I have started studying a martial art. Choi Kwang Do at Cassar Academy in Morden, and we’re signed up for 6 months. When I say we, Claire is also learning to defend herself and get fit at the same time.

We went initially on Monday evening for a free introductory session where we learned basic blocks, punches and kicks in a private session with an instructor, who like me was slim and tall but I wouldn’t consider crossing him, knowing what he must know.

Claire really seemed to enjoy it and really got a kick (excuse the pun) from unleashing onto a pad held by the instructor, as did I, even if I was a little self concious I looked like an idiot. Mind you, looking like an idiot was nothing compared to sounding like an idiot, shouting a Kihap. Will have to work on shouting loudly every time I punch or kick, and decide on what I want to shout. I don’t think they allow you to swear, making it all the more difficult.

What I hope to come away with is more confidence and not feel intimidated by anyone, plus much improved core strength and flexibility. Of course as a bonus I should also have a bloody hard punch and good kicking techniques.

Choi Kwang Do also appealed to me due to its emphasis on physiology and anatomy rather than mystical energy centres of the body, which I’m not exactly sure about. The official Choi Kwang Do web site says “Choi Kwang Do is a unique martial art based on scientific principles and developed to promote optimum health, fitness and self-defense, not winners in sports competitions.” Its quite lucky there is such a great facility at the Cassar Academy in Morden (even if their web site could do with some of my skills).

<figcaption class="wp-caption-text">The Cassar Academy in Morden.</figcaption></figure>

For joining on the night we got our Do Bok (uniform) free, so we tried them on as soon as we got in and they are great! I mean, look how scary I already look.

<figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Me in my New Do Bok.</figcaption></figure>

Now we need to concentrate and actually apply ourselves to this, its going to be tough – but first things first, we need to learn the Choi Kwang Do adult pledge, that we recite before every class, and the principles of Choi Kwang Do:

Adult Pledge

• To set positive goals and strive to achieve them.
• To apply self discipline to further my personal development.
• To stand for justice and honour my word.
• To promote friendly relationships among all people.
• To use what I learn in class in a constructive manner.

Principles of Choi Kwang Do

• Humility
• Honesty
• Gentleness
• Perseverance
• Self control
• Unbreakable spirit

Add to all this a bow before entering the school floor, the school motto “Pil Sung” and a whole host of Korean commands we must know for class, there is an awful lot to learn before we really get into the nitty gritty of Choi Kwang Do, something I’m really looking forward to!

<figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Chris Crudelli’s BBC TV series.</figcaption></figure>

We’ve also got a Chris Crudelli workshop coming up, where we might learn some more cool stuff, I like Chris Crudelli from what I’ve seem of Mind, Body and Kick Ass moves on the BBC DVD we’ve been watching. Not quite sure what Jiu Fa Men is but I’m sure it’ll all be explained on the day! More on Chris can be found on twitter.com/kickassmover or his web site, crudelli.com

So this year I did want to do something big for charity, following my London to Amsterdam to Brussels last year. I was struggling for ideas, but fortunately GyroHSR have provided me with a nice warm down following the Vitruvian IronMan 70.3.

The Great British Bike Relay is a relay cycle with a group starting in Glasgow and a team starting in London converging on Manchester on September 10th (where I will also be playing football for GyroHSR London vs the rest of Gyro HSR) before sending the next leg on its way.

So about 250 miles in 2 days should be enough of a challenge for which I have to raise £1,250 – so expect plenty of events and so on over the next few months. More information will follow as I get it – anyone who wants to join my team – let me know!

Monday 4th May: So the time came to beat my rather slow time of 1:14 for my first Thames Turbo Triathlon race in April. I was confident I was stronger in the water and on the bike, and it turns out I was, 2 minutes knocked off the bike and almost 1 minute off the swim. Very good. Problems occurred when I dismounted from the bike and found that my knee didn’t work very well. Hardly at all in fact.

