06.23.05
Spell With FlickR
06.21.05
Blackburn and Back
After Norway beat Sweden in the UEFA Women’s Championship semi-finals last week we decided, on a whim, to go and catch the final held at Ewood Park up in Blackburn on Sunday! It was hardly worth driving 120 miles just for one afternoon, so we made a weekend of it and drove up on Saturday instead.
The weather on Saturday was gorgeous so, after finding a place to stay (conveniently located right across the road from the stadium), we started walking in to town. Half a mile, a couple of hours, several pints of alcohol, and much hayfever-induced sneezing later we realised we had no idea where we were, although we could just about see Blackburn cathedral in the distance, so we caught a bus. There really isn’t much to do in Blackburn centre on a Saturday evening, unless you fancy hanging outside one of the umpteen kebab shops. Fortunately we stumbled across an italian restaurant, where we had a nice pizza and a bottle of wine before waltzing our way across to a taxi-rank, where the cabbies were waiting to whisk us back to Ewood park.
On Sunday we drove back into the town centre to see what the city could offer in the way of shopping. The answer: not much. So we had a quick bite to eat and went back to the stadium to sort out tickets for the match. I was surprised to find the crowds starting to build around the stadium even three hours before kick-off! German and Norwegian flags were flying everywhere, as well as the obligatory English flags (which seem to have a habit of appearing at ANY football match, regardless of location or the nationality of the teams involved).
As the game kicked off the weather took a turn for the worse. Dark grey clouds were looming over head, and, after 30 minutes of play and two Germany goals it started raining. The Norwegian women started to rally and soon scored their opening goal, followed soon afterwards by what was thought to be the equaliser, only to have the linesman flag it as offside! In the second half I’m not sure whether the Germans were playing more defensively or the Norwegians were just lacking the needed bit of extra pace, but either way the pace of play was a bit slower. Germany scored their third goal on one of their attacks when the shot deflected off one of the defenders and away from Nordby’s outstretched arms. Norway had a couple of late changes during the closing minutes, most notably a header from Lise Klaveness, but it lacked the pace required to beat the behemoth of a German goalkeeper.
Final Result:
Germany: 3
Norway: 1
The drive back down to Birmingham was a long one… when it rains, it pours. There was even some flash flooding just up the road from Blackburn, in Yorkshire. While in the car we listened to the singles charts on radio 1… how the hell is that bastard frog still at #1 even after 4 weeks!!! What is wrong with this country?!?
Fortunately right after that it was time for Dance Anthems, with Armin Van Buuren as a guest DJ. Shibbeh! So the rest of the drive wasn’t too bad for me (Hanne, however, may disagree 
).
And now for Jerry Springer’s final thought:
Take some time to consider your monkeysphere. Yes, most of it is obvious / common sense, but it’s got some great snaps of MONKEYS, people! I was actually thinking about this kind of thing earlier: there was a big reception held in the lobby of the building in which I work. I was trying to get out of the building to pop over to the shop and buy a drink, but there were too many people in my way. Because I didn’t know them and had no idea what they were doing there I had no hesitation whatsoever in cursing and taunting them (all within the confines of my mind, of course). Had I known these people or if they were related to me then I probably wouldn’t have been so quick to bite.
Monkeys… hehehehe.
06.13.05
ow, ow, ow!
Ok, so there’s been a complete lack of updates lately, but, as usual, there hasn’t been that much to report either.
Work is pretty hectic… i’m just wrapping up a project with Clinphone due by the end of this week. In the process i’ve learnt a fair bit of PL/SQL, which is always handy, as well as some more of the ins-and-outs of the various API’s in use for our products.
When not at work I either want to sleep or just lounge around at home… I try to keep up my fitness going to the gym at least a couple of times a week, though I’m not able to keep up with Hesam. Actually I just got back from Body Pump (“Ve’re going to pump joo ahp!”)… foolishly I decided that I hadn’t tried hard enough last time, so added a couple of extra kilograms only to nearly die half way through the class. Hopefully i’ll at least be able to wiggle my fingers around the keyboard tomorrow to get my work done, even if the rest of my body is paralyzed by pain.
And please welcome the latest edition to the blogosphere: Sophie! She’s one of my friends from university after living with her in both the first and last year. She’s just wrapping up her masters, so she set up a blog to record bits and bobs from her travels this summer (off to Tenerife, then South Africa, the lucky git!).
Time to rustle up some food!
06.08.05
Technikul duffikulties
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Sincerely,
The Management
06.01.05
FlickR Pro
Amit Rules!
Being the kind chap that he is, he recently gave me an invitation to try out FlickR PRO free for a year! I’ve had a FlickR account for a while now, after Hesam first introduced it to me a while back, but I never really played with it… all that is about to change!
With unlimited storage, and 2GB upload allowance per month, i’ll be photo-blogging a lot more as it’s now even easier for me to create entries and send photos from my mobile phone. Although WordPress has made this feature possible in the past, I never managed to get it working.
Anyway… here’s the first photo i’ve uploaded from my phone. It’s of the giant scary santa that was put up outside the museum in central Birmingham during the time of the German Christmas Festival.
Oh yeah, and speaking of Amit, don’t forget to check out his latest venture: QuotationsBook.com. Quotes and the ilk are always popular on the Web, so i’m sure this will prove to be a profitable endeavour. Power to him!