The grand total to date stands at £656, give or take a few pence. Not bad at all considering that I have yet to approach family and friends and still have a lot of people at work to hassle about it.

Remember, if you’re not sure about sponsoring me then go and sponsor me via Daisy who will be imbibing copious amounts of legal stimulants to stay awake blogging for 24 hours the same weekend.

I’m still discovering the joys of Musicmatch Radio. Despite moaning the other week that they censored NIN’s closer, I found yesterday that other songs haven’t been censored. (And as I write this, NIN’s “Wretched” is playing in all of it’s uncensored glory. God still sticks his ‘fucking’ arm though!)

In addition, the related artists feature is improving. Today I decided to start by typing in “Front Line Assembly” as the base artist. The list that got returned was: Front 242, VNV Nation, Ministry, NIN, KMFDM, Bauhaus, Lords of Acid, Killing Joke, Nitzer Ebb, Die Krupps, Skinny Puppy and a couple more I’m unfamilar with.

The afternoon is looking up. Let’s rock!

The principle behind Funjunkie’s “Summer Burn” is to “burn 2 cds of your favourite summer tunes”.

The first two tracks I’ve considered putting on the cds are “Paint it Black” and “Dead of Winter”.

I may be going around this the wrong way.

Hands up who knows what the score was between Croatia and England the other day?

Hands up who knows which housemates are up for eviction this week?

Hands up who knew that Iran had “paraded” some blindfolded British troops on the television yesterday?

Hands up all those who knew that a militant Muslim group in Iraq were holding Kim Sun-il, a South Korean translator working in Iraq, as hostage?

Hands up all those who knew that he had been beheaded on video in exactly the same manner as Nick Berg was just over a month ago and that the video is freely available on the internet?

Hands up all those who know what page of today’s Guardian the story of Mr Kim’s death made?

Hands up all those who know who Paul Johnson was?

It doesn’t go away, you know.

Tonight was probably the windiest and wettest it could possibly be for a midsummer fun run. Not that I was going to let that put me off!

The run tonight went very well. I finished the course in 27:03 which is 1:20 faster than last year. It felt better too although I was definitely struggling towards the end. That’s six kilometres at 4:30/km. Oh, and being the Action Man that I am, I squeezed in a ~5km jog at lunchtime too.

This bodes well for two more races that I have before Tough Guy. The first is the Serpentine “Last Friday of the Month” 5km race around Hyde Park. My best time for that so far is 23:19 so it would be nice to knock a few seconds off that.

Then in the first week of July is the JP Morgan Chase run. It’s an event I enjoy but last year it was blisteringly hot and I suffered. Still managed the 3.5 mile race in 26:25 though. It would be nice to get under 26 mins this year.

Of course, none of this is really that useful for Tough Guy because I know I can run 5/6 km and these races are generally flat and on hard surface. What I’m going to have to start working on from this weekend onwards is the stamina. Perhaps I might get a chance to thrash out a 5+ mile run over more “challenging” terrain on Saturday.

As they seem to be the latest in-thing, I got myself a Gmail account. So far, there have been no trumpets, no fireworks, no ticker tape parade and no scantily clad women throwing themselves at me.

What’s all the fuss about? Why are people offering to buy one for $25 or auctioning them off? I now have a Gmail address which will go alongside my hotmail addresses, yahoo address, and the 20+ other email addresses that I have.

Gmail schmemail!

UPDATE: Gmail is great, smashing, super. I thoroughly recommend them to everyone. Now go over to Daisy’s and give to charity by buying one from her. *ahem*

The Underwater Tunnel was first unveiled in the January Tough Guy earlier this year. The obstacle consists, suprisingly, of a tunnel. That goes underwater.

There’s an article on the Tough Guy website which shows the construction of the tunnels, designed to appear like you’re swimming under ice. Rather than ice, however, only clear perspex was used. The advantage of this is that the tunnels will be light.

That won’t be much help for those of us who will be keeping their eyes shut so as not to lose their contact lenses!

There are two tunnels to choose from. The first has two air pockets which break up the tunnel and allow you to catch your breath half way through. The second is more challenging and has no air pockets at all. It’s not a challenge in itself, but after the Country Miles and the previous ten obstacles, it’s going to be tough.

Being a qualified diver, I love being underwater. I want to do the single breath tunnel at least once on the two laps. Lack of visibility doesn’t concern me as I’ve dived at night and in zero viz before now. But making it through on one breath is the order of the day. Fortunately, there are safety divers to pull us out if we get into difficulty. I hope!

A “deep, sticky, stinking pond” is the only way I’ve heard this described. As with Dead Leg Swamp, this is going to be difficult to run through. While down at the gym today, I figured that the only way to do any training for these obstacles is to dig out my old ankle weights and do a mile or two in those. It won’t help with the stickyness but it will give an idea of what it’s like to run when you’re shoes are weighed down.

I’m sure the smell is going to make me a big hit with the ladies too!

It has taken me half an hour to get nearly ?250 in sponsorship for doing Tough Guy. That’s just from a few people in my department and I have at least fifty people in the rest of the company to go. It started well with some of the managers donating ?20 each but as soon as we got to my team, the average plummeted to a fiver. Cheers guys! >:-/

I have only had one argument about Gift Aid from a stubborn wench who refused to tick the Gift Aid box because “I don’t want to have to go through the hassle of declaring it on my tax return.” Yeah, right, cheers for your generosity, love.

The situation with Gift Aid is this: if you are a UK taxpayer then a charity can claim a tax refund from any donation you make. This works out at 28p on every pound. In other words, for every pound you donate, the charity receives ?1.28.

If you’re a higher rate tax payer then you are eligible to claim back more tax from any donations you’ve made. So, for example, if you donate ?100 to a charity, the charity receives ?128.21 and you, being a higher rate tax payer, can claim back ?23.08 meaning that you have only paid a total of ?76.92.

Of course, there’s no explaining this to this woman who is one of those people who is right about everything. *sigh*

A quick update on the sponsorship front, I am now up to £241.03 on Justgiving. Big thanks to Mer, Snowman and Bingo for their generous donations.

Also, a big shout out to Daisy who is taking part in the 24 hour charity blogging event “Project Blog” this year. She has chosen me, or rather, Macmillan as her charity and is getting her readers to sponsor her efforts by donating to my event. Confused? It’s simple really! We’re both raising money for Macmillan and you can sponsor us both by using the donation page I’ve set up on Justgiving.

Incidentally, non-UK people can still donate as long as you have a valid credit card. You have to enter the amount in sterling (GBP) but you can work out how much you want to give in dollars using any reputable currency converter. (I normally use Oanda.com)

Tomorrow I start working on the offline donations in earnest!