Well there was one problem - there was a whole scene of the 1995 Rugby World Cup in South Africa omitted from the film - we all know about it, the press kind of tried to keep it a secret but true Rugby followers have this story in their lore, deep and well understood.

Early on in the Rugby World Cup there was a secret meeting between Nelson Mandela and Will Carling. Notes taken by presidential aides confirm that Mandela asked, nay demanded that Carling’s men throw their semi-final to New Zealand and deliberately miss tackles on the useless and lumbering Lomu to make him appear good. It is well known in Rugby circles that England could have walked off with the Cup with ease - everyone knows that!!

Well Carling, under pressure from the RFU bowed to Mandela’s demands and Rugby history was made when the Boks lifted the cup.

It would have been nice if Eastwood had remembered the magnanimous gesture of the English team and recorded that for all to know.

But there is a darker side too, nature is savage and anyone who wants to ride the wild sea must pit themselves against brutal and harsh elements on a regular basis.

Now, I am writing this as a warning to those not in the know. You have all read about the precipitous drop in at the Mavericks, we all know about the vicious reef beneath the Pipeline’s azure hues and we have all seen recent footage from Jaws. But for some of us, in our own backyard, there is a break so dangerous, so hostile and so unpredictable that only the foolhardy would paddle out into its apparently benign break.
I am talking about the Hotpipes in Shoreham - UK.

Here nature’s forces are funnelled into a maelstrom which makes the slab at Teahupoo look like a longboarding grom’s wet dream. On the South Coast of sleepy Sussex gargantuan waves break over a reef of razor sharp coral and scrap metal. The prevailing onshore winds lash the surface into a frenzy or churning mush which means that the waves are not only unsurfable but any slight error is generally punished severely.

Moreover the break is patrolled ( I can not say surfed as these locals know the stupidity of entering the Shoreham waters ) by a gang of out of work welders with severe personality disorders. Not having the politeness of Sir Ken Bradshaw these types will bite a chunk from your board while it is still on the roof of your car. Needless to say car crime is rife in this area and it is a designated police ‘no go zone‘.

mean local surf dude at the hotpipes

As if things could not conspire more to make this place a spot to bookmark under the heading : do not surf here; there is more. It has recently been discovered that Shoreham Port Authority has been laundering Russian Uranium at the Power Station and the Geiger Counters go off the scale down at ‘the Pipes’. This radiation in the water has led to severe mutations amongst the indigenous shark population.

So, please take it from me. Do not venture down to, perhaps, the nastiest break on the planet. This is really a place to avoid.

This article was originally submitted to Magic Seaweed, but they, strangely did not want to publish this denouément of such a break.

Trouble is the massive number of creative and digital agencies who have already undergone this process - looking for a catchy, easy to spell and inspiring name to brand themselves with.
It is almost tempting to go for luck and use a generator like :http://adactio.com/extras/newmediagenerator/.
I have searched exhaustively through thinks which inspire me: surfing, sea, sun, Greece, Nietschze, clarity, sincerity, simpleness, candour but the similies and synonymns are already synonymous with existing companies.
Maybe I will just stick an “i” infront of a word.
iDare.

The Android powereed phone is like a natural progression into the area of cloud computing. I had already made forays into this via extensive usage of Google Apps and the HTC Hero just took it to a new level - cloud computing on the move.

The best thing you can say about a new gadget it that it is intuitive - and it is to the max!

Touchscreen is a joy and far more user friendly than the Omnia i900’s fiddly stylus dictated function.

What HTC have delivered here is a beatiful package which does credit to the Android’s ease of use.
Apps install simply and the market has thousands of useful packages.

Everyone keeps going on about the iphone but in reality this is only because it is their only experience of a high end smartphone, if any of them had owned a Palm Treo 600 some 8 years ago they would not be so amazed. God I get bored with iphones.

The camera is a bit dodge though.

