Camino Primitivo

 I got feedback from people saying my previous posts inspired them to either lose weight, start exercising, run a half marathon with their sibling or consider doing the Camino. So one more post hoping it also serves as inspiration for someone. If it does, please let me know! 

 My active holidays comes to an end and, for the third year running, I have been doing some walking, this time along the Camino Primitivo. In fact, well over 500k steps in eleven days to cover the distance between Oviedo and Santiago, a superb and challenging experience with plenty of time to walk on my own for hours and also to meet some great fellow pilgrims. If that was not enough, it was made all the more "interesting" by the mix of rain, wind and scorching temperatures I got the pleasure to enjoy throughout the days. 

 One word of caution though, consider your fitness level and rather start small. It's taken me a couple of years to get to a point where I feel I can walk 30km per day on average up and down through rough terrain (and to be fair, my feet probably beg to differ). Training can get you anywhere but it takes time. 

 And while we are on the topic of walking, my department, Digital & IT, has organised a step challenge called Steptember, raising money for Children's Cancer Research Fund. Any donations, big or small, are highly appreciated. 

Rolls Royce Digital and IT is fundraising for Children's Cancer Research Fund

This was posted in LinkedIn: https://lnkd.in/p/eqRVsqxa

The world wins with happy developers

I just spent the last couple of days at the We Are Developers World Conference in Berlin with my team. Not surprisingly agentic AI was a big topic especially how the software development life cycle is being redefined along with the job of software development itself, what is worth measuring and what is not, and how different companies are tackling similar challenges.

My aim in this conference was not to gather technical details, but rather to look for inspiration to become a better manager, therefore several of the talks I decided to attend were about creating high performance teams, removing friction and improving developer experience. Time well spent.

Plus there is the possibility to watch all other talks online. In that sense, zero FOMO during the conference knowing everything will be available. Kudos to the organisers.

First published in LinkedIn

Capture The Flag (CTF)

Last month I participated in a CTF event organised by the RR team in Indy through this platform, CyLab Security Academy. The challenges covered several categories and were organised in 6 levels, each level only made available if you solve at least 50% of the challenges in the previous level. While some challenges I could solve in a few minutes, others took much much longer. In fact I got stuck for days in a reverse engineering one. I ended up learning a fair bit about assembly and radare2 through The Official Radare2 Book and eventually cracked the challenge. However I ran out of time and could only complete one more challenge before the deadline. All in all, great experience. I decided to go solo instead of teaming up with someone else and managed to finish in the top 10th percentile of participants (~13th percentile of people who at least solved one challenge). Nothing like jumping into a new topic to see how many things you don't know...

S25 Half Marathon 2026

This was posted on LinkedIn on 20th April

A year ago I would have thought this was impossible, and yet it happened yesterday. I finished my first race, a half marathon!

The real challenge has been keeping the discipline to show up for the training sessions on my own over the long cold winter, even if it meant running while snowing in the evenings or along frozen tracks in Grunewald. In retrospect, signing up for another race later in Spring or in early Summer would have been much better. Lesson learned for next time.

Kudos to my brother for coming all the way from Madrid to run along with me. Without him it would have been even harder. With him it was still hard but also fun, and this will become a core memory. Even more so as arriving at the Olympic Stadium through the marathon gate was truly magical.

Vacaciones 2026

 

Busy previous week in Poznan - Gandía - Alcalá de Henares - Meco

Miles - Flixbus - bus - flight - underground - Cercanías - bus - Cercanías - high speed intercity train - Cercanías - bus - car - flight - regional train - S-Bahn - bus

LinkedIn Queens

 

This makes me a bit proud, I have achieved many times top 10% and top 5% rankings. Around 20 days ago (forgot to post it here) was the first time I got to be in the top 1%. No idea if this is true or just engagement tactics though. Maybe there should be a queens.com, similar to chess.com

Puntos Suspensivos en papel

Casi mil páginas, muchas fotos y muchas entradas en los casi diecinueve años del blog. Me encanta el detalle de diseño con los tres puntos en la banda, con uno diferente de color rojo en cada volumen.

