Bank Holiday

Bank holiday weekend and the weather is good! On Friday night I went out to the famous spiegeltent, which is part of the Brighton festival and good fun it is too. The night was put on by Gaz Mayall and his rockin blues - there was a great band and some generally swinging music. I'm going back there tomorrow evening to catch Bugz in the Attic with a bunch of people from work, and that should be good too. It kind of made up for Thursday nights attempt to catch some music - I had bought a ticket to check out the fatcat night but ended up arriving a bit late - in fact I arrived 30 mins before the end..and hence had paid quite a bit of money to see 30 mins of, errr, folk music. Vashti Bunyan has a good voice but I was hoping for something a bit more lively. Nevermind, it was worth a shot and at least I felt I had got a bit of culture, I was feeling the urge to hear some live music so that was good despite the cost!

I've been helping out my flat mate with his boat project which is pretty good fun, painting it and sanding the hull etc - here is a picture of it, its a pretty big boat - a twin screw motor cruiser I believe is the description. Its due to go back in the water at the end of this month. Back down there tonight for more painting and then we are off to see some fireworks at the Marina - which is part of the end of the festival. If the fireworks are anywhere near as good as the show in Preston park a few weeks ago then it should be fun.

Also this weekend I have waxed up my new surfboard and have generally been sorting out all my bits. My flatmate managed to pick up a top notch wetsuit for me at literally half price , its the hoodless 3Q zip on this page - very nice and kind of him too. Now all I need to do is find some time to get out there..only a few hundred yards down the road is a spot where most surfers in Brighton congregate, known as the pipes..and Shoreham harbour is not too much further. Its all about those weather forecasts...Brighton is not exactly renound for its surf..but you can still have a bit of fun. I want to get down to the Witterings as well, which is a few hours drive West and by all accounts a good spot. I also fancy taking part in the paddle round the pier, an event for charity. Be good if its a nice day. I am also on a sponsorship drive for the London to Brighton bike ride..so feel free to sponsor here! I think I'm on course to match last years effort and am looking forward to that, especially as this year I am cycling home.

I've also found a Thai boxing class to go to at last, I was really missing the training. Its quite different to my last camp (in fact, I knew I would never find anything to match it, eh Danny;)...the gym is a lot of mixed martial arts, and they even have a cage in there! They do a lot more kickboxing down here and people are more familiar with that than pure Muay Thai. A lot of the guys there do wrestling as well. Still its good to get out there and stay sharp - they have a ring which is great. These guys go a lot harder with their sparring though as I found out last week, this dude really clocked me one and everyone cheered him on - I'm like 'its not a fight..! Ho Ho..so I used my push kick to try to keep him well away after that. Good fun and the instructor is a nice guy so I'll be back there.

Thats its for now - I'm going to try and catch up with some more work reading on all things search related before we head out, there doesnt seem to be enough time in the day as there is so much info out there to take on board..but I'm really enjoying learning something new, even if space vectors and canonicalization are mystifying me slightly still! Here is a cool little page a colleague pointed me towards to help work it all out...