Dartmouth Regatta

I spent two days racing a Farr 45 to launch two10 degrees, the new consultancy I'm working for. It was fast paced, and exhausting stuff. The team work was inspiring, there were 12 of us crewing the boat, part professional, part 'never been on a boat before', but there are no passengers on a boat like this, so everyone had a part to play.

View the photos here

Uncle Arthur's

On a recent trip back to Marple, we cruised past by great uncle's old house, to see if the buyers had done anything with it.

Before:

After:

This blog isn't dead

Whenever any blogger says "I'll promise to write more blog posts", you know that you won't see another post ever again. This blog has taken a sabbatical, mainly because most of my time is spent with my toddler, and we don't really want to put photos of him online (he can do that when he's 18 and on facebook).

In the mean time, I have been writing a technical (programming) blog over here: http://coderead.wordpress.com/

Elliot's First Year

I can't believe a year has passed since Elliot arrived, looking back to early videos of him it's amazing to see how much he has changed and grown. His personality has really started to emerge in the last few weeks, as well as an obsession for cars and an eagerness to throw himself head-first into dangerous situations (he'll make a great snowboarder).

Here is a compilation of a few of the videos we took over his first year.



Happy birthday!

New ride-on mower, with free house

It's not pretty, but as of now it belongs to us. Some serious work is required to improve the 1962 build, as it hasn't had much attention since then.

France Holiday

This year we chose to re-live our youth, and go back to an area of France we've been to 3 times before, with the Holdsworths. This is always a dangerous thing to do, the world moves on, and the fond memories you had (of drinking giraffes of beer and eating takeaway pizza from a particular vendor) are not always fulfilled (or in this case dismally dashed) when you return years later. However, despite these setbacks we were somehow able to find ways of having fun with a pool, a load of sunshine, a couple of small people and a number local delicacies (beers).

View the album

This is why I love NewNet

8:41pm

This is why I hate Tiscali

8:48am



7:34pm



58kbps? I might as well be on dialup. So I'm switching to newnet, who claim not to do any traffic shaping...

run bike run bike run

After months of training, last week Dan I did the Rendlesham Forest Challenge 2009. This was a 22k race which you do as a pair. You are allowed one bike between the two of you, but you must stay within 10m of each other. After sizing up our opposition (mostly people from running clubs) we realised that this wasn't a race we were going to win. However our 10 minute swapping strategy worked well, and we completed the course in a respectable 1hr 52min.

Homebrew

For Christmas (after quite a lot of hint dropping) I got a homebrew kit , complete with the malt and yeast for a strong dark Belgian ale. It didn't take me long to get the brew gurgling in the airing cupboard.



After 10 days it was bottled, and a secondary (6 week) fermentation started which gave it the flavour and fizz.



And the product of my toil is an 8% tramp killing special brew, that any Belgian monk would be proud of.



Next it's pilser...

http://www.brew-it-yourself.co.uk/