On Sunday I was invited along to the British Touring Car Championship at Knockhill Racing Circuit by Chris Brown to see his Team Sunshine.co.uk race. Chris Brown for folk don’t know him is a part owner of the holiday firm Sunshine.co.uk that started after he famously sold the Affiliate site HolidayWatchdog.com with fellow Sunshine.co.uk owner and affiliate Chris Clarkson.

I had a wicked day out at Knockhill, brought my camera along to try a bit of car action shots, and Chris even gave me a free lesson on how to take a photo that has the car in focus and the background blurred. I really need to spend more time on the other side of the dial on my Canon 40D and less in Photoshop to get these kind of effects

It was really interesting what goes on behind the scene, the crazy amount of work between each race to get the car ready and just how many people that takes. And the tyres, think they cost about £160 each and they burn almost a full set per race and they have 3 races per meeting, so no more complaints about me buying a new set once every 2 years

Everyone on the team was really nice, you could feel the passion they had for the team, was also interesting to see the amount of fans stopping by for the meet and greets, indeed I had to laugh at a few of the dads coming up and saying there 3/4 year old really wanted to meet them when clearly it was just an excuse for them to hide there star struck excitement LOL Another nice touch was the drivers gave out Sunshine.co.uk bags to everyone that visited the stand and kids that stopped by for autographs even got a free Sunshine.co.uk cap, these are very good high quality stitched caps, so had to blagged one for myself

Thanks for the invite guys and good luck with the rest of the racing season, maybe a couple more Podiums

I found out today that Rick Hubbard a person I worked with many years ago at Adgrafix (later became Hosting.com) has passed away. Rick was a really nice guy that everyone got on with so it’s sad news indeed. When I worked on support I was based in Scotland and he was based in Hawaii so we often done the hours that east coast USA folk didn’t do. I guess it’s good to remember someone with a funny story or memorable event, for me it was when we both where over at the company HQ in Sudbury as little way outside Boston for 2 weeks. Now what I didn’t know was Rick was allergic to all kinds of perfumes, so unknown to me when I was getting ready to head in to the office one day I was busy spraying myself with CK One and Lynx so I smelt nice LOL .. I go in, and was working with Rick on some server thing that needed done, and he approached the “issue” of the perfumes and his allergy, I was like oh sorry if I had known I wouldn’t have bothered and he was like no problem but cause he suffered from them pretty bad he asked would it be ok if I took this green soap stuff and used it to remove the perfumes… Was a pretty funny request that I never been asked before… maybe not the funniest of stories but certainly memorable.

My thoughts are with Sandy his wife, she will probably never see this, however felt it was worth taking a few moments to remember a friend and work colleague, I might be half way around the world but it’s amazing how the Internet has brought people together and can also get news out quickly.

Had a fantastic night last night with Chris and George from Sunshine.co.uk and Mark and Bruce from Existem AM. What I thought was out for a few beers after work turned in to an epic virtual golfing tour of a few of the worlds most famous courses. Chris has booked us in for 4 hours, provided the beers and got the food in, what a guy!

Have to say being a non-golfer and only having ever had 2 lessons in Portugal (thanks to Paul Wheatley for them) it turned out that I was actually not bad at the driving the ball far and accurate down the course, however my putting and chipping was really poor so it was a good thing we where play in 2 teams where you could play on the basis of selecting the best shot to go on with, so I was the opener for my team, then they done the rest LOL but we done well.

Anyway turns out this place has been open 18 months and I never heard of it, so if you like burgers, beer and a bit of golf where you don’t need to walk far and can get drunk by time the 18th hole comes round then I would highly recommend try The Golf Lounge out, based in West George Street, in Glasgow.

I been friends with Matt for years ever since we meet via the original A4U forum many moons ago but it was only today that I worked out that Matt shares the same birthday as my mother-in-law Catherine LOL so happy birthday to them both, hope you have a lovely day.