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!

Check out Biden’s latest blooper.  I’m a fan of both Obama and Biden but please!

The website number?

Time to spend with the family, loved ones and friends.  Yeah right.

If you haven’t been living under a rock for the last 8 months, you must have heard of this crisis that’s been going around.  Now, I haven’t felt a decrease in projects yet, but I’ve noticed some changes here and there.

Some projects aren’t being decided upon as fast as before, others (mainly backend stuff, financial applications) are getting priority.  These are moving faster than ever before! There’s real business to be done and a real opportunity here! I’ve never been so busy as these last weeks.  

Belgium being Belgium and our weather being what it is, I was looking forward to a weekend enjoying the great outdoors (read: the golf course), but work comes in the way.  Now, I don’t mind hard work, but from what I’ve seen around me, many people are really suffering from increased stress levels, doing longer hours, a slower cashflow and mainly, a burden on the mind.

Let’s all remember that we’re here to enjoy the time we have and to help one another.  Griet and I both enjoy our jobs and we love working hard every day.  We hope that our plans come true and that we’ll be allowed to retire in 17 years (when we’re 50 and have saved enough to relocate to the south of France and open a bed-and-breakfast) but we ain’t going to try and enjoy our lives now any less. Have a superb weekend!

When the going gets tough, the tough get going!

Yesterday evening, I’ve been asked to take up the role of a young man trying to get the hand of his beloved girl but facing his soon-to-be-father-in-law and watching him run away with his baby sister, in the upcoming theater play “When I win the lottery”.
We’ll start rehearsals probably in september and we’re playing in november 2009.
After portraying a senior citizen twice now, I’m looking forward to getting married on stage (although that particular scene isn’t in the script). I’ve been married to Roos Van Acker (on stage though!) before. Damaged goods, as they say…