Both of my coaches, Emma Davies & Richard Beamish, attended the competition. Which was nice of them and very much appreciated!  We arrived at the rink at 7am, in time for my practice session at 7:30 am to 8:00 am.  A further two minutes of warm up time was permitted prior to the start of my event.   Then after all the time spent nervously waiting, it was over in 1 minute and 37 seconds!  The presentation of medals was made just before 6pm.

I surprised myself and won Silver, and relaxed after my event to watch the other skaters compete, all of whom performed to a really high standard.  Despite the long day and the nerves prior to competeing I had a great time and really enjoyed myself.  I hope to return next year…

I skated in a custom made outfit made by Joanne at Bunny Hop Skatewear.  Photos from the competition are below, the video can be viewed here: video.

Mandriva Linux install is very simple and the OS works well, however I was unable to configure an encrypted home folder using Mandriva. So I switched to a customised Ubuntu distribution called Ubuntu-eee (now known as Easy Peasy – don’t know why). This generally worked well but wifi was temperamental and USB_PERSIST support was missing.

Finally, I tried Eeebuntu 2 and after installing both Base and NBR (NetBook Remix) versions I opted to use Base which included everything needed to get started installing applications that I needed and allowed me to install only those applications that I actually needed.

My Asus EeePC now runs the following software:

• Eeebuntu 2.0 Base
• OpenOffice 3
• Firefox 3 – Web Browser
• Thunderbird – Email Client
• Pidgin – Instant Messaging Client
• Picasa 3 – Google’s excellent photo organiser
• F-Spot – Photo organiser – useful for uploading to Gallery2
• GIMP – Image Editor
• FireFTP – Firefox add-in – FTP Client
• Cups-PDF – PDF printing
• Dropbox – File Synchronisation
• Stellarium – useful to star gazing
• Apache, PHP & MySQL – for web site development and testing
• Totem – video player
• Banshee – iTunes like audio player
• Audacity – Easy to use sound editor
• LocalePurge – removal all unnecessary language files and free up valuable storage space.
• Wine – run windows applications within Linux!

I decided that it would be fun to try to skate, having only been on the ice once before as a child (I couldn’t skate then so what made me think to try in the middle of a crowded shopping centre I will never know).  With no tuition, or idea of what I was doing, I stepped onto the ice  spurred on by my own determination to make my way around the rink without having to hold onto the barrier.

After a lot of effort I was able to make my way around without holding onto the barrier, although my feet were in agony due to me relying entirely on the inside edge of my blades.

The rink was very quiet and so a lot of very friendly shoppers that had stopped to watch those of us mad enough to step onto the ice were talking to me and giving me advice as I struggled round the rink.

Despite the sheer look of fear and concentration I did have fun, as you may be able to tell from at least one of the photos below.  I also met some very nice, helpful and friendly Canadians during the hour or so that I was on the ice.  More importantly, it started my interest in a new hobby, and one which has become very addictive.