The stumbling back into transition and subsequent struggle to get into my shoes prompted attention from the marshalls around me, and after careful consideration and advice I decided to not even try and start the run. A quick check to the paramedics to check I wouldn’t lose my leg or anything and I was sent on my way. Disappointing end to my race, but caught up with a few people I hadn’t seen for a while and made some progress in the parts I could do.

Friday 8th May: This morning I went to the physio to have my knee checked out, after a few days the knee was already feeling stronger and free of pain, so I was a lot less worried than I was. I see David Bolton of Limbus Physiotherapy when I am very broken, as he is incredibly good and exceedingly knowledgable.

Thankfully David believes it is just ITBS, or runners knee. This is good and probably means that my shoes are worn, my bike ill fitting or some other random problem that could randomly occur. So this weekend includes a run tomorrow morning to test the theory, new running shoes ASAP and a professional bike fitting with Sigma Sport in Hampton Wick.

With these all done I should be fit and raring to go cycling mad in the Pyrennes on 6th – 9th June. Which is a relief.

Future of Web Design over with for another year then and I have to say my first conference was an overwhelming success. Started well, with meeting @boagworld, @stanton, @ryanhavoc, @mikestickler, @anna_debenham, @nofont, @BHardcastle and @dkirk (twitter usernames of course) in the Prince of Teck at Earl’s Court, unfortunately had to bail to finish the current Virgin Insider build, but alas it was still fun. Except the getting stick for not having an iPhone, however after the next couple of days I definitely want one. I just upgraded on Orange. Bugger.

<figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Molly Holzschlag on stage at FOWD 2009 - Flickr image from user: vectorfunk</figcaption></figure>

The conference day was in the rather big Kensington Town Hall, which was nice, having met up with Natalie from BluHalo and the @fhoke lads the sessions got underway.

After Ryan Carson introduced the day and told us what we needed to know, there was an impromtu talk from Danny Somekh which looked at applying the agile development model to web sites. Quite interesting, if a little under prepared due to being such a late addition.

Next Jim Coudal of Coudal Partners (http://www.coudal.com/) talked about how the creative process seems to focus on taking a constant and applying variables to it, using the Booking Bands game as an example. Booking Bands says combine a band and a book to make something amusing. I’ve come up with “Oliver’s Twisted Sister” and “The Bloodhounds of the Baskervilles gang”. To do this he emphasised most would take either a band and cycle through the books you know, or vice versa. He also highlighted a short attention span isn’t necessarily a bad thing for creativity.

Next was Meagan Fisher from SimpleBits on the Mobile Web. Not really anything new, but it was interesting and good to know the leaders in web geekery are promoting and fighting for the same things as I am.

Brett Welch (of www.goodbarry.com was good) was next and was really fun. He talked about the business side of our work – the following points sticking with me:

• Talk about the clients business
• Design is a commodity
• Are you worth it?
• Try to join the dots not build from new
• Sell your expertise not a product

He had a way to remember the process, involving Busta Rhymes. Business, Understand, Strategy, Targets, Actions. The end result should be effective and repeat business.

Mark Boulton (http://www.markboulton.co.uk/) was next talking about typography for the web. He made some good points, being a very intelligent bloke:

• Typography can be frustrating on the web
• Design bridges author and reader concept ideas
• Use smart defaults and push people with the ability to influence design to make correct decisions
• Make people think they are being creative
• Use a typography cascade
• Check the Vista defaults for more fonts to use
• sIFR is a pain in the arse (my personal favourite)

The next speaker was slightly different as he had a companion to help him. Who is a guide dog. Because Robin Christopherson is completely blind.

Robin (of http://www.abilitynet.org.uk/) demonstrated the difficulties that blind and users with other disabilities find whilst using the internet. He pointe4d out that a lot of disabled users use a mobile version of a site as it is simpler, that captcha is not viable, gave some tips on making things easier for your users and was overall very impressive. This is something I will take back to the office and push for better accessibility in our sites.

<figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Mike Kus speaking - Flickr Image by vectorfunk</figcaption></figure>

Mike Kus from Carsonified was up next talking about design. His slides are up at http://www.slideshare.net/mikekus/graphic-design-the-forgotten-web-standard A good talk with a good video at the end. Not really my bag though – design and stretching design legs. One good point he made was to to harness the power of the copy you are designing for and think about the copy to inspire rather than dictate.

Sabrina Dent then spoke about the Stalinist web design model. Something that I always have trouble with. Its fine to say no all the time – but I struggle when it comes down to saying the words! Sabrina backed this up with the reasons why and so it might help me say no more often. Sabrina’s blog is at http://www.sabrinadent.com/

Finally Molly Holzschlag (www.molly.com) ran through the future of web standards, covering HTML5, XHTML, Compat mode in IE8, SVG, Canvas, RDFa, Microformats and a lot more besides. Really good and perfect for what I went to FOWD for.

I will cover the workshop content in another blog – after I have conveyed the message I took away to all the good folks at GyroHSR, hopefully changing something for the better too.

You know one thing I really hate. When I open a browser window and start typing a web address, only for my Google home page to load and remove focus from the address bar to the search box.

It annoys the hell out of me when I want to got to a web page and end up searching for tbee.com or ebook.com and so on. We (well most of us) know you shouldn’t move the user focus with out them expecting it and this is a prime example of this.

It annoys the hell out of me, and there’s nothing I can do. Maybe its time to dump google as a home page. The new Yahoo! home page actually looks quite nice – maybe its time to switch back there after all this time. We’ll see when it launches to everyone if it can fulfil my needs.

/rant

I was sent this youtube video by a colleague at work this morning, it is unbelievable. How anyone in their right mind could actually think about doing this in a cycle race, let alone in a sprint finish is beyond me.

Watch the bottom of the video to see the Yellow Jersey leader Daryl Impey gets taken out by Theo Bos. Bos grabs Impey’s shirt and throws him into the barriers, taking himself out of the race as well.

Now I know cycling teams have all sorts of tactics and so on, but this is appalling and I hope that he faces a very long ban, amongst any other punishment that can be thrown at him.

For weeks I thought I was not going to be able to enter this race after tearing (potentially) my intercostals, but I couldn’t miss the first race of the new Triathlon season. I decided about 10 hours before the race started that I should give it a go. So after packing all my gear into my bag, getting my aero helmet and TT bike sorted to try out in a race for the first time I went to bed excited that my season was about to start.

The season didn’t get off the the best start, when I forgot to register and then tried to start but wasn’t allowed. Thankfully I woke up – I was only having a bad dream! Next dream was even worse when I forgot to rack my bike and had to get it out of the car once I had finished the swim. I’m a little worried that dreaming about triathlon means I might be taking this a little too seriously.

When I finally finished dreaming about triathlon I woke bright and early at 5am to load the car and get over in good time, parking easily and being all registered by 5:45am. This being my first Thames Turbo, I had no idea I would be standing around for 2 hours until all 483 competitors before me got started at 15 seconds intervals.

Eventually starting, I got the swim out of the way in a respectable 8:30 minutes, then I went out on the bike. The TT bike just didn’t feel fast. I couldn’t seem to get the pace up to what I wanted, the roads were horrible, but I got through and started on the run. I was passed by Louie of the Viceroys about half way round the bike course so that was my motivation on the run, get back in front and hold it to the end, which happened approximately 4km into the run.

After finishing in 1:14 I decided that I need to do Thames Turbo Race 2 on 4th May to find out what time I can get with proper preparation – not to mention a decent bike leg. So 5am starts for a bike and a swim it is I guess, because I’m determined to finally finish first out of all the people I know, if it kills me. Which is a distinct possibility.

