The Oval Cricket Ground has had it’s fair share of controversy the last few years:

In 2005, England reclaimed the ashes in unusual circumstances when they drew the test match – the batsmen accepted the light on the final day such that they could not return to the field. The match was ended with the umpires ceremoniously removing the bails. If it was not to be a decisive moment of a series like the ashes it would not have warranted such a ceremony.

In 2006, Daryl Hair made the headlines in Pakistan’s tour of England where he accused the team of ball tampering. The outcome was the Pakistan team refusing to return to the pitch and for the first time in the history of the game, the match was defaulted to England. In a similar way, the bails were removed.

2007 was fairly uneventful, but 2008 gave us another story…

England vs New Zealand in the 4th ODi out of 5 last wednesday (25th June)
Chasing under 250, New Zealand are only just keeping up with the run rate as last remaining batsmen Grant Elliot drops the ball from Ryan Sidebottom by his feet. Sidebottom goes for the ball and there’s a nasty collision. Elliot falls, Bell picks up the ball, throws it to Pieteerson by the stumps who runs Elliot out.
Elliot hobbles off the pitch and is given out, and a whole uproar breaks out in the NZ dressing room. England lose the match in the end in a last ball cliff hanger. Collingwood apologises afterwards and the media lets loose.
At this point i will simply say make up your own mind:

link to the youtube video

To me I think the laws of the game are very clear with 2 exceptions
Apart from them, they say Elliot is out and Collingwood was right

The exceptions?
Firstly, the spirit of cricket – this is the prequel to the laws of the game, and are cricket’s way of saying you should show sportsmanship. Fair enough I say, but I still say tough luck in this instance.
Secondly, Law 23.3 & 42.5
Law 23.3 relates to when the ball is dead. Sub section (b) ii) says that when a player or umpire is injured the umpire should call dead ball.
Again, this is where if the umpire felt that the collision should’ve halted play he should’ve called dead ball. Instead he opted for the soft option and asked collingwood if he was sure he wanted to uphold the appeal. I’m sorry, but that doesn’t cut the mustard and isn’t the way to umpire.
Next, Law 42.5 which relates to obstruction of the batsman. This is the only law which could possibly save Elliot from dismissal. The laws are formatted such that it is up to the batsman to get from one end of the pitch to the other unless he is deliberately obstructed. Clearly this was not the case in this instance, and i would go so far as to say that both batsmen tried to get in the way of either the ball or the bowler or both. Why else would all 3 be running on the same side of the wicket. Elliot should’ve run down the left hand side since his partner was running down the other. But wait, that would’ve meant he couldn’t get in between the ball and the stumps if he did that! But that’s ok, and apparently in keeping with the spirit of the game
You’d never guess that i was a bowler when I played the game – and of course one who begrudges how it seems to be a batsman’s game (Twenty 20, fielding restrictions, limited short balls, powerplays etc etc.)

Enough of my cynical talking, but I will leave you with one last clip to get you thinking from December 2006 between Sri Lanka and New Zealand. The number 11 batsman Mutthiah Muralitharan and Kumar Sangakarra completed a single which got Sangakarra to 100. Murali walks out of his crease to congratulate Sangakarra. Unwittingly, the ball is still on it’s way back and Brendon McCullum runs Murali out. Spirit of Cricket New Zealand?

Murali Run Out

Make up your own mind, but I say while the spirit of cricket lives there should still be some degree of common sense and responsibility.

I’d not caught onto this story before (probably because I haven’t been following much world news) about Human Feet washing up on the shores of Westham Island near Vancouver – article from the Guardian 21st June 2008.

Five human feet have washed up on the island coastline around Vancouver since August last year, including two in the last four weeks. All but the one on Westham Island have been right feet; all but one appear to have been male and all have been wearing trainers – Reeboks, Nikes and Adidas. The first four were all size 12…

…But the most recent foot turned out not to be human at all. A prankster had stuffed an animal paw into a trainer and then planted it on the beach. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police were not amused…

…DNA profiles of the first three feet, found last year, do not match any missing-person cases, according to the coroner’s office. While the evidence has been gathered, there are few clues to the origin of the five feet…

…
Theories about the origins of the feet abound. Some suggest that they belong to victims of the 2004 Asian tsunami, or that they may be from the victims of maritime or air accidents.

Others point to the large numbers of missing people in British Columbia. According to police there were 2,371 people listed as missing in the province at the end of May, with gang-related crime, drugs and homelessness all contributing to the problem. The exploits of a Vancouver area pig farmer, Robert Pickton, loom large. Pickton was convicted last year of the murder of six women, and according to the prosecution at his trial confessed to the murder of 43 others.

