echo $firstday->attributes()->t;;
echo $firstday->part[0]->t[0];
echo round(f2c($firstday->hi[0]));
echo round(f2c($firstday->low[0]));
echo "  sun: ".$firstday->sunr[0];
echo $firstday->suns[0];
}
get_forecasts("BEXX0008");//ghent, Belgium

All that’s left for me to do is to set up the new fileserver (I’ve been preparing one for the last month or so, to replace the 4-year old “riogrande” server, also in the attic) to print this “good morning” greeting every day at – say – 7am. I’d like to combine it with my daily schedule (iCal) and todo list (through TaskPaper, easily done).
Thanks for the tip, Jeremy!  I haven’t spent a dime and I’m one great gadget richer!