Half Marathon preparations

 

Only six weeks left until the S25 Half Marathon here in Berlin. Good that the weather has improved and the icy days are over. Quite some work to do though until race day. Today I was curious about the track so I plotted it in https://www.plotaroute.com/runningrouteplanner and I was pleased to see that it is mostly flat, and actually not much different from my usual training track. I also found out that I can generate gpx files and upload them to my mobile, which seems quite useful.

Maybe one weekend I will do my long run there to get familiar with the track.

Puntos Suspensivos 2007 - 2025

Ya están en camino tres volúmenes con casi mil páginas en total con las entradas de este blog del 2007 al 2025. Todo mucho más rápido de lo que me pensaba. 

more html tools

Using AI I have created a landing page for whatever html tools I create in the future, even if they are only useful to myself. If curious, have a look at https://jccabrejas.github.io/

Splitting images

Today I decided to scan an old album of photos from almost 30 years ago. To save some time and effort I started scanning the photos three at a time and then four at a time. Which of course means that photos need to be split later. For this I used this prompt with Gemini and it worked as a charm. First time I do not have to change anything in the code.

Build an artifact that lets me split a photo into several subphotos of equal size. 

There needs to be a field in which the user can select the photo (upload from computer or paste).

There needs to be a field with a template for name of resulting subphotos

Then the user has three options to split the photos:

3 photos horizontal split

3 photos vertical split

4 photos

After one of these three options is selected the user will be able to review the result before each photo is saved (some guidelines will be overimposed to the original photoo). It will be possible to adjust the guidelines horizontally and vertically as appropriate)

Once reviewed it will be possible for the user to download each single photo. The name of the files will include the template provided previously by the user plus a string with time stamp to avoid duplications and overwriting existing files.

No React.

__________________________________________________________

From this

to this

HTML tools

I came across Useful patterns for building HTML tools by Simon Willison and found it very interesting so decided to give it a try at some point, ie today.

A colleague will be running the London marathon and looking into the training plan, I thought it would have been nice for the organizers to allow you to download an ics file rather than a pdf file (or both). Something you can add to your calendar with no effort. 

https://www.londonmarathonevents.co.uk/sites/default/files/2025-10/2026_TCSLM_Beginner_Training_Plan.pdf

So, enter html tools using Gemini. Needless to say, it took several iterations, so I really need to work on my prompts.

First prompt

Build an artifact that lets me open a pdf file. The file has a training plan to run a marathon and only pages 3 and 4 are relevant as they contain a table with the training plan. Pages 1 and 2 can be dismissed.

There needs to be a field in which the user can select the date of the marathon. The artifact will then generate calendar entries (ics file) for each day in the plan back from the date of the marathon. Each day is either a "Rest day" or a day in which you have to run or walk (or both). Rest days can be dismissed.

For each day in which there is a walk or run planned there is small text with a description.

It will be possible for the user to download those ics file. No React.

As an example, if the selected date is April 26 2026, then the plan will start 16 weeks before.

Second prompt

Dismiss the parsing logic and simply include the text in each cell of the table for running days

At this point I remembered that Excel can parse pdf into columns so I gave it a try (not perfect) and changed the prompt so that it would accept a slightly edited excel table (maybe I should have tried uploading the excel file instead)

Third prompt

ok, the parsing of the pdf file is not working. Instead of loading a pdf file, the user can paste an excel table. First column has week number, columns 2 to 8 have plans for each day of the week

Fourth prompt

That did not quite work. Each cell has text delimited with inverted commas ("). All text needs to be part of the training activity. Do not dismiss Rest days, however do not include them in the ics file

Fifth prompt

all text within " characters needs to be displayed, not only the first row

Sixth prompt

This looks good, please express distance in km, not miles

Seventh prompt

MIN stands for minutes, not miles

Eight prompt

This looks good. It should be possible to edit rach row in the schedule

After these prompts, which did not really take long, I got this (note it works even with typos in the last prompt, yes, read it again). Nice and sweet.

