Vancouver Olympics, day 1: Arriving in Whistler

So I made up my mind. I’ll simply call it day 1, day 2 etc. and maybe add a second headline. I’ll make it short and then a jump, so the blog does not get too cluttered. I’ll try to do it daily, but no promises — besides, if there is nothing worth sharing, I won’t bother and I’ll save it for another day.

So we made it here. 27 hours of travelling, it went smoothly all the way to Vancouver (apart from the taxi getting stuck in the snow on the way to the airport). And then it started to remind me of the Torino games: took them 3 hours to get a bus (must have been a surprise that there are journa­lists arriving couple of days prior to the compe­tition… ;-)). Then the two hours to get to the village — and then the busdriver got lost. Well, in Torino they did not even find the correct village, so I guess this is progress.

We have been getting settled today, meaning: local cellp­hones, internet connec­tions, getting to know the trans­por­tation systems etc. — the basics so to speak. Starting tomorrow, it’ll be work, work, work… The snowsi­tuation is not too bad up here. Yes, it’s old snow, but there is enough of it and they have promised some fresh showers above 1000m during the end of the week. I just saw some images and info from the Cypress mountain on tv (freestyle and snowboard): it does not look pretty, but it seems they will not have to change the venue to another location.

I had couple of pretty hectic days before leaving, but my plan worked: I had the majority of my packing done actually one day too early so in the end it went rather smoothly and so far it seems I did not forget anything essential.

But then I decided to finish the multi­me­dia­pro­jects I had been working for, so that pushed it a little bit. I totally underes­ti­mated the amount of time I’d need, and even though I am pretty fast with the computer, doing over 300 compo­sites does take some time; I mean, if you count 3 min per pic, it means 900 minutes — and that means several days of work — when you count in the fact that you do have to rest and eat etc. in between. Then add your basic webdesign, sound editing etc. — and it ends up taking a while.

The reason why I pushed this is that when working abroad I need an approval from my ISP to upload and edit from a specified IP-address. And when using wireless systems, the dynamic IP changes every now and then, so you have to reapply for the permission constantly. But, to my surprise, I do have a fixed line in my hotelroom, so I should be ok in the days to come in this respect.

I am definitely the wrong person to comment, but I think the results are not bad — and at least: it is an effort to do something different. I am curious to see how others have approached this — i.e. has anybody really tried to build anyting special for the web. The time diffe­rence in these games is 10 hours against us, so it would have been the perfect oppor­tunity to “scoop the net” but.… well, we’ll see.