Happy Anniversary

This year’s Carling Cup Final between Aston Villa and Manchester United will take place at Wembley on Sunday 28th February 2010.Curiously, this date marks the exact 34th anniversary, to the very day, of Manchester City’s last trophy. After United defeated Millwall 3-0 in the 2004 FA Cup Final, all the United players changed into shirts numbered ‘36’ in a tribute to the young player, Jimmy Davis, who had recently died in a car accident....

January 29, 2010

34 years

‘When we go to Old Trafford, we will take that banner down. This is the last year it will be displayed because we will win.’ Roberto Mancini - 6 January 2010

January 29, 2010

the wit and wisdom of Gary Cook

‘This football club will be without doubt the biggest and best in the world. People don’t like to hear it but I’ll make no excuses for saying it, and I will never stop saying it because I truly believe it with the resources and capabilities that we have - and when, not if, we’re at Wembley having beaten Man United yet again !’ Gary Cook - Mad Hatter Saloon, New York, 22 January 2010....

January 28, 2010

fun with keywords

Some of the varied and bizarre keyword searches leading visitors to this site merely confirm this blog is the ramblings of a confused madman. Here is a selection from the start of the year ‘dyslexic blog’ - curiously spelled correctly. ‘crucifixion blog’ - listen United are in debt and suffering a dip in form but don’t do anything hasty now. ‘why linux will never’ - come on, you simply can’t leave me dangling like that....

January 20, 2010

milkman of human kindness

Sometimes your faith in humanity is restored. The DEC Haiti appeal has raised over £25 million just from the news coverage alone. This exceeds the £20 million raised by last year’s Children in Need campaign which (while still a worthy cause) is mercilessly peddled and trailed by the BBC for two long weeks. Don’t forget to mark your donation as ‘Gift Aid’ which allows DEC to reclaim 28p for every pound given....

January 20, 2010

Steve Jobs on design

‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” — Steve Jobs So very true. Via a comment on an interesting blog post comparing Tumblr to Posterous. Ironically, this short post would have been better suited to a one liner, throwaway post correctly labelled and nicely formatted as a quotation on a service like, well Posterous or err, Tumblr but I am trying to consolidate all my efforts into this blog....

January 19, 2010

Arthur Smith nails it

‘This country is shit. The food is shit, the government is shit, the weather is shit, the transport system is shit, education is shit, life is shit, death is shit, I am shit’. As this country grinds to a halt yet again after a light dusting of snow, a timely and apt quote from Arthur Smith whose autobiography ‘My Name is Daphne Fairfax’ I can highly recommend.

January 13, 2010

the mechanics of IT

Last year, I visited a customer in Swindon. When I arrived at the office, I noticed some water dripping from the underside at the front of my car. I didn’t have time to investigate or get my hands dirty so I subconsciously hoped it was just condensation from the air conditioning unit and tried to forget all about it. After work, I managed to navigate Swindon’s world famous roundabout of roundabouts and finally locate my hotel....

January 4, 2010

meaningless annual stats review

That was the year that was. Statistics for 2009 with the comparative numbers for 2008 in brackets. Summary 29,901 visits (43,732) 39,545 page views (63,095) 1.32 pages per visit (1.44) Average time on site - 48 seconds (54 secs) 91.2% new visits (90.6%) Search Engines Google - 22,627 (32,830) Yahoo - 381 (704) Bing - 168 (N/A) AOL - 128 (229) Ask - 115 (195) Referrers identi.ca - 575 (229) avc....

January 2, 2010

dreaded Nigerian underpants bomber

What a terrible holiday period for Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. By the time, we had opened all our presents, stuffed ourselves with turkey, fallen out over charades and finally slumped in front of ‘Gavin & Stacey’, Umar should have been sitting at the right hand of Allah, surrounded by a variety of 57 vestal virgins, clad in white silk lingerie, feeding him grapes, tending to his every whim, straddling… [That’s enough vestal virgin fantasies - Ed]....

December 30, 2009