2025: A year in review

 

Now that the holidays are almost over, it is a good time to write about 2025 before the normal routine starts. All in all, 2025 was a pretty good year. Holidays again played a big role, and similar to 2024 this was mainly because of sharing them with family. We spent a few days in Easter and in October to enjoy the sun in Spain, enjoyed a busy Summer road trip to Belgium and Netherlands with one of my nieces and, again, but not quite the same, I took on the challenge of the Camino de Santiago, this time with my brother. Difficult to say what was the highlight of the year with so many good breaks. Following on what hopefully by now is a tradition, I wrote a couple of booklets with my travel notes, both or the Camino and the business trip to India.

If I thought I did well in 2024 regarding keeping physically active, 2025 was in a league of its own. I lost more than 10 kilos in six months through a combination of running, exercise and better nutrition, focusing on creating habits rather than quick returns. I started again the C25K programe and ended up running 10 km several times through the year, not to forget the multiple times I have been to Teufelsberg on 20+ km treks training for the Camino. No surprise then that the 165 km in early September including a 50 km final day was more fun than pain.

Work wise, another very busy and successful year thanks to the great team, which keeps changing and evolving and never stops to amaze me with their skill and dedication. 2026 will be again a busy year in which I am making my best to see challenges as opportunities while still trying to have fun and enjoy what we are building.

Civil ET&S Award 2025

Posted in LinkedIn earlier this week

What a great way to finish the year, really honoured to be part of the team which has received the Civil ET&S Award in the Engineering Excellence category.

Nice example of how collaboration across Services, Digital & Engineering working as one team towards a common objective really makes a difference.

Kimon Abu-Taa, Theodora Tzortzoglou, Christian Otterbach, Oguzhan Bozkurt, Theresa Robinson, Łukasz Więckowski, Alberto Bava, José Manuel Sarrión Navarro, Luca Fontana, Pasquale D'Urso

Business trip to India

I posted this in LinkedIn a few days ago

Kristian Harder and I visited Tata Consultancy Services in Bangalore and Pune two weeks ago, and I would like to thank the whole team for making us feel truly welcome, specially our hosts Anil Gangolli, Ronney Samuel and Sneha Sikchi (Malpani).

Our teams have been working together for several years and there is a strong foundation to continue our collaboration, based on our common commitment to deliver high quality data and software products. Thanks for letting us take part in your townhall meetings to provide context on Business Aviation and how we use data to drive decisions and enable value.

On a more personal note, playing cricket for the first time and doing it in India will be a cherished memory.

Mumbai airport

 

India - Bangalore and Pune

 

Business trips are always busy and you end up seeing hotels, airports, offices and restaurants (if you are lucky). Not everything is nice, however there is always a chance to capture beauty when you see things through the eye of a photographer

Doha

 

Turns out you can see a fair amount of Doha in a long layover en route to somewhere else, which is what I did a couple of weeks ago. Just get a transit visa, jump in the metro with a day pass and be willing to do quite some walking (we clocked over 30 thousand steps).

Camino 2025

 

Camino Planner: Godesalco.com

Yet another incredible adventure on the Camino de Santiago!

Over seven days last week, my brother and I walked ~165 km from St Jean Pied de Port to Logroño. We faced plenty of challenges, from an extremely rainy and steep first stage—an 8 km climb to a refuge at 800m after a nine-hour journey—to a scorching 50 km final day in 30°C heat. That last day alone set a new personal record for most steps: a whopping 72k!

This experience felt very different from last year's journey. It was a powerful testament to how much my physical condition has improved, and a great reminder that my training and wellness goals are paying off.

As always on the Camino, we met many amazing fellow pilgrims. It was inspiring to connect with those on their full journey to Santiago, not just walking a few days like us.

This journey wasn't about stepping out of my comfort zone, but rather about expanding it. The rewarding feeling of meeting a great challenge is what I've come to know as "type 2 fun."

Here's to a greater sense of well-being and more rewarding adventures ahead!

#CaminoDeSantiago #Wellness #OutdoorAdventure #Gratitude #PersonalGrowth

This was originally posted in LinkedIn