Jack Of All Tirades

No Coming Back

2010-02-15T21:50:00.007Z

You heard it here first (well, maybe...) - Scotland will do very well to avoid losing all their remaining games in the Six Nations 2010. That game against Wales was a sucker punch. As Shane Williams glided over, arm aloft as if conquering the ground beyond the Scottish try line, I felt as if one of Lee Byrne's massive left foot punts had hit me square in the gut - so I can only imagine how the Scottish squad felt. Losing is one thing, winning with some great stuff before losing by haemorrhaging points in the final 7 minutes as your colleagues lose their heads around you* is quite another.

Combine this with the fact that Chris Paterson bruised a kidney, Rory Lamont buggered his knee and Thom Evans just about got paralysed and I think it's a pretty big ask to come back from that and win a tough set of remaining games. Italy in Rome, England in Edinburgh and then a most likely championship chasing Ireland in Dublin. As ever, I'll be delighted to be proven wrong (I was pretty pessimistic about the Cardiff showdown to begin with, in typical fashion), and I may well be, but it is far more likely than before.

I've said before that it's hard being a Scotland fan in any sport and Saturday was the perfect example of that classic Scottish export - the valiant defeat. It's happened time and again and I still don't know why I continue to be surprised by this...

*Why didn't the restart get kicked to touch!?

New Decade, New Dimension?

2010-01-09T16:00:00.001Z

This new decade will be the glorious dawn of 3D TV and movies apparently.

Um...no...it won't be.

I went to see Avatar earlier this week, but that isn't what prompted me to get hot under the collar about this. Sure, it's the poster child for the 3D 'revolution' and was quite impressive in 3D. The film is well worth seeing and enjoyable enough (if a little predictable) - in 2D or 3D, that extra special spare dimension doesn't add that much to it...apart from £3 to the ticket price.

That isn't what gets me though, I'll leave it to Mark Kermode to rail against 3D in cinemas. It's 3D TV sets for your living room, in particular the idea this will haul consumer electronics companies out of the recession. Am I the only person entirely uninspired and a little sceptical about this? The hype has gone too far if company high heid yins are pinning economic recovery on this gimmick. Remember Terminator 2-3D? A theme park ride. A gimmick. You can thank James Cameron for that as well I suppose. The 3D raising its head now is the same thing in disguise.

When the time comes the watch your shiny new film or TV series on your sofa, can folk be really bothered cracking out the glasses that make you look like the lovechild of Bono and Woody Allen?! Everyone watching needs a pair, surely. What happens if you lose them? You can't watch until you get a spare set? I thought the point of new technology was to make things simpler, not infinitely more long winded and complicated. It seems to be a lot of development and expense to bring what is essentially an anti-piracy device into the living room.

What happened to the drive to get everyone with HD 1080p television sets? I still don't know a lot of homes with HDTVs There's no need to foist 3D on the world with all the associated gubbins. We're still in a situation where swathes of consumers still haven't quite sussed out HD, Blu-ray, (legally) downloaded films and shows, may well not be inclined to do so and are not very well catered for with regards to being able to play what they own on what they want - TV, iPod, PC etc...who gives a toss as to whether spears and fingers can point out of the screen at them?

Killing In The Name Of Fun

2009-12-19T15:19:00.009Z

I'm sure most must have heard about the unlikely Christmas No.1 battle in the UK this year. Well I've been sucked in and bought Rage Against The Machine's profanity laden Killing in the Name (which I already owned) ahead of X-Factor winner Joe McElderry's The Climb (although it's not really his, but we'll get to that).

To begin with though, as much as I may like him to be, Simon Cowell is not rattled by this. I may not like the bilge he pumps into the airwaves year after year but he's an intelligent man who hasn't made umtpy-thrumpty millions by being an easily perturbed idiot. For all his protestations in the press he will be loving this battle - all publicity is good publicity in this case. Syco records won't sell any less Joe McElderry CDs as a result of this. If anything this means more X-Shocker singles will be sold, as more fans of it hear Killing in the Name and recoil in horror and run out to buy it. Similar to the boy himself. I'm ignoring the Sun's "They wouldn't get through to boot camp..." quote as it just sounds ridiculous and I wouldn't trust the Sun for anything. I very much hope that quote is out of context, or I really do despair but the lad seems pretty diplomatic about the whole thing. But all this coverage is why Cowell can't stop popping up in the press talking about it. Despite shelling out my 50-odd pence I have no doubt at this point that the X-Factor physical sales from today will tell and propel another crap ballad into the Christmas playlists. I would say he needs a No.1 not for his pockets but for the X-Factor brand to continue spinning money the way it is now.

So why am I bothering? Why does it matter? Well it was not a Simon Cowell quote that got me so annoyed, but that annoying little idiot Louis Walsh. He claimed it was "killing the fun" in the race for the top spot. For who? You and your cronies? This is the most fun I've had with a Pop Chart in years. It's the first time I will have paid attention to anything involving the Christmas No.1 since...well, ever. I've had immense fun with RATM swearing on 5Live and sending producers into panic, the ridiculous mashup videos and all the rest of it. The supposed ironies over the song choice of the massive facebook group are unimportant and miss the point. It's a vote against the show, as members of RATM have said, and an attempt to make the charts interesting. The final lines of the song are Zack de la Rocha screaming "F*** you, I won't do what you tell me!" and it's appropriate for multiple reasons.

About 3 days ago I went and looked at the iTunes download chart and spotted two oddities. Stop Crying Your Heart Out by Oasis hanging around the top 30 and Don't Stop Believin' by Journey right up in the top 10. I then discovered they had been performed on the X-Factor recently. All this Rage Against The Machine campaign is showing is that the massive marketing machine that propels glorified karaoke singers to chart topping positions and long-forgotten singles back into them is not the sole preserve of the Simon Cowells, Nigel Lythgoes and and Pete Watermans of the world. Exposure correlates with sales pretty closely, and it always has. In an age of quick word-of-mouth through things like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube there is no reason why what record executives decide should dominate the charts and this is proof of it. Even if RATM don't make it, the fact remains that politically themed, rap metal song from 1992 about the LA Riots got to No.2 in the UK charts - purely as a result of facebook group gaining some traction.

Secondly, X-Factor contestants should adopt the song's final refrain as their motto. Where are the previous winners of these type of shows? Michelle McManus, Steve Brookstein, Leon Jackson, One True Voice? Where are these people now, not even counting other finalists? Absolutely nowhere, getting dropped the minute they were past their prime - which was about a few months to the marketing men. Anyone who genuinely wants a singing career should not audition for the X-Factor. A quick 15 minutes? Yes, but unless you are fairly talented (there have been exceptions) there is no career through this route. What ever happened to a distinguished but low-key session career? As long as you do what King Simon decrees you're fine. It's about time there was some creativity involved, rather than just churning out (rather bad) covers. This is not the best route, or even the easiest, to a musical career. To all X-Factor hopefuls I implore you, turn to Cowell and say "I won't do what you tell me!" It's ironic he claims this is "[putting] down young talent" given that is exactly what he himself does when it's no longer making money for him.

Can the show be entertaining? Sure, of course it can and it must be. Not my cup of tea, I hate it, but 19 million people don't watch it if they do. It's about time it stopped being a shop window for music though (and not new music either, we're now talking Miley Cyrus covers for goodness sake, the original only came up about a year ago or something). In the year that has seen the cancellation of the grandfather of all reality TV shows, Big Brother, it seems appropriate to deliver a big two's up to the X-Factor before it hopefully begins to go the same way.