The suggestion that there may be a criminal element connected with the appearance of so many feet is bolstered by the conclusion of Ebbesmeyer and other oceanographers that the feet have most probably been carried down the Fraser river – which flows from the Rocky mountains before reaching the Pacific Ocean at Vancouver – swelled by the spring snow melt…

…Back at Westham Island, the man who found foot number five has few doubts about its origin.

“This is coming down from the river, no question about it,” he said. “There’s someone doing this all right. Think about it: if they tied a chain around someone’s ankle and threw them overboard, the foot would just pop off. That could explain it. Maybe they got a lot of bodies stored up in a container and they got washed out. We don’t know. There’s a lot of stuff goes on over there,” he added, nodding toward the city.

It’s all very puzzling, rather creepy, and disturbing

However, it reminded me of a story relating to european dairy farmers. I don’t have a link for it unfortunately, but it goes something like this:

The EU concluded that there was too much milk being produced by dairy farmers to the point that it was being called a “Milk Lake”. To address the problem they legislated that a certain percentage of dairy cattle would have to be slaughtered, though the farmer would be compensated by the EU for every cow he had slaughtered. The way they would be paid was simple; the slaughter house would give the left ear (it may not have been that specific or even been the right ear) of every cow and a certificate to the farmer to send off to collect his money.
The scheme appeared to have been successful as the uptake had been very high after several months. Shortly after the scheme had been stopped, it was noted that were a lot of cows roaming fields with only one ear! The cows were still alive producing milk, with the only problem that they were missing an ear so slightly deaf.
I’ve heard it told as Italian farmers, though I believe the French were the biggest culprits.

Anyway, that was what sprung to mind, but I do hope something more is discovered about the the mystery in Westham Island

I don’t know if it’s that we have thick walls in the house or i’m just unlucky with routers, but after my Linksys WAG-54G router’s 4 port hub died I decided it was time to upgrade. I went for the Belkin Mimo G+ Router.
It’s been generally good with one exception – the wireless part of the router is a pain in the neck. It’s as if it goes to sleep. Having tried everything in the settings, forked out for something they’re now calling a range extender.
They’re clever gadgets that piggy-back off the ring main electrical circuit, essentially turning any plug socket into a network point. They’re not cheap, and the one i’ve gone for is the wireless version, so doesn’t involve any change from a user end.

It works like this:

So what you do is plug a cable from the router into the XE102 plug which is plugged into the mains
Then you simply plug the WGX102 in in the room you want to get the access and you have wireless networking in that area. Takes a bit of configuring to get all the settings synced up but is pretty easy.
So far, it seems to be working well.

On another subject, I thought I’d seen every video format that’s out there from mpg, avi, divx, qt mov, asx, wmv, mp4 etc… the list goes on. But I came across one last week that had me completely baffled: MKV
And the reason for it’s appearance: Hi Definition TV recording
It’s a container format similar to avi, asf, mp4 so will play in MPlayer, Perian for OS X

LONDON MAYORAL RESULTS
Overall results

It is a sad day today seeing the results
The people of London have voted out the first mayor
Out goes a man who has done more for London than any before

But as you depart, Ken, we thank you for what you’ve done

It seems that 8 years is long enough for some and they have chosen a bumbling blundering buffoon in the form of Boris Johnson.

I think those that have voted for him find him funny thinking that would be a good thing, but they are forgetting that the man’s an idiot. They are also letting their political thoughts get in the way of things. Just because Gordon Brown (Labour) is making a hash of things in the government, doesn’t mean that a Labour Mayor is also making a hash of things. So there are people who think that by making a protest vote for the Mayor is going to make an impact on the government… think about it before you do something like that because if the mayor is largely doing a good job what’s the point!

Can people really be that stupid? And vote in someone who for example was quoted as saying

My friends, as I have discovered myself, there are no disasters, only opportunities. And, indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters”

Admittedly Ken hasn’t been without mistakes, but he’s turned things around in public transport reducing the cost of bus fares, introducing the oyster card which speeds things up, and ensured that tube strikes have been kept to a minimum by negotiating with the unions.

Can the people who voted for Boris seriously see this good work continued? I’m going to give it 6 months before we have a tube strike after Boris bumbles through a negotiation and screws it up

I just hope that things aren’t completely ruined for London, but the way it’s going we’re going to have at least 4 years of Boris and it’s looking likely that David Cameron is going to force his way into government without really doing anything, just by sitting back watching Gordon Brown make mistakes.

I’ve been slacking with the maintenance of the blog in terms of updating the software that powers it.
The last update I did was over 2 years ago in Jan 2006 when I went from 2.0.2 to to 2.0.4
Have just done the upgrade to version 2.5
I haven’t confirmed if my theme is compatible or if all the plugins cut the mustard
Also upgraded ip2nations database to the latest versions, so any odd countries should be matched better

If you spot anything that looks odd, let me know and I’ll look into it

Yesterday my iPod crashed while I was listening to a Sigur Rós album
Normally when that happens (not necessarily while listening to Sigur Rós!) I hold the menu and enter buttons down for 5-10 seconds and it reboots, but this time that didn’t work
I did a google search and found a forum post on macrumors.com that worked a charm:

- Plug the iPod into the power charger ONLY and not the computer
- Toggle the hold switch to on and then off
- Hold the MENU and Select (center) portion of the wheel down simultaneously for ten seconds.

