Why everyone in Korea uses digital watches

Clicky and enjoy.

New Wordpress

A few days ago I upgraded the site to the latest Wordpress release. This is not a job I relish, because my site template doesn’t natively work with Wordpress and upgrades in the past have been nothing but a headache for me. On previous releases, I’ve had to roll back to older version to get up and running again. Fortunately this time everything went through OK, and in fact, whilst in amongst it I got a chance to tidy up a lot of annoying little niggles with the CSS.

I have to say that the latest Wordpress is absolutely top drawer. I was previously on 1.5 so to go up to the v2 release you’d expect some fairly substantial changes, but they’ve really pulled their finger out, especially what they’ve done with file uploads. Though I did have to turn off the new rich text editor, not a fan of that. ‘Nuff said though – kudos to Wordpress – unbelievable free software. If you need a blog, check them out.

The Tuck Rule – Interesting definition

I read Get Fuzzy every day, and I thoroughly recommend you to do the same. It’s a great comic. In today’s episode, I came across a saying that I was unfamiliar with, owing to it being an American comic:

The unfamiliar text being the “tuck rule”. A quick Google turned up the results.

1. Incident made famous in the 2001 AFC Championship game in which Tom Brady appeared to fumble the ball, but the play was reversed when the officials reviewed the play and enacted the “Tuck Rule”: “If a QB loses the ball before he has tucked it firmly into his body, even if his intention no longer is to throw it, the play is an incomplete pass.” The Patriots went on to become Super Bowl Champions.

So that’s the answer – it’s an NFL thing where the Raiders lost the Super Bowl due to a dodgy rule. Sounds like the off-side rule in Football, or the LBW rule in Cricket. Strictly speaking they’re good rules, but they’re hard to call and can often seem unfair (generally always to the team who has had the ruling against them.)

Anyway, the reason for this post, was whilst trying to find out what this tuck rule was, I found a slightly different definition for it.

When, during an act of masturbation, someone unexpectedly walks in and the male perpetrator must swiftly and handily tuck their genitals in between their legs.

Interesting, but it’s no laughing matter. Ask any bloke who has ever been caught.

Both quotes from the Urban Dictionary.

They proved me wrong

Well done to the England boys for salvaging a draw from the India test series. OK, so it’s not exactly beating Australia, and there’s only so much triumphancy in saying “YEH, WE WON so we um, er didn’t, er, *ahem*, er lose the series.”

In fairness, the bowlers did an outstanding job on the last day, not in just taking the 9 required wickets, but in making India look very very silly in the process. Which is always good.

And it really makes you wonder… is Andrew “Freddie” Flintoff actually God, I mean actually God..? The man go do no wrong at the moment. Just when it seemed like the arrival of Kevin Pieterson was going to overshadow England cricket’s golden boy, Fred just stepped up about three gears. Not content with just being the best bowler in the team, and one of the best batsmen in the world, he has now successfully juggled these two responsibilities with possibly the biggest of them all – captaining the side as well. It is well documented for areas of team captains’ game to flounder, which tends to be batting (the only recent bowler captain I can think of is Imran Khan, and it didn’t seemed to phase him). Anyway, I digress, Fred has done a terrific job under impossible circumstances.

What will happen for the upcoming tour will depend ultimately on the injury status of the team – with so many players suffering one way or another, the team could be anything for its next outing – a home test series against Sri Lanka in May. I would be surprised to see Flintoff remain as captain if Vaughan is fit, but you wonder if Trescothick will get another shot at captaincy after what Fred has achieved.

Gullwing mirrors

On my way into work this morning, I passed 4 cars who hadn’t put their wing mirrors back down. I mean, when these people get home from work each night*, they get out of their expensive cars and either electronically or manually fold the wing mirrors in, so that, presumably, they don’t get taken off by passing traffic and/or local hooligans with baseball bats. But in their leather-lined luxury, which was 3 BMW’s and a big 4×4 Mitsubishi with a mummy in, half asleep at 8am, they hadn’t put their wing mirrors back down and were therefore completely oblivious to anything that might be to either side of them, such as a bicycle, snaking through Wednesday morning traffic. Yes, in the whole time they’d been in their car this morning, not a single one of the 4 drivers had checked in their wing mirrors.

One driver was oblivious… nay, ignorant, that even a polite reminder (i.e., a heavy slap on the offending wing mirror as I passed him) didn’t even prompt him to extract his mirrors. He just carried on, blissfully unaware of anything going on around him, safe in his £40k luxury, confident that when the day comes that he ends up killing a cyclist, motorcyclist, pedestrian or unlucky family pet, his overpriced lawyer will be able to arrange things for him.
* Of course it begs the question if they ever notice that their wing mirrors are still up. Frankly, if they’re not going to use their wing mirrors, I’d be more than happy to remove them, free of charge.

GMail accounts

I’ve got a bunch of GMail invites, so if you want one (i.e., if you want a GMail account), leave a comment with your email address here.

The decline of English sport

England’s performances in recent sporting encounters have been nothing short of pitiful. In Rugby, where England are well-deserved World Champions, they finished a lowly 4th in the RBS Six Nations. Whilst France won the competition, in my mind, the team of the series was Scotland, having demonstrated an incredible improvement in their game, and well deserved their 3rd place. Ireland were fortunate to scrape to 2nd.

It remains though that England were shocking. After a promising thrashing of Wales, they slumped to defeats at the hands of Scotland, France and Ireland. That’s 3 losses in 3 against Ireland. Andy Robinson is promising a shakeup of the England team camp management and coaches, but I wager that he ought to be the one to go. He doesn’t have the presence that Woodward had, and probably doesn’t even have the tactical nouse. What was obvious in every England performance was that Matt Dawson is a better scrum half than Harry Ellis, yet Dawson didn’t start a game (I think). At best he was given a half to play and make an impact. Which invariably he did. The argument being that Ellis the new guy, and they’re breaking him in for when Dawson is no longer playing, but… it seems ridiculous when Dawson is playing well.

I can’t remember the last time I thought something about the state of English football. Frankly, I couldn’t care less. But for an all-Dutch final in the darts was frightening. England representatives had a nightmare at the Winter olympics, especially in the curling which ought to have been a shoe-in… nothing. Scotland even defeated us in the cycling at the Commonwealth games.

And to cricket. In the third and final test match of the India series, a match which England must win to draw the series, it seems any upsets (both mentally and physically) and have been set aside as England dominate on day 3. Posting a total of 400 would have been disappointing for the side, but to see Strauss score a hundred is a welcome change, and Flintoff appears to have taken the role as captain in his stride as he posted another half century. James Anderson has not baulked his chance of a permanent comeback as he played a crucial role in a dismal 279 all out by India in their first innings. So it’s all positive, it’s all good, isn’t it?

No. Because in England’s reply first-innings centurian Strauss was out for 4 and Ian Bell failed yet again, scoring just 26 runs in the whole match. His 9 and 1 in the first test was equally poor, and whilst managing scores of 38 and 57 in the second match, the match was eventually lost and so arguably worthless. For a number 2 batsman to score 131 runs in 6 innings is not good enough – they should be averaging above 30.. not 21.

It remains to be seen whether we can post a quick 200 runs and bowl India out in the final 2 days.