Oh the Heat

So the heat messed me up pretty badly today.

I had to cycle into work, as is usual on a Friday.  It's a thirty minute ride, but by 8.30 AM it was already 28 degrees, with a humidity that rivals rainforests.  It took me about two hours before my body was able to regulate its' own temperature, and by then I'd already had to teach a class.  I'm pretty sure it was the worst class ever, but I can't remember...  I've only just managed (five hours later) to get rid of my headache from this morning.  The upshot - don't bike anywhere when it's this humid.  It's not even the heat so much as the humidity.  Dry-heat is preferable.  I don't know the exact statistic, but I believe it's around a hundred million times more pleasant to have a 35 degree heat with 10% humidity than a 30 degree heat with 98% humidity.

It's also come to my attention that I've been bitching about the heat for a month now.  I honestly don't know why, but it's really messing me up.

On a bizarre side-note, the average Japanese person is terrified of lightening.  They warned me about lightening, pointing out that 'when it is thunder, flash from sky... flash is dangerous.'  Well, aside from the Engrish (I would love to be able to say even that much in Japanese at this point), I find it incredible to think that they think no other country in the world has thunderstorms.  I've been asked if England has thunder and lightening, whether it rains a lot, (I thought England was notorious for that) and whether it's dangerous in England.

I would say I'm in far more danger being here, as I'm at least half a foot taller than average.  Considering the fact that right now it's thundering, and there's a wickedsick storm outside, I'll have to do my best granny impression and ride my bike bent over double.

Or not, considering open plains are not common here.

The Week in News

Chinese people attacked in Paris.  Imagine if an English politician said it had nothing to do with race - they'd be crucified.

The mayor of the 20th district, Frederique Calandra, said she believed the attacks were not motivated by racism.

"Chinese people are attacked very often, not because of racist problems but because thugs have this opportunity of making money easily, because Chinese people are used to carrying cash - a lot of cash," said Ms Calandra.

That would put her out of a job in England.

Japans fastest train looks like a giant penis.  Considering the obvious aerodynamic advantages of such a design, does that mean we will begin seeing Usain Bolt run stark naked?  Only time will tell.

Worlds most inappropriate advertisment.  It's pasted next to a church (who cares about the church part?) and opposite a school.  Whoops.  Actually thinking about it, an advertisment of this nature, posted anywhere, will be seen by children and christians.  Post it on the side of a road and it will be seen, post it on the side of a house and it will be seen.  The point is - advertisments are designed to be seen.  It doesn't actually matter a jot where it's put.

Worlds fastest train cuts a ten hour journey down to three hours.  Them there chinese be up to no good again.  I predict a horrific crash, the government will blame it on dissidents and communism will strengthen its grip on the country for a short while 'in the name of personal freedom and security.'  Oh wait, that's England and America.

It's about 31 degrees or so, and humid enough to make resting my hands on this hot laptop intolerable; so that's all for this weeks news roundup.


On a side-note - The two funniest comments I've ever seen on a youtube video are both present at the top of this one.

On a completely unrelated note - I attempted a pet project last night, of live-streaming my desktop over the internet (just to see if it could be done, really) and I got it working, except for one annoying bug.  It would randomly flicker all over the place, making it a pain in the backside to watch.  Epilepsy inducing.  I'm running an Nvidia card with two screens, and frankly speaking, it could be one of a million different things causing it.

Also, if you want to find a way of stressing out a new computer, try livestreaming something.  The comp needs to continuously capture the video, transcode it, and upload it on the fly.  I was averaging 60% CPU usage when I was in a game.  Taxing stuff.

Ideas welcome on how to fix the flickering.

Swimming

So I went swimming for the first time in Japan.  I went to a small local pool.  It had half a dozen lanes set up in the normal way.

One lane was set up for the elderly to walk around, one lane for practice, and the others for people of varying speeds.

What interested me was the fact that everyone was slow.  Regardless of lane, everyone moved at a snails pace.  There were very few people in the pool, luckily, which meant I was able to go for 50 metres, duck under the lane and carry on in another.  This allowed me to get a bit of fitness in, while not stressing my bruised foot.  Prior to this I visited the gym.  Jumping into the pool after being in the gym is a glorious feeling.  They also have an entire ceiling shower feature, so you walk through a wall of water before you hit the pool.  It's quite cool.