It means you need to have a mains charger which you don’t get out of the box when you buy a new iPod
I was about to get the putty knife out and pull the battery out to reboot it, which am glad I didn’t have to do

While our family doesn’t generally celebrate christmas these days I did get a present this year and it’s kept me occupied the last month or so
It’s a book called The Book of General Ignorance.
It is a book about urban legends and questions & answers, and makes for a great trivia book. Therefore it’s right down my street.
A lot of it is fairly waffly, so I’ve summarised some of the more interesting ones below (apologies for the excessive use of wikipedia links – it was just easier):

1. Henry VIII had 2 official marriages out of the general 6 he’s meant to have had
2. The human body has 4 nostrils (2 are hidden)
3. Antarctica is the driest, wettest and windiest place in the world
4. The largest living thing is a giant mushroom in Oregon
5. A blue whale’s throat is the diameter of a grapefruit
6. A chicken in 1945 lived for 2 years after having it’s head chopped off
7. A goldfish does not have a 2 second memory – according to research it is more like 2 months
8. Mosquitos have killed 45 billion people over the years from the 100+ fatal diseases they carry
9. The Bobak Marmott of Mongolia is largely responsible for all plagues (which have killed approx 1 billion people over the years)
10. Chameleons change colour based on emotion not the background
11. Polar bears are not left handed
12. Marco Polo was born Marko Pilíc in Korcula in modern day Croatia and he did not introduce Ice Cream and Spaghetti to Italy
13. Walter Raleigh did not introduce Potatoes or Tobacco to England/Ireland
14. Champagne was invented by the English – they shipped in flat wine from Champagne and added the “fizz” and started fermenting it by adding sugar
15. Seven prisoners were freed by the storming of the Bastille on 14th July 1789. They were 4 forgers, a sexual offender and 2 lunatics (one was english and thought he was Julius Caesar)
16. The Swiss eat their pet cats and dogs after they die – apparently as part of the recycling process. Some is turned into lard & cough medicine
17. The Nursery Rhyme Ring a Ring a rosie has nothing to do with the great plague. It dates from a 1790 Massachusetts rhyme about a girl name Josie.
18. There are at least 15 different states of matter
19. Glass is not a liquid – it is a solid, and the reason why church windows are thicker at the bottom is because medieval glaziers didn’t always cast a uniform sheet of glass and put the thicker end at the bottom
20. Silver is the best metal at conducting electricity and heat
21. The moon smells like gunpowder and the moondust feels like snow
22. The moon goes round the earth, but the earth also goes round the moon
23. There are an additional 6 satellites that could be considered moons of the earth
24. The average distance between asteroids in an asteroid belt is approx 1.25 million miles, so the chance of hitting one when flying through one is very small
25. Light travels at 300,000 km/s in a vacuum but when travelling through diamond it only travels at 130,000 km/s. The slowest speed it has been recorded at is 60 km/h when travelling through a block of sodium frozen at -272ªC
26. A centipede with 100 legs has never been found
27. A two-toed sloth has 3 toes on each foot, it is so named because it has 2 fingers on each hand. Two toed sloths are not related to three toed sloths
28. A European earwig has 2 penises
29. There are more tigers in captivity in the USA than in the wild combined – there are thought to be 12,000 owned by private owners. It is only illegal to own tigers in 19 US states.
30. The Shaftesbury memorial in Picadilly Circus is of Anteros, Eros’s younger brother (not of Eros as it is commonly signposted and referred to as)
31. Only 5 people were officially killed in the Great Fire of London
32. The Romans gave the thumbs up symbol at the end of a gladiator fight to signify the loser should be killed. They buried their thumb in their fist to indicate he should be saved
33. Most accused of witchcraft were acquitted or hanged – very few were burnt at the stake. Most were men.
34. The number of the beast is 616 – it was mistranslated from the original Book of Revelations until it was redone in 2005
35. The Universe is beige
36. Water is actually a faint shade of blue despite appearing colourless in small quantities
37. There is no word for blue in ancient greek
38. The Coriolis force is not the main influence on which way (clockwise or anticlockwise) water goes down the plughole – in fact it is going to be negligible
39. Camels carry fat in their humps and originally come from North America
40. Technically there are only 46 US states:
Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts are officially commonwealths.
In addition there are 2 commonwealths: Puerto Rico and the Northern Mariana Islands. They drew up their own constitutions declaring themselves commonwealths of the United States. Neither are US states, and are officially unincorported territories so not included in the 50 “US States”
41. George Washington’s false teeth were mostly made of hippopotamus ivory
42. Baseball was invented in England
