TV stardom at last…

What a bizarre day yesterday was. Hannah and I appeared on BBC1 on the “Beat the Burglar” show. We looked like idiots, as expected but it was funny all the same.

How, and perhaps why on earth were we on it? Well, when we moved into our gaff in Wimbledon I had a feeling it needed securing and so signed up for this show to avoid having to pay for the necessaries or do any of the work myself.

The deal is they trash your house then give you a £1,000 security makeover – new locks, lighting, motion sensors etc and lots of advice about how to keep out the crooks. My instincts proved correct as we actually did get burgled for real two weeks after the first test filming. The funny thing was we had just got back from a camping trip and when we walked into the house and saw it completely trashed, we assumed it was part of the show – that they had been in when we were out. We laughed our heads off then composed ourselves for what we thought were the hidden cameras. After an hour of waiting for presenters and camera crews to jump out from behind the sofa, I called the producers of the show and realised that actually we really had been burgled. The coppers who came round found it all very amusing.

The filming was very funny and the crew from Lion TV were a lovely bunch. However, it was the day after my rugby end of season do. If you saw the program, you will have noticed that I am looking more than a little hungover. Some classic comments from the presenter such as “Not being funny, but that stereo isn’t worth enough to nick is it?”. Anyway, got to go, that will be my agent on the phone……

ipod nano launched (as well!)

OK, getting a bit obsessive on this now, so last post I promise. They had one more announcement up their sleeve – the nano ipod. You can see all the details on the apple website, but basically it’s a smaller version of the existing ipod (available in 2 or 4G). Nice design, but again, I can’t get too excited. The thing I’m most excited about is the new advertising which sounds cool.

Apple iPhone – first pictures

available at this website

iPhone launched at last – but what a lead baloon

After lots of hype, several promised (but undelivered) launch events and some really bad leaking of the story, the new Apple/Motorola itunes phone is out. Congrats to Leslie Katz at CNET for breaking the news first when made official. All I can say is what a lead baloon. After all that hype it’s just a phone with an ishuffle. I can’t get too excited about that – other phones have had that capability for months. Guess I’ll be carrying my 20G ipod and a phone for some time yet.

I love podcasting

I got home last night and wanted to listen to something vaguely intelligent whilst cooking. The trouble is that when I get home most radio stations are pumping out the same music I’ve listened to all day or, even worse, lonely hearts phone-ins. But I was able to plug my ipod into the speaker system at home and select the latest edition of BBC Radio 4’s “From our Own Correspondent” program. This doesn’t go out on Monday evenings, I was able to do this because FOOC is one of the podcasts that I subscribe to and get downloaded (for free) to my ipod everytime it comes out. The convenience of being able to listen to my favourite radio programs when I want to is hugely appealing.

Podcasting is not a new phenomenon, but the more mainstream media is now starting to embrace it. The BBC have been at the forefront of this, with select progams available for podcast for some time . There are also lots of one-man-teams sitting in their bedrooms, podcasting their own take on the world (the audio equivalent of a blog). Some of these are very good, some are crap. Again, a bit like the blogging world. A good place to sort the wheat from the chaf is the iTunes music store and click on the podcasts section on the left toolbar. They have a top 100 podcasts chart which is quite varied.

By the way, if you don’t have an ipod but do have another mp3 player, the chances are you can receive podcasts too. The name is a little misleading as it is not restricted to the ipod at all, that just happens to be the most well-known music player.

Zambia AIDS orphan help

Chief Charlie has got his project to help victims of AIDS in Zambia underway. You can visit his blog for more details. Good luck to him – a Great man.

Even more pictures…

The beautiful mountains of the Drome. The housemates. The kayakers, the mussel bbq.

More photos from the Drome

My brithday flight in a glider above the mountains.

Escape to Escoulin

Just got back from a fantastic week in the Drome Valley, a couple of hours drive from Lyon in France. We stayed in a friend’s house in Escoulin, a tiny village in the mountains. We did a huge amount of eating, siesta’ing and drinking which was long overdue. We also had to fish the occassional dead sheep out the swimming pool. Oh yes, and we got through every board game ever invented, including the awesome Rapidough, which I would recomend to anyone. The region is truely beautiful and also offers some more energetic activities such as kayaking and glider flights. Cheers to our fellow housemates in the Grande Frere maison.

London Triathlon – lots of fun

I competed in the London Triathlon this weekend which was awesome. Having trained for a whole seven days I went into the race with a simple aim: to finish. As it turned out I did OK. As expected the swim (in the Royal Albert Docks) was a real killer. I was only doing the super-sprint distance (400m swim/10km bike/2.5km run) but I think I did about 500m in the water because I headed off in the wrong direction in all the confusion. I made up good ground after that though, pasing lots of people on the bike and run. Despite getting a cramp on the start of the run (mental note: practice the transition), I managed to finish strongly. According to the official race results I came 22nd out of around 70 men in my group, which is a result I’m proud of for a first ever attempt at the sport. Thanks to Crawshaw for the last minute coaching and encouragement.