What wasn't cool: a brother/brother combination intent on being social rejects.  They were incredibly bad swimmers, and would wait for me to reach their end of the lane before setting off, forcing me into a different lane.  Realising their tactic of stopping me swimming in a single lane wasn't working, they split up between two lanes, hoping to stop me entirely.  Luckily, there were three free-moving lanes, and I simply hopped into the free lane whenever necessary.  Let's just hope they don't have another brother.  (One was eighteen, the other fourteen.  Kids in Japan lack the maturity of Western counterparts, that is to say, when you meet an eighteen year old in Japan, he's actually mentally sixteen.  Extremely annoying.)

This aside, I had to go to the gym on my crappy backup bike, because I got another puncture.  This time it was a five centimetre staple.  Nice.

In related news, it was thirty-three degrees indoors, with a humidity hitting 95%.  I had three ice-cold showers yesterday, and I would still be sweating within ten minutes of leaving them.  I'm talking ice-cold, dropping my core body temperature to hypothermia levels.  I would come out shivering and still be sweating.

I don't think I've ever had heat affect me this badly before.  In Korea everyone has air-conditioning.  In Japan, my room doesn't, and schools refuse to turn theirs on because they have no money.  With my pay, I can believe that they're broke.

The upshot is, headaches every day.  Sweating when I wake up, having been sweating when I was asleep, sweating in the shower, sweating on the bike ride to school, sweating in class, sweating in the teachers room.

It's extremely hot.

Match Report, Pig Nose

So I played a rugby game on Sunday, with the ex-Tochigi (county) champions, Sano rugby club.  (Not to be confused with the professional outfit stationed in the same area, these guys are very much amateur.)

Some ten years ago, this club was a force to be reckoned with, apparently.

Anyway, the short synopsis of events, before the long unveiling of the action as I remember it, is as follows:  It was hot.  We only played for thirty minutes each way, because it was hot.  I had a headache after five seconds of running around.

So both teams were ready for the kickoff, with a lengthy preparation time deemed necessary for the newly formed Sano back line; expectation was high.  At least until we started playing together, and the language barrier was immediately erected.

After some confusion (a lot of confusion on my behalf) we ironed out four moves.  A couple of switches and a couple of miss-passes.  Not exactly a fearsome arsenal, but it was the best we could do.

We were lucky enough to kick-off, and after an immediate knock-on, me and my inside centre (I was playing number 13, (Outside centre) performed a switch.  That was 1/4 of our moveset used already.  Thirty seconds as we were into the game, it worked nicely.  I went straight through a gap in their defensive line, barely got by the full-back (he was close up against the back line, so I had to put my best foot forward to dance past him) and scored under the posts.  I would like to say this set the tone for a one-sided game, but rather it just proved to everyone that defence is not important to these guys.

Essentially, every time we scored, they scored too.

After them scoring (within five minutes) we were pinned inside our own 22.  Our defence (somehow) managed to hold out for a few phases, and rather than build pressure, the opposition attempted a cheeky kick under the radar.  Luckily, our fullback was also English, and has watched enough France games to know this was coming.  He dabbed the ball down and immediately threw it forwards to our number 10.  Sensing an opportunity, he kicked the ball a centimetre over the line, picked it up, drew a man and off-loaded the ball to me.  Now, watching a 110kg Samoan about to tackle you may seem intimidating - but having a whole pitch and three or four players to get past, in an oven, is even more intimidating.  So I went for a run.

By about halfway I had managed to outmanoeuvre a few of their defenders, and by the ten metre line only one man was chasing me.  By the 22 I was easing back for fear of blowing a gasket, and, when I did eventually reach the line, I flopped over.  Tiring stuff.

Apparently, the water-guy could tell how hot I was by how red I was, and would throw varying amounts of water at me as a result.  It would take about three or four minutes to cool down enough to go on another run, at which point my headache would return.

Around the halfway stage of the first half, a curious incident occurred that hinted at the nature of Japanese rugby players.  We had just knocked on, and there was a scrum forming.  I was jogging back into position, head down, willing my headache away, when one of their flankers shoulder charged me.  Bearing in mind the whistle was blown a good 30 seconds before this incident, and that the opposition player knocked me on my ass in front of everyone, it was incredible that nothing came of it.  I can't comment on whether the referee saw it directly, because I was on my backside and not really aware of anything other than that fact.  I can only assume he didn't, or he really hated foreigners (he ignored me all match, when I was asking him if we were on-side at scrums and rucks, eventually one of the linesmen took pity on he and helped me out).  This event, coupled with a late rucking challenge (late because the whistle was blown fifteen seconds before the challenge occurred) where I was bridging over a ball and ensuring their players couldn't reach it, when one of their players just ran full pelt into my side (illegal because, he came in from the side and it was an aeon after the whistle was blown to end play) giving me a nice bruise on my hip.  I should point out that it was our ball, so they shouldn't have been challenging, and the guy who ran into me was a dick.