I'm fed up with it, and clearly millions of other people are as well. We're "cynical" and "stupid"? It's "very Scrooge" and we're "taking the fun out of it"? No we're not, quite the opposite. We should just shut up? Well f*** you, Simon, I won't do what you tell me.

Can The Web Kill The Pub Quiz?

2009-09-12T10:53:00.010+01:00

It's a familiar sight up and down the country - people huddled round tables with scraps of paper, desperately fumbling around for a pen or pencil as bit of feedback crackles over the sound system. Whispers of "Shut up!" echo around as the first conundrum is burbled through what sounds like a microphone covered in cotton wool. The pub quiz. Teams gather in hope of having a good spread of knowledge - sports guy, film guy, history guy, geography guy, general brain-box guy. A sure fire winner of the cash/sweeties/free drinks, no?

Not any longer as I put it to you they can be beaten by one single person - mobile internet guy. This is something that occurred to be a while back whilst doing a pub quiz I attended semi-regularly at The Pear Tree in Edinburgh (anyone in Edinburgh should go along, good quiz). When I briefly formed a team consisting of friends and flatmates, we had 3 smartphones amongst our number and agreed not to use them as that would be cheating. More and more people though are getting smartphones. Of my rough age group, about half the people I know own, or are considering, an iPhone; another quarter own, or are considering, a Blackberry. The number of people owning such devices is only set to increase. Even my old Sony Ericsson could access Wikipedia and Google, albeit quite slowly. Text services such as AQA, text a question to 63336 in the UK, offer answers to your questions at a price.

All of this is simply an evolution of that moment when you realise your absent friend would definitely know the answer to that question. One cheeky text message later and you have your answer. A host of information is right at your fingertips now, not just the knowledge of those in your phonebook. Short of getting everyone to forcibly turn off their phones, the answer to any question is a few fingerswipes away. Not even the music round is safe from the all-knowing power of the internet, you could even stream the song to check the answer given. I've used my phone to settle various non-quiz pub disputes over the time since I got it. What colour is a polar bear's skin? What the hell is a kelpie? How tall is Nicolas Sarkozy? Can dogs look up? How long is a piece of string? No question is safe.

My role tended to be 'film guy' or 'sports guy'. Name all the films Tim Burton directed beginning with 'B'? Batman, ~~Batman Begins~~ Batman Returns (Edit: Cheers, Jay. Stupid error - d'oh!), Beetlejuice, Big Bish. Bam! Four points please. But knowing you could achieve the same thing, possibly quicker, by Googling Tim Burton's filmography lessens the satisfaction somewhat. There's plenty of incentive for some folk to do this too, there are often some valuable prizes on offer at a pub quiz. With the ubiquity of such devices it will become harder to police (short of building a pub in a Faraday cage).

Obviously the pub quiz is not going anywhere soon but with more and more people having access to on-the-go internet I can't help but think the questions are soon going to have be wonderfully creative if it's not to become an endangered species.

Music On-the-Go...all of it

2009-09-07T17:10:00.008+01:00

Well not all of it, but a hell of a lot. I blogged about music service Spotify a while ago and generally how superb it was. Well - it just got better. Today the iPhone application hit the iTunes store (and Google's Android store as well I believe).

When the history of music in the digital era is reflected on years from now this will be a watershed. Although my technology predictions are generally a bit dodgy*, I genuinely believe 2009 will be regarded as a landmark period. When Spotify finally gets a release in the United States it will just explode.

Spotify in its desktop form was an excellent and well-executed service, but I always had that niggling thought in my head - "I can't listen to these on my MP3 player, iPod or whatever - shame, really". No longer, I now have access to over 6 million tracks in my pocket, accessible through my phone. Just think about that for a second - 6 million. Through a phone. I like to keep up to date with consumer technology and, as a result, little that comes out on a day-to-day basis makes me go "Wow", but this has kind of blown me away. I'm still surprised Apple allowed it, as it poses a massive threat to iTunes long term. Naturally, you won't always have a signal good enough to stream music over which is why you can store anything up to about 3,000 songs (assuming you have the hard-disk space on your phone) for listening offline. The playlists you set up at home on your computer seem to automatically synchronise to your phone as well. Add on the collaborative playlists already available on Spotify (where your friends can add tracks as well) and the genius grows.

This isn't all a fairytale dreamworld, however; the mobile versions are only available to those paying £9.99 a month for the advert-free version of Spotify. I coughed up as there was no minimum term and I could axe it after a month if I wasn't satisfied. So far I am (although it did cut out a couple of times this afternoon) and will be keeping it on. In the last post on Spotify I did worry about the longevity of the service in terms of it becoming a money-making venture. this will certainly help. I wasn't a fan of subscription based models for music but if they can get me to sign up then something is obviously going according to plan. The only true problem is the inability to run the application in the background and check e-mail, text messages and such while the music is playing but this is more the fault of Apple than Spotify and it won't affect those running it on an Android based phone.

Once again, anyone who hasn't tried Spotify should. Even in its free (advert-based) form it is worth seeing. To that end, I have a spare invite going as a result of me signing up for premium so if anyone is after one then let me know.

*I effectively said Google Chrome web browser would flop. Whilst hardly the new standard, it's now my default browser on every system and I've been turning family and friends over to it. I have been proven to be talking out my rear end. D'oh!

Guitar For Dummies #6

2009-09-03T08:45:00.000+01:00

It's approximately a year since I bought a guitar and tried to fix my complete lack of ability in terms of music. It's gone pretty well I feel. I can play a number of tunes pretty well, even if my repertoire is still fairly Oasis-biased there's enough to balance it out now.

I'm delighted I kept on with this and would recommend anyone do so. If I can play a guitar there is hope for us all. There is still a rather large and annoying gap in the form of barre chords that I still haven't bothered with. I got rather defeatist a while ago and thought I probably just couldn't do them. I then recalled that this time last year I could only play two chords, and not that well. I've picked a couple of tunes that feature a single barre chord and I'll work on playing them that way. I can already throw out a B-minor with a minimum of mute or fret buzz (I'd been cheating previously by only playing the highest 4 strings and fretting only the high E, which is actually B/F#m or something...). I thought about lessons but with me about to start a PhD I'm not sure when I would find the time. Besides, I got to here without any.

So even though I won't be headlining anywhere near you, well...ever, I'm declaring this a resounding success one year in with plenty of stuff to try and improve from here. I've quickly learnt I was never going to be some sort of magical finger-wiggling demi-God in the space of a year, it's a gradual process. I'd like to have a proper go on an electric guitar at some stage, with the aim of owning one somewhere down the line. If anyone I know who plays a guitar wants to recommend a tune that I should have a bash at (barre chords or not), then give me a shout.

In other news, tried a bit of singing with it. Stopped quickly, knocked my timing off and I also have a tin ear. Can't have it all though, eh?

Inglorious Tarantino

2009-08-30T12:58:00.003+01:00

I finally caved yesterday and went to see (the curiously spelled) Inglourious Basterds, which is apparently not a remake of the 1978 Italian movie of (essentially) the same name. I used to be a massive Tarantino fan, and still am to a certain extent, but recently he has seemed to disappear up his own...well I'm sure you can find a suitable end to that sentence. I was going to whack a tweet up about what I thought after the hasty decision but it's impossible to express in 140 characters. The film is frustratingly bad and excellent in equal measure.

