I went to Boscombe Bay this morning to watch the surfers and take a few pictures. It was pretty cold (the forecast said just above freezing), so I had several layers of clothing on.

It was just starting to snow as I parked up. So as I got out I was adjusting my hat and gloves and trying not to shiver. I walked a few cars down, still sorting out my hat, and this surfer girl is packing her wet suit into her car. She’s stood there in her bikini. She laughs, looked at me and said, “hello mate” in such a way to indicate I was a complete wimp for having suitable clothing on. I mean, clearly it is normal to be stood in a car park in your bikini, while it is snowing. People say Northerners don’t feel the cold, but these surfers are impressive.

I wasn’t really expecting that many people to be in the water with it being so cold, but there were loads. Admitted, they did mostly have the full cover wet suits, that just leave a tiny bit of your face exposed, but still. If I had balance, was immune to the cold and didn’t mind getting salt in my eyes I could be a surfer. Even though they’re surfing in the cold, in the middle of winter, in England, they still all seem to have sun bleached hair and tans Maybe I’ll just make myself look really cool by getting a roof rack and driving around with a few boards on top of my car.

Some days it’s best not to eat properly. It’s best to forget all the stuff that’s good for you and make something that you just feel like. I may not be the finest Michelin starred chef, but I make the world’s best cheese on toast. Just toast several slices of Tesco’s fresh rustic white bread. Cut the cheddar (full fat) cheese into several slices, place on top of toast and grill for a couple of minutes. Perfect!

I wouldn’t normally be watching people in weird costumes dancing around an ice rink to over dramatic music, but it is the Winter Olympics. I’ve been watching all kinds of sports I’d never normally take an interest in and lunch time topics at work have tended to revolve around techniques for winning at Skeleton Bob. It’s like when Big Brother or the World Cup of even Wimbledon is on, it just gives everyone some kind of shared context to talk about.

It doesn’t even seem to matter too much that we (as in the British team) are rubbish. If there is someone getting disqualified for the wrong sized skis, or crashing their bobsleigh, it’ll be us. That just seems to add to the entertainment somehow. Our man in the Skeleton event (Dr Ice I believe they call him) even made his own sledge, where as the Germans have some finely engineered BMW device.

We are lucky to have the BBC covering the events here though. The one thing they can do really well are big events like this, even if they do use the same old commentators they’ve had for the last 100 years. It’s great to have continuous coverage without a single advert anywhere to be seen. I can’t wait till the Summer, the World Cup is going to be even better and we have a chance to do well.

I’m sat here watching The Brits, which is kind of like a UK version of the Grammies. Not as cool as the MTV Europe Awards, but still good to watch. I think music award shows are so much better than other award shows, like movies, sports or TV. The actual award bits are still boring, but at least they have performances. I know the whole unusual collaboration thing is over done, but I can’t get enough of them.

So far they’ve had Prince doing a few old songs (he was surprisingly boring), but looked quite young for an 83 year old. Then they had Coldplay, who sneakily included a Michael Bolton lyric in their song and James Blunt. James Blunt would be ok if it weren’t for his voice. Still, Gorillaz, Kelly Clarkson, Kanye still to come, so it should improve.

*UPDATE*
The Kanye West performance was very funny. He rattled through the standard, Diamonds from Sierra Leone, Gold Digger, Touch the Sky routine, but was joined on stage by 77 gold painted women. Picture of a few of them here.

Work can be a funny thing. The best things I do aren’t always the things that I’m meant to be doing. I’m lucky to work with some very cool, but also extremely smart people. All of them tend to have little side projects that they’re tinkering away with over lunch, in the evenings or early in the morning before anyone else gets in.

Working on some customer projects over the last few years I’ve had to build a few social network applications. The most interesting (and hardest) part of them is usually the visualisation of the networks. The problem with the standard node and connector graphs that you tend to see is that they quickly get too complicated and loose their meaning to people. So, as a little side project I wrote a visualisation to renders a user’s IBM social network. The internal corporate blog system provided the data, a small web app aggregated the blog feeds (looking at people who were commenting on each other’s posts among other things).

I then put together a fairly simple Flash client that read the data, loaded a contact’s photos from our directory server and then scaled the images depending on the strength of the connection between the user and their contact. So, when someone looks at their social network, the larger the image, the stronger the connection is to them. It seems to work and it’s kind of nice just to be able to see the pictures of your contacts in one place.

There’s a bit more about the project here.

Possibly the most important part of the place where I work is the cha bar. It’s THE place for tea of all varieties, they do also do a few other drinks and fruit snacks, but it’s tea that powers the site. I know we’re playing to the English stereotype, but we really do get through a lot of the stuff. Whenever there is a decision to be made or a problem to be solved, the first thing people do is get a cup of tea.

This week they’ve been running a special “loyal tea” (get it?) offer where you get a card stamped for each tea you buy. You can then collect gifts like free teas and various soap products from Dove. Now, I’m not saying I’ve drunk a lot of tea this week, but I am saying I’ve already had:

• 2 * Free Teas
• 1 * “Waffle” Slippers
• 1 * Regenerating Hand Cream
• 1 * Indulging Cream Bath Foam
• 1 * Regenerating Night Lotion
• 1 * Regenerating Calming Night Shower

No, I don’t know what half that stuff is and I don’t know why I need regenerating, but it’s FREE!