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Football Gaffes Galore

| Friday, March 30, 2007
BBC3, Friday, 9pm - 10pm.

1 hour of deeply embarrased footballers. Serves them right for being so grossly overpaid.

I should probably have been out enjoying myself, and not sitting in front of the box like a total sadcase, but this show eased my pain considerably.

Highlights:
Solano, Shearer and Barton line up a cleverly disguised free-kick routine involving lots of feints and ball-hurdling. Barton runs at the ball, jumps over it - the wall breaks a little. Shearer and Solano both run at the ball, pretend to swing at it, run past it an then realise that one of them was supposed to strike it. But who? Hilarious.... Wankers.

The Double Dixon:
I know, it sounds like filth, but I'm actually referring to Dixon's thumping diving header past Seaman and his incomprehensibly brilliant lob from 30 yards over the head of... yes, you guessed it, the same pony-tailed 'keeper as was lobbed by the "only-slightly-less-skillful-than-Lee-Dixon" Ronaldinho. Oh, and Nayim (only that was from about 50 yards). And then there was that Koeman chipped free-kick everyone in the world could see coming from a mile away, except ol' Davey.

Pick of the bunch:
That Pires/Henry penalty. Wtf was he thinking of?


What a great show. It was like watching YouTube, only you could actually see the ball.

This guy knows how to blog

| Thursday, March 29, 2007
Disturbing stuff, but it shows what you can do with the Blogger API.

http://9961.blogspot.com/

Ireland 1 - 0 Slovakia

| Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Now that was more like it. A spirited performance, especially in the first half, when Ireland got the ball down, under control and attacked.

Doyle, Duff and Ireland were all excellent and Dunne, McShane and Given were rock solid. The rest were so-so (except for O'Shea, I mean - can anyone tell me what he actually does?). Hunt always looks enthusiastic and energetic, and despite coming across a bit brainless, he beats players and gets crosses in. Finnan was playing left-back again, which doesn't suit him, although he played fairly well.

As so often happens when a manager doesn't have confidence in himself (or his team), 1-0 at HT seems like a good result, and they instruct the team to defend deep for the next 45 mins. As expected, this lead to a nervous end to the match that could have finished in disaster, but for a very good stop by Given.

Still, 3 points and all that shite.

HT analysis from Brady, Giles and Dunphy was as enlightening as ever, with Giles confusing the crap out of O'Herlihilihy talking about how "goalkeepers" can be selfish or not look up in front of goal (he was talking about Doyle not giving the ball to Duff when he was in a better position). I think Giles is going a bit soft in his old age, either that or he's doing his best impression of Big Jack "Er, whatsisname?" Charlton and Sir Bobby "I used to manage Porto when they were the biggest club in Spain" Robson.

European Championship Qualifying : Group D Table
28 March 2007 22:01


P
W
D
L
F
A
GD
PTS
1 Germany 5 4 1 0 21 3 18 13
2 Czech Republic 6 4 1 1 15 4 11 13
3 Rep of Ireland 7 4 1 2 12 8 4 13
4 Slovakia 6 3 0 3 15 11 4 9
5 Wales 5 2 0 3 8 9 -1 6
6 Cyprus 6 1 1 4 9 16 -7 4
7 San Marino 5 0 0 5 1 30 -29 0


Look at how Northern Ireland are doing! The world has clearly gone mad...

European Championship Qualifying : Group F Table
28 March 2007 22:58


P
W
D
L
F
A
GD
PTS
1 Northern Ireland 6 4 1 1 10 7 3 13
2 Sweden 5 4 0 1 9 4 5 12
3 Spain 5 3 0 2 9 6 3 9
4 Denmark 4 2 1 1 7 2 5 7
5 Latvia 4 1 0 3 4 3 1 3
6 Liechtenstein 5 1 0 4 3 15 -12 3
7 Iceland 5 1 0 4 4 9 -5 3

10 Tips for Creating Your Web Site

|
These Global Knowledge white papers are very good. This one on web site creation is not bad at all.

Yet another use for Google(tm) Docs & Spreadsheets

|
Did you know that you can publish post to Blogger powered blogs using Google(tm) Docs & Spreadsheets?
Neither did I, until now. And it doesn't do a bad job, either.

Get to know Windows Vista's new bootloader architecture

|
Another fine article from TechRepublic.

Read it here.

TechRepublic's 10 Things...

|
...to look for in an anti-virus application.

Read all about it.

(you'll probably have to sign-in with your zdnet/techrepublic account first)

Blood Diamond...

| Monday, March 26, 2007
... is an excellent film. Go and see it while it's still on in the cinemas - or you could t0rr3nt it, not that I'm advocating that sort of thing. Better to see it on the big screen in all its glory, in any case. Djimon Hounsou is unbelievably good. So is Di Caprio.

Solid gold... or diamond... whatever. Just see it.

musicovery

|
Jim sent me a link to a cool kind of radio...

http://www.musicovery.com/

It seems to use that engine I can't remember the name of... I'll look into it and get back to you with the name.

Why I Love Opera

|
The Opera browser is so darn great



This is why... enjoy.

Diskeeper vs. Perfect Disk

| Sunday, March 25, 2007
Is there really any competition for Diskeeper?
Have we, the Diskeeper faithful, been missing anything all these years?

Have a quick peek at the debate raging at driverhaven and decide for yourself.