These events, coupled with a few more niggly half-punches, have led me to conclude that Japanese rugby players are filthy.  I would expect one or two of these things to happen in England, per match.  Not all of them.  Especially not all of them to me.  I'm not even a forward for Christs sake; that stuff goes on in the scrum, not open play in front of the referee.  Seeing as very little (if anything) happened to anyone else on the team, I can only assume one alternative.  They're extremely xenophobic, and this is their outlet.  Either way, no harm was done, and I'm more than happy with my performance (despite one enormous, gut wrenching mistake towards the end.)

So we resume, halfway through the first half.  Our fullback was a fellow Englishman (the only 2 white people on the pitch) who proved his worth several times.  Throughout the next period, he fielded a number of kicks and stopped a number of breakaways.  It was all-round good stuff.  During this period I think I scored another try, but I can't remember.  They scored just before half-time, and we had scored another prior, so we were up one or two tries at this point.

The second half felt even hotter, although I'm sure it was just my imagination.  We opened with a convincing attack down the wing, where I gratefully took a ball behind their defensive line while being herded by the winger and fullback into a corner.  The winger got me about five metres from the line, with the fullback joining in a stride later.  One of their centres eventually joined in, and with three of them scratching, scraping, punching and kicking at me - I fell over the line for my third or fourth.

Then came a period of concerted effort on behalf of the opposition, pushing us back to our own line on a number of occasions.  At one stage, with me and the fly half the only defensive line, it appeared a certainty that they would score.  They went through hands laterally, allowing my inside man to tackle a ball carrier.  He off-loaded, giving the opposition a four on one against me.  I tracked along, the first man passed to the next, turning it into a three on one.  Then, out of nowhere, our full-back nailed their ball carrier.  He managed to pass out of the tackle, but it was sloppy.  The ball went high and wide, giving the recipient a few metres of touchline to work with.  Unfortunately for him, I had continued tracking the ball and bundled him into touch.  Rather unceremoniously.  My entire team, bar the full-back, were waiting for them to score and had all but meandered back to the halfway line.  Thanks to some sterling work by the full-back, this certain try scoring situation was overturned.  Some indecision on behalf of the opposition led to a breakout, and what was a certain try for the pinks (their team colour) became a loose play miracle try for us.

This is certainly a feature of Japanese rugby.  They lack the physicality to compete in tackles (they are angry, but can't channel that aggression) or during the ruck or maul situation, but they have an extremely open, extremely interesting open play game.  They're very much like the French national team in this regard.  Broken play suits them well, and off-loading in the tackle creates some fantastic situations for flowing rugby.

So in the last five or ten minutes of play, we broke out of our own half once again, thanks to some fantastic running by our full-back.  He took a few players out of commission, then off-loaded to me.  I was away, with only two people to beat.  I edged closer to their line, and with about ten metres to go, made a ridiculous decision.  They were both on my inside, and I should have feinted inside and gone outside for a try in the corner.  It would have been tight, but I could have made it.  Instead, I did the opposite, hoping to wrong-foot the first guy and bludgeon the second.  I stepped the first guy fine, but upon hitting the second guy I was well bought down.  The plan, then, was to put the ball down, get up and pick the ball up from my own side.  This is perfectly legal assuming the tackler has let go.  Unfortunately, a third player bundled me from behind when I was getting up (not knowing or caring that I didn't have the ball) and managed to take off my left boot.  I have no idea how he managed it, and can only assume he slide tackled me.  That would have been okay, except my boot was done up tightly, and in working loose it made my foot do the chinese foot binding thing, and folded it over.  The upshot is, that after some pain I left the field, and didn't get back on in the remaining five minutes.  My foot is pretty damned blue, but I've been walking on it okay after resting it yesterday.  Another week and it'll be back to perfect.

The upshot:  Not only did I screw up a perfect opportunity to add my fourth or fifth (after a great breakout by the full-back) but I got injured in the process.  I felt like a right lemon.

As far as I know man of the match awards are given; but on this occasion it would have gone to either myself or the full-back, and that kind of recognition of foreigners is best left to other members of society.

Final score: 32 (maybe) to 24 (ish)

We went for food afterwards, and in that time we were invited along for training at a club called pig nose.  Like Sano won their county league a decade ago, pig nose won the national amateur competition a decade ago.  Apparently I'm ten years from the heyday of Tochigi rugby.  That'll be fun, assuming I can get there.

