Went with K to see Lou Rhodes (ex Lamb) last night and a) It was lovely and b) I’m well knackered. It was natural that the two Lamb songs she did went down the best, but the new material was good, if a bit on the sunny side. We were as one that she is just too bloody happy at the moment and she needs some of the edge to her songs that can only come from a bit of a crappy personal life :->
Well, hooray! Your neighbourhood www.toastboy.co.uk scores a creditably low 0.41 on the Wankometer. Other places I could mention, which shall remain nameless, score a “considerable” 3.89 :->
A lot’s happened, some of it none too pleasant, but everything seems to be under control now. Anyway, it’s amazing what you can find out when you pootle around on Wikipedia:
The Reds lost to Barnsley yesterday. It’s beyond a joke. Who should take the blame? It’s far less easy than in the England case, bizarrely, because with England there’s we don’t go having to sell all our half-decent players (let alone the really good ones) every time they start to show some form.
So Rooney’s a left winger is he? And I’m a chuffing Dutchman.
Good luck to the Northern Irish - they played their hearts out and they deserved the win. It’s not just that they sneaked a goal and then hung on: they had the two best chances in the game and they took one of them. England were laughably bad. Several players went missing, but the manager must take the ultimate blame. Wright Phillips had the most pace and showed the most promise in the first half, skinning the NI left back every time he had the chance. Who did Sven substitute first? Wright Phillips. Tosser.
Can Sven keep his job after this? Yes. For the right reasons? No. Not at all.
If Kia-Ora was too orangey for crows that must mean that there’s a certain level of orangeyness where it’s OK for crows to have it. Why, and just how orangey was it?
The West Wing series 1 on DVD is a Chrimbo gift that has kept on giving. No ads, woo hoo, the usual quality entertainment, but best of all, no blurting voiceovers at the start of the closing titles.
So Max Mosely thinks he’s close to fixing the overtaking problem in F1. Excuse my cynicism, but I think not. It goes like this: AMD will make a supercomputer which, via the modern magic of computational fluid dynamics simulation, will “measure” the downforce of car designs and limit them to a certain figure. Sounds peachy, right?
The thing is, as any fule no who has followed F1 for any length of time, the edge in the sport is all in breaking the rules inventively so the scrutineers (and other teams) won’t notice - or at least can’t prove it. Not allowed to use wheel speed sensor data to inform the formerly outlawed traction control? No problem, just use the airbox pressure instead. The teams hire the best in the business to work around the rules, not within them. This purely computational rule, though, is one step further in this particular cold war.
This time, the teams don’t have to figure out how to defeat other teams, or even the people at the FIA doing the checking of the regulations. They have to beat a computer. If (when!) some bright spark figures out a way of designing an aero package which looks to the CFD computer to comply to the regulations but behaves better than that in a wind-tunnel, they’re made. At least until they’re found out.
You might think I hate all these subterfuges from reading this: you’d be wrong. It’s why I love F1. It’s the pinnacle of one of the most fiendish, devious and political sports there is :->
One for the eight year olds in the audience - what the definition of gross? Sneezing with a mouthfull of muesli, like I just did.
