FIFA tally

Over Arthur's best of 16 round prediction at the FIFA site (Courtesy of Yahoo) a schedule of the World cup soccer, which you can fill out. You may want to keep the group standings page handy. I uploaded both my predictions (you can click the image on the right) plus the empty schedule template for your viewing (and betting) pleasure.

But without further ado, the why and who: The big question in group A and B is: “who’s going to play Germany or Sweden”. I don’t think Equador will win Group A (Germany is playing Equador next week): the German soccer fans will expect Germany to win their group, which means that there won’t be a Germany vs. England game (which would have been a great game, I think). If my schedule is right, watch for the game Germany vs. Sweden. With some luck, Sweden might be able to kick Germany out of the Worldcup.

Group C and D: Argentina will win group C (it’s going to be a draw against The Netherlands). I expect Mexico to become the group leader. So, in group D, watch for the game Portugal vs. Mexico to see what I mean: that’s going to be a ‘softball game’, with lots of ball circulation and no goals. 1

Group E and F: Australia will make it to the next round and play against the winner of group E, which is naturally going to be Italy. Nothing exciting about that game. Interesting is going to be the other game which will be Brazil vs. Czech Republic. Here’s my World Cup soccer surprise: I expect the Czechs to do really good.2

And the last 4 countries in group G and H: France and Spain will win their groups and play against (respectively) Ukraine [for now I bet my horses on the Ukraine, yes] and Advocaat’s Korea.

1 It looks like Portugal shrug off their boriness (that’s a word I hope) and is in fact in the running of leading group D. It now looks that Portugal will face the Dutch in the next round.
2 The other surprise is that Ghana beat the Czech Republic.

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Henry writes a letter to Ann

Via Sweet FascistSadly No’s (‘Abstinence-only raps’), I found the link to a video named ‘Henry Rollins letter to Ann Coulter’. It’s hilarious (might not be safe for work, contains nasty language).

Henry Rollins is naturally the front man of the ‘Henry Rollins band’, as some of you may know and apparently he has his own show on the IFC, which is appropriately named ‘The Henry Rollins Show’ (or ob. Wikipedia page).

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The Soccer will not be televisionized

AdTropical Storm Alberto ergo: my value pack does not include the broadcasting of any soccer or that. So, you might just as well enjoy the soccer thyself, while I’ll read the headlines from the sites around. So, the Dutch play Ivory Coast tomorrow, and here be my prediction: 2-1 for the Dutch. Goals are scored by Simon Tahamata, who, as some of my generation may remember, also made the top pop charts during the prerun of the Rome Eurocup of 1980 1.

Lots of rain today: Tropical storm Alberto slightly touched the Maritime provinces today. Winds and plenty of rain and weather warnings for Eastern parts of the province.

1 If I remember correctly, Johan Cruyff thanked for the invitation to join the Dutch team because he wasn’t guaranteed the number 14-shirt or something.

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More cookies

Some local news: Yes. Cookies. Salmon River is now hockeyville 2006. I found out Sunday after loud horns and fireworks, but then went back to my Civ 4 game. The exhibition game? According to the local paper, it’s going to be held at the Truro Legion stadium instead. It fits more people evidently.

Hey, talking about Nova Scotia: fellow Nova Scotians went to the polls today and as apolitical I try to be, today’s good-gross is brought to you by macadamia cookies (recipes). Next time elections are around, I expect aspiring candidates1 to go door to door with a box of that goodness.

1 update: I see that the three ridings in Colchester stayed in the hands of the Conservative party (Brooke Taylor, Jamie Muir and Karen Casey).

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Radio and Cast

CircNot available for Canadian viewers apparentlyumstances forced me to listen to the Dutch Radio 1 broadcast of the soccer game Netherlands vs. Serbia-Montenegro (1-0). It happens to be a Windows Media stream, which you generally will find around this location. That said, I kept Yahoo’s MatchCast side by side, in case I was going miss something. However, I noticed that there was some delay between the radio broadcast and the actual game. A delay of 3 to 5 seconds is weird and gives a whole different meaning to ‘live’. That Yahoo Matchcast is obviously great work, though, not something you want to connect to if you have only a 56k6 modem. And if you’re living in Canada: don’t expect the FIFA videos to work. They don’t.

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canucket

canucket
n 1. A typical, unique (or specific) Canadian thing, object, trait, custom or behaviour.

Ex. John is holding a canucket in his hand.

Origin: Canucket is a mashup of the words ‘canuck’ and ‘nugget’ and directly implies something specifically Canadian. For example, ‘hockey’ is a canucket (as most Canadians would agree that hockey is a Canadian invention. People of Dutch origin may not agree though). The typical bi-langual packaging of products (food products) is a ‘canucket’ too. However, poutine is not a canucket because it is obviously something that most Canadians have never heard of (yet)1, 2. Also: French Canadians often use the French version of the word ‘canucket’, which is ‘canuquètte’.

1 Poutine is a canucket.
2 Blackened. If you really need to read that, use a highlighting marker on your LCD or CRT screen.

