FIFA injustice

Much as I would prefer not to write about Saturday's match, I can't be seen as the only Anglo-Portuguese blogger to ignore it.

Frankly, I thought that England played better, overall, than Portugal, but that doesn't count if you can't put the ball in the back of the net. Rooney and Beckham were useless. Hargreaves and Ashley Cole were superb. On the Portuguese side, the only player who stood out was Ricardo, clearly the Man of the Match. England didn't miss four penalties out of five. Four out of the five penalties were on target but Ricardo defended three of them - a stunning feat. How FIFA chose Hargreaves as Man of the Match is beyond me, though he was the best England player.

Congratulations to Cristiano Ronaldo for slotting home the last penalty, under huge pressure. I hope he gets to do the same against France and Germany, when I will be supporting Portugal.

Technorati Tags : Football

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Joke of the Week

A woman walks into a cocktail bar and asks for a double entendre.
So the barman gives her one.

Found on Little Red Boat

Well I thought it was funny.

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Tons of Rubbish

I noticed yesterday that this will be post 100. A ton of posts from someone with little to say! That got me mulling over the origin of the word "ton" in this context. After all, a ton is 2240 imperial pounds or 20 hundredweight (showing my age here). And a tonne is 1000 kg. So where does "ton=100" come from when talking about speed, runs in cricket or other colloquial measures.

My dictionary doesn't help, neither does Wikipedia or the other on-line dictionaries I browsed through, so I'll just leave this one hanging...

Anyway, if I have produced a ton of rubbish, imagine how much the other 20 million bloggers on Blogger have produced. It's mind-boggling. Maybe some recycling is in order.

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Memoirs of a Geisha

This work of fiction, which describes the life of a geisha from her childhood in Japan, through her working life during the Great Depression and the Second World War to her later life in New York, is only spoilt by the clarification in the closing notes that it is a work of fiction.

As a biography, the story is totally convincing, though the account of the war years is rather harrowing. Except for that section the narrative runs at an even pace, ideal for reading a little a day, not so gripping that I could not put the book down.

All the book required was a concluding confirmation that it is, in fact, a biography. As it is, the doubt remains as to how truthful the descriptions of Japanese life are, what was made up for the sake of a better read. Nevertheless, a gripping book, well worth reading.

Technorati Tags : Book_review

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Get Firefox!

I've been playing with Firefox for a couple of weeks now, and have to recommend it over Internet Explorer despite many years of almost faultless service.

It's smaller, faster and more user friendly, particularly the tabs feature. In addition, a big plus for me is that I can now visit my own blog without clocking up visits on Sitemeter. At the old house, using ADSL from Oni to access the internet, Sitemeter would detect my browser and ignore my visits. Since we moved and changed to NetCabo the visits were registered, coming from the same PC with no configuration changes. Firefox has fixed that - hooray.

The plug's in the sidebar, as I can't put scripts in the post body.

I am also removing my endorsement of Bloglines. Not because it's faulty, but because I've found something better: NetVibes (thanks Bev).

Red Card for Pope

Who was the bright spark who fielded a Pope (Eddie) against Italy, with a referee who is probably Catholic.

Well he's been sent off! Should have substituted him while they could.

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Harry Birthday

P'ra Inglês Ver is one year old today.

I'm not sure if 96 posts with 816 visitors is good or bad, because I didn't define any objectives when I started. I have tried to resist writing posts with the specific objective of getting more visitors but, as a result, have tended to wander in No Man's Land. Categorising the posts is also not easy, especially as I haven't used tags.

It has been a chore at times, close to making me give up, and a passion at others - thanks to Mr Constâncio. So it's onwards, to year 2, at least until I get bored or people stop visiting. I will deal with visitors, tracking software and other blogging tools sometime soon, but now its off to finish another book for this weekend's review...

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The New Volkswagen Passat

After 4 years and 120,000 km in my old Passat, where my only real complaint was the awful radio, I swapped it for a new one. Big mistake!

The new radio's fine, so VW have fixed a minor complaint. The downside is the awful clunky gearbox, with low gears too low, and high gears too high. Thanks to improved sound-proofing, I found myself cruising at 140km/h in 4th the other day. 6th gear is very long.

And then there's the fact that it has gone into "limp home" mode seven times in the last month, so I can't say I'm a fan of the electric engine management system. The solution: switch off and restart, just like a PC, which is great when cruising in the fast lane. The dealer claims to have fixed that problem now, by updating the software!

So I'm driving a 140 horse power PC, running Windows Me (the worst Microsoft operating system ever). It hardly inspires confidence. If you're thinking of buying one, wait at least 6 months for VW to fix the bugs.

Why Study?

Yesterday morning, on the radio, I heard an advert for a rock festival saying "Relax between the end of classes and your exams - come to our festival, you deserve it". I was amazed. I can only conclude that either:

1. The course teaching has instilled the basic principles and techniques so well that studying for the exam is unnecessary.
2. Given that all that is required is to know the answers to a restricted number of questions which always come up in the exam, cramming the night before the exam is sufficient.
3. It's acceptable to risk failing one or two exams, because they can always be re-taken in September.

Maybe I'm missing something here, or I have forgotten how it was when I was a student.

Which World Cup Team am I?

Strange!!!!


Thanks to Pandora