Tarantino's first 3 feature films (that he directed, discounting Four Rooms) were superb. Pulp Fiction, in particular, had crackling dialogue that was inspired in parts. How many other films can keep your interest while two hitmen stop on the way to 'work' to discuss, amongst other things, what French people call a quarter-pounder and what level of infidelity a footrub constitutes? The success of those first 3 films seems to have gone to his head- Kill Bill was pure self-indulgence, two parts totalling 4-hours of bloat. I quite liked Vol. 1, and Vol. 2 was even slightly better but there was one good, 1.5 hour film in there somewhere if only Tarantino had reined himself in. The less said about Death Proof the better.

And so we come up Tarantino's WWII epic. His "Dirty Dozen". There is a lot to like here and the trailer is horribly horribly misleading and there are more strands to the film than it implies. It is, however, far too long once again. There is a superb film of just over an 1.5 hours in here but instead we get just over 2.5 hours of self-indulgence and the dialogue can be unforgivably dull.

There is one stand out element in the film and that is Christoph Waltz as Col. Hans "The Jew Hunter" Landa. The man is simply superb and steals the film, let alone the scenes he is in - it is a wonderful turn. It is worth seeing purely for his performance. Apparently plucked from Austrian TV by Tarantino it is a masterstroke in the same league as reviving John Travolta's career in Pulp Fiction. He won the Best Actor gong at Cannes and he should receive an Oscar nomination in my opinion. In a mediocre, boring ego-trip of a film he shows what this film could have been.

There is a lot to dislike about this film - the length, the dullness of certain dialogue, Brad Pitt's ridiculous performance, the self-indulgent nature of the whole affair. But there is also a lot to admire - the chaptering of the story that Tarantino has down to a fine art by now, some humorous exchanges and, above all, the performance of Christoph Waltz. It might be worth seeing on DVD, and certainly Waltz should not go without recognition.

After this, though, Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs seem like a long, long, long time ago.

Try, Try and Try Again

2009-08-29T13:07:00.007+01:00

It's hard being a Scottish football fan.

This is true for a number of reasons, but a classic one is the practically bi-polar behaviour of a lot of the media coverage the national team receives. A recent Chick Young column, a man I have very little time for, recently moaned and lamented long enough for me to deduce that his thesis was "We're rubbish and no one cares about us". The catalyst for this stream of pessimism most likely being the rather embarrassing defeat in Norway and Arsenal outclassing Celtic. Just two weeks previously the headline on his blog read - "Celtic victory energises Scottish game". Make your mind up, eh?

The fact of the matter is that, right now, I don't believe we do matter a lot on the world stage. Unfortunately that's what happens when you haven't qualified for a major tournament in 11 years (soon to become 14 I feel but fat ladies, singing etc.). Teams are aware we are reasonably difficult to beat at home, but that's about it. Scotland, since about 1998, have been a shadow of their former selves from before I was born. As an analogy, I think it must be hard to support Nottingham Forest in their current state having seen them win, and then successfully defend, the European cup in the late 70s. But so what? Unlike Forest, Scotland can still sit down at the big table and try to fight for scraps of the meal. We're still able to qualify with the right results. Nottingham Forest won't win the European Cup again for a long, long time.

Trinidad & Tobago, Togo, Angola and North Korea have very little influence on the world game, far less than Scotland, but they've all recently qualified for World Cups. Was the Greece side than blundered its way to Euro 2004 victory any better than the Scotland side that downed France in Paris? On a technical level, no. I don't think so. And of course the English press don't care about the SPL, if Dundee United were to go under in the manner of Airdrie I'd barely care myself. None of this matters, so commentators - Mr Young in particular - need to stop being so downbeat between 'victories'.

To turn it on it's head - I don't care whether Celtic get a mention in some poxy London newspaper, or if the world found the losses to Norway and Macedonia amusing. If Chick Young is "weary of writing obituaries about the Scottish challenge" then stop writing them you dunderhead!

It's time we stop inflating our importance on the world football stage, stop despairing about "lack of respect" and just shut up. It's easily sorted, and will be soon I'm sure but not while Chick Young and his cronies whine on about wanting more attention like the spoilt child at the party. We need to earn it back first, and we're perfectly capable of doing it as soon as we stop wallowing around in self despair when things don't go according to plan.

2009 Films: Rainy Day Preferable

2009-08-18T09:00:00.001+01:00

I was looking at cinema lisitings to try and find something to go see in the next couple of weeks. I like to consider myself fairly knowledgable about cinema, probably more than I actually am but I don't lap up any old crap and I often turn to folk and suggest a film where the half the time the response is "Never heard of it...". But this year I have never been so uninspired to go to the cinema - is this a bad year? I'm beginning to think so.

Aside from the obvious candidate in Harry Potter my choices over the past few weeks/months have included:

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen: "Quick! Stop that giant piece of CGI from hitting Megan Fox's arse while my large piece of machinery explodes for no good reason!"
G-Force: Guinea Pig secret agents? Really? "It's Dr Dolittle meets Spy Kids! I'll get my coat..."
GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra: This just looks awful, and Christopher Eccleston's Scottish accent should be enough to put anybody off. Possible 'crap' classic like Batman: The Movie?
The Ugly Truth: Gerard Butler (of 300's "THIS IS GLESCA!" fame) does a hilarious American accent that gave me a good laugh, but looks below run-of-the-mill.
Watchmen: Went to see this and on reflection it was crap. Not the worst ever, it has a great opening sequence set to The Times They Are A-Changin' - all downhill from there.

And those are just the ones that were on my radar at given points due to publicity. I did see Public Enemies recently, the latest Michael Mann film. Whilst positively Oscar-worthy compared to the bilge above it was even disappointing in the context of the man who gave us Heat, The Insider and Collateral amongst others. Before that I had the triple whammy (in the space of 10 days) of Angels & Demons, X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Terminator: Salvation - henceforth known as Skydiving Pontiffs...For Dummies™, X-Men Unoriginals: Wolverine and Terminator: Regurgitation.

Words cannot truly describe how crap I thought Terminator: Salvation was (although Mark Kermode gets close here and here) and see very little to inspire me going forward. I think I need to start making more effort in sourcing films that I'll enjoy rather than stumbling to the multiplex. I've found myself going to places like Edinburgh's Cameo and the Cambridge Picturehouse less and less over the past 2 years and missed a number of films I'd like to have seen in the process. Given the uninspiring stuff being churned out at the multiplex I'll have to rectify this.

I also see an Alien 5 is being made with Ridley Scott at the helm...god help us all.

Multiple (Online) Personality Disorder

2009-08-15T11:43:00.007+01:00

The other day I tried to get a handle on my presence on the web - find lost logins, usernames, strengthen a few passwords, delete where needed - that sort of thing. Oh my dear lord.

I discovered two things: 1) If I can give my future children any advice regarding the social web, or any section for that matter, it would be to not sign up for things unless you are sure you need them or will use them (or least document it somehow when you do so) and 2) I'm Google's b*tch.

I thought I could cover this in a couple of hours but how wrong I was. At last count I had about 20-30 online accounts and about 10 I could remember none of the details for. I also suspect I have two MySpace accounts owing to forgetting about the other one. Only problem with this is that I need to get into them in order to delete them - as I have now done with my Bebo account and will be doing with several others. I think I may have cottoned on to this just before it became insurmountable, but it all comes very close to a bewildering mess. When you remember the advice to not use the same login credentials for multiple sites it becomes even more daunting when you lose track.

