Bonsoir France

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.

For anyone with Google+, I would recommend following the Project Glass Page.

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"

Ben