Writing
Personal

Freediving at the SETT

As some of you already know, I'm a qualified PADI dive instructor, and spent a good part of my twenties travelling around Asia, teaching people to dive. During the surface intervals, me and some of my colleague would jump off the side of the boat to practice our breath hold diving. We started just by finning down, but quick progressed to variable weight diving where we'd grab hold of a weight belt to pull us down, and then haul it up afterwards. We weren't very good, and I've later found that this practice was also quite dangerous, but it was fun and killed some time.
Personal

5 Things You Didn't Know About Me

# I can eat and breathe fire # I was flying planes solo before I was old enough to drive # I've dived on an active, underwater volcano # I lived in a tent for a whole summer while surfing in Devon # I helped set up a dive shop in Thailand when I was 27
Tech Culture

Whither W3C?

I've been a strong proponent of web standards since first being introduced to them "back in 2000 by Jefrey Zeldman":http://www.zeldman.com/com0100b.html. I started discussing standards on my "local mailing list":http://www.brightonnewmedia.org/, then on my blog, and finally at conferences and events. I even "wrote a book":http://www.cssmastery.com/ on the subject.
Speaking & Events

Rebooted

Ever since hearing about "Reboot":http://www.reboot.dk/ three years ago, I've wanted to attend this Scandinavian conference. I was supposed to speak last year, but fate conspired against me. However Jeremy went, and by all accounts knocked their socks off with a love letter in praise of the hyperlink. Jeremy came back all enthused, so I set a reminder iCal as well as a mental note to attend.
Speaking & Events

XTech 2007

Last week I had the pleasure of attending "XTech 2007":http://2007.xtech.org/ in gay Paris. I've not been to XTech before, but "Jeremy":http://adactio.com/ spoke there last year and really enjoyed it, so I wanted to check it out.
Speaking & Events

Conference Reflections

In the last month I've attended four conferences, and spoken at three of them. I've already talked about "SXSWi 2007":http://www.andybudd.com/archives/2007/03/another_year_another_southby/ in some detail, so though I'd give the other events a quick write-up.