I've questioned why some folk of my generation don't sign up for at least one service like Facebook, Twitter etc. I have a very good one now - how quickly you could lose track of your online identity. My usage is fairly mild by modern standards and I'll have this reigned in fairly soon I feel but it is also tapered back somewhat by the ubiquity of Google, which I seem to rely on more and more. Google is responsible for my webmail, calendar, feed reader, this blog and its RSS feed and hits tracker, YouTube and even backing up my mobile phone contacts. Is this a good thing? I can't decide, that's at least 8 login credentials rolled into 1 but Google seems to be taking over the world, or my internet one at least (I'm writing this in Google Chrome for heaven's sake...).

Therefore, I would say to keep track of what you sign up for online as you do it. You then won't lose track. Also, write some passwords down. Everyone says you shouldn't but as long you keep it in your wallet/lockbox/whatever, or maybe the system you use to generate passwords, I don't see the harm. Much better than choosing a password you can remember easily and then use everywhere, which can lead to problems.

It may be that there is very little point in me doing this, but I feel a lot better having a handle on the information I have out there. Once you realise this, it can't be too hard to keep a track of it but realising the amount you have out there is the hard bit.

Top Of The Pops: Good Riddance

2009-07-21T07:30:00.006+01:00

Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys wants Top Of The Pops back on the air, and he joins a growing list. Am I on it? No, and here's why.

TOTP had become dated and a relic. Whenever I was flicking channels with friends not one would say "Put on Top of the Pops, will you Jim?" - quite the opposite. From an age when I was old enough to truly appreciate music and form my own preferences about it I never watched it, if anything I watched Later...With Jools Holland. Neil Tennant thought cynicism had creeped into some of the presenting by the 90s and that "...I think its up to the public to make the taste decisions - not the DJs presenting." Well they did, people stopped watching the show because it was no longer relevant or any good.

I found myself watching Top Of The Pops 2 more often than it's big brother. As a young secondary school pupil I first came across The Eagles and other bands from way before my time on TOTP2. It shaped my musical tastes and opinions far more than the version of the main show than existed by the turn of the millenium. Now you may say that this was, of course, archive footage of the main show from 'way back when'.

But that is entirely my point, it had become a shadow of what it was. My children will not be watching archive footage of The Ketchup Song, Touch My Bum or It's Chico Time and wishing they were there. I have of course chosen deliberately humorous/just sh!te (delete as appropriate) songs, but no one wants the 21st Century TOTP back, do they really? When was the last time somebody watched a performance on the show and thought "Wow"? As a young man acquainted with the modern version of the show, I certainly don't recall any.

Top Of The Pops was past its 'Use-by' date and was removed. Nostalgia does not make good programming. Grandstand went the same way as the digital TV age took hold - television moves on. If people want some sort of music showcase on the BBC then innovate in some way, think of a way to make it relevant instead of pining for an out-of-date nostalgia trip.

Olympic Rugby 7s: Make It Happen

2009-07-19T12:32:00.008+01:00

In the coming weeks, the future of Rugby 7s will reach a crucial moment in its development. I want, along with others, to draw attention to this as the sport is vying for a place on the Olympic roster in 2016. The first stage is the list of sports being reduced to two, followed by an IOC vote in October. As a rugby fan and a (albeit slightly jaded) fan of the Olympics, this should happen. Olympic Rugby is a perfect fit.

Olympic 7s would draw crowds, grow the sport, fit in with other Olympic sports and give a new dimension to the games. If Rugby is to grow, both the full version of the game as well as 7s, it has to spread and be introduced to new frontiers. There is no better way to do that than making it an Olympic sport. Beyond all the sporting reasons, there are financial incentives as well - rugby fans from the world over would pack stadiums. Record crowds on the IRB circuit at Twickenham and elsewhere show this - Edinburgh 7s even attracted 20,000-odd people despite hardly any (decent) publicity from the SRU.

The whole idea of the Olympics is meant to be countries coming together and competing in the spirit of fair-play and friendship. Adding Rugby would give other countries a chance in the spotlight, remove them from the periphery of the games. For example, Fiji and Samoa have never won an Olympic medal in any sport at any games despite 24 appearances between them. It is not inconceivable, however, that an Olympic 7s final could be contested between these two that hitherto have been standing on the sidelines. I have signed the petition to make it happen, and would encourage anyone who follows rugby or the Olympics to sign. Keep yourself posted on Olympic developments in the coming weeks with UR7s. Get a buzz going and it will happen. Rugby both wants and deserves the opportunity to show, on the biggest global stage of all, what it can do.

30 Rock: Watch it

2009-06-08T19:39:00.004+01:00

Long time since I got on here, bloody exams! Done now and thought I'd briefly give a shout out to 30 Rock, my American TV Comedy of the moment. I'm sure there are many people who know of this, Americans mainly, but loads have people have asked me "What's that then?" recently when watching on my iPhone, possibly as a result of it airing on Five in the UK and not getting the highest ratings in the US.

Despite this, it's recently been renewed for a 4th season and has won the Outstanding Comedy Series Emmy two years in a row - the first show to do so since Frasier, beating off the likes of The Office and the wonderful Curb Your Enthusiasm in the process. It's a slightly off-the-wall comedy based around behind-the-scenes of a Saturday Night Live type show and the characters therein - neurotic head writer Liz (Tina Fey), business focused network exec Jack (a brilliant Alec Badlwin) and the fictional show's two main stars (Jane Krakowski of Ally McBeal fame and Tracy Morgan) amongst others. It has many golden moments and it would be unfortunate to see it go the way of Futurama, which (despite being better than stablemate The Simpsons, in my opinion) was cancelled amidst critical success but declining ratings. I would encourage people to get it on DVD, as the first series is dirt cheap now - although I'm sure it's available by other, slightly more nefarious means. The second and third series have really stepped the show up a gear though.

Go watch it, it's well worth a shot. Best American sitcom since Curb Your Enthusiasm started it's run, and more suited to people who don't like the humour of the latter (do they exist!?...). Enjoy.

Lions Apathy: Could 7s Help?

2009-04-29T19:56:00.011+01:00

On Tuesday the Lions team for the tour to South Africa in 2009 was announced. As a Scot you can probably guess I'm not terribly enamoured with the 'Jock-count', so to speak, and I'll be having a mini-rant about that shortly and although it isn't the main focus of this post it touches upon what is - how to inject some '21st-Century' into what is, some feel, a relic of the bygone amateur era.

First off, a few gripes. I never fully expected many Scottish Lions but I certainly expected more than 2 out of 37. I like Nathan Hines but I never expected him to be named and it feels rather token-esque, of the 5 locks going he is 4th or 5th choice as the tour starts (even though I feel an O'Connell/Hines 2nd row would be ferocious). Euan Murray was a dead cert, so no surprises there. But beyond that - Ross Ford not one of the hookers? Does McGeechan actually watch the Magners League? Is he aware Ford was punching holes in a team chock-full of Lions just this weekend? The omission of Mike Blair is also poor in my opinion, I'm not sure how anyone can argue Harry Ellis is a better inside-half than Scotland's captain. Picking on form is all very well but Geech certainly has a short memory - the sight of a Springbok pack retreating across the Murrayfield turf with IRB Player of the Year nominee Blair leading the way has obviously been erased for some reason. That's even ignoring the fact he led Edinburgh to victory on the stomping ground of the likely Lions scrum-half. Those two certainly and you could make cases for a number of backrowers (Strokosch, Barclay...) and the ever reliable Paterson to have gone on tour - what is certain that 2 is pitifully low given some of the players that have gone.

