The footy starts in 10 minutes… it’s time for another one of my game reports. Stay tuned!

Once again, I’m on the sofa where I’ve been for 48 hours. Currently, there is something on BBC1 about muntjacks or something. I’ve probably spelt it wrong. Hmmm.

Right, it’s srarted. Theyre’ discussing the team selection. And I’m sitting, pretending I know what the hell’s going on… wonder what time kick off is.

They tannys are currently playing “Vindaloo” by Fat Les. The weather is shite too.

And now, they’re just jabbering amongst themselves. For some reason, I can’t take my eves off Alan Hansen’s scar. I keep expecting something to burst out of it and start singing

The music has changed to Carnaval De Paris by Dario G. That’s a much better tune than Vindaloo, though they both came out at roughly the same time.

HAHAHAH! John Moston says… “There have been some hair raising moments”… camera cuts to someone completely bald.

And now, it’s onto the national anthems. Cleverly, the Croatians are wearing plastic bags on their hands, the colours of the Croatian flag, which they raised when the anthem was sung… oh, wait, it was pre-planned, as England did the same thing.

0 Mins
Oh joy, they’ve kicked off.

2 mins
If you look carefully at the pitch, you can see outlines of an American Football pitch. No wonder they’re complaining about the state of it.

6 Mins
This hasn’t really got much more exciting since the last update, which to be truthful seems like half an hour ago. I don’t know why I put myself through this. Oh, for fuck’s sake. En-Ger-Land are down 1-0 after 7:30 minutes.

10 Mins
What’s quite amusing is that the local BBC news station “Look North” was pimping him as “the next great thing”, as he is originally from Carlisle. Eng-Er-Land nearly score, but don’t. How surprising

13 mins
LOL… “More Frank Carson than Scott Carson”. Best line of the night from whoever said it. Can’t remember his name. All of a sudden this match has picked up a bit of pace. I think I know why Scott Carson’s dressed in all yellow - so you can’t see the butter dripping through his fucking fingers.

14 mins
TWO NIL.

15 mins
Removed the sweary from the last update. Also fixed a couple of tpyos. I need a wee, but have a feeling I might miss another 6 Croatia goals. It’s currently taking me about 5 minutes to climb the stairs anyway.

20 mins
Wahey, a free kick. It won’t even come close. It didn’t. Corner kick time. That was even firther away than the free kick. Sigh.

22 mins
“BRB”

25 mins
Back, just in time to see Croatia attack again. I’ve moved my ankle again, therefore I’ll be in agony for about the next 20 minutes. Joy.

30 mins
It’s got boring again. Normally, at this point, I’ll stare out of the window and comment on things happening outside Mercuryvapour Towers. However, the blinds are closed, it’s pitch black, and I don’t think the neighbours are going for an indian tonight. Every time I’ve commented on a footy match (not on this site, however), they’ve went out, and came back with a brown paper bag full of spicy goodies. Free kick to England…

32 mins>
Delayed due to Croatian injury… aaaaand, we didn’t score.

39 mins
One thing I learned tonight is that the council will shortly be replacing the streetlights around here. I don’t have any further info on where or when, but surely I’ll update the site with pics when this happens. Sorry Chad. But, if you think that’s dull, you should be watching this bloody match. The Beeb are currently replaying the first goal ad infinitum, every time there’ds a dead-ball moment, “Let’s see that again, if you can bear it”…

42 mins
You know, I’ve done a few of these now, and I don’t think I’ve actually been able to comment on an England Goal. And I don’t think I’ll be able to comment on one tonight either. Every time England get the ball in their area, the blue shirts are on it, rather like bluebottles around shit. Which Eng-Er-Land are, at the minute.

45 mins
1 added minte of stoppage, and a free kick. Possibly the wankiest free kick I’ve ever seen in the whole of my life.

Half-time
Right, that’s quite possibly the worst 45 minutes of football I’ve ever seen in the whole of my entire life. Let me just point out that I have no interest in football. I’m only typing this because I’m in pain. It takes my mind off the throbbing, swollen limb at the end of my leg.

