30 years old, and still looking good.

What an excellent birthday! Clare took me on a mystery journey, which involved driving, walking, the train and the tube, and ended up at the London Eye (I've never been on it before!). As soon as we arrived we bumped into my Mum and Dad, Clare's Mum and Dad, Kev, Suzanne, Rich, Claire and the girls (amazing coincidence?). So we took a trip on the big wheel, saw lots of good views, and had a great time.

We then stopped by the Tate Modern, and wandered up to Belgo's in Covent Garden for a bite to eat. When being shown to our table I recognised Josh sitting on the end of it. It then slowly dawned on me that the whole table was filled with 26 of my friends, some of which I've not seen in years. I was overcome! We had some excellent muscles and Belgian beer, and continued the party later at the Porter House.

Thanks to everyone who came along, and most of all to Clare, who has been scheming and plotting behind my back for months! I should really change my gmail password...

View the photo album

Castle run video

Josh shot some video while I was doing the castle run, and compiled it into this excellent movie.

There are also some photos here.

Thanks Josh.

Australia

Clare flew out to Australia in March to do her medical elective. For those of you unfamiliar with medicine, it seems that part of the course involves jetting off to some exotic location to relax on a beach, drink a few cocktails, and occasionally pop into the local hospital.

I joined Clare at the start of April, and we spent three weeks working our way down the east coast, from Cape Tribulation to Sydney, with a few stops in-between. I was amazed out how diverse Australia is. Having been educated in the culture by watching 'Crocdile Dundee' and 'Neighbours' I had always assumed that the country was a dusty, arid place with a housing estate in one corner. In fact we found rain forests, miles of beach, coral reefs, modern cities, extremely friendly people, perfect weather, and abundent wildlife. I highly recommend a visit, and I can't wait to go back.

We took 850 photos in total, there are a small selection in the following web albums:

Newcastle
The Blue Mountains
Port Stephens
Armidale
Melbourne
Cairns
Cape Tribulation
Magentic Island
Fraser Island
Noosa
Sydney

Things to do before you're 30: Task 6 COMPLETE

The final task to achieve before turning 30 was to climb the Sydney Harbour Bridge. As you can see from the above photo, I did it (thanks to the sponsership from my parents as an advanced birthday preset). All I need to do now is wait two weeks and complete the greatest challenge of them all: becoming 30 - argh...

[yes I know it's a terrible photo, but they made us do the pose before letting us off the bridge]

Things to do before you're 30: Task 5 COMPLETE

I was worried that I wouldn't be able to achieve this one. For the last couple of days I have been feeling under the weather, with a sore throat etc... and I couldn't do the training schedule I had planned. I decided I would give it a go anyhow, so I eased off from Kenilworth Castle at about 4pm on Saturday. Josh accompanied me, taking photos and videos, and being generally encouraging. I also had my secret weapon, the Radio 1 essential mix by Pendulum playing on my MP3 player.

So I arrived at Warwick castle sooner than I thought, it took me 45 minutes and 40 seconds, and I'll be honest, I could have gone further. Bring on the next challenge!

Photos and videos to come...

Suits you sir...

I don't think the large number of gadgets do him any favours, but you can't knock the originality.

Things to do before you're 30: Task 5

There's not been much blogging recently due to Clare being in Australia with the digital camera, and me being at home with two dogs (and not much to do).

However, the clock counting down the days 'til I'm 30 has not stopped ticking, and for March's task I have decided to run between Kenilworth Castle and Warwick Castle. I'm not a particularly athletic person, and I have never been all that good at running, so this is quite a tough challenge. The route is 5.4 miles long according to google, and I think I can do it in under an hour.

All I need is a pace car (well someone to take some photos and give me a lift back). Any volunteers? The day I run will depend on the weather (I don't like rain).

View the route

Smoking pipes

Yahoo recently launched 'pipes' (beta). What on earth are yahoo pipes? - well it's quite a cool internet based application which allows you to 'mash' the web. Which basically means that you can do clever things with RSS feeds to mix together content from different websites. I wasn't really all that excited about pipes when I first read about it. I've never seen a 'web mash up' which has been either interesting or useful. So pipes, although having a very impressive user interface, seemed like a bit of a waste of time.

That was until I was driving home last night, stuck in traffic, and I thought - I wonder if I could use pipes to give me traffic information for my daily commute? I drive through Warwickshire and Oxfordshire, and use the A46 and M40. The BBC traffic RSS feeds are organised by county, and just display all the roads affected. So I created a pipe that searches for traffic problems on the roads I use, for the counties I drive through. It outputs a single RSS feed, which I can add to my google desktop homepage. I know, I know - I'm cool.

Preview my pipe

Things to do before you're 30: Task 4 COMPLETE

As previously mentioned, task four of my 'things to do before you're 30' was to spend a maximum of £5 on an outfit to wear at Jake's house warming party. I had a good look around Kenilworth charity shops on Saturday afternoon, and I was struggling to find clothes cheap enough. That was until I stepped into the 'Cat's Protection League'. I knew I had struck gold when I saw a perfect pair of brown cords (every charity shop's flagship product) for £2. After trying on a few different tops, I settled on a long sleeve t-shirt for just £1.50. That left me a whole £1.50 under budget, so I decided to accessorise. I found a fantastic scarf and belt for just 50 pence each, the perfect additions to my great new look. So I went to the party in my £4.50 outfit, and nobody said a word. Task four accomplished.

Silverstone

Yesterday Dad and I went to Silverstone to race Lotus Exiges around the southern part of the grand prix circuit. It was a wet and windy day, but it didn't stop us from having a great time. We did two sets of 4 or 5 laps with an instructor telling us how to get the most out of the car. We then swapped seats, and the instructor took us around for a lap each. He was rather quick. I now really really want a Lotus. My 30th birthday is coming up!



View the album