Hi all,
For the first time in 3 years am celebrating Christmas at home
Being a bit sluggish today, but better late than never. Below is a link wishing everyone who comes on here a very Merry Christmas:
Christmas Link from stonysleep.com

What links my last post to this post is that they are both about what is happening now and what happened 22 years ago.
This year Venice has had the worst floods since 1986
Tomorrow is the final day of a test match that reminds me of one of the most famous tests in 1986

So, the 1st test between India and England is at the MA Chidambaram Stadium
Chepauk, Chennai, India and sees the match finely balanced with India being set 387 to win and approx 120 overs to do it in. With 90 overs remaining they have 256 more runs to score and 9 wickets in hand. If they achieve it, it will be the highest total on this ground scored to win a test match – the current highest for a side batting last and winning is 155 in 2001.
An interesting match in itself, however the match I want to look at happened in 1986, though again we have a similarity, because like the 2001 match it was Australia vs India.
Back then, the city of Chennai was known as Madras, and in September was to become the stage of one of the greatest games of cricket.
Part of the reason for it’s greatness is it is the 2nd of only two international tied tests. Note this is not a drawn match, as tied refers to both sides scoring identical scores and losing all 20 wickets over the course of 5 days.
Both sides were full of greats:
David Boon, Dean Jones, Allan Border, Steve Waugh, Sunil Gavaskar, Mohinder Armanath, Mohammad Azharuddin, Ravi Shastri, Kapil Dev, Craig McDermott, the list goes on.

The scorecard is available here – on it’s own does not tell the full story, but is essential to follow.

The Wisden Almanack article on the match details some of the finer points which I will attempt to summarise (though you need to create an account to read it).

Winning the toss, Australia batted first and scored 574 for 7 declared in the first innings over 3 days thanks to 122 by David Boon, 210 by Dean Jones (playing in only his 3rd test match) and 106 by captain Allan Border. Jones had to have treatment for exhaustion, nausea and cramps after his 8 hour innings which was the highest by an Australian in india. The humid weather conditions made the innings even more impressive – reports state that it was 40 degC in the middle and 80% humidity. This was Australia’s highest total in india, setting a good platform. The pitch favoured the spinners, with Yadav, Maninder Singh and Shastri bowling over 135 overs between them (of the 170 overs delivered). Yadav and Shastri took 5 of the 7 wickets to fall.

In reply, India lost wickets and were struggling at 65-3, 142-4, and 206-5.
The follow on target was 375 and looked a long way off, but thanks to a century from captail Kapil Dev they surpassed it and got to 397 before being dismissed. Australian off spinner Greg Matthews took his first 5 wicket haul in a test match. Their other spinner Ray Bright took 2 wickets also.

Australia had a lead of 177 with less than 2 days to go there was not much time to force a result. Ending day 4 on 170/5 again the spinners had taken the wickets, this time Shastri and Maninder Singh shared the 5 between them.

Border decided to gamble the following morning setting India 348 to win in 87 overs

The scoring rate had been high throughout the game
Aus 1st inns: 3.36
Ind 1st inns: 4.42
Aus 2nd inns 3.46

348 in 87 required 4 runs per over exactly and had been done by India before when they scored 406 to beat the West Indies in 1977. In that match they did have 147 overs to do it. In addition, Sunil Gavaskar and Mohinder Armanath were part of that winning team. So, coupled with playing at home, hopes would’ve been high especially since the popularity of one day cricket batsmen had learnt how to score at over 4 runs per over on a regular basis.

There were no hundreds this time, but Gavaskar lead the way with a anchoring innings of 90
Armanath hit a similarly paced 51 as was Azharuddin’s 42
Going to tea at 190 for 2,
CS Pandit upped the scoring with a run a ball 39
Shastri hit 48 off 40 balls but lost Cheetan Sharma for 23 with 18 needed off the last 5 overs

The damage was again done by the spinners Matthews and Bright

India got to 344 for 9 with 8 balls remaining.
Shastri was in with the last man Maninder Singh
Going into the final over with Shastri on strike…
He hit a 2 and a single leaving the scores tied with Maninder on strike and 4 balls remaining

At 5.18 pm after defending the first ball was defended Matthews had Maninder Singh adjudged lbw to collect his 2nd 5 wicket haul and 10 wickets in the match. The match was tied and the 30,000 supporters there would talk about it for the rest of their lives.