The problem is how to maintain interest in the tour for the fans of these neglected countries, however unfair the selection calls. I'm sure Irishmen felt similar at times in the 1990s. I have some friends scouring deals for South Africa tops and, whilst I will not be engaging in anything like that, I have had a lot of enthusiasm sucked out of me.

That's why I feel there should a 7s series or similar alongside the Lions tour - and there are a number of benefits to this idea as I see it.

I was going to raise this idea on twitter before the excellent UR7s beat me to it. Incidentally, UR7s is an excellent site for following all sorts of 7s banter and I would encourage folk to sign-up and raise the profile of the site as 7s is woefully underrepresented on the web in my view - UR7s can help sort that out. They have an interesting article going right now about a Lions VII v. Nearly-Men VII, get involved here and see if you agree with me that the Nearly-Men would win...

This would add a whole new dimension to the tour. When they would be played I don't know, although to avoid burning the players out I feel single games at half-time during the midweek games and even the Tests could work and would open doors to other players. There is no doubt that 7s is an excellent developmental tool but it's easy to forget it is very much a sport in it's own right, with it's own worldwide appeal, nuances and different qualities. Kenya's success in particular over the past couple of years demonstrates this. Thom Evans, very much a possible bolter for Lions selection could definitely do a job on a hard 7s ground in South Africa and Max Evans and Matthew Tait have shone in the format before and would put themselves in with a shout. The 15 guys not in the match squads could get a run out and it further raises the 7s profile.

This would also help the push to get 7s into the Olympics - what better way to raise the profile of the sport (both formats) than have an abbreviated Lions VII side competing in the Olympics the year before the full tour?

I think it would inject something new into the Lions touring format, help grow 7s and rugby in general and it might get a few more Scots on tour...maybe...

Red Dwarf: Back To Earth Review

2009-04-12T23:00:00.003+01:00

I blogged a while ago about how shows should be put out to pasture after they reach their peak. Shortly after I wrote that it was announced that Red Dwarf was returning (to Dave rather than BBC2) with a 2-part Easter Special. Now, as a 3-parter, the new shows have just finished with me an hour behind everyone on Dave Ja Vu, despite my best attempts to unintentionally miss out.

First off, I write this as a colossal Red Dwarf fan. I do not write this as a Sci-Fi fan - I've never liked Star Trek or it's spin offs (with the exception of some Next Generation episodes) and I've never watched an episode of Battlestar Galactica, Stargate SG-1 or Firefly in my life, although I did see the film of the latter. I approach Red Dwarf pretty much from a purely comedic standpoint.

Red Dwarf: Back To Earth could have been brilliant. I went into the 3rd part wanting to hate it, I fully admit after a reasonable (if a bit dull) Part 1 and toe-curling Part 2 (although this seems to be the reverse of popular opinion). I was expecting to be convinced that one of my favourite shows ever should finally be left well alone. It hasn't done that, as it was exponentially better than the first 2 parts All it has convinced is that Red Dwarf has been a victim of it's own success. Taking out adverts the whole thing lasted about 70ish minutes - of which 40-45 were bilge. On top of that the meta-humour largely belonging to the 2nd part was a far too on the nail and I hated it, could have been done in a way that preserved the humour with a little less of the self-referential wankiness and similarity to a Comic Relief skit. Although, I concede that may be a preference point on my part.

There was, however, a very tight and potentially very good script for a good old half-hour show. This has a bloated, yet curiously rushed and unresolved, feel to it and a movie would have been the same. Red Dwarf was also a show fairly small in its scope, which is why Series VIII - whilst quite funny - didn't really work as well as previous series. There were still some great moments amongst all this such as when Sophie Winkelman's replacement hologram indicates there is nothing wrong "morally and ethically" with 'killing' Rimmer as holograms are already dead.

So he pushes her in front of a moving car.

There were too many moments that fell flat though, which would have been pruned from a half hour show. Character comedy with snappy dialogue (which Red Dwarf was for most of its humour, or certainly its best bits) does not translate into grand plots with cinema pretensions in my opinion. You'll never see a Friends film. You'll never see a Seinfeld film. You'll never see a Frasier film. You'll never see a Blackadder film. Ok...there was sort of a Blackadder film, but it was rubbish and that's rather my point. Sitcoms, even great ones like those listed, do not make good films. But because Red Dwarf has Sci-Fi trappings many hardcore fans (which I border on...) feel it belongs 'somewhere bigger' - it doesn't! It was fine where it was! Rather than convince me that it should finally be retired, I now think there's life in the old dog yet if Doug Naylor would just stop dicking around and take the show back to basics. What made it good was the old-fashioned sitcom with Sci-Fi plot devices - not a Sci-Fi show with a handful of jokes.

There were a number of problems. Why did Dave air it in 3 parts when it was clearly better as a full length run? Why did they dispense with the laughter track? Show it to an audience after filming as was done for Series VII.

But I honestly don't care - there was enough there to convince me a truly great show was in there just screaming to get out. I quite enjoyed it in the end, despite my utter contempt for part 2. There was enough negative reaction about to probably mean it won't return, and I contributed my fair share on Saturday night, but if there was anyway of guaranteeing tighter (much tighter!) scripts then I say go for it, have a Series IX if Dave will stump up. I was thinking it would be interesting to see what Steven Moffat could do with Red Dwarf alongside Naylor if he was affordable - sure, the new Dr Who is pants in my opinion but he's clearly comfortable in Sci-Fi scripts and Coupling is one of the finest British sitcoms to appear in the UK since the turn of the millennium.

The cast enjoyed making it, and I quite enjoyed it despite there being a clear half hour I despised - it says something about the rest of it in my opinion that I still did. So yes, that's correct - on the basis of 3 'episodes' that weren't all that good on the whole I think Red Dwarf could make a return to its glory years with tight scripting and genuinely talented writers alongside Naylor.

No stoning till I blow the whistle.

Spot(ify) The Difference

2009-04-07T22:37:00.012+01:00

Like most folk of my social group, I spend a lot of my time listening to music. I pretty much can't keep my concentration studying without some sort of cacophony ringing in my ears. Up till now I haven't had access to as much music as I may want, I don't use torrents (I barely really know what one is). That changed about a week ago when I finally downloaded Spotify.

I've had an invite to the beta of the free version since forever but hadn't bothered downloading it. Why bother? I'd tried Last.fm on the recommendations of almost everyone musically minded I know and have had a profile for months - I've only used Last.fm directly on a handful of occasions - although I have tracks from iTunes, and now Spotify, 'scrobbled' to it (wherever the hell they got that word from). "What's the difference?", I thought. However, a few folk I knew had it installed and in the press I was hearing good things, so I downloaded it about a week ago and haven't looked back. What I found was a fairly slick iTunes-esque interface with an easily searchable database and easy playlist creation - a far cry from my Last.fm experience.