46 mins
Well, it’s back to the footy. Chris phoned me up, and thankfully rescued me from the dirge of the BBC half time commentary. No doubt they wore the tape of the first goal out to within an inch of its life, though I expect it’s very unlikely they’d actually use tape for something temporary like that, instead resorting to either hard drive or solid state media.

50 mins

Oooo! A free kick in a good position, after the crowd stop singling “the Great Escape”. AND IT’S A GOAL TO ENGERLAND! Oh, wait, no, I lied. It was shite again, followed up by awful defending by Eng-Er-Land again.

52 mins
Terry Venebales looks constipated. Frank Carson, sorry, Scott Carson saves a shot using his feet. Clearly the butter on his hands hasn’t set yet. The only times he’s touched the ball with his hands is when it’s being retrieved from the back of the net. At least there’s one thing, if we don’t qualift for Euro 2008, I don’t have to type these out any more. Woooo, or something.

54 mins
Holy cock, an England Penalty? Yes….. We won’t score. Here comes Lampard… hurry up for fuck’s sake… kick… BACK OF THE NET! Wahey. 2-1.

56 mins
A free kick now. Beckham kicks, hits a Croatian player in the bollocks.

58 mins
Croatian corner…. Frank Carson redeems himself! This is getting at least partially interesting now.

62 mins
88,091 attendants at Wembley. More wanky defening and another save by Carson.

64 mins
Yeeeeeesss. Ooops. I seemed to have let a bit of emotion out. That must mean that Eng-Er-Land have equalised. Good old Crouch.

66 mins
Er, hang on, why am I celebrating? It means that next summer’s telly will be pissed up the wall. Actually, not that it even matters. I need a wee again, brb

70 mins
I return to see another England Free kick… wasted

71 mins
Whatshisname just commented that the pitch has been spoiled by the American Football, and that Beckham is an American Footballer. I really don’t think he thought that through before he said it, personally.

74 mins
It’s at this point of the match I begin to think of which tracks The Beeb will use over the end credits, showing highlights of the match. I’ll take a wild stab at the dark and say they’ll use “I Believe In You” by Kylie Minogue, assuming the scoreline stays the same.

78 mins
Oh, cock. The scoreline didn’t stay the same. 3-2 to Croatia. John Motson said “Something Outta Nothing by Ivan Petric”. Wrong, my dear Motty, it was by Letitia Dean in 1986, and I doubt they’d use that over the end credits. I doubt they’d use it for anything ever again.

83 mins
Ah well, I can’t see them coming back now. Something which really pisses me off, for one reason, is the fact they’re using multiple footballs. Now, I’m sure you’ve all seen that annoying car insurance advert with the overly cheery pirate, and the annoyingly shit CGI parrot screaming “MULTICAR! MULTICAR!”. Well, every time the ball goes out of play, and a new one is thrown in, all I hear in my head is “MULTIBALL! MULTIBALL!” in the same parroty voice.

88 mins
Butterfingers grabs the ball with his hand, for the first time in the game, pretty much.

89 mins
Free kick to Croatia. 3 extra minutes. We’re goosed, really.

90 mins
Throw in to England. Now a corner.

92 mins
It’s all over. It must be. 20 seconds to go

Final Whistle
Oh god. It’s all up to Andorra now. If they score by the time I finish typing this sentence, England are through, if they don’t then I don’t have to do one of these for the next two years. And, Russia did win.

And, The Beeb simply chose to play the last few seconds of the MOTD theme instead of a compilation of clips. And quite rightly so. I will end this post here, there doesn’t appear to drag it out any further.

Technorati Tags: beaten, beckham, carson, croatia, england, england v croatia, euro 2008, football, footy, frank, losers, lost, scott, streetlighing, uefa, wembley

Oh, man. I am in so much pain at the minute. Yesterday, I went arse over tit down the stairs, after Daddykins left an “Absurdly big Joke Book” on there, and have ended up spraining my ankle pretty badly. So, I’m now sat downstairs, in my boxer shorts, in agony.

