Inchoate

Parkour training rig -- right outside!

After having my imagination captured by free-running / parkour I've started looking at urban street architecture in terms of running and jumping around and over it. And wondering how I'd train for this. By some bizarre fortune it turns out there are seven outdoor exercise stations spread out around a playing field almost adjacent to home! (I'd seen it before but not with the eyes of a budding freerunner...)

This evening, after a one km warm-up run I spent a very pleasant 45mins jumping, twisting, handstanding, pull-up'ing and generally taxing my ankles, wrists, and shoulders. What fun! And with a pull-up bar I have pretty much everything I need to hammer most muscle groups and thus avoid a gym membership... Woo-hoo!

Savings systems

I've been pondering my finances quite a lot recently, and how to escape the rat race i.e. have enough residual income ("earning while sleeping") not to have to work. I've read plenty of theory on this Rich Dad, Poor Dad etc but as yet not put a lot of it into practice (on account of simply not having a stable enough-looking income to get a house).

And then I found a book with some immediately applicable goodies...

Lucky

Found this in the garden just now. When I was looking I expected to find one.

Although that could just be evidence of being slack mowing the lawn and letting too many of its friends get it on :-)

Damp Assassins - aftermath

After injuring my knee and not having an MMS phone anymore I figured I'd just spectate the Damp Assassins.

But as Darren and I sat chatting with Will the Judge, the possibility of being involved in a phone-facilitated drenchfest in such good weather was too much to pass up, and off we headed to Argos to score weapons...

Sixty-nine dude

• credit card number
• National Insurance number
• one of my telephone numbers

Festival of Peace

Sunday: Large indoor/outdoor "peace party" at London's only lighthouse near the Millennium Dome Festival of Peace.

Damp Assassins

Saturday: Now this sounds like a laugh: grab your MMS phone, uber-water pistol, and hunt down your "enemies" in London's Hoxton.

Damp Assassins

Unfortunately I have injured my knee but more crippling, for this, I don't have an MMS phone any more now that Urban Tapestries snagged the P800 back.

Hashing & hobbling

Enjoyable evening hashing with Tommy. Hashing describes itself as "a drinking club with a running problem". The Barnes H3 (Hash House Harriers) describe it as...

Urban Freeflow

Recently learnt about Urban Freeflow from a Guardian article on Parkour. Parkour, a French creation (pars-course?), is using the urban landscape as a gymnasium, focussing on fluid flowing movement and visual elegance. The article had an apt comparison between their activities and Spiderman.

Youth Of Britain Chillout vid

From the makers of music tracks set to quite simple but compellingly surreal and hyperactive Flash videos like Gay Bar comes this excellent "music video" for Y.O.B: Chillout. Extra points for being set to a crazy motorbike ride through London (lose points for not having a lid on ;-).

July 10th on...

Somewhat a socially circly week coming up but with three open slots it could still get messy... Suggestions welcome ;-)

Saturday & Sunday: Kundalini workshop with Glenn Morris. Very excited about this after reading a few dozen pages of Morris's book, Path Notes of an American Ninja

Saturday night: party at Tom's place; congrats on getting funding!

Monday: farewell drinks with a couple of party organiser friends

Tuesday:

Wednesday:

Thursday: dinner & movie with friends

Friday thru' Sunday: hanging with mates and bro at Ashton Court Festival in Bristol. This is going to be killer: 120,000 festie-goers, 150 bands, and Tommy's in town! W00t!

Urban Tapestries Slashdotted

The Urban Tapestries social research project into collaborative location annotation (phew!) was recently featured in Slashdot. A well-known side-effect of appearing on that enormously-widely read site is that the linked-to sites get pounded. It's not uncommon for those featured sites to go offline under the weight of Slashdot readers: hence "slashdotted".

Guess what happened?

Encyclopedic knowledge of Southfields

The Wikipedia didn't have an entry for Southfields. *tap tap tap*. Now it does!

Wikipedia rocks.

PS someone else has since edited it and added me to it! It wasn't me, honest! You're too kind, whoever you are.

Who needs monkeys?

(Via Miles Gould on London.pm mailing list)

grep /dev/urandom 'Act One, Scene One. Elsinore, a platform before the castle'

No success yet, but I don't have to clean up as many faeces as with my last
experiment.
-- seen on Slashdot

Brilliant! Reminds me of the Infinite Monkey Protocol Suite...

Salsa!

When I first moved to London after the States I really enjoyed the couple of Salsa nights with Peter V in Islington's la finca. In one of those unexplained followings, we stopped doing it. "Hey, this is fun. Er, let's not keep going."

Confucius, he say ... dinner time! (Thurs 8th July)

In a shock moment of organising a event more than 36h in advance...
You have no excuses this time ;-)

A friend highly recommended the Confucius restaurant in Wimbledon.
Surprisingly enough, it's a Chinese restaurant.

Drinks beforehand!

18:00, Bar Sia, Wimbledon, 105-109 The Broadway
19:30, Confucius, Wimbledon, a short amble to 271 The Broadway

RSVP by Tuesday and I'll book the table Tues. I'll keep the attendee list online here -- add yourself with a comment below!

July 5th on...

In Bristol this weekend; back Sunday or Monday.

Monday: Salsa in SW18, meeting 19:30 at D Bar.

Tuesday: Mobile Clubbing at an undisclosed yet location, meeting before the 18:18 start.

Wednesday: Ecademy then party with Firebox, at Clapham. These are cool - lots of fun gadgets to play with (saves buying them) and mid-20s crowd.

Thursday: Dinner at Confucius in Wimbledon, with drinks before at Bar Sia, 19:30, and 18:00. Some local action afterwards or perhaps pile back to my or a friend's house.

Friday: Clubbing at Oceana, in Kingston. Pre-meet venue & time TBA.

Saturday: possibly: Slow Sound System [click News], at The Foundry. Later, Old St-area venue (e.g. Mother, Play, etc) or West End. Thoughts?

Outstandingly crass Beckham joke

Occasionally one comes along that is so awful.... You've been warned.

Reflections

I ate some fillet steak tonight (blue cheese sauce, veggies, roast potato slices). The first red meat ordered in a restaurant since I was, I think, twelve. Before the last couple of years the total red meat I've eaten has probably been 200g at most. I've occasionally scarfed down sausages when there was almost nothing else to eat (i.e. other living humans' welfare was threatened, heh) or meat that would've been thrown out anyway. Dunno why I did it this time, it just sort of happened. I suppose partly the option in this meat-oriented restaurant was a couple of boring looking almost token chicken dishes I could've probably bettered with my eyes shut. The steak was quite tasty.