There is one fatal flaw I find with Last.fm. It may be just me (but even then I blame it on a cackhanded user interface that doesn't suit neanderthals like myself) but what ever happened to simply playing a track? I just can't get that with Last.fm. Sometimes I don't want to listen to people that sound like Oasis or The Who, I want to listen to Oasis and The Who. No, I don't want to listen to the solo work of The Rolling Stones - I want to listen to Jagger, Richards and co as an ensemble. It may also have to do with the music I listen to - the artists that turn up on 'The Rolling Stones' radio are thoroughly unimaginative and I am fully aware of the comparisons between Oasis and Kasabian or Blur. I don't have this problem with Spotify and find it far less infuriating.

If I want to listen to a track I search for it and play it - end of. Naturally the library is still growing and there is a lack of, for instance, the aforementioned musical equivalent of Mancunian Marmite but most of what you search for you will find. As I've said before, I generally tend to rely on friends for musical tips and can check out last.fm after 'scrobbling' from Spotify if I fancy some recommendations. Collaborative playlists are a nice feature though and can easily help with the former. To that end, I would encourage anyone who might find themselves reading this to download Spotify first and then follow this link to add to the playlist therein. Through a test with this feature I've already found some new stuff and been reminded of a few tracks I'd forgotten about.

The only thing I worry about is the revenue generation. The free version has fairly inoffensive adverts (they never interrupt a track), but you can pay £9.99 per month or buy a day pass to listen ad-free. It seems they didn't expect the free version to be as popular as it has been, given recent deals which have been struck with the likes of 7digital. This worries me as just about everyone else I can think of expected that to be the successful bit. I sincerely hope Spotify endures though. Many things have been touted as the solution to 'free' music and keeping record companies happy in the digital age - Spotify is the first one to actually capture my interest and keep me using it.

Playing For Scotland Is So Last Year

2009-04-04T20:56:00.012+01:00

So...an up and down week for Scottish sport. Andy Murray cruises into the Miami Masters final, Frank Hadden sadly (but inevitably) departs and then we get to Messrs Ferguson and MacGregor and their two-fingered salutes. The actions on the bench against Iceland, after the pair were dropped following a marathon bender, have ultimately led to the end of their international careers.

I won't go on about the drinking session leading up to this and I am inclined to agree slightly that the media storm is slightly over the top, but one thing I am quite forthright about and I think most Scotland fans agree with me.

The pair can take a running jump.

As can Fraser Wishart, the players' union chief, who claims the players were "due [the] courtesy" of a phone call to inform them of their non-future with the national side - no they weren't. They showed none themselves so I don't see how they were entitled to anything quite frankly.

Barry Ferguson has clearly had an inflated ego and sense of his own importance since he was essentially backed over Paul Le Guen in 2007 and MacGregor is just a brainless idiot - not that Ferguson is particularly endowed with the old grey matter or he wouldn't find himself where he is. If you're going to flick v-signs at whoever it was, Burley and staff, fans, teammates, press, whatever - I don't care - whilst representing my country you can piss off, I don't want you in my national side. Especially when you do it like adolescent schoolchildren. For all the lauding of Rangers' disciplining of the players on their return to the blue side of Glasgow, the less Rangers players in the side, who clearly prioritse their blue nose credentials above all else, all the better I say.

There is clearly something in the water at Ibrox - McCulloch, Boyd throwing his toys out of the pram and now the gruesome twosome. These four players are an example of everything that is wrong with Scottish football. McCulloch, to my mind, clearly jumped ship when it occurred he was no longer an automatic pick in the Scottish midfield - and he chose to do it days ahead of a vital game. Boyd is nothing short of an absolute idiot who seems to think banging in the odd good goal against Partick Thistle for Rangers entitles him to roam free on the Hampden turf with impunity. MacGregor really is an idiot - Craig Gordon is an excellent keeper and David Marshall, whilst slipping under the radar in recent years, an able understudy. What MacGregor clearly doesn't realise is, despite playing for The Forces of Darkness, he is an entirely dispensable member of the squad - he can't afford to act like a big time charlie because he is not one by any stretch of the imagination.

And then we finally get to 'Bazza' - a man who I cannot abide. If any player personifies the small minded, Glasgow-centred attitude inherent of all the bad bits of Scottish football it is him. This is the man who returned to pastures Weegie as playing in the Premier League for Blackburn couldn't compare to an Old Firm derby apparently. As one friend of mine put it - "He could have been a world-class player if he wasn't such a knob".

Sadly though, it isn't just the football players who are doing this. Rory Lawson recently shirked proving himself on Scotland A duty in favour of remaining in Gloucester to take on Bath. No doubt the latter was a bigger game in the grand scheme but that isn't the point - just like a lot of Old Firm players, he considered himself above representing his country. I can't see the fortunes of either the football or rugby sides improving if representing your country continues to become supposedly unfashionable.

Handbags In The Ruck

2009-03-19T20:40:00.008Z

Well, it's a while since I managed to get on here due to various levels of shiteness but I'm back and with a bee in my bonnet about Steve Borthwick, Martin Johnson and, to a lesser extent, Warren Gatland. England's captain apparently wants to teach Scotland how to win with grace after the 2008 Calcutta Cup match where the men in blue "made no disguise in rubbing in the fact they had beaten England".

And your point is Steve?...

First off, ignoring the fact the Frank Hadden and others have no idea what he is blethering about, why is he surprised at the level of Scottish excitement over beating England? Putting aside the fact it was against their oldest rivals it turned out to be their only victory in the 2008 edition of the 6 Nations. As much as hate to say it, a Scottish victory over the auld enemy is rare thing indeed. The current England manager, Martin Johnson, never played in a losing side against Scotland and I would imagine he intends to continue this trend as a coach. So forgive us if we were a little pleased with the result last year.

Secondly, since when have the England team been gentleman winners? The win over France sent the tabloid hyperbole machine into overdrive. I won't for one minute suggest that England didn't deserve their victory or they didn't play some nice rugby - with Flutey and Armitage the standouts in my eyes. Let's get this into perspective, though - England played well for 50 minutes against a French team that were easier to turn over than a pillow. It's a promising improvement, no doubt, but hardly calls for the trophy case glass to get polished just yet.

Even Martin Johnson has waded in declaring he has "no sympathy" for Scotland as he must concentrate on his own team - more than fair. However, this is apparently as a result of the team having a "chip on their shoulder". Put the stereotypes away will you? This is more symptomatic of the England vs. The World attitude that seems to pervade English sport than the stereotyped view of the Scot who defines themselves only in terms of their non-Englishness. If we win at Twickenham I will be over the moon, the last time it happened I wasn't even born for chrissakes, but it won't make up for the fact that we should have beaten Ireland, arguably France and Hadden selected the wrong bloody team to play Wales and has made other baffling calls. For a team complaining about teams' reactions to beating them their captain and coach don't half build up their importance - take the rough with the smooth and all that.

On an ending note, Warren Gatland seems to have donned his long shorts and entered the playground as well after claiming his players have a particular dislike for their Irish counterparts. Really? News to me, and I suspect a lot of Welsh and Irish people as well.

My tip for the weekend is for Wales to deny Ireland the Grand Slam but not manage the 13-point margin they require to oust them from the summit. France will paste Italy with the backlash from their woeful performance from last week. Hopefully the team in blue at Twickenham might have better luck this week...

Popularity Contest

2009-03-01T22:31:00.009Z

What makes a sport popular? I was wondering this in the light of this weekend's 6 Nations fixtures, which went far better from my point of view. Due to unforeseen circumstances I ended up with a free ticket and tried to find someone to take it free of charge - a number of people who would have taken it couldn't due to work but even when I got to the match there was thousands of empty seats for one Scotland's biggest matches of the campaign. Ironically, the stadium wasn't sold out for one of Scotland's better wins since the heady days of 2006.

