The Royce Files

Once again Testudo entered the 48 Hour Film Festival this year. In nutshell its sort of a contest with teams and you draw a genre of film and you need to make a 6 minute film all within the confines of 48 hours. We did well last year so we decided to give a go again. Our Genre- Holiday. Our writers had a script out by 9:30PM on Friday and we were filming at 7 AM the next day at the Zoo. My contribution- actor. Yep, I'll be in front of camera with lines this year. And no Elvis costume. I won't say much about it since I have not clue what it looks like. However, it contains drama, comedy, and an ounce or two of sci-fi. Guess I'll take the chicken shirt on that. We finished principal shooting at 6:30 PM. News had also spread that this may be the last time it will be held in town. We need sponsorship to sustain it and a few more teams. I guess you can't blame the organizers- we are sort of an out of the way burg. Yet, the thought of trying to do Minneapolis in the future s...

The bargains this week consist of a micro piano, a North Dakota Tree Booklet, and 4 first day issue catchets. Total= $2.50 The piano cost a quarter! All these were acquired at garage sales while I waited for other scenes to be shot for the 48 hour film fest in town which I was participating.

I was on my way to far south Fargo- the one that was in grave danger a few months ago- when my rear bike derailleur decided to destroy itself. This stranded me many blocks from home with a someplace to be soon. I used my two walking feet and in about 2 hours arrived home and switched to another bike. Before I reached home I picked up a few bargains along the way: Travel Boggle Game, Wireless Headphone, a Bartender's Jigger. Total cost $1.75. I guess I am a sucker for wireless headphones- I did not realize it required 4 batteries. The boggle game was sweet and I've been looking for a jigger for a while. I think I'm hoping to move toward mixology. The garage sale season has begun in earnest around these parts. And soon spring clean up week will be upon the area too. Hope I can find some spare bike parts to repair my ride. For now I will ride the M200 or the C200.

S eems like the success of the Fargo Marathon may have created 2 new races and revived another. Or perhaps the increased interest in running the big distances among Americans is showing itself in the Upper Midwest. May marathoning in the northland, as Fargo Marathon participants can tell you, is not for the feeble or faint at heart. To train to race condition, many begin their training just as they take down the Christmas decorations. [I just run in circles most of the year.] Weather in May can be pleasant or it can be a bear. The running of this year's Fargo Marathon was definitely on the bear side. Fortunately the snow did not fall. I was on traffic duty the first year and snow fell a bit during the 1st half hour after the start. Two new marathons across the border in Minnesota will be run in May. The first, next weekend, will be in Stillwater. That's not far from my hometown. Anytime Fitness Stillwater Marathon will be run on Sunday morning May 24. I may be nearby and migh...

How about this for a roustabout making literally powering your ride. Have no clue where it comes from. I could check but that would spoil the fun of guessing. India is my first guess. Does anyone know the liability of running something like this ride?

I f you read the comments from one of my previous Fargo Marathon posts from Eric Sondag- he makes a valid point about the build up to the Fargo Marathon. There really wasn't anything, barring a few human interest type stories and then one about the Kenyans that will be running, that looked closely at the competition. 3 Olympic Trials participants ran Fargo this year. How did that go unnoticed? I suspect there are not many marathon media relation staff on board which could have given a number of these athletes a little press. One of those runners was Kelly Mortenson, who I helped check in on Friday. Kelly finished 6th in the marathon. When I saw him pass on the course he was still in 2nd position. The eventually winner (who I think I have photographed here- actually it is Matt McCurdy pictured ) Pete Gilman held the lead almost the entire course. Based on the last 10k timing, it appears that he was surrounded by the Kenyan pack as they attempted to pull away. Typical strategy when y...

I was reminiscing with a friend of mine the other day and the discussion came to programming languages. We named quite a few. I then asked him to guess my favorite language. He took lots of guesses until I finally stopped him and said SNOBOL . It is also known as SNOBOL4 but my texts seemed to drop the 4 when talking about String Oriented Symbolic Language. I think I wrote a paper on it or gave presentation. Although it is probably thought to be a dead language since the arrival of perl and the JAVA interations ( Griswald, one of SNoBols the creators died in 2006 ), you can still find there is interest in it. Like here . Although Viktors earthlink website which holds the manual has been down for half the decade. Ah hah- but I struck gold and found the original by Griswald himself ( or something akin to it) here . Oh the days of programming long past!