The irony is, the bloody joke book isn’t even that good. 703 pages of jokes such as this one…

In the middle of the night, the woman nudged her husband saying “Jack, I think I heard a noise downstairs. Are you awake?”
“No,” he replied.

I’m sure you’ll agree that’s a humdinger of a joke. A-hahaha. Oh, my, the tears are streaming down my face with laughter.

No, seriously, that’s the joke. Exactly as it’s printed.

Er, anyway. I’ve been through this sprained ankle shit before. I sprained the very same ankle back in 1997 (or the back end of 1996, not that it matters) when I tried to take a shortcut over the hedge in the front garden, but ended up getting my foot stuck in the top of it, before eventually crashing down to the floor on top of my ankle. Oooo-eee.

THe pain is pretty much the same, though the last time I did it, I went to A+E. All they did was x-ray it, say nothing’s broken, and send me on my way, advising me to keep topped up on painkillers. Now, I could do the same again, but obviously, it’d be pretty pointless. Last time, I didn’t bother with the recommended painkillers, and this time I won’t either. I’m a MAN. None of those little cissy round things for ME! Actually, I just don’t like taking tablets, and would rather have the searing pain.

It means that the last two days have been absolutely pointless. I’ve not been able to do a thing. I’m actually trying to put weight on it now, but it makes me just look like Gregory House. I even have my granddad’s old walking stick.

Seeing as I’m confined to the sofa, I might as well update this through the day. Or something.

Technorati Tags: ankle, injured, injury, joke book, l ow, pain, painfu, sprained

Some of you may remember that I have a love for a particular song called “Downtown”, by long-defunct Swedish songsters One 2 Many.

It has frustrated me for the past seven years, that although I’ve mentioned it quite a few times, I’ve never been able to post an example of what it sounds like. Finally, thanks to the wonderment of YouTube, someone has actually made a video with it in. The video itself is nothing special, as it’s just the cover of the single, but you can hear the record, and of course, that’s the main thing…

Unfortunately, I have a feeling it won’t be up there for long, despite the fact this song went out of print decades ago, so watch it while you can. You’ll probably hate it, but I don’t care. It’s one of the best songs ever as far as I’m concerned.

Technorati Tags: downtown, embedded, europop, hit, media, Music, one 2 many, scandanavian, song, vinyl, youtube

I’m in one of those moods where I look around here, and really wish there was something I could post about. I want to actually write something, but I don’t know what. I could blather on about technical stuff to do with the site, such as the fact that the main database table holding the posts for the site has went from 1.6Mb to 2.4Mb for no appearent reason, but I won’t mention that, as I’m sure it will all bore you rigid.

Of course, this lack of news-worthy updates does mean that I’ve been in work for the past 2 days. Things are not looking good either, as I start a new shift pattern, which means I will now be dealing with contracts which I have not dealt with since September, and have completely changed since then. And, it’s going to be like this for the next 4 weeks at least. I don’t know whether to laugh, cry, or have a stress breakdown. I’m going to be asking questions over everything. Now, this wouldn’t be too bad, but I’ve been there for six years, and should know more than anyone else there, but I’ve spent so much of the last few months on nightshift, I’ve been “out of the way”. Oh, it’s going to be fun. Expect some depressing posts in the next few weeks.

Chris, who regular viewers will know, is now working with Noscere at the same place.

Right, I’m now strugging for stuff to type about. I’ll resurrect another one of my abandoned postings from a few weeks ago. I wrote this and never really finished it, though I’m sick of looking at it every time I log in to the site, so here it is!

On-Demand TV. A user’s opinion.

Back in the olden days before broadband, there used to be these things called video cassettes, which got inserted into video reocrders, and with a few presses of the remote, these wonderful contraptions recorded your favourite TV shows so you can watch them later. It was timeshifting. It’s as if YOU were in charge of your television!

