A Team who break the rules

del.icio.us Tags: rugby , world cup , england

For 4 years the England rugby union team has not played up to the standard they set themselves in the 2003 world cup - even at the start of this years tournament they looked like a shadow of their former selves. But yet somehow, someway they have made it to the final - almost in secret.

People keep blathering on about how they've achieved nothing yet and are only here by grace and favor - but how many sports teams could come back from a 36-0 thrashing .to beat some of the best teams in the world in less than 3 weeks. Very few I would hazard!

England faced a very dark time, especially on the knockout stages. They didn't sh9ow any instant improvement or tournament winning style. What they did show was a refusal to be beaten by default and a massive desire to prove critics wrong. Most of all they finally seemed to want to win the damn thing.

With our usual humility even us Brits are still writing England off. Even the sports writers are predicting narrow Springbok wins. But tellingly no one is predicting a run away South African win, such as the teams' previous meeting would suggest. As David Hands writes in the times today, England are a team that "don't seem to know when they are beaten".

Against Australia we should have been thrashed, but we came out much stronger (if still struggling), the magic wasn't quite there and the Aussie's were formidable opposition but it was a start. In the end it came down to luck and a bit of a coup.

The France game seemed a bit more hopeful in the light of such improvement. Indeed they were nowhere and would have had a thrashing but for 3 terrible English mistakes gifting them their 9. After the astoundingly good first minute try it promised a magical match that never materialized. In the end it was a brilliant tense game but still not perfection.

So we have the skill and the gritty determination, today we need that magic and sparkle that makes a cup winning team. It would be like a fairytale for a team that was written off as outsiders after 4 years of hopelessness stepped up to the plate and said "yes, we are the best and can prove it".

Today England face a fitting finale, the team that handed them their drubbing just a few weeks ago now are all that stands between them and immortality.

Win or lose, this is going to be a fantastic game.

Valve kill 32 man TF2 servers.. but what is next...

This was posted on the HLDS mailing lists (list.valvesoftware.com) a little while ago today. It made me laugh for a bit but it also made me think a bit too.

Read it and see...

Hello, Let's run a book on which servers Valve will randomly filter out next, without even so much as the decency to tell us.

1) Australian servers. Let's face it, it's those pesky Australians who are so far up Valves sweet asses it must be embarrassing for Valve. Those Australians need to be taught a lesson to counter balance all of that Pacific rimming that's going on.
2) Servers that have an unusually high number of players with 8 digits. Come on let's face it. The 8 digit crew are all noobs, snotty nosed teenagers and haxors.
3) Servers outside the Western United States that have an unusually high number of players with 6 digits. If a server attracts the old and wise, they're community is going to be too smug.
4) Servers running FF.
5) Servers that sends the player into a different world where there is 1000's of custom skins and the admins have been sad enough to invest 500 odd man hours into creating a work of art, not to mention the modding communities whose total output dwarfs anything that has come out of Valve.
6) Servers that attract the top players. C'mon something has to be wrong, they're all hacking.
7) Servers that attract too many noobs. No scrub that, they're all in Washington State.
8) Servers that are running that new plugin, which lies about the total number of available slots.there's 32 slots but 24 are advertised!!!
9) Servers with unsuitable chat language for minors. 10) Servers with 2 slots, passworded, that say "Valve doesn't listen to server admins" as their server name.

Right. That's my list. Odds anyone?

Fact is Valve killed off 32 player servers by filtering them out of the master server list (as far as I follow it). IMO that's fine - it is hardly a killer blow to any servers and it's their choice after all! But the amount of craziness this move invoked has been staggering. I mean are Valve REALLY likely to start picking and choosing which mods (or types of mods) are allowed to run and filtering out servers running "unauthorized" ones?

Dammit they provide and API and SDK to allow people to make mods -they are not going to kill any off (unless of course they do serious damage - in which case such a move is understandable).

Plus how the hell will they pick out specific mods and kill them off? It would be a stupidly difficult task - and not one they are going to undertake (it's not as if they are Valve servers - you can do what you like with it!).

So yet again we get silly hype and scaremongering and Valve get a load of bad press in the server admin community. Sure they're not perfect and their updates do often break things or make silly changes. But give them a break - the service they provide is pretty damn fine considering they are still churning out game after game and, despite regular massive breakages, the engine is fairly stable and very powerful.

Why cant we all just enjoy the game for once???