Dean Jones (210) and Kapil Dev (119) were awarded the man of the match awards though Matthew’s profile suggests he shared much of the plaudits for the “match-winning” figures:
68.1 overs, 10 maidens 10 for 249

Matthews never performed bowled anywhere near as well in a test again with those two 5 wicket hauls remaining the only ones in his 33 test match career. He finished averaging 48 with the ball and 41 with the bat. His profile also says that while every other player sweated profusely during the match, he wore a wooly jumper throughout

This picture really says it all – this is St Mark’s square and the flood water is up to the hips
The worst flood for 20 years

The Venetians call it “Acqua Alta” or High Water as it literally translates. It comes in 2 forms really.
There is the mild flooding that comes with the tidal lagoon.
This affects a few areas more than others as the water flows up through the drains into the streets. Warning signs for tourists show which areas are most likely to be affected. It’s not a huge problem at this stage, and life goes on.
It looks like this in St Mark’s square:

What you see in the first photo though is the more dramatic where the water comes into the squares from the open water
This can only happen when the tide is high and the water level has been raised significantly either by rain or low air pressure. This leads to the dramatic flooding we see now when the water mark around St Mark’s Square hits 1.5 Metres (over 5 foot). 90% of the city is flooded. Tables have to be erected & raised to enable people to get around. Many homes (especially those on the ground floor) are flooded.

There are some plus points to acqua alta, especially if you’re a wakeboarder:

Youtube link to Wakeboarding in St Marks Square
And some pictures of the Wakeboarding

As usual I’ve been slack with upgrading my blog’s software, and it’s only been a few spammers signing up that has prompted me to upgrade things. And again, I’ve refreshed the ip2nation database & plugin to cater for any unusual countries or ip addresses. Things seem to be working, but as usual if you spot anything odd drop me a line and i can do some investigation.

The main reason for my post though is I’ve just installed an autotagger (I haven’t been tagging my posts in the past) and want to see whether it works.

With a bit of luck if I drop some keywords in it should add the relevant tags

As we all know now Barack Obama is going to be the first black US president, but I’m not going to talk about the in’s and out’s of the election or the merits of his victory.
Instead I give you

Dizzee Rascal on newsnight interviewed by Jeremy Paxman – the result is rather comical

Link for those who want to view it on youtube.com

(in the next section i’ve completely copied the transcript of the interview into chunks in case the link isn’t available in the future and to highlight certain parts. DR is Dizzee Rascal, JP is Jeremy Paxman)

The highlights of the interview are:

• When asked if the UK could have a black president it went as follows:

JP: … could you see this happening in Britain?
DR: Yeah. In time.
JP: You’re rather positive!
DR: Yeah, man. Why not, man? There’s a first time for everything, isn’t there? …
if you believe you can achieve, innit?

Radio One have been mocking this final line but at the same time it almost is something the “yoof” of today could take to heart.

• When asked on political parties he acknowledged they existed but little else:

JP: Dizzee Rascal, do you believe in political parties in Britain?
DR: Yeah, they exist. I believe in ‘em … I don’t know if it makes a difference. But you know what I mean. It is what it is. Politicians … say what they say – you might get every now and again a genuine one, innit? But I think people, like, as a whole make the difference …

• When asked if he considered himself British, Paxman calls him “Mr Rascal”. Dizzee then comes out with a classic on who could run the country:

JP: Dizzee Rascal, Mr Rascal, do you feel yourself to be British?
DR: Of course I’m British, man! You know me! … what’s good. I think it don’t matter what colour you are, it matters what colour your heart is and your intentions. I think a black man, purple man, Martian man can run the country … as long as he does right by the people.

• And finally, Dizzee reckons he could run for PM and that Obama’s victory couldn’t of happened if he hadn’t embraced hip hop:

JP: Well why don’t you run for office?
DR: See, that’s a very good idea. I might have to do that one day. Dizzee Rascal for prime minister, yeah! Wassappenin’! Barack Obama embraced hip-hop, man. That’s the way he got through to kids. There was a more young vote ever. And it was through hip-hop!

There’s a new “drug” also known as a Herbal Powder going round called Akuz (sorry, best link i could find in 2 minutes).

Apparently they had problems with people switching the powder for cocaine when it first launched, but the bottle is now tamper proof so you won’t be sold coke inadvertently.