Contrast this to football and the difference can be quite striking. Scotland - a country of only 5m people - supports over 40 pro or semi-pro football clubs. It only supports 2 pro rugby teams and even struggles with that. The natural thing to head for is that success for a national or local team makes a sport popular but that doesn't hold water. Scotland consistently make it to Rugby World Cup quarter finals (and sometimes beyond) but that doesn't stop football dwarfing it in popularity despite trials in recent years and the national team never reaching the second round. Hell, we had an incredibly successful elephant polo side but I don't see kids saddling up Nelly from coast-to-coast. The roots of this popularity gulf go way back, and it's almost far too late to change it all.

Rugby in particular has a certain toffery associated with it in this country. Football is seen as a 'game of the people' in a lot of ways and it's a lot easier to pick up and play. All you need is some mates with jumpers and a ball. Rugby on the other hand is more problematic, as is cricket, tennis and just about any other sport you can think of and therein lies what makes something popular in my opinion - simplicity. Being successful in sport always brings a buzz around a country but it won't happen without some popularity backing it up so people get involved. Rugby is a complicated sport, cricket is incomprehensible to me sometimes and other sports require even more 'equipment'. The offside rule aside, which isn't complicated according to John Cleese, football is quite simple to understand - two teams try to kick a ball in the other's net and you're not allowed to clobber the other guys.

This seems to hold up a little against scrutiny also. Test cricket popularity is waning in the face of one day and, more recently, 20-20 matches. This is why Rugby should embrace 7s to the full, it is a simple way to get people into the sport like 20-20 cricket, short tennis, 5-a-side football and so forth. Any sport wishing to increase it's popularity needs a simple way for people to get involved. It's all about simplicity and availability (which is why I give the LTA a F- for constructing a massive tennis centre when they could have built numerous courts nationwide...). Rugby and a few other sports have neither of these. There is no reason that Scotland can't punch above its weight in sport - it did it in football for years - there just needs to be a way to make sport popular again. People need somewhere to take part in it and not be intimidated when starting out. Even if they never make it in terms of high quality play, they may well continue to follow the sport and having people aware and supporting it - or sport in general - is half the battle.

Short But Sweet

2009-02-19T17:09:00.006Z

I like to think I have a good attention span but even I can start to switch off when people start to go on for a bit. Short is generally good and that is why I don't really agree with the concept of double lectures or classes of over an hour or so (when they are passive anyhow) and it's also why I think Twitter is growing in popularity as much as it appears to be.

I found myself scoffing slightly, even a few weeks ago, at the idea of Twitter as a news medium but I've quickly come round after a quick scan of who I follow on Twitter. I've been craving decent and snappy Rugby 7s news for a while due the total ineptitude of BBC Sport's rugby coverage and I've got that through Twitter. I didn't find it though - it found me, presumably as a result of mentioning rugby so much during my updates and it comes in a nice bitesize, minus-140 character format that I can easily check on the go. Same goes for BBC Sport and I'm more aware of goings on at my University's Student Association as a result of twitter (EUSA and other political bodies outside studentdom should push this hard in my view, could easily get lots of people involved this way). All of this comes without waffle as well or diving through some layered interface, if you want more detail you can generally follow any links that come with the post and go straight to the source.

That is why Twitter (or a similar service) will grow - it can easily become more useful (in the sense of being able to digest and tailor the info you acquire from it) than the hideously popular facebook, for instance. My web browser already indicates I'm using Twitter far more than facebook these days without my use of Tweetie and such. More news, fewer issues and less applications like 'Poo Fight' and similar spammy nonsense. This can change of course, I expect spam to grow on Twitter but unless you're going to become some sort of Twitter behemoth then I'm not convinced about how much of an issue it will be to the average user. There is some degree of inanity, I've been guilty of this myself sometimes, but that's the case with any social networking framework, in my experience at least - not everyone is William Shakespeare. You need to watch out for filling your head with banal non-info. When people criticise Twitter on account of this happening they generally (as Stephen Fry put it) don't understand it - it's very much what you make of it. If you follow dull people then you will find it boring and bland and too many will make it a hassle - quite simple really.

There is also the issue of bite sized content dumbing down the issues at hand in the case of news - but that is rather the point. With so much 'news' (both conventional and the more mundane within your own social circle) occurring daily and constantly people need something to look at on the go and quickly that conveys some of the more important stuff concisely so folk can check it out later. Different feeds allow you to filter stuff out to a certain extent as well.

For people like me, who are undoubtedly part of the web generation but not the most savvy when finding and discovering services to collate news and info for you (I still haven't used Google Reader yet for instance) it's a remarkably easy and concise way to do it.

The Hopeful Pessimist

2009-02-08T00:58:00.009Z

Is blind optimism a national trait of Scottish people? I'm certainly beginning to think so, when I look back on recent sporting (non) achievements of my beloved home country. This hit home to me with the 6 Nations starting up again and I found myself seriously contemplating putting £1 on a Scottish Grand Slam at 171/1. Yes, I know - I gave myself a slap round the head and came to my senses but this mindless optimism still invades my thinking as the game with Wales approaches and with the football team due to take on Holland in March.

This could also be partly generational - none of the older generations in my family seem be as (pessimistically, if you'll excuse the oxymoron) hopeful as me and other Scots of my age. In the case of sport, they may have been tainted by one too many of the Scottish Valiant Failure™ and some just downright failures to continue with the unwavering optimism year on year. I can't think of any other country that can have a noticeable portion of it's fans thinking "Yeah, I suppose we could win, you know" despite being ranked 5th out of the 6 teams and having lost the last two meetings in the tournament with the 6th-ranked team. Add in having arguably their best player injured for the tournament (in both sports mentioned thus far) and other injury problems and the lunacy grows.

Is this why Scots are viewed as dour and grumpy by our British neighbours? Too many Scots wandering around dejected after years of unfulfilled optimism? My head tells me every time that Scotland are unlikely to win things, and sometimes they do, but my inner realist is usually correct. Despite the odds, being told otherwise, previous experience and better opponents I still think we can win the 6 Nations and beat Holland to qualify for the World Cup - aye, right. Alan Hansen will also quit punditry and team up with Gregor Townsend to cure cancer while we're at it.

I always find myself dejected after tournaments but by the time the next one comes around I'm always coming up with loony justifications in my head about how Scotland could win - that this year is our year. Why? It can't be unwavering support, mindless optimism isn't a prerequisite of it. Is it something in the Scottish mentality that I keep returning to? Maybe I'm right this time but I suspect you could republish this post this time next year and no one would be any the wiser. Regardless, if now isn't the time for baseless hope to raise its over-eager head, then when is? Bring. It. On.

Edit: Mindless Optimism 0-1 Inner Realist

Bored In The USA

2009-02-03T19:05:00.009Z

So it was the weekend of the Superbowl and people seemed really quite excited about it round here, I had at least 3 people ask me what I was doing for it and the BBC were pushing it on the sport website quite extensively. It was apparently the best Superbowl ever, some are saying. Drama, ability, glitz, they even finally got Bruce Springsteen to perform at one - it had it all.

I missed it and I honestly don't care.