(And I STILL haven't had time to buy and Orange box GRRRRRRR I'm running 7 TF2 servers and I'm not able to play any of them - THAT's a problem!)

A Law unto Himself (Murphy's law review)

del.icio.us Tags: TV , Drama , BBC

One of the problems with being a film buff is that TV drama is just so much less interesting nowadays - it has non of the gloss or realism a film has, nor the immersion you can get from it. Luckily those of us in this situation have the BBC to save us. Murphy's Law has from the start been gritty, gripping and engaging TV that rivals some of the best movies in it's genre.

For those who live under a stone the show follows Tom Murphy, an Irish undercover cop (in England) doing deep cover work in dangerous situations. In the latest series he is less of a field agent and more of a manager - at least he starts that way, things soon take a bad turn and he is back doing what he does best: kicking ass.

Of course the series is really made by James Nesbitt who is a fantastic actor. He brings realism to quite a hard role - he has to be hard, gritty AND show a soft side - all without it looking corny. And he pulls it off, just. It is wearing a bit thin by this series - they have been trying to build character depth since S2 but have done it in a very hazy and complicated way. In a way this enhances the mystery of Murphy but at the same time just confuses you. Many of the support characters and people in his life do not carry from series to series (and even episode to episode) and he seems to have so much 'history' he should be 400 years old.

Despite the shakiness Murphy's Law is still some of the best TV all year, we can forgive the mild plot holes and the occasional corny scene in light of the fact that it grips you from start to finish and leaves you wanting more. Thumbs up to the Beeb!

Lets go Live

Technorati Tags: Live Writer , Live Mail , Microsoft

I've been using Windows Live Messenger for a while now, along with Live OneCare as my security software. I have to say it is pretty good stuff, amazingly Microsoft have come up with good products! Today I tried 2 more offerings. Namely Live Mail and Live Writer.

Live Mail is simply an Outlook Express replacement. I say simply but it isn't wonderfully simple. It is not bad to set up but the interface is not wonderful.

That said it is quite clean, it does work and it is fast. My one major grouch is that message rules are complicated to setup. Well not complicated just a little long winded. Also there is no calendar included which is a big problem for me (as I use the one in Outlook quite a bit).

An 8/10 for the effort would be fair. At least it beats OE into the ground :)

Live Writer on the other hand is another matter. Quite simply a stunning piece of software. I'm using it to write this blog at the moment and it's working well. Writer is a blogger program that connects to just about any blog you can imagine and lets you post to them in a WYSIWYG way. sweet.

My only annoyance with it is that it keeps putting <p> tags in every time I hit enter and a few other html annoyances. Not a huge problem but it could be cleaner.

But it has a spell checker, it has the ability to insert media (although the attempt above inserting from Screencast didn't go so well) and it has lots of features. One useful one is the ability to live preview your post as if it were published. If nothing else it might make me make a few more posts :P

So 9 or even 10 out of 10 for writer.

So a couple of highly recommended programs there - give them a go. Microsoft's Live Network seems to be working out ok!!

Restaurants should be banned

Today I went for a great curry with some mates. About £7, bring your own beer, traditional Indian fare! Actually I had to wait ten minutes after everyone else to get my Rogan Josh as they 'forgot' about me! Seriously restaurants need to be banned. Still, can't complain. It was cheap and tasted gorgeous.

On the more positive side it was only 2 minutes walk from our flat. My friends had a 20 minute walk to get home, and it's freezing tonight. *evil laugh* In fairness last year they used to live as close in to Leeds centre as I do now whilst I lived nearly 5 miles out. The times they laughed over me (and Dom) walking home (well smiled to themselves then!) makes up for the times I am ribbing them this year :)

Exams!!!!

I had the first 2 exams today! The first was OK (control systems) as I remembered most of the Laplace transforms (ugh!) and the rest was common sense. Maths was harder. The first half was vector calculus which is really tough stuff. But fortunately the second half was A-level standard statistics (or at least could be solved by those methods) so that kinda rescued it.

These exams are worth 20% of the marks for each module this semester so 60% plus would be a good marker and take the heat off in January.

Tomorrow I have programming (easy), embedded systems (simple) and Electromagnetism (*cries*). I hate that last one - really it's physics not Electronics. I sit through the lectures and it seems like a foreign language. Those first 2 are great though, my type of 'bespoke' electronics. Programming I find especially easy, I tend to soak up these computer languages and my good knowledge of PHP really helped with this module!

