IMS_Blog

A pretty big dump of Project 365 photos, complete with a bit of an oops. And also now complete with the end.

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So, time for the New Year post I suppose, which of course involves a quick run down of things I got up to over the holiday period…

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I was going to start the year off with a Happy New Year, here’s what I did in my holidays post (that is coming) but I just sat and worked this out, and it seems an age since I did a purely football post, so hey.

I’ve been thinking about Demba Ba and Cheick Tiote’s absence at the Africa Cup of Nations. While Ba is obviously a huge miss the one thing a team needs when they might be struggling to score goals is not to be letting them in at the other end. Which brings us to Tiote. I’ve just sat down while waiting for dinner to cook and taken at our goals conceded record both with and without the man in midfield. By my reckoning (not double checked, based on nufc.com match reports, league only, assumes a match is 90 minutes), we’ve played 14 matches (barring 8 minutes when he was subbed off) with Tiote and 6 without. Without him we’ve conceded 13 goals, with him one less at 12. That equates to a goal against every 104 minutes while Cheick is on the pitch (i.e. less than one per game) compared with one every 42 minutes (i.e. one per half!) without him.

Of course like all such analysis there a many things neglected (strength of opposition faced, form and availability of the rest of the team, etc) but I still think it goes to show how important he is defensively. We need to keep tight for those harder to come by goals to count!

It’s been ages since I’ve updated my Project 365 so I though I’d mark the fact I just dumped a load of photos in the gallery (took me about a week of evenings just to catch up). Well past the 300 mark…

So, I finally achieved a minor, frivolous ambition: A letter published in the BBC’s Magazine Monitor :-)

[And for anyone actually wondering what the quoted Aitken Head was on about in the original article it’s a reference to the idea that if you cut him open he’d “bleed black and white blood”. Basically he’s trying to get across the passion and feeling involved, as well as how deep seated some things are.]

Incidentally, this isn’t the first letter of mine published. The first, long ago, doesn’t seem to have gotten a mention here.

I had occasion to buy a new landline telephone recently. Is it me, or this an area of consumer electronics that basically hasn’t moved in, what, twenty years? I looked at the ranges at a few places, and everything seems to be a) the same b) completely uninspiring. You seem to get a choice between with or without answer phone, and that’s it (don’t need an answer phone, BT have voicemail covered). “Higher-end” seems to consist of simply increasing the number of recent calls/phonebook/etc numbers, or adding more universally horrible ringtones. Given the state of mobile phones this is amazing—I don’t seem to be a landline much above the functionality my first mobile had back in, er, 2001 I think. I know these things are cheaply mass produced (in a million almost identical varieties it seems) but is there really no room for innovation? I really can’t have a polyphonic ringtone (let alone mp3 playback)? Phone memory is an issue. Christ, surely I should be able to get a memory card slot and bit of software for the PC to transfer contacts etc. And don’t get me started on two tone, one line displays!

Really it does seem that its an area in complete stagnation. I’d have paid a bit more for something a little bit cooler (despite how little I use the landline for actual telephony) but I wasn’t given the chance.

Full disclosure: Amazon did turn up this Binatone thing (which reviews suggested was way under powered) and a quick google just now found this from Archos, which looks a bit nicer. Really though, I don’t necessarily want something on the scale of Android, just something better than what is out there.