A Red Letter Day

So today is a bumper day for blog posts.  Having written about terrible chinese copies, I felt it impossible to append this post to the bottom of the last.

It is about Canada.

I have no idea what the news reports in England, but the internet is rife with pictures and videos of the riots in Canada right now.

First off, a prediction.  This will become a South Park episode.  That is a given.

A large number of commentators have ruefully noted that Canada is the home of progressive liberals (dirty filthy hippies, to the rest of the world) and such events should not have unfolded in a land of arts and free-love.  Obviously, those people are morons.  Even the most lovey dovey of countries will riot.  History has taught us that the more hippy a country becomes, the more ridiculous the reasons for rioting.  England is a testicle-free country, with enough bark to scare a country of say, Liechtensteins size - and enough bite to damage a country of, say, San Marino's size.  Now, as a hippy country with no power, following my rule of impotence, England should have riots of stupid matters.  And indeed, we see that England riots over things like football.  An unimportant and stupid situation.

Let's look at another country in the same boat as England.  The Netherlands are also an impotent country.  They couldn't impose their will on a whale in their territorial waters.  What do they riot about?  Football.

Ice Hockey (I think they lost an ice hockey match, anyway) is simply the Canadians football.  It's a simple equation with an inevitable outcome.

What is more fascinating is the extent of the riots.  According to Wikipedia (my ever unverifiable source of information) four people were stabbed, one hundred arrests were made and one idiot fell from a viaduct.

Yet there were no deaths.

In my mind; THIS fact alone makes Canada the most liberal of countries.  Even if your country consisted of twenty people, all of whom were artists, and who smoked marijuana and did other drugs every day, you would still have riots.  To distinguish these liberal countries from, say, the middle east, you only need to see the death toll.

And then there are the pictures.  Holy crap, some of them are funny.  These are all taken from:

http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/06/16/photos-riots-fire-destruction-after-vancouvers-loss/

 We begin, with this doosy.

The caption reads 'man rioting blah blah blah.'

What it should actually say is:

Man superglues foot to door during riots.  Can't get down.


Fixed.

Next!
The next picture probably won't get the kid arrested, because he's not actually pictured doing anything wrong.  Just standing there looking like an idiot.  Also, everyone knows that all asian kids play World of Warcraft (/sarcasm), hence the caption.

Bring it on!  I have the +5attack stick of destiny.

Looking for a good time?

Head to the Granville Entertainment District to turn your world upside down.

I hope this man is shopping for his girlfriend.

Because that bag doesn't go with his coat.

Free limb transplants for everyone involved in the riots.

But all the blood was taken by this guy.  Also, he looks like a viking.

Why does the police officer look like he has a chairleg, and not a baton or nightstick?

Why did the rioters re-animate a rocker from the 60's?

What happened next?  This is one of the few pictures that I rue being a single frame.  I really want to see who wins in this particular spat.






Ok, now to lower the tone.  I apologise in advance for this - I'm pandering.

Blue shirt:  Jesus dude, that stinks.

Hoodie:  *fixing belt*  Sorry dude, couldn't hold it in.

Once again proving that you don't need to be white to riot, these chinese descendants show a rebellious streak that their brethren don't.

All those years of rock band practice have finally paid off.

His form still needs work though.

The second best javelin thrower in Canada shows his resentment at being left home for the Beijing Olympics, and bids to put his name forward for the London 2012 team.

Cigarettes, not the only way to kill yourself in Canada.

I was about to place the words 'coolest woman ever,' between more words like, 'too cool for school.'

However, looking at this again, her demeanor is apprehensive, and she's obviously posing for this picture.  As such, I will not respect her participation, and merely state that she shouldn't be smoking in the first place.

Who knew two cars would create so much smoke.

 If Danny Boyle (?) had waited to shoot 28 Days Later, he could have used Vancouver as a backdrop.










I include this picture, simply because it's a police car that's on fire.  That's cool.

Canadians are not savvy shoppers.

 This bloody idiot has clearly missed the sale.

BUY TWO, GET ONE FREE, IDIOT.

Go and get yourself another couple of shirts.

Also, go raid a shoe shop on the way home - those things are damned ugly.

This guy is included on the wall of shame, not just for trying, and failing to light a police car - but for getting caught on camera doing so.

My years of setting police cars on fire suggests to me that he is going about this the wrong way.  Don't completely bung the entrance, otherwise there won't be enough air for the fire to spread to the petrol tank.

Also, your rag is long for a reason.  Light it at the end, not in the middle.

The annual Volvo flipping competition got off to a rocky start, as someone forgot to turn off the engine.









