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
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.
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
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:
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?
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
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
