Monday, January 31, 2005

Is it me or does the Premier League more further from reality ever season? Is it a ‘sport’ or is it a ‘business’? If it’s a sport then it’s an extremely polarized one with league centred on the holy trinity of Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester United and the other clubs picking up the leftovers. If it’s a business then it’s shockingly run with the Premier League alone being some £500 million in the red, not helped of course by Chelsea’s £88 million loss for last year. Fortunately Roman Abramovich underpins the club with a loan of £115m thereby preventing KPMG righting the club off. Even more bonkers is that for the season 2003/4, 76% of the clubs income was consumed in wages. Most other clubs in the Premier League run at a more modest but still trouser wetting 55%. So how can clubs dig themselves out of the mounting debt? Well the obvious one is to bring the wage bill down but with player power in the ascendancy and the FA neutered by incompetence that seems as unlikely as teams not 'tapping' players outside the transfer window. Maybe every team needs a Russian billionaire but I’m not sure there’s that many to go round.

Friday, January 28, 2005

Profanity Alert! As a good corporate citizen I thought I’d take a gander at the new MSN Spaces and see it adds anything to the blogging experience. It has some neat built in features like a picture galley, lists and is pretty easy to setup; that is as long as you don’t have name like mine. Imagine my surprise, although in retrospect I’m surprised I was surprised, when I couldn’t get past the profanity filter as it blocked both my name and a URL link to this very site. So as the troops at Boing Boing point out you can call your 'Space' "Butt Sex is Awesome", I'm persona non grata. Prove is any was needed that most censorship just makes the censors look stupid.

Tuesday, January 25, 2005

On Yer Bike! I have the kind of job which allows me to split my time between the two MS offices in Reading and Soho. I can work from home but Karen does likewise and experience tells me we wouldn’t get much done! When I go up to the Soho office, which is about eight and half miles away, I’ve started cycling. It was hard work to begin with but is slowly getting easier; hard work as I’m using my ‘old skool’ mountain bike whose low gearing means when I’m peddling like a maniac other riders pass me with ease. What is apparent though is that cycling in London should be reclassified as an ‘extreme sport’. You sadly are at the bottom of the traffic food chain.

Monday, January 24, 2005

How are you feeling today? According to a Dr. Cliff Arnall, who specializes in seasonal disorders at the University of Cardiff in Wales, today is the Most Depressing Day of Year. He has devised a formula that takes into account weather, time since Christmas, monetary debt and motivational levels and reckons the 24th of Jan is the low point for all of these. I suppose it's about this time that all those credit card bills begin to land on the mat, the weather is not great, New Year resolutions are a distant memory and there's not much to look forward to until the spring. Some might say one day ain't enough.

Saturday, January 22, 2005

Oppps... Daz has already pointed out one problem. The standard blogger comments tool; you have to have an account with Blogger to leave comments....that sucks! I'll remove that and insert the old one. And unfortunately if you use a new template you have to reapply your all custom code. Boo again!

Friday, January 21, 2005

The builders are in... Well almost. In a fit of madness I decided to mod the blog template. Now my HTML skills rank alongside my skills a fighter pilot or brain surgeon as poor to non existant, so bear with me whilst I fathom the meanless lines of code that make up the blog template. In the meantime you might find this interesting. Have you ever heard one band and wondered if there's any of a similar style worth cheacking out? Music Plasma might help...funky too.

Tuesday, January 18, 2005

As I mentioned the other day one of the things I’ve picked up again after a long break, if twenty years can be called a ‘break’, is the guitar. I played a little bit back at school and university and I was frankly crap. Well a twenty year hiatus hasn’t changed that but despite the sore and still rather clumsy fingers I’m really enjoying and it and even after a few weeks seem to be making some progress. Like most things you’re not use to ‘little and often’ seems the best approach, which translates to 15 to 20 mins a day. Which is about right ‘cos anymore and the fingers hurt, although already the tips on left hand are noticeably harder than the ones on the right. My trusty Squier Bullet has brushed up nicely although the pickups have yellowed over the years and the chrome is well past its best on the machine heads. Not bad for what is a level entry guitar. So level entry in fact Squier now only do in one colour Henry Ford style and have removed the tremolo arm to keep the cost down. It still makes a reasonable sound and fortunately is still straight despite languishing in the loft for sometime. I suppose at some point I might want to move up to a more quality piece of kit, nothing too grand maybe a low cost Epiphone or something. The Les Paul Gold Top copies look very ‘rock and roll’.

Friday, January 14, 2005

So what’s grabbed my attention in the last 24 hours? Harry Windsor proves once again it’s about time he added ‘village idiot’ to his CV. It is doubly ironic that it’s the 50th Anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, and if he took five minutes to look at his family tree he’d see it has a rather Teutonic flavour. What did George Santaynna say about the lessons of history? As I type this the Huygens has started it’s decent through the Titan atmosphere and will land on the surface about lunchtime. The ESA have no idea what it land on but at least it won’t be anywhere near a gaff prone member from the House of Windsor.

Thursday, January 13, 2005

What to absorb all the latest news stories in one go, or least try? Have a look at Newsmap. Just select the type of news you're interested and or the region. It's a bit full on to begin with but it's a handy way to see what's going on.

Tuesday, January 11, 2005

No update for a while. Sorry I've just been a lazy so-and-so...so I'll do a quick update in bite sized chunks or if I'm feeling lucid maybe more. Christmas was quiet for a change, no relatives and no hassle. I think I might be on to something. Which gave me the chance to finish Dan Brown's The Da Vinci code. It's full of great ideas all nicked from other places of course, but that's not the problem, it's the writing. Dan forgot he was writing a novel and wrote a film script (well a synopsis anyway) and a poor one at that as the plot sign posting is appalling. And the final puzzle if you don't solve it about twenty pages before the characters, and boy are they slow at times, then you should hold your head in shame. I can see what the fuss is about as the central ideas are really rather good but I can't help feeling it could have been sooooo much better. But hey what do I know...Dan's minted as a result of this book. As a Christmas treat I purchased a Denon DHT 500 SD home cinema based on the cracking reviews it's had, and lets be honest the price. Top piece of kit and without doubt the best all-in-on currently available. Which gave me the chance to watch all three extended versions of Lord of the Rings, which by my calculations weights in at almost twelve hours. But it is good, actually it's better than good, it's a Tour de Force. None of the extra bits seem casually bolted on and it answers some of the questions left unanswered by the theatrical releases, namely what happened to Sauruman for one and why was Boromir so keen to lay his hands on the Ring. I also found in the loft an old Squier Bullet I'd long since forgotten about and haven't strummed for about twenty years. Well some new strings and a good clean has changed all that and as I speak the fingers on my left hand are rather sore. Another chum of mine joins me and the growing number of ex Lotus employees at MS towers, now I'll have someone to play table football with. Welcome Mr Hollands. And lastly but by no means least the Indian Ocean disaster. If you haven't already given generously please do, and make sure the company you work for does so as well.