Now, before we look at the next picture in the riots.  I feel I should refresh your memories.

This picture is of Michael Jackson in his Smooth Criminal persona.

The next picture is of a man impersonating him.  The reason I add this second picture?  This guy is trying really hard to be Michael Jackson, but doesn't quite manage to pull it off.

Throw tear-gas at a man however, and he instinctively channels Jackson himself.  As evidenced by the picture below.

Presumably the same guy, after getting bored of being Michael Jackson, goes Soviet and emulates the Luna programme.  Let's just hope it doesn't end like Endeavour.

Someone raided the set of Free Willy.  What's up with that hair?  On a lighter note, the guy in the background, next to the car, appears to be picking up a beer.  Now, I'm led to question a number of things here.  Was the beer already in the car?  Did the car have a fridge in it?  Was the beer intact?  So many questions, so few answers.

Also, if you look to the right of the guy with a beer on the floor - there appears to be a man with the largest Abe Lincoln style top hat, ever.  So big that it requires the user to hold it all the time with both hands.  Then I realised that it was actually a bin, and he is going to smash it over the guy bending over getting his beer.  Now, I don't know if that flies in Canada, but I would have to sit the bin provoker down, and have serious words with him; if I were in the receiving end of that.

Now.  Now then.  What's going on here?  This is where my hypothesis about Canadians being the perfect liberals really kicks in.  Plainly, these two are high.  If they're not, then they're mental and should be locked up.  Of course they're not because everyone has equal opportunities blah blah.

It's just like the F1 paddock.  (Look on the portaloo.)

P.s  Toploader have reformed.  Awesome!

Of Copyrights and china

So china is world renowned for stealing ideas.  Their entire economy is based upon rehashed ideas, stolen from their Western counterparts.  For the most part, this works perfectly.  Zero research and development costs, expertise garnered through hard work and backwards engineering - coupled with the absolute poverty and low wages of the working class.  This is the capitalists dream.

To be honest I don't really care how china makes its fortune, it will do things no worse than what England did in the past or america is doing now; that was the case until now, however.

One of the things that ensures the chinese economy continues to burn, is the black hole effect.  China invests in external companies, while drawing the profits back into china.  Once money wanders over the chinese border, it will never be seen again.  In this way, china is growing nice and fat, along the same model as america.

Again, before today I could have cared less.

Now, however, with china being the largest PC using country in the world (that is to say there are more PC's in china than anywhere else in the world) and a large portion of those PC's used for playing games, I was irked to see this video.  It is a crass copy of Team Fortress 2, a game that's been out for ages in the West.

The point being, this game is banned in china.  The chinese then make a half-assed copy, add some mandarin, and it's good to go.  The revenues generated by this game stay within china, and don't make it across the sea to the american developer of the original title.

Why does this irk me so?  I don't care about profits, revenues or legalities - I do care about human rights however.  Why should chinese gamers have to play a sub-par, toned down, washed out copy of a classic game.  I have previously managed to get my hands on some chinese clones (one of age of empires, one of counterstrike) and they were abusive pieces of software.  They were the gaming equivalent of jumping testicle first onto railings.  That an entire generation of chinese kids think that playing games amounts to this, is a travesty.

In fact, I'm thinking of starting a charity (called travesty international) to promote awareness of this issue.  China, please drag games into the 21st century - start by basing your mechanics on games that aren't ten years old.

P.S  Kudos to Microsoft Game Studios for making a trailer for a war game, without using blood.  Skip to 45 seconds.

P.P.S  For a comparison to the chinese game linked above, check out the real deal here.  Notice how the player model is identical?  Even the helmet over the eyes.

Wearing Your Sunglasses Backwards

It's often said that Japan is many years behind the west with regards to fashion.

I've always been a firm proponent of the 'they're not behind, they're different,' philosophy.  I stand by this idea, as I can't think of a single girl in England who turned herself bright orange (by choice, not by drinking too much sunny delight) and then willingly electrocuted herself.



This was a thing, some time ago.

It has come to my attention, however, that certain fashions manage the transition, and that it takes a few years for that process to occur.

One of the cool things for the kids now, is the rubber band bracelet (?) things that show support for a charity. I was given one in my first year of rugby at university, supporting post-operation troops.  Help for heroes is a charity that works to provide healthcare for individuals who have served and suffered.

During the trip to Japan, this idea has undergone a few changes.  The shape has changed, no longer being a uniform width, but having wider parts facing upwards, allowing more writing to be embedded onto the face of the rubber.