43. Thomas Crapper as not the first to invent the flushing toilet however he was involved in the sewerage industry and holds 3 patents for water closet improvements.
44. Mozart’s middle name was not Amadeus. His full name was Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart.
45. The largest capital city is technically Honolulu, the capital of Hawaii. This is because the boundary of the city of Honoloulou is the county of Honolulu which consists of the entire stretch of the North Western Hawaiian islands which are 1500 miles long or 2127 square miles
46. The Largest man made structure is a rubbish dump on Staten Island called Fresh Kills. At 4.6 square miles in area, receiving 650 tons of rubbish a day until it was closed in 2001. It reached a height of 25m taller than the statue of liberty
47. We are still in an ice age – an ice age is defined as any period in earth history when there are polar ice caps
48. The inventor of the biro was called László Biró and from Hungary. However the first person to patent the ball point pen was John J. Loud, but he never exploited it
49. Chalk isn’t used to make blackboard chalk – it’s made of Gypsum (Calcium Sulphate as opposed to Calcium Carbonate)
50. Cockroaches are not the most likely creatures to survive a nuclear war. They may be able to live for a week without a head, but a fruit fly can sustain over 3 times the radiation and a parasitic wasp can take 9 times. The creature most likely to survive though is the bacterium Deinococcus Radiodurans
51. Violin strings have never been made of cat gut – they sometimes used sheep gut at least until the 1750′s (and maybe even today)
52. The greater the number of floor you climb before you throw a cat out the window, the more likely it is to survive. According to a US study that showed cats that fell out of buildings up to 7 stories were more likely to sustain injuries than those falling from higher floors.
53. Ostriches don’t bury their heads in the sand
54. Your fingernails and hair don’t continue to grow after you die – it’s because your body dehydrates tightening the skin that creates this illusion
55. Alcohol doesn’t kill brain cells, it just makes new cells grow less quickly due to the dehydration
56. James Bond’s favourite drink was not a Vodka Martini – it was bourbon which he consumes 58 glasses of in all the books whereas he only drinks 19 Vodka Martinis.
57. Jaffa Cakes are cakes (not biscuits) – a landmark legal case was involved, as under British law biscuits and cakes are not subject to VAT, but chocolate covered biscuits are (luxury item). The evidence to prove they were cakes was that Jaffa cakes go hard (like cakes) when they go stale. In contrast, biscuits go soft.
58. It doesn’t matter how close you sit to the tv you won’t damage your eyes
59. The more hours sleep you have at night the more likely you are to shorten your life. However, not sleeping enough will reduce your IQ, memory and reasoning ability
60. Half an hour of exercise 3-5 days a week is likely to be just as good a treatment for depression as the medication your doctor prescribes you as it reduces symptoms by 50% according to surveys
61. Hitler was not a Vegetarian though he probably should’ve been as he suffered from chronic flatulence – not eating meat would’ve helped this
62. The Spanish invented the concentration camp in cuba in 1895 several years before the British used them in the Boer Wars
63. The Hurricane aeroplane was more successful than the Spitfire in the battle of britain essentially winning the battle
64. 1 dog year is not equivalent to 7 human years. It’s a sliding scale that starts quickly and slows down in time. It also depends on the size and breed of dog.
65. There is no such animal as a panther – technically all large cats are panthers, but what is usually being referred to are black leopards/jaguars.
In the US they often mean a black puma – however none has ever been found
66. The banana plant is a herb and the banana is a berry
67. Botanically,Strawberries, Raspberries and Peaches are not berries – they are drupes – raspberries and strawberries are aggregated drupes.
68. Almonds are drupes, Peanuts are Peas (legumes), and Brazil nuts are seeds – none are nuts
69. Captain cook did not give his men limes to cure scurvy – he gave them sauerkraut. Lemons were given to sailors from 1795. By the 1850′s to save money limes were given to save money. Limes contain very little vitamin C, so scurvy came back with a vengeance.
70. Captain Cook did not discover Australia and he wasn’t the captain of the ship, he was a Lieutenant. British explorer William Dampier explored Australia in the 17th Century. Another contender is the 14th Century Chinese Admiral Zheng He
71. The Australian slang for an English man, POM (or pommy), is short for pomegranate because it rhymes with immigrant when said in an aussie accent
72. There were between 2 and 20 wise men or magi and at least one of them may have been a woman. This is according to the English church’s 2004 revision of the description of the Magi
73. Panama hats come from Ecuador. They were named so because they were given as standard issue to men digging the Panama Canal
74. St Patrick may be the patron saint of ireland but he is not irish – he was from somewhere around Pembrokeshire