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Eood

Once Civ 4 Direct IP game versus Alfonsagain, I missed the World Cup Soccer games: England vs. Paraguay(1-0), Argentina vs. Ivorycoast 2-1 and Trinidad vs. Sweden 0-0. Early this morning I found out that my TSN channel wasn’t in my cable package anymore, something I reported about way earlier, I think. The good news is that ABC seems to cover the games (what? ABC?). Good. I’ll turn my TV on tomorrow at noon 1 2.

The main reason of not being able to watch was soccer, was because I decided to play an online game of Civ 4 against the other half of the twin. Obviously, as the older part of the two, I decided to let Alfons win this game.

1 And, I should wear my Orange jersey, I guess.
2 Well, there you have it: the ABC only starts broadcasting at 12:00 ADT, which means that there’s no game, not anywhere on my 30 channels. Something more cheery: The Discovery channel has a rerun of ‘How William Shatner changed the world’ at 11.

Posted in Civilization, Truro NS | 3 Comments

Dood

I‘m sorry. I didn’t have time to watch the World Cup Soccer but I read that Germany won 4-2 from Costa Rica and that Poland surprisingly lost (0-2 against Equador).

Two paradoxes on one day: The Yearlykos conference in Vegas, which is about liberal politics, netroots and blogging plus that other thing, where the Republican majority in the House voted against a proposal forNet Neutrality. A summary: you are hott when you blogg.

Fair enough: We saw Crash today, and we both liked it: it started slow, but at the end it appears thing finally started to come around in a, well, crash, I suppose.

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Hey

It’s Alfons’ birthday! Who would have thought.

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Google Spreadsheets

Earlier Google Spreadsheetthis day, I received an invitation to test drive Google Spreadsheets (Note: Google seems to be stuck in a space-time continuum today). I’m not sure if I’m allowed to post screenshots but, for what it is intended to do it’s doing an extremely good job. Not bad at all.

  • Importing both (standard, no fizzle-frizzle) Excel and CSV files works without problems.
  • Exporting to above formats works good.
  • There are hardly any formatting options (I was looking for ‘bordering’), but once again, this is not something you need when you make spreadsheets.
  • One of the most promising features (which is something I couldn’t test) is the sharing of spreadsheets with other GMail users. Instantly. That’s what Google promises. It’ll be interesting to see if they can live up to that.

Once again, not too bad at all. What’s next? Online charts (but then that’s something they probably already do with ‘Google Analytics’)?

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Heap

By coincidence I found the site of Imogen Heap (her picture was featured on FlickR). I like it, but I’m not into music. I hate music. I’m as you’ve found out, a proud reformed ‘music listener’. Music kills. Secondhand music kills too. Here’s an example Alfons mentioned earlier this week: There’s a piece of his favourite composer that uses a meter of 5½/8 1. I have a hard time imagining what that might sound like: it probably has a clear rythm, but the music, I’m not sure of. I’ll make a prediction: Thanks to modern synthesizers, in about 5 or 10 years, nobody will know how to compose 5½/8 music. After all your generic sequencer does only support boring meters like 4/4 and 3/4. For others, you probably have to resort to paper.

Fair enough about the music: Other stuff. The Dutch embassador of Estland is leaving Estland because of homohate and racism. His Cuban partner was often subjected to harrassment and public threats. I thought this was weird news particularly since I expected most Europeans to be comfortable with gay couples. In a way it reminded me of the President’s support for a constitutional amendment which defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Hey, but what about Mickey and Minny Mouse?

Hey: you can run out of the heap space, did you know that? Oh: and a thread is like a freightliner. Two threads is like two freightliners. Think of it: how would freightliner A tell freightliner B to stop speeding?

1 Other known HTML entities

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Shiny Rounded Corners

I notice that my ‘/’ (Slash) key is stuck, which is most likely because there’s dirt in between the key and the board. I feel so smart today. My Toshiba laptop manual should explain how to lift off the keyboard from the laptop: at least, I remember reading something like that three years ago. Problem is: where do you find an almost three year old laptop manual after moving one time? It’s in a bag! Yes. But which bag?

Slashdot changed its looks. I’m not sure where the announcement is, but a couple of times I linked to several CSS samples provided by contestants. Try here. If I only could Web 2.0-like hide the ads on the right side. But to quote Web 2.0 developers: ‘Oooh, Shiny Rounded Corners!’1

1 Bonus link

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A lighter

A lighter note: I see that Sonic Youth (wikipedia) is about to release a new LP/CD, ‘Rather Ripped’, in about a couple of days. Sonic Youth’s site is actually an oasis of older stuff (QuickTime videos, MP3 songs) they did, including their experimental work, like ‘Piano Piece #13’.

Hey: The Dutch youth team just became European champions (Warning: Dutch only).

What is mentioned at the BBC, is the apparent popularity of Sandi Thom. The Scottish singer demoted the ‘Gnarls Barkley’ to the 2nd position in the UK Pop charts. No really! The big question is, why would I mention this. To be honest with you: I have no idea. Looking at the clip of that particularly hit song, I’m not impressed with missus Thom’s lyrical ability. But maybe that’s because I’m literally out of fashion and out of time. “Ouwe zeur”.

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