The company who makes it has been saying it’s all “Just Harmless Fun” when asked whether it encourages young people to take drugs that like Akuz are sniffed up the nose. It’s an orange powder which apparently makes your nose burn and gives a bit of a sugar-rush like sensation. It turns your snot orange.

stonysleep.com has been running for a while (10 or 11 years I think), admittedly not in blog form for all that time.
Now, there’s a website called yourwebsitevalue.com which values a website based on various criteria. Back in July we were worth less than $50, but I went to it today and was surprised to see the value zoom up to $208:

How Cool is that!?! Though am a little surprised what’s happened in that time to cause that. Perhaps google has finally got round to indexing all the blog so put a higher pricetag on it.
Anyways, check it out i you have a website or are curious how much some of the more well known sites are worth

Reduce the population and size of the earth such that it has a total of 100 people
Split them into the breakdown on the earth based on ethnicity and various statistics to create the miniature earth.
It shows how stark the divide is between those who live in the western world and those who do not

Link for those not reading it from my blog and don’t get the embedded video

It’s morning at Headingly on Friday 18th July and the question on who will make way for the fit & in form Andrew Flintoff is the question on everyone’s mind. This is soon answered but immediately becomes old news as Geoff Miller, national selector, delivered a a crurve ball (or should i say googly). This is because Ryan Sidebottom was forced to pull out because of a side strain.

His replacement was named as Darren Pattinson… photo below:

At which point everyone apart from those who have been following Nottinghamshire’s season this year was baffled, as Pattinson has only played 11 matches at first class level (6 of which have been in the UK).
The Times is asking Who is Darren Pattinson?

In summary, he was born in Grimsby, moved to Australia, played club cricket for Dandenong (in Melbourne) and made his debut for Victoria in November 2006. Recommended by a fellow australian playing county cricket in the UK, he signed a 2 year contract with Notts starting this season. He has taken 29 wickets costing an average of 20.86 each so far. In the time before making his debut in Australia he found work as a roof tiler.

He was included almost certainly unnoticed in England’s 30 man Champions Trophy squad of players

The question remains though why such an inexperienced player has been picked at international level. England captain Michael Vaughan said he’d only seen him play once and that was in a Twenty 20 match.

The last time I can remember anything remotely like this happening is when Fidel Edwards was picked for the 2nd test at Kingston vs Sri Lanka in 2003 having played only 1 first class match. The Jamaican Observer was asking “Fidel Who? Not Castro?”
They had to eat their words because Edwards took 5-36 in the first innings. He was slightly overshadowed by Corey Collymore who took 7-57 in the second inning which earned him the man of the match as West Indies won the match and 2 match series 1-0.

However, the differences between Edwards and Pattinson are numerous
Edwards was 21 when he was selected – Pattinson is 29
Edwards was selected by the West Indies captain Brian Lara after he faced him in the nets between the 1st & 2nd tests
No one questioned whether Edwards would play for the West Indies if he put in performances – Pattinson is only confirmed to be in the UK for 2 years.
Edwards has a unique action and regularly bowls at 90 mph. Pattinson has a good but ordinary action and bowls at 80-85 mph.

I’m still baffled and with England losing the 2nd test yesterday questions will be asked as to why someone who has played so few matches was chosen over someone from the academy (youth) or those who have been performing for their county and has international experience.

I’ve been meaning to get one of these for a while, and just my luck there was one in the returned items sale at the weekend.
It’s great fun and has meant that I’ve started to tinker around with FreeBSD again which is installed on an old Dell PC.

What’s a KVM Switch you ask? Well, what it lets you do is have one keyboard, one mouse, one monitor running off 2 computers: Keyboard, Video, Mouse Switch. It has a little button that you press to switch between the two.
The video is the key part and that works incredibly smoothly. The Keyboard and Mouse part seem a bit choppy, though that’s probably more related to FreeBSD not being setup to use USB Keyboards & Mice. I’ve got PS/2 ones plugged directly in which seem to do the job.

It looks a little messy but believe me it’s an absolute joy to be able to switch between the 2 at the touch of a button.
And infact, I’ve got the network configuration linked into the router so I can use the internet connection.

Konqueror Running in KDE on FreeBSD:

It was version 4.9 that I installed before, and things have moved on so much – I reckon I mucked the install up a bit when I did it as the only user that seems to work smoothly is root, and the shutdown command breaks unless you put the -h flag (halt). Therefore, can see myself reinstalling it all – probably the latest version.

Anyway, this gadget should keep me amused for a while