This week, for a change, has been filled mainly with revision. This has left extremely little time for other exciting adventures and as such, I have very little of those adventures to share with you.
I have learnt that people tend to get tetchy when products try to kill them - it's a bad idea, for example, to make a homicidal door. I have also studied a proof that curiosity did in fact NOT kill the cat. This is, allegedly, because Jack (the man who owns the cat, named Tuna) happens to own a dog, Rover. This makes Jack an animal lover and therefore would NOT kill a cat. After extensive proof and tree traversal we get the answer. Curiosity did NOT kill the cat. Certainly not a cat named Tuna, owned by animal loving Jack.
Well that settles it then.
I have further discovered that Unicorns are certainly horned and magical, however it is impossible (without further investigation) to determine whether or not they are mythical. We also don't know if it is a mammal or immortal. This is a shame.
Learning all this has come at a cost. As I said, I've had little spare time and as such haven't been able to take to the water as much as I should. Training for the Great North Swim [Massive thank you to anyone who has donated, by the way. Very much appreciated.] has taken a hit - and I've only got 6 days left. 4 of these will be clogged up with revision. Fingers crossed. So, before I get back to staring at a text book trying to absorb the wonderments contained within; It has come to my attention that the fixtures for next season have been released. In a press release, we're told "Steve Kean's side start life in the npower Championship with a tricky away trip to Ipswich Town". Fixtures can be found here. Championship does have more of a ring to it than Premier League. Kind of.
"I have a tortoise in the garden, if you can believe that."
I went to see Coldplay last night (09/06/2012) and it was rather spectacular. Interesting decision playing "99 Problems" before they came on, followed by what I'm told was the "Back to the Future" theme - worked surprisingly well though. They also kindly provided the crowd with wristbands which lit up as part of the show - pretty genius idea really as it looked rather amazing. I took a few photos and a couple of videos, which you can see here.
It took about two hours to get there (via a quick trip to McDonald's for some sustenance) and only a mere two hours to travel the first 8 miles (followed by another quick trip to the same McDonald's for some more sustenance), with the rest of the journey taking a further 2 hours. Despite the 6 hour journey time, it was certainly worth it.
As exams are now in full swing, I haven't had much chance to do anything of particular interest for the rest of the week (although you could argue Coldplay more than made up for it), however I did receive this rather prestigious award earlier in the week, which now takes pride of place on my wall, just next to the certificate for catching all 150 original Pokémon. A spectacular array of awards I've built up so far.
Almost the highlight of the week
If you don't want to know the F1 results, then I've kindly hidden them, but if you already know them or don't mind having them spoilt you can always
I managed to keep at least an eye on the Formula 1 earlier today whilst tackling revision and what an interesting race it was. Literally would never have guessed the results, ever. Disappointed Fernando couldn't hold his position but massive well done to Hamilton, Grosjean, Perez and their respective teams. Mercedes let themselves down somewhat by managing to make a DRS that fails in the open position - the complete opposite of what should happen - which was rather unfortunate for Schumacher.
Within the news/reams of stories I've seen this week, I feel this one to be the most interesting. It's a toothbrush. And a water fountain. Sign me up.
It is now 2 weeks before I take part in the Great North Swim and can announce that my wetsuit has now arrived and even fits. I say 'fits'. It's like playing with a Chinese Finger Trap trying to get it on and off and is not the most flattering piece of kit I own. I digress. I would like to quickly add that, for those who don't know, I am indeed taking part in the swim to raise money for Marie Curie Cancer Care and you can donate here and they are extremely appreciated.
Ok, so granted I'm not actually in France, per se; but I finally completed my little Channel Challenge. Just. It was a gruelling last 4 miles (all in one day), but it's over. This, shall be the last pretty picture relating to my Channel Swim and as such I shall make it larger than usual - if only to entertain myself.
Channel Complete - 31/05/2012
Just under 19 hours, 22 sessions and an average of 79 lengths (~2km) per session. As I logged the final stretch on swimming.org I felt a certain sense of joy. [On a side note - entering the last swim into the spreadsheet I'd crudely put together to work out the averages etc. left me with '#VALUE!' as it vainly attempted to divide by 0 - not so rewarding]. As previously mentioned, my next challenge is the 1 mile Great North Swim which I shall be raising money for Marie Curie Cancer Care [currently, their site appears to be down and the last few weeks of nigh on solid ASP.net development tells me that their problem is of the ASP variety] and those of you who feel like you wish to donate/sponsor can do so on Just Giving; and, as always, it is very much appreciated.
Moving on from the topic of swimming and onto the pearls of wisdom and fun facts I've picked up over the past week.
I don't know how many people have actually seen this, but I thought I'd share it with you as it's a relatively powerful image.
It's part of the marketing for the Olympics (or more specifically, Paralympics) from Canada. There's also a video too... (There's a short article here for anyone who's interested).
They're also running with the tagline "Super Athlete" on their site, which I think is also rather powerful.
I'm not too sure on the exact time, but the Windows 8 Release Preview has recently been announced and it looks Ok. It's basically a cross between Windows 7 and Windows Phone [which is like a cross between Windows Mobile and the XBox dashboard]. Essentially it's Windows-ception. [For anyone who hasn't seen Inception - this may make less sense than it already does]. I'm banking on the actual usability and features of it being a lot better than they are in my mind. I did download the preview for Windows 8 quite a while ago - but it errored every time I tried to install it, so I've yet to see it first-hand.
And sticking with the technology theme... Has anyone seen the Google Glasses concept video? Or even heard about it? I would recommend seeing it so much that I've taken the liberty to stick it right under your nose.
Well it's getting to the point where the post is becoming more of a book than a blog post, so I guess I'll leave it there for now - I might consider slightly smaller, more directed posts in the future - but for now we can leave it as a 'my week in a post'.
"I wouldn't say anything is impossible. I think that everything is possible as long as you put your mind to it and put the work and time into it"
