Inspirational Adventurers

Following the safe arrival of atlantic rower Chris Martin this week, my eye turns towards more wintery endeavours. It's difficult sometimes to see how the actions of people like Chris and Jim McNeill have relevance to the 'ordinary man' or indeed the actions of the thousands of athletes preparing to compete in Torino at the Winter Olympics. To my mind, however, it's these people that represent something we seem to forget exisits in the human condition, the desire to explore, to challenge what we can physically do and in so doing expand our awareness of our own evolution. Where we've come from, and where we can get to.

I know it's a bit trite but one of the things that Jim McNeill's expedition will forward advances in is face care. Clinique, the premium cosmetics company, has been working with Jim to develop a face cream that will protect his skin under extreme conditions. Ok, so it's hardly the wheel or fire but only through doing stuff like this do we enable forward-thinking companies to develop prodcuts that will benefit us further down the line. What will Clinique learn from this that might, for example, allow them to develop a suncream that will be more effective and - perhaps - save a clutch of people from developing skin cancer? It's a long winded extrapolation that Jim's advendutres will stop someone getting cancer somewhere down the line but I still believe it makes the point that these endeavours enhance our human understanding.

Even if it has no physical affect on the vast majority of us, it certainly has motivating aspects on those interested in the efforts the likes of McNeill, Chris Martin, Sir Ranulph Fiennes, Jane Tomlinson and so on. Since reading Chris' Blog and following Cracknell and Fogle across the atlantic I got back on the treadmills. I went to my local Sweatshop and bought myself some new Asics and am signed up for a half marathon. In some small way their heroism (and I'd defy readers not to call it that when they see what they all went through between the Azores and Antigua) has helped me get fitter, in time possibly fitter than I've ever been before.

Ok, enough moralising. Just a short note now to apologise to loyal readers for my lack of content recently. Many of you will know the extra time that's gone into the day job recently and despite all the inspirational reading matter I've not got any better at managing my time. I stilll make notes on stuff all the time (and not just who's spraying what on the walls outside my flat either, thanks MJA ...) and with any luck you'll see some more insightful guff on here about usability in the near future.