The second transformation is the cause.  They no longer support charities (I've never seen anyone put change in a charity box, and the only charity box I've seen has been at a convenience store (see: twenty four hour corner shop (sic))) instead preferring to advertise the childs favourite cartoon.

I feel it apt, at this stage, to point out that men and women of all ages watch cartoons.  They're not all cutesy, painfully dull, IQ sapping Disney style feel-good festivals of medicority.  Think of the scene in Kill Bill, for example, where the gangsters roll into a families' house, murder everyone, then set it on fire.  This scene didn't pass the censors, so they remade it in a Japanese cartoon style (way to go censorship.  We have Disney to thank for the Western perception of cartoons being benign.) and (Side-note The cartoons aren't normally that detailed - they're made on shoestring budgets with fierce deadlines.) you can often see ultra violent cartoons of that nature on late night TV.

P.S  Good luck reading that last paragraph; it ended up being far more complicated than I had planned.

Anyway, the bracelets were a stupid idea for charity (except for the vain) and they're still a stupid idea.  The best fads are pointless, and pointless seems to be universal.

I would normally stop here, but some astonishing things have come to my attention.  Firstly, the Human Development Index thinks rather poorly of England (or more specifically, the UK) ranking it one place above Singapore.  Singapore being a developing nation means England, by rights, should be classed as one too.  Some of the other countries that rank above the UK are frightening (Spain, unemployment capital of Europe and south korea, a third world country.)

On the note of south korea, I just finished reading an article by a new recruit to the BBC Asia team.  She recently arrived in sk, and was greeted with typical hospitality.  If you read the article you will notice that Mr. Bu is on par with the average korean.  That is to say, he's an asshole, and is a perfect representative for koreans everywhere.

I do feel sorry for their reporter though - she has to endure two years of korea.  がんばってね！

On a slight tangent, the scariest bird in the world lives on (above? In?) the Faroe islands:


"Because when you grab them [the worlds' most dangerous birds] they have a tendency to vomit - and they carry bacteria which are dangerous for pregnant women. And my girlfriend is expecting a baby."


Holy crap.  Not only do they vomit on you - they kill babies.  Why have I never heard of this bird before?  What else do they have on those islands?  Alley cats that maul grown men?  Sheep that attack and destroy cars?  These islands were the real-life inspiration for Jurassic park, it seems.


Oh, and one of the sports teachers in my school wears his sunglasses backwards while he's indoors.  This obviously ranks above the yanks who wear them indoors, but he stills looks like a colossal cock.  P.S I love the hyperbole laden definition from dictionary.com.


#Update#  In a hilarious conversation lasting five minutes, I found out (with no irony) that Japan invented cheese.  They also invented the round cheeses, often divied into six or eight slices.  Despite inventing all cheese everywhere, they only have one type of cheese.  It's called six piece cheese, and is the only type you can buy in Japan.


I fear there was some mis-communication, at some stage.

Outlandish Predictions

SO the pools for next years Heineken cup have been announced.  Seeing as England will have a large presence (as is usually the case) I feel that outlandish predictions of who's going to win are the order of the day.

In pool one we have Munster, Saints, Castre and the Scarlets.  Munster to win the pool, Saints as an outside shot.  (This sucks for saints, because they could have potentially reached the final with an unbeaten winning streak.)

In pool two we have Cardiff, London Irish, Racing Metro and Edinburgh.  London Irish to win, if their form is good.  Racing metro if not.  (I hear that Metro are buying in players left and right.)

Pool three consists of Leinster, Bath, Glasgow and Montpellier.  Leinster to come top.  Bath to come second.  I don't really care about any of the others.

Pool four has the tigers, Clermont, Aironi and Ulster.  Leicester to go through, comfortably.  I predict one possible upset in the away match with Clermont.

Pool five has some big names, with sarries, Benetton, Biarritz and the Ospreys.  Saracens to go through based on their domestic performance this year, and the fact that the Saracens is essentially the South African national team.  In fact, if Saracens don't win everything next year, they will have under-performed.

Toulouse, Quins, Gloucester and Connacht round out the final group.  My pick for this group is Toulouse, but I'm desperate for Quins to pull something out of the bag.  The problem with this group is that Toulouse aside, Quins, Gloucester and Connacht will be taking points out of each other left and right.  I predict an equal score for at least two teams, bringing it to a points difference decider.

So the top of the table teams will be: Munster, Irish, Leinster, Leicester, Sarries and Toulouse.

The second places will be: Saints, Racing Metro, Bath, Clermont, Ospreys and, in the final pool, it's a three way tie.  I'm going with Quins, because I really want them to do well.

The world cup pools are somewhat easier to draw, they appear to be designed to allow the top teams into the knockout stages.

