Sat. 6.30am. Pouring rain and long umbrella queues outside the portaloos... 7am. Elite riders (def not me) start on the gun. By 7.30am another 880 riders have started tearing up the already muddy and waterlogged track. What joy. Hit a tree 10km in after going blind down a muddy track. Sunnies useless, didn't wear them for the next 8hrs. 35km. 1st water stop. No water to wash bikes only to drink but lots of wet lollies, bananas and muffins. Many stories of chaos, crashes, bike problems. 60km. 2nd water stop. Not much conversation. everyone is wet, cold, tired with bikes just hanging together. Jude bounces up all happy - I had the grumps. Good to see her tho'. Support is SO important.

Riding through Canberra is a bit easier now as it's only drizzling. See Mt Stromlo in the distance. Fantastic feeling. 10km to go. Suddenly there's 2km of calf-deep walk through mud - all sucky and slippery. Very depressing. Lots of swearing by everyone (except me, coz I'm a nice person). Last uphill to observatory then a sick, flat out, 2km downhill, with huge berms and swoopy corners.

I'm yelling and whooping with another guy who's pinning it too. I've never met him before and we're best buds on the downhill! It's worth 98km of hell to get to 2km of downhill track. Sprint to finish to beat 2 other guys - why did I do that after 8.5hrs? Happy smiling Jude there with towel. hose bike down. Jude says I've turned blue with cold. Shower with clothes on. Coffee. Back to hotel. Go horizontal. Happy. Next 100km at Callala Beach, South Coast in 3 weekends. No rain please.

Ok - so we received two iPads today - and as you can see from the photos below - we can't wait to start using this device (and it all happened on Mark's birthday!) .  We are keen to see how it will make life easier - and also what fun we can have with them. Either way - its a new digital landscape with gesture computing on a tablet.

When you combine the sounds of Pete Rock, visual backgrounds of New York city, beautifully graded video with nice typography placement and subtle effects - you get to see the heart and soul of New York city. Nice work by the guys at www.kx1.com

Concept by Papa Neal & Fu for K1X. Track by Red Cafe & Pete Rock, Cinematography, Direction & Edit by Kevin Couliau (Asphalt Chronicles), Art Direction by Thibaut de Longeville, Motion Graphic Design by Vincent Dumond and Post Production by 360 Creative (Paris) feat. Red Cafe, "Miles High", "The Franchise", "Anti-Freeze", "Special FX", "Best Kept Secret", "Headache", "Black Diamond", "The Pirate", John Starks, Bobbito “Kool Bob Love” Garcia, KRS-1, Stay High 149...

These voices for the TomTom are just crazy - the latest addition - Star Wars! If your a fan you'll love this clip... watch Lord Vader during the recording of his GPS voice for the TomTom.

Have been a long time fan of IdN since I was a design junior so its been around for ages... always interesting and uses print techniques that you may not always see used in magazine publications these days. The branding issue is a good one - also features the new Melbourne identity and how its applied to just about everything Melbourne....

Ok - so some how a conversation between Mark and Brian turned into a $50 bet to see who could go the longest without getting their haircut - last man standing to win all.

With all of us being so competitive, I came along and for some unknown reason uttered the words - "make it $100 and Im in" - thinking they'd leave me out... oh well - that $300 is looking good so far...

So now you can see the progression on this page - we'll update it as the time passes!

Update - 8 June 2010

Update - 17 May 2010

Update - 14 April 2010

Before - 12 March 2010

Daily Drop Cap is a project by Jessica Hische, a designer/illustrator living in Brooklyn.

The project started in September 2009 in which she illustrated a letter every day. These letterforms were shown in her recent solo exhibition at Lamington Drive in Melbourne, where I had the pleasure of smelling each individual letterpress print!

Check out her complete work at www.jhische.com

Google never cease to amaze me. Yesterday they unveiled they plan a broadband network for the US that is 10 times faster than what we will have in Australia with the new/improved NBN... and that they want to buy/resell power.

Now they have unveiled one of the greatest toys ever – a virtual glass elevator that lets you fly around the world, just like the one in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Made by a few of the engineers in their spare time, the Liquid Galaxy project is an interactive booth with wraparound LCD screens. The screens show synchronised views from Google Earth and you can use a six-axis mouse to move your way through air and water.  Very Cool.

Font shops pick for 2010 - for my pick I think slab serifs are going to be in for the year, expect to see this more online and in print. Check out the complete list here.

Meet the new Burton Method, currently holding the accolade of the best board constructed – ever. This thing is the lightest, most responsive board on the planet. The Burton doctors stripped everything down with surgical precision to achieve this and constructed the Method from finely woven carbon strands and S2 fibreglass which is what makes it as light as a feather and as tough as nails. The base is also Teflon coated meaning it will soak up more wax, which equates to less friction and more speed. Nice! But the doctors didn’t stop there. They added super sharp steel titanium alloy edges to carve up the mountains.