Steven Joniak – the Blog

Talk about determination! I’ve been trying to get my photos to work with the Burger King / Simpsons movie website called SimpsonizeMe.com where the ‘Simpsonizer’ machine will take your photo and transform you into an honorary Springfield character in you choice of colours though I went with the classic ‘yellow’.

But getting to this point was very frustrating and incredibly difficult! I had modified about a dozen different pictures, attempted uploading around 30-40 times over the course of last week or so. I tried uploading in the morning. I tried in the afternoon. I even tried late at night. And time after time I recievied errors to ‘try again’ or that the site was down. Adding insult to injury were other friends all around me were seemingly easily converting their images – what was I doing wrong?

So like any good geek, I began to look onto Google and research a solution. First I found I was not alone in having troubles in getting the site to work, yet others seemed to have little trouble at all?! Baffled, I took the advice of a friend at work and tried in the wee hours of the morning and after about a dozen failed attempts it finally began to work – well sort of…
First sucessful attempt wasn’t even my picture! Second attempt was my picture, but my character was a woman… Third try was a charm and finally it worked! The results you can see up here as well as the customization image (click to see full size).

When you can get it to work, the application is very cool though. You can customize your look however you like from face types, hairstyles, body shapes, clothing colours and additional accessories like tatoos or piercings. This is a great tie in to the Simpsons Movie, and even more a blast for a long time Simpsons fan like myself, though I think if I wasn’t such a die-hard fan (read crazy, non-sleeping geek who can’t accept defeat) then I would have given up on the site after the first few tries.

I just hope getting to see the movie won’t be this hard – D’oh!

[ Enlarge Image ] Its not a fluke! I have finally been able to consistently and consecutively run 5 km, without stopping or walking, and set a best pace of 5.32 min/km with a followup of 5.40 min/km. I’m running just under 30 mins for each run, but for me this is a huge step forward in getting to where I want to be when it comes to my health and running. Now that I know I have a health issue with my legs, keeping them fit is more important then ever and I’m ecstatic to be so motivated with this new goal achieved and many more to come – better, faster, stronger is now the name of the game – building endurance, speed to run under 20 min, 15 min even build up to 10 km – it IS achievable!

God bless Apple & Nike+… woohoo!

Over the weekend I had a scare when it seemed like there was no coverage for the Tour this year, but then after a search online found that OLN (ie VS) is showing the tour every day and recapping at night at 8:00pm est. Though I’m not much into watching sports, the Tour de France is one of the few I watch year after year – and this year was a special one as the Prologue and 1st stage begain in London & Cantenbury.I love cycling and have been riding for as long as I could walk. I love the freedom and exhilration from peddaling down the lakeshore & speeding along the waterfront and really pushing your body and muscles to see how far you can go – nothing better on a sunny summer day for me!Links:Official 2007 Tour websiteGreat review site Steephill.tv

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