Pool A is Canada, France, New Zealand, Japan, and Tonga.  France and New Zealand will go through.  There isn't a prayer for Tonga, Japan or Canada.

Pool B consists of Argentina, Georgia, England, Romania and Scotland.  England will lose to Argentina (we always have a kick up the ass realisation moment in the world cup.) but both will go through.  100-1 that Scotland will beat either England or Argentina.

Pool C is as clear-cut as the others, with Australia, Ireland, Italy, Russia and the USA.  Australia and Ireland to go through, Australia on top obviously.  Again, I'm desperate for Italy to beat Ireland and go through to the Quarters.  They've been up and down, with their recent performance falling below par - so I may want it to happen, but it ain't gonna.

Pool D is clear-cut, with Fiji, Namibia, Samoa, South Africa and Wales pooled together.  South Africa and Wales to proceed, with the proviso that Wales don't slip up against the south sea islanders AGAIN.  They love falling at the last hurdle, especially against Tongans and whatnot.  Their history of failure, then, leads me to suspect that this pool will be the most interesting of the lot.

There we have my predictions.  Feel free to ridicule the long-shots and question my sanity.

P.S.  A woman FINALLY gets screwed over by the courts, regarding home ownership:

A court ruled he was entitled to 10% and Miss Jones to 90%, but the Court of Appeal said that despite their unequal contributions, he was entitled to half because the property was jointly-held.


Considering the number of times a woman with no job has sued for half a property, despite not contributing in any way, it's refreshing to see that a man has done the same.  The primary conceit of these women is that they contribute to upkeep of the house.  Fair enough if there are children involved (which is a whole other feminist scam, see fathers for justice) but when it's just a scrub, leeching away, I have no sympathy.  The fact that this is the first case I've ever read of a man doing the same thing, and the fact that he will soon be overturned and forced to pay back the money, shows how woman centric this country is.  Equal rights for all!  (Except if you're a man, or you're black, or you're...  You get the idea.)

When Did Golf Become Cool?

So I was looking at some camera lenses recently, and Nikon also make rangefinders for golfists.

This model looked like something from a war movie, while this model looked like something James Bond would have tucked away in his coat pocket.  The question is simple; when did golf become cool?  All these gadgets are awesome, and if they included night-vision (night-time golf, anyone?) they would be the ultimate Christmas present.

Being a golfist has, for the longest time, been a death-sentence for Christmas intrigue.  Socks, stupidly bright trousers and a few tees are all you could have previously asked for.  Now, you can ask for a digital rangefinder that has literally no other use than to relay the information that is already given to you at the beginning of each hole.

Then, to top off my amazement, I find this on the same site.

It's a goddamned red dot sight.  Perfect for all your golf related massacring needs.

What the hell.

Sensibilities

So I've got five minutes to write this up - the ultimate deadline!  (I'm heading home in five minutes.)

Some very quick reviews of what I found interesting today.

This printer:

I want one.

I think it's a photographic printer, but, frankly speaking, it looks like it could sprout legs and take its own pictures.








This article from the BBC.  Suggesting that china houses anything of interest in the music scene, having (not six months ago) sent their very own 'culture show,' team to find out what's happening - only to find that nothing is happening.  Direct contradiction from two separate entities housed within a giant, wasteful corporation.  Time to separate the wheat?

This article from the BBC, suggesting I was correct about Herr Blatter.

This article from the BBC, suggesting I'm a sucker for working in a public school - I wish I could worry about using too much electricity for heaters in Winter, or aircon in Summer.  Public schools have these things called windows, they close in Winter and open in Summer.  That's all we got (sic).

This article from the BBC, suggesting I'm in the wrong country right now.

This article from the BBC, suggesting that Japanese people (especially women in their thirties) are massive hypocrites.  They are offended by French rudeness and general impoliteness (something the rest of the world accepts as quintessentially French) and yet eat their noodles as if they were trying to scare away deaf, otherworldly spirits (see: loudly)

And this link to my youtube account.  I am terrified of walking down the street in Japan, because of APB: Reloaded, a game I've recently started playing.  In Japan, there is often a lack of pavements to walk on.  Check out the video to see why that's doubly concerning for me, as APB does have pavements.

And that's been ten minutes, so I'm off.

Awkward Family Moments

Wikipedia is a fantastic source of entertainment.

I don't know how much of it can be trusted for factual accuracy (the number of spelling mistakes, grammatical errors and unproofed sentences leads me to question the fact checking) but the way each subject of interest is linked to another, means I find myself aimlessly wandering between articles, picking at anything of interest.  I am very much a vulture of useless information.

