Took a family trip to Goring-on-sea and Lancing college last weekend and I took along the D90 to see what I could capture.
It’s been on the cards for a while but I finally broke and pressed the “buy” button next to a Digital SLR whilst browsing around. I’ve had digital SLR’s in my basket before now, but have backed out for one reason or another. This time, I took a deep breath and pushed on past the goal posts.
It’s a big investment – especially into an area that I haven’t really shown a great deal of direction previously. Indeed, up till now, my photo taking prowess has never really stumbled beyond the diabolical iPhone 3G piece of pap.
WOW – what a frustrating day. I wasn’t in the best of moods anyway, but when I tried to load Dreamweaver CS3 this morning and I was presented with:
Error “Licensing for this product has stopped working”
What? Why? This did piss me off, of course, but this turned into a huge sage that has taken all day to fix and I’m seriously pissed now. Although slightly relieved that it appears to be solved.
Just to illustrate my point about how sportsmanship seems to be lacking in sport, I just happened to flick over to see the end of the “Football Masters Cup Final” between Tranmere and Bolton.
A shot on target was blocked by the arm of a Bolton defender. The defender, who could have been in no doubt that the ball hit his arm, protested to the effect that the ball hit his head. It didn’t. The result of the rebound off the defenders arm lead to a goal at the opposite end.
The referee saw video evidence of the incident and so disallowed the goal and awarded a penalty to Tranmere – to correct decision based on the events.
Instead of going 4-2 ahead, Bolton therefore found themselves at 3-3. Tranmere then went on to score a late goal to win 4-3.
Post whistle the Bolton players surrounded the referee protesting his use of video evidence to come to the correct decision. Sure, there are questions about the fact that video evidence was used when I don’t believe it was officially within the rules of the event but my larger point here is that the Bolton player knew well and good that he had committed a foul and that foul should lead to a penalty. He knew it enough to lie to the referee. And the same player then thinks it perfectly within his rights to bemoan the referee reaching the correct decision and feeling positively hard done-by into the bargain.
The cheaters feelt hard done by… well good. And more of the same please. Cheaters shouldn’t prosper.
A couple of news stories this week about cheating in sport. First we had Eduardo’s blatant dive to win a penalty. Now we’ve got the FIA investigating allegations that Renault asked Nelson Piquet to crash at last years Singapore GP to force a safety car and secure his team mates victory chances. We’ve already seen Hamilton and McLaren deliberately lie to officials to try and influence a decision.
It’s only fair to say that Renault is only being investigated on allegations – there’s no proof as yet. It’s also not as if cheating in sport is anything new. It’s just that it’s sad when it happens and it leaves a nasty taste in the mouth. The actions of these people damage sport for everyone.
Disrespect for the referee in football is sadly rife at all levels of the sport and as far as I can tell, endemic. I’ve watched my cousin play for his school in several different sports. When playing rugby, the referee’s decision was final. The same bunch of lads playing a game of football saw every decision met with disdain. Even on the occasions where the players show respect to the referee, the crowd certainly don’t.
Even with overwhelming video evidence to the effect that Eduardo deliberately dived to secure a penalty, Wenger comes on TV berating the discussion and attempting to protest his players innocence. He certainly wasn’t in front of the cameras saying that he thought what his player did was in the worst possible taste and he was going to take any action against him – irrespective of whether there was any official action to come.
And, as a decision by the player, you’ve got to say that a 2 match ban is probably worth the personal cost as this sees his team progress to the next stages of the competition. Some reports saying that it could be worth as much as £16m to the club. And the message coming through? Cheaters prosper.
Playing fair is often not the easy way. It’s also, sadly, not the way to succeed in some modern sports. I would even go so far as to say that playing fair is often seen as a weakness and something for losers.
How can sportsmanship and fair play return to sport wholesale? It probably can’t – but certainly, using all possible means to ensure that no cheating is taking place is a start. Punish cheating harshly. Nobody likes undue interference by post event stewards but giving the stewards the opportunity to enforce rules and stamp out cheating should be encouraged.
Just to make sure that my geek credentials are in-tact, I’ve now completed the Battlestar Gallactica. Did I enjoy it?
Well, yes, as it happens. Again, I liked the fact that I could chose to watch episodes whenever the fancy took and, again, I think this helped with some periods of the overall schedule that were a little slower.
The whole thing starts with a bang – ramps up – then goes through a bit of a plateau before finishing strongly enough and tidying up enough loose ends to make the whole thing feel complete and satisfying.
The whole series raises some interesting questions about what makes us tick and what ultimately makes us human. It also has some very powerful parallels with the Middle-East situation that the West finds itself.
Mostly I found the pacing good and liked the fact that the series had enough scope to move outdoors on occasion. I liked the grittiness of this vision of humans in space and the fact that it gives full airing to the darker side of human nature.
There were things that annoyed. Episodes that were boring or didn’t quite work. But when you’re talking about 60 odd hours of television, that’s surely to be expected.
Overall, I wouldn’t rank it up there with series like the Wire or Sopranos, but it’s worth a watch for sure and better than the average TV by a margin.