Times changed, and as broadband speeds got quicker, and if you skip certain things such as Sky+, your PC became your video recorder, Torrent sites sprang up all over allowing you to download entire programs for you to watch at your convenience. This brought the fun back into um… televisfun. Of course, this meant that “the man” cried out, waving the copyright law book around, screaming for justice, despite the fact, all that the average user was doing was simply the same - timeshifting.

If only there was something they could do about it… and voila! 4 years after the horse first bolted, the first “on demand” services start popping up, allowing you to download programmes to view later.

Let’s start off with 4od. it’s a great starting out, as it’s the only one I’ve actually used.

It is 6PM. I’m bored out of my skull, trying to think of something worth watching. Suddenly, I glance up at the clock with an air of excitement, then breathe a deep sigh of sadness as I realise that I have indeed, missed today’s episode of Countdown. Poo.

I load up 4od, type in “countdown”, and would you believe it, there’s today’s episode a simple mouse click away. Wahey! So, I begin the download. The estimated time to download is roughly twice the length of the show Whether it’s planned this way, or just a miracle of mathematics, it’s hard to say. It begins to download, and I wait patiently for it to finish, so I can get my daily fix of looking smugly at the TV, whilst saying “Well, I got 7, and they only got 6! Losers!”

Within minutes (well, upwards of an hour if I’m honest), I now have my freshly downloaded copy of Countdown ready.

And this is where the big difference between on-demand TV and home recording lies. Yes, that 3-letter acronym… DRM, which stands for Digital Rights Management. Now, the big, big difference between these on-demand services, and recording them yourself (or god forbid, getting them from a torrent site), is that the files you download from these services are licensed only for a limited time. Once the download is complete, it gets associated with your account, and it grants you a license to view the file for only a matter of time. I think for most things on 4od, it’s currently 2 weeks from when it finishes downloading or possibly when it first aired. As soon as you click play, however, this drops down to a maximum of 48 hours, which means you have two days to watch whatever you’ve downloaded as many times as you can handle. Not a problem for Countdown, as it’s one of those shows you don’t have to watch again…

Some programmes you have to actually pay for - I was going to download some of the earlier episodes of “Fonejacker”, only to find that they were 99p to rent, or £1.99 to buy permanently. I assume this means that it doesn’t time out.

At the minute, 4od has some of the older archive programmes available for free download, such as the entire series of Father Ted, the first series of Desmonds, and some other shows in which they’re famous for. I’m assuming this is so they can get the system tested for when it goes live officially.

All of the above may change, as the system is currently in beta. The DRM will be here to stay, that’s a guarantee, but as long as this on-demand stuff is used for timeshifting purposes only, then it could be a winning formula. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have Des ‘n’ Carol to watch…

And, that’s the end of the quote. Since I watched that, I haven’t really bothered with 4od, or in fact, any telly for that matter. On the subject of the box, however, I’m disappointed to see that “I’m a celebrity” has returned to our screens. This is certainly something that on-demand TV shouldn’t be used for. It’s diabolically bad.

Have you noticed, that each of these “reality” shows, has at least one “celebrity” which the whole world expect to make an absolute prick of themselves? The original “Celebrity” Big Brother started with the mental breakdown of Vanessa Feltz, yet you can’t remember anyone else in that particular season. Shortly after, it was Michael Barrymore. And then…. oh, let’s just cut to the point… this particular series has… Christopher Biggins.

This will be the position of my head and hand, should my TV remote accidentally stray away from the continued series of Top Gear and Buzzcocks.

One “celebrity” in there, which I do have a bit of an interest in, is Marc Bannerman. A blog which I frequently read is one entitled “Shit Sandwich”, and I posted a comment on there, which I shall copy and paste, as I can’t be arsed typing it out again.

“Marc Bannerman played one of the greek ones in Eastenders (or Italian, can’t remember), though I remember him much more from Al Murray’s “Time Gentlemen Please”, where he played the rival landlor Greg Thompson, whose catchphrase always involved him implying that he had a massive cock. ”

Of course, that’s going to get a load of unintentional results from search engines, but you may remember that a few years ago, I went to see Time Gentlemen Please being recorded, so I’ve actually seen him live. Typing this in here will allow me to never mention it again, or at least for the duration of this series, because I subconsciously assume that everyone who knows me reads this website. Bwahaha.