God help me I have tried to like American Football and I don't dislike it, I just find it so unspeakably dull and find it hard to understand why it's starting to gain a following in the UK. My knowledge of the sport extends to Lawrence Tynes (part of the winning New York Giants team from 2008) and that was only because he was born in Greenock apparently. I watched the 2007 Superbowl and found it reasonably entertaining but needlessly long. What is the deal with switching entire teams depending on being on the attack or defending? Is it so all the rubbish kids get a chance in school games or something? I refuse to believe the positions are so specialised that the team can't adapt, practically every other sport manages it.

I'm willing to excuse the miserably dull Giants v. Dolphins game held in London the same year as the British weather didn't exactly help matters but it seems to be a block I have with most 'American' sports. Basketball seems to be a competition to see who misses first and baseball seems to go on forever.

They have got one thing right though, that seems to work for team sports in particular. The draft system. A quick look at Superbowl finalists over the past few years, or those for the World Series or NBA shows it's perfectly possible to maintain a winning side but it stops the overall dominance of one side year on year. To an SPL supporter outside the Old Firm, a Premiership supporter outside the 'big four' or a French football supporter outside Lyon that would probably sound like a good idea. It isn't needed though, the sports are entertaining enough in their own right.

No amount of open-mindedness will change the fact that American Football is really quite dull, reflected by its inability to spread round the globe to date. Look at sports that have spread globally (and I'm not talking about ludricous Game 39-esque plans), there is a reason for it. American Football (and numerous other sports that only really exist professionally in North America) hasn't, despite being a slick, heavily financed juggernaut.

I'll try again next year, as I'll lap up most things sport related but I reckon it may be to distract myself from Dundee United's growing bad luck in penalty shootouts. Now there is drama.

Guitar For Dummies #5

2009-01-28T18:00:00.002Z

The guitar learning has stalled recently in the midst of Uni work, I feel I've even gone backwards with some tunes but it can't be helped really. Have certainly been trying to get a strum in when I can. I know many people who play guitar or an instrument (partly why I decided to give it a bash) and, if they find themselves reading this, I am appealing for advice.

I said a while ago I may upload a video/mp3 of me having a bash so here it is below. It's me having a bash at a version of Wonderwall. Yes, yes, yes - I know, there are millions of people on YouTube playing that song and I can do others but this is the one that has deteriorated the least with the practice downturn. I am looking for constructive criticism and advice - even if you do think it sucks! The prententious black-and-whiteness is purely to try and distract you from the fact that the audio is slightly out of sync. I had to record it on my iPhone and put it over the video in an ad-hoc fashion for 2 reasons. When recording from the webcam the audio sync is even worse and, secondly, the better audio quality gives me nowhere to hide. If I'm asking for tips and constructive criticism no sense in hiding behind shoddy audio, eh? It kind of deteriorates towards the end (my arms were knackered, I'd just finished my initial test for the 100 push-ups challenge as part of the ongoing fitness drive) but there was no sense in re-doing it as the purpose is not to impress people as I said before. Anyway, be kind...

Murray Will Be Back, Despite The Platitudes

2009-01-27T10:20:00.001Z

Andy Murray is a superb tennis player who was in the form of his life, which is why it came as a shock to me that he crashed out to Fernando Verdasco in the Australian Open yesterday. Verdasco played superbly (93% 1st serves in 4th set, anyone...?), however, and Murray will be back - make no mistake.

Despite a few gloating comments, I'm glad to see the anger at his 'anti-England' remarks has dissipated slightly - some of the nonsense that has been spewed over the last 3 years regarding his supposed views on England in the World Cup was downright ignorant. Anybody under the delusion that he bought a Paraguay shirt or anything else along those lines would do well to read the second part of this article, written by the man who conducted the interview from which this ugly non-story grew. Never have I seen such bile reserved for a British sportsman by the British people, all because of some red-top hysteria with little to no foundation. To be honest, I'm suprised it was that much of a story - 'Scotsman Raises Wry Smile At England World Cup Exit' - well hold the sodding front page!

What has annoyed me in the more Murray-friendly media is the typical stuff following a major favourites exit from a major tournament, typified by this comment from the BBC's Caroline Cheese:

"Murray - a voracious student of the game - will learn from this"

Why? What is there to learn? Sometimes your opponent plays a storming game? You don't play as well when you feel ill? After several years on tour I must admit I'd rather hoped he'd have learned that stuff already. What can a world number 4, who has beaten arguably the greatest player ever 5 times in a row and the world number 1 twice in a row, possibly learn from crashing out in the 4th round to someone ranked lower than him? Absolutely nothing and these empty platitudes reflect the problem with the British public with their sports heroes, along with the initial bile-spilling. You are in or you are out, and you get an easy or rough ride accordingly.

I consider myself a Murray fan, but this wasn't good enough for him - and he won't need anyone to tell him that. He could and should have gone further. I haven't noticed a single quote from Murray pontificating that he will 'learn from this'. When it comes to attitudes on our sportsman the British public never seem to get it right, they are either showered with bile at the sligtest hiccup (the England football and rugby sides, the UK Athletics Squad, Murray till now) or let off with frankly not good enough performances (Scotland football slip ups, Danny Cipriani, Tim Henman, any number of other tennis players).

Everyone has a slip up or comes up against an inspired opponent every so often. They shouldn't be flung out with the rubbish when it happens, but neither should they be patted on the back and told it was a 'learning experience'. For someone like Laura Robson it is, for someone like Murray at the top of the game it isn't. Had Chris Hoy not won the Keirin or Individual Sprint in Beijing I doubt he would be calling it a 'learning experience'. Sometimes you are talented but you are outplayed and lose, you simply try not to let it happen.

BBC Needs To Get A Pair

2009-01-25T19:06:00.010Z

The BBC's decision not to air the Disasters Emergency Committee appeal strikes me as odd. I'm not going to get into the whys and wherefores of the conflict - the whole Middle East issue is a highly emotive one for many people and not one I am going to wade into with my opinion when I have read very little (although more than most I arrogantly venture) about the history behind it all and the issues at large. The BBC's reasoning I find curious and slightly illogical though.

The issue is that they want to remain impartial on an ongoing news story, but to many people their non-action on the issue throws impartiality out the window and could be viewed as more politicised than simply broadcasting the appeal. The BBC should of course remain impartial in reporting the political wrangles of the ongoing conflict but no one is any doubt that there is human suffering amidst all of this - we've been seeing it (on BBC News) for the past few weeks. There will only be a political or partisan message in appealing to help those involved in the conflict for those with already strong and unwavering positions on the 'rights' and 'wrongs' of the Middle East crisis.

Having not seen a version of the broadcast in question I find it hard to believe that it would compromise the 'neutral' position of the BBC so badly that they would choose not to broadcast it. The BBC is a public service and no matter what they do, public services piss some people off - in this case I feel the BBC needs to grow some balls and realise that on this topic someone is always going to be annoyed with their actions (or inaction, as the case may be). The background issue is too controversial for them to remain truly 'neutral' in the opinions of all - take the route with the greater good. That is bringing the suffering of those caught up in conflict, regardless of the 'side' they are on in this case, to a wider audience.

The irony here is that the controversy whipped up by this will probably generate more publicity than if they had simply quietly broadcast it. To me, this should be above where your opinion lies on the wider issue - assuming of course that the money goes where it is needed. The BBC has made the issue political for a great many, in contrast to its wishes, and it hardly needs more bad publicity.