I got to thinking a bit more, my glib immediate reaction needed some form of analysis….

Further I felt that the massive increase in user generated content online must be a very important factor in the way in which the online shopping experience has changed over the past few years. Even as little as 5 years ago the Internet was pretty much read only for the consumer, you looked and read but did not play an active role in it, much like watching TV or reading a book. Soon the blogoshpere took over and forums and niche industry sites captured a decent market share of the online audience - this was the beginning of social media.

The very fact that now people were having their say online meant that gradually the onus has shifted. For a while price comparison sites dominated the search engine results (SERPS) and the consumer was able to view many websites’ offerings side by side. I suspect Google no longer give these sites the ‘exposure’ they merit in order to maintain their grip on paid results, but that is another story.

Nowadays if you are shopping, say for a new Sat Nav device you are far more likely to ask someone, rather than blithely click on the first result from your favourite search engine, you may ask someone down the pub, at work or at the school gates, this means that you may be searching for say “Dabs” after the recommendation rather than “Sat Nav”.

Some interesting issues make themselves evident now, if you search for a company by name you are quite likely to come across user generated ( and unmoderated ) results - you will find forums, Facebook, Twitter, Bebo and consumer groups all showing up in the search results.

Social Media has given SEO a new and very powerful tool to drive targeted traffic to your site; potential customers will have gleaned trust and knowledge of your site prior to visiting so that conversion rates are much higher. This leads of course to a corresponding necessity to spend on alternative routes to market such as paid advertising.

Of course it takes time and effort to set up, track and maintain all the social media strategies but done properly this can generate increased exposure and qualified traffic. D

As new social media sites come and go you will have to keep an eye on where it will be pertinent to increase exposure and where words will be wasted, it is here to stay and traditional SEO tactics will have to change, or be left behind.

Indeed I have come to rely heavily on its additional features, my email and the handy little Route 66 Sat Nav.

It all came crashing down last week, though when the phone appeared to be maxing out its RAM - you see unlike the quite locked down Symbian Phones or the Apple OS which keeps itself removed from its applications in essence, Windows is more feminine about its associations, it takes every piece of software personally and creates registry entries for them all, cute but not without issues.

I am at fault, of course, I had started installing 3rd party apps with little care or thought and one of these must have got itself into the start up registry entry and then managed to loop through some memory intensive and insensitive routine.

A long labour of turning on, sudden realisation that hard reset was only option, spine tingling fear as I entered 1,2,3,4 and allowed the Omnia to erase ALL data on its 16gigs…..

Then, a joy, I loved turning it back on, it was like an old friend, I had forgotten just how fast it had been in its youth, even with SPB Mobile shell it leapt and danced in time with my finger taps - the baby is back and whirring.

I am even due an upgrade from Orange, who now will be offering the 3G iPhone and am completely ambivalent, sing my sweet Samsung

Naturally don’t believe everything you read. Releasing cash from your pension is a shortsighted measure for some, but then again a bird in the hand……

With the Route 66 application installed the i900 whirred into life. Sadly the battery was taking a hit as was the fuel tank of the Renault but we made it there.

The Sat Nav responded with alacrity to every sinuous and treacherous bend in the French transport system, it located the rare Garage on the peage and even warned when nearing campsites.

The phone ( the Omnia ) is a splendin travel companion, combining Sat Nav, Wifi, DivX movies, a very sturdy 5 Megapixel camera, mp3, radio, 16 gig of storage and of course a telephone. I would like more games but I guess they will come and a final reques would be a big stonking battery do that the machine stays on when you want it turned on.

I was lucky enough to chance upon a beautiful evening in Brighton at the Sally Bennis Theatre. A load of the South Coasts finest ’surferati’ was assembled to view Jolyon Hoff’s documentary/ film.

It was a finely constructed and nicely cut insight into both the east coast surf scene in he early 70’s and of course into the mind of MP.

He clearly was a tortured genius.