Um… Andy Fordham’s lost weight, hasn’t he? Good for him.

Righgt, I think I’ll leave it here. I’ve not done too badly, considering that an hour or so ago, I had nothing at all to type about.

Technorati Tags: 4 on demand, 40d, andy fordham, celebrity, christopher biggins, facepalm, iacgmooh, marc bannerman, television, telly, work

Aftr the disappointment of my old laptop spontaneously combusting, I did indeed rush out, and hammer my credit card, and now have a shiny new laptop, to replace the posthumously named “Carrie”. It shall appear, on my nextwork as “Carrie-2″. Oh, how imaginitive. Of course, if you’ve visited my flickr, or are on my friends list, you’d know that…

The specs are much better than the original machine. AMD Turion, 2Gb RAM, 160Gb HDD and ATI Radeon X1200, presumably the laptop version.

We ended up rushing through to PC World on Tuesday, in order to pick one up. The model I originally opted for happened to be out of stock (typical), so I ended up getting one a little more expensive, but with better specs

Setting it up seemed to take for ever. Although it came “preinstalled”, it still took around an hour for Windows Vista to configure itself. It then took about another half an hour to manually reconfigure the look of Vista so it doesn’t look shiny.

You may have remembered my informative guide to Windows Vista back in February. I’m not quite sure whether my opinion has changed. Obviously, I’ve had the chance to use it a bit more in-depth now, but I don’t think there’s any great advantage over Windows XP SP2. As I mentioned earlier, I switched off as much of the processor-wasting eye candy as I could find, and this improved it greatly. I always believe that operating systems should be functional, and not try to be too pretty. Those split-seconds where windows fade in and out all add up, and as I’m no more than three weeks away from my 28th birthday, I don’t exactly have time to waste. (says he, who is up at 10AM, writing a blog entry)

The next step was to get rid of all of the installed crap. There was some photo uploader rubbish, which allowed you to turn photos into books… pointless. There was also a trial of Office, and Works. Both of them entirely useless, and uninstalled without opening them. I don’t know whether I’ll bother putting any type of office app on there, bit if I do, I’ll just stick with Open Office. It does anything I want from an office package.

Oh, and I managed to get all of the data from the old laptop, but not without a performance. On Monday night, I ordered a hard drive caddy from ebay. It arrived Wednesday morning. I was a little suspicious about the build quality of said device - there was absolutely no quality to the unit whatsoever. Flimsy metal construction, with a little bit of circuit board at one end. Still, it only had to last until I’d copied the important parts of the HDD over.

I was about to format it, when I realised it had totally omitted my old user directory, as, on this new system, I wasn’t the “owner”. This is obviously where all of the “important” stuff is kept, so I have to make sure this was copied over,. Somehow I’d managed to fight through the confusing and contradictory security errors to copy everything that was needed.

That’s a picture (noooo, really?) of it, connected up to the laptop. What can’t be seen is that it also takes 2 USB ports, one for power, and one for data. That blue LED is also stupidly bright.

What is it, and the current surge in popularity of the blue LED? Why is it, that almost every appliance since the PS2 needs to have at least one of them? They looked cool when they first came out, but now they’re just overused. Sigh. The DVD player downstairs has two blue LEDs, the laptop has about 6, both of my proper external hard drives have blue LEDs in them, my card reader has one just as bright,and equally as annoying, expecially in a dark room. Windowcam3 also has a blue LED case fan. Grrr. I don’t like them much anymore.

Oh, and on Tuesday night, the first houses in Raby Road and York Road erected their Xmas decorations. Not the same houses as last year, as they’re now boarded up, presumably awaiting demolition.

Well, I’m off to bed now, to catch some much needed Z’s before work in 9 hours.

Technorati Tags: blue LED, caddy, carrie, hard drives, laptop, new, pc world, raby road, vista, windows, xmas decorations