Cristiano on Tech/Life

I just made a little Yahoo Pipe that extracts all the info from the IMDB Top 250 list. There were already a few of thee out there but none of them just took all, and just all, the info and outputted it as a pipe.

So here it is, but keep in mind that it’s mostly useful as RSS, JSON, or PHP object.

So now it’s time for this year’s resolutions. I hope these ones are a bit more realistic than last year’s ones.

• Get healthier – I used to go running, and I used to weigh about 20KG less than I do at the moment. To be honest, I don’t care about my weight, but I do care that when I stop sporting I tend to feel worse and worse over time. So my only really must-accomplish goal for this year is to get healthier. I hope to lose some weight but it is more important to sport more and feel better over time.
• Finish or fail my master’s degree - This is kind of no brainer. This is my last year to finish my master’s degree. And to be honest: I don’t care anymore. But as it does seem like a waste not to finish it I think I have to give it one more try.
• (Co-)Organise more BarCamps - I have been involved with 2 BarCamps in London last year and although I’m not sure if I want to be in charge of organising another one I will definitely want to be involved in as many as I can spent time on. So, who is up for BCL8?
• Watch 52 movies of the IMDB top 250 – This was on my list for last year but it failed because Mel and I never set aside some time for it. Now we have a big screen and decent audio in the bedroom we might try it again. Plus we’ve actually been watching more and more older movies recently which means we’re kind of in the mood for most movies anyway.
• Fall in love with photography again – I haven’t really been making any photos last year because I guess I was pushing myself too much. I want to go back to the hobby I loved in 2008 and bring my Flickr account back to live.

It’s the time of the year again for New Year’s resolutions and so I start by looking back at the resolutions from the last year and how I did.

• Project 365 & 52 Themes – I completely failed on this. I came to about 100 in the Project 365 but gave up on the 52 themes after only a few weeks. I realised something very important: I am not a pro photographer and don’t want to be one. For me photography is really just a fun hobby, and as soon as it turns into something else it takes all the fun out of it for me.
• 52 Movies from the IMDB top 250 - We did try this, but somehow ran short on time. I think we maybe saw about 8 but simply never put aside any time to watch all the other ones. I guess we might have a better chance this year with a big screen in the bedroom.
• Try Linux - This is the only thing I really did, and only a few weeks back. With the arrival of my Dell Mini 10 I gave Ubuntu, Xubuntu and Mint Linux a try, but I realised it’s not for me. I agree with my original point that Linux is the best server OS out there, but for desktops it’s just not there yet. Like my friend Reinier said: why is Linux so innovative when it comes to architecture, but not when it comes to UI?

I guess I’ll have to do a blog post tomorrow with my resolutions for 2010 but I give it another night’s sleep to come up with some more achievable ones than last year.