In an interesting addendum to this style of information consumption, I cannot remember any specific information within any article I have ever read.  The articles are condensed into keywords, for reference at a later date.  If I were to be asked about Asian tennis players, for example, I know only one name.  Li Na is a player of note, winning a grand slam (the first by an Asian) and seeding in the top ten.  Prior to reading this article, I wouldn't have a clue why I know that name.

This is interesting because it's often been suggested that the way people are remembering things is changing.  Before books, people remembered, and embellished, stories passed through generations by speech.  This required a direct remembering of the story.  Remember as much as possible, make up the rest.

When books were invented, it became impossible to blag your way out of a mis-telling - the proof was there for all to see.  It then became the aim of learned men to memorise quotes.  This is why the ludicrous act of memorising lines of poems became the de facto standard of intelligence interpretation.  If knew all the lines of shakespeare, you were a certifiable (lunatic) genius.

Now, with information readily available, people needn't remember everything.  Give me thirty seconds and I'll have the wikipedia page ready.  There is no room for human error when using this model (besides the error of the article itself) because it's right there, at a fingertip.

What I've seen criticised in several articles relating to retention of language specifically, is the current model requires very little effort from the user - you don't need to know who doodled the Mona Lisa, or who composed the Planets, it's on our phones and computers.  The argument extends to the inevitable conclusion,  of people lacking the ability to remember anything.  The fact that people can't spell is cited as a prime example.  Spell checking software has been around for a decade now, and people who write on the internet are the first demographic to be exposed to this additional feature.  In essence; that face you pull when someone writes on a website 'lok at tht, its amasing,' is down to a simple time-saving device.  Which is easier, spending a lifetime learning how to spell, or thirty seconds figuring out how to use a spell checker.

I think it's obvious that there are more factors involved than one aspect of a program, but it's ultimately the desire for everything to be easier (which spell checking feeds into) that has created the situation we're in now. That and people don't care.

To be honest I think it's more about not caring.  The internet has allowed everyone to see, behind a veil of anonymity, the bulbous beer bellies and swaying man boobs of intellectuality that we attempt to hide in other forms of media.  The internet allows it all to 'hang out there,' because there are no consequences.

On a side-note, I may not be able to quote any lines from Shakespeare (or any book, poem, play or article I've ever read) or remember the plot to half of them, but I'll be damned if I'm going to sacrifice being able to find stuff like this in favour of a well-rounded memory.

P.S  You know that tennis playing chinese chick?  While looking at her wiki, I found out this:

'However with her disapointing results Li Na sacked her husband as coach and hired the Dane Michael Mortensen.'


Damn.  That's cold.


I wonder how she broke the news?  I also wonder if she got any Christmas presents?

Oh Football, How You Make Us Laugh

I'm going to dive straight in with a quote that destroys any credibility the Argentinians had:

'With the English [2018 World Cup] bid I said: Let us be brief. If you give back the Falkland Islands, which belong to us, you will get my vote. They then became sad and left.'


How the FUCK did we ever get the Olympics?  No, seriously.  We own the Falklands, and previously owned half the world.  If the rest of the world took the same stance as the Argie delegation, we would already be down 50% of the votes.  We must have won over everyone else with the Olympic bid.


Either ours rocked, or everyone else sucked.  (I suppose a little from column A and B is possible.)

This picture from the daily mail website shows how the democratic process perfectly.


Good job, free and fair elections.


(P.S  DON'T SHOW AMERICA FOR CHRISTS SAKE.  They will bomb us in the name of democratic freedom.  (Us being Europe, because this idiot is based in Europe.))





Next quote (from the daily mail, not a person specifically (so take it with a grain of salt)):


The chairman of the ethics committee - the watchdog group set up in 2006 to deal with claims of malpractice in FIFA - will in future also be elected by the congress.


So, let me get this straight.  The organisations that are being paid by Blatter, and those who are his cronies, will decide who becomes the person to investigate their corruption.


That can't possibly go wrong.  There is literally no way that any human being could possibly abuse that system.  I cannot see a single thing, literally not one, that might stop that from being the best plan ever made by a dictator democratically elected and representative group of people.


In other news.  Something that I am not impressed at all by happened.


Why did it take him three years to plan this?  It would be infinitely impressive if he'd landed a backflip from 4000m.  That would have been cool.  This is just a (rich) lazy mans motoX.


This, on the other hand, is awesome.  A bloody good excuse to dick around on a motorbike, if you ask me.


As is this.  When do they stop increasing the number of rotations?