I say, Extraordinary film!

I watched The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen again tonight, with Sean Connery starring in it! (he really is the best Bond) not bad but a little corny :) although I found out too that it is based on a comic book series so I might have to check that out - though Wikipedia does say it's very different to the film..

People seem not to like the film incidentally, I really don't know why. Sure it's corny and the special effects look a bit archaic at times but it's a wonderful romp through 1899 Europe! The only let down is the ending (from when Venice gets bombed onwards) which isn't so much weak as predictable and drab. They could have pepped it up a bit!

At least the bitter end is suitably tear jerking!

And tomorrow?

Tomorrow I will have to get my flatmates to clear up the flat. I went away for the weekend (3 days) and they 'trashed the place. Tonight one sloped off out with some mates and the other went to his (apparently not but blatantly so :) ) girlfriends house. Tomorrow they won't escape....

Today I have been...

... Watching - The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
... downloading - District 13 (interesting looking French action film)
... buying - A card for my Mum's 50th!
... hating - My flat being a complete mess (not my fault)

Itooooooons!!

Last night I downloaded the new version of Itunes (V7. whatever). Ive been using Itunes 6 for a while and I really like the way it organises and looks after my music. I also like being able to buy online relatively cheaply. Whatever the arguments against Apple and Itunes it does work and it is the best solution on the market - end of story.

Actually V6 was getting a little old - or at least the competition was meeting it. So along comes Itunes 7, and my god its pretty cool.

The flashiest addition was the new CD browse view - where you can flick through your album artwork like they were actually Cd's. It needs to be seen to understand what exactly this is but it is really really cool. There are some bugs but essentially it works good. As a sort of compliment to this you can now tell the software to download cover artwork for all your music (not just purchased ones) this does take a bit of fiddling to get right (and might mean renaming some albums) but again it essentially works.

Actually that second feature is really cool as it is a feature I have wanted for a while - and for the most part it finds them automatically.

Other new bits n bobs include movies and TV shows in the store (and sub folders for them in the software). I got all excited over this till I found out that currently only US customers can access this. I don't know if Apple plans a UK roll out but I really really hope so - I love movies and a download system as good as Itunes for my films would be brilliant (and cut down on shelf space in my room!!). As to the TV shows I was hoping to get Prison Break series one - but again no UK version.

Another neat new feature is an upgrade to the backing up tool. So now you can back your entire collection and playlists to CD/DVD(s) and restore them at a later date. You can also do incremental backups - which is really useful (I did it straight away!!).

Other than that it just looks nicer. SO well done Apple, another good Itunes release means I'll be sticking with you for the future :P

(In other news I am downloading Vista RC1 as we speak - actually it has been going on and off all day!! so some time next week you should get a review - if it doesn't destroy my PC)

Vista come vista go

So what exactly Will vista bring to us? Apart from a long beard after all the wait of course!

At inception Vista was meant to be the next big stepping stone in OS's, Microsoft's answer to its critics. And at the start the feature list proved it! Most prominently a new file structure to replace the current NFTS format. That sounded pretty useful - especially considering the features MS promised for it. Considering how going from FAT32 to NFTS format made XP an 'evolution' it was a promising start for Vista.

The best bit was we were getting an evolution in the next version of Windows! Something that has never happened before. Not only that but it was to be released soon after XP...

Then it got delayed - really delayed. You could argue for hours over whether that has been a marketting ploy to maximise sales of XP (Personally I suspect that played a part) but no one really knows. What is certain is that our amazing new OS to play with was not going to be around as soon as. Ah well we said - think of all the new features - it must take time to write them all!

Then of course news that most were being dropped or re-worked as add-on's for release after Vista (like the new directory format). So now what is Vista, as far as I can tell it is just XP with all the security patches applied (OK so totally rewritten but feature wise...) and a flashy new GUI.

And you know what my XP Corporate already looks like that thank you very much, that's what mods are for. And the mods improve all the time. So do I need Vista, no. Will I buy it. Yes because it will bring benefits in the future and will save me messing with shell upgrades to XP (plus I like to have the latest stuff. But I will be keeping my current XP on all my other PCs, Vistas will only go on my main rig.

Now when is that release date? Changed again?

(PS I'm now using Blogger Beta which is all very nice :D go google go)