Since my last blog I travelled by bicycle from London to Amsterdam to Brussels. I also started competitive triathlon. I was promoted. I found a few awesome web applications.

It might have been a few months since I blogged, as I was rebuilding my site from the ground up, however I recently decided to maintain WordPress as my blogging platform – so I can add blogs without having to re-build the databases later… leaving about 5 months of blogging to do.

I’ll write and back date some blogs I have, including the 3 capitals bike ride and the triathlons, but some other summer news is below.

Promotion

Earlier this year I was promoted to the role of Senior Web Author, or Senior Front End Developer. About time too, say Dan and I, but now I have the title I will have to apply myself to the title more that previously – when we seemed to be doing the role without the title. I also need to start looking at my next role, and how I can progress further without becoming a management type person. I’m not ready for management roles yet!

Training

I’ve just got a training schedule and it is painful! I will stick to it as much as physically possible and see how much I can improve in triathlon next year, because there is a chance I could get well under 2:30 olympic distance, or maybe even represent GB in the amateur age group world champs. Not likely, but I’ll have to have a go.

Published

I recently wrote a blog entry for BluHalo about when should we stop supporting Internet Explorer 6.

Work wise, I’ve also started an email review system for Virgin Atlantic – which is going relatively well. I’m looking forward to completing the whole system and making it simple to update and making a system that can be used for other clients as well. I don’t think the Virgin system would work for all, due to the complexity of the dynamic content, but there is definitely something there we could sell. As much as I hate it, dynamic content does work.

Next year’s cycle challenge

I better get started on this soon, and get some fund-raising started if this is to come to fruition – but I hope next year to cycle from John O’Groats to Land’s End. Approximately 1,000 miles in 10 days I hope, but I’ll go as quick as I can! I’ll need cycle sponsorship, some support vehicle cost cover, some equipment sponsorship and fund-raising for an as yet undecided charity.

Movember

This was a mistake. I’ve joined our Movember team at work, where you grow a moustache to support male health issues, such as prostrate cancer.

I’ll blog about the danger of reply all that helped me raise most of my fund-raising later.

So other blogs are on the way, so keep an eye open!

After Sunday’s game was cancelled due to Hoxton not getting a team out, Hospital Tavern are officially promoted after being awarded the points.

So I will be playing Second Division football next year in the Hackney and Leyton Football League!

Hoxton aren’t happy as they were expecting a re-arranged game, but the league disagreed, am sure Maynell are very disappointed – we would have had to play Maynell in a play off for promotion if we drew and they would have been promoted if we lost – but they’ll get over it! We would have beaten Hoxton anyway!

At least we have something to celebrate at the end of season drinks! Should be a good night!

This week I have mostly been buying clothes! On Friday another piece of my triathlon and open water swimming equipment arrived, a Sola wetsuit! It’s a good fit and bloody warm! I managed to resist putting it on and going for a cold bath to see if it works! The first open water swimming session should be on the 11th May, at Dorney Lake (or Heron lake, not quite sure yet!) followed by a Windsor bike ride with the Viceroys. Hopefully I can still remember how to swim quickly and along with my cycling they can make up for me not being a great runner. Walking funny has meant I had to invest in a £90 pair of trainers for that part, but worth it if I’m not in agony afterwards!

Tomorrow was supposed to be the day that Hospital Tavern were promoted by beating Hoxton Foxes, having lost the title to FC Highstone, but the opposition can’t get a team. It means on Tuesday we will either be awarded the points by the league or have to play again. I hope it is the first because otherwise it will eat into my training schedule, which I would prefer not to happen. However the jubilation of being promoted by actual beating Hoxton and the celebrations afterwards would be great!!

Bank holiday weekend has not been enjoyable, having a terrible hangover all day (really considering less drinking…) today (Saturday) and planning on working on Monday to meet a deadline for SportsAid.

Speaking of which, I better try and get the DNS and domain sorted for that!