So The Tour finished last night, with Spaniard Alberto Contador winning the overall race, only 23 seconds ahead of Aussie Cadel Evans. However it looks like the positive aspects of the last three weeks of cycling will be overshadowed by an order of magnitude by the various controversies that have surfaced. Race leader Michael Rasmussen was sacked from his team and therefore the tour five days ago when he was alleged to have lied about his whereabouts in the leadup to the tour and there have been three separate doping controversies, with Patrik Sinkewitz, Alexander Vinokourov and Cristian Moreni all testing postive to doping either in the leadup to the tour (Sinkewitz) or during the race itself (Vinokourov & Moreni). Furthermore, race winner Contador was investigated last year for being part of a massive European doping scandal, but eventually cleared. Although he tested negative in all blood tests taken during this tour, the smear against his name will surely be difficult to lose completely. Last year’s winner, American Floyd Landis is similarly smeared, and may still lose his title as Tour winner if the US Anti-Doping Agency deems him a drug cheat, after returning an 11:1 testosterone to epitestosterone ratio during last year’s race.

Basically all of this points, in my mind at least, to widespread, largely uncontrolled drug cheating in professional cycling. Although testing techniques are becoming near fool-proof, and sporting bodies around the world are starting to take much tougher stances on drugs, some associations such as the International Cycling Union (UCI) are dragging their feet. This allows cheats to succeed, which in turn causes more otherwise honest competitors to turn to drugs, which increases the problem.

In the end the only people really, truly punished are honest cyclists like Briton Bradley Wiggins, who was forced out of the tour due to his teammate, the aforementioned Cristian Moreni. I can’t begin to imagine how frustrated and angry Wiggins must feel, and can only hope that his disillusionment doesn’t cause him to start thinking along the lines of ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’. The UCI and other international cycling organisations have a lot to answer for. Strong, proactive reform is needed now, before the controversies of this years race become forgotten, and most importantly before the image of cycling as an international sport becomes too much more tarnished.

That said, GO AUSSIE!

Pete

I was meant to be in bed hours ago – I’ve got the dreaded 8amer tomorrow and I’ll be at uni until 6pm – 10 hours in total. But for some reason I can’t go to sleep knowing that this little fella won’t be in the collective consciousness of the few people who religeously read this. I swear it is the funniest, most offputting thing I’ve seen all day, and as an added bonus it takes about 3 seconds to watch, and weighs in at a laughable 220kb!

If only flash players had a ‘loop infinitum’ setting – I think I’d be happy if that played forever.

Pete

Apart from the obvious importance of the weekend just been, it was also quite full of sport, although until 1am this morning it looked like a miserable weekend of constant losses.

The Bledisloe cup wrapped up in New Zealand on Saturday night, with the Wallabies humbled by the team that is surely going to be World Champions come September. No surprise there, but upsetting none-the-less, especially considering the Wallabies’ come from behind win in Melbourne last month.

The Socceroos, who thanks to a 4-0 thrashing of Thailand last week played in the AFC quarterfinal against Japan, where we were outplayed but not outscored, finally succumbing to a loss on penalties, 4-3. I blame Schwarzer entirely (which I am aware is akin to blasphemy after the 2005 Uruguay match, but why can’t anyone else see that he is a spud?).

Carlton made it 5 losses in a row after a 117 point thrashing by Brisbane yesterday. Although the result will surprise few, the club have decided today that three wooden spoons and no better than 11th in six years is not good enough for Pagan (who coached the Kangaroos to 1996 and 1999 premierships), and as such he will be joining the Demons’ Neale Daniher and Fremantle’s Chris Connolly in the public (or just the pub) for the rest of the season. Although I’m firmly against changing personnel as important as senior coach in the middle of a season, it really looks like Pagan’s time was up. It’s just sad that public opinion can change so quickly – before the round 12 match against Hawthorn, having come off a comfortable win against Port the blues were a happy family. It’s funny what difference a month can make.

The Aussies in the tour even looked shaky, although Cadel Evan’s Saturday and Sunday’s rides consolidated his current position of 3rd.

However, there was no need to despair. After a hell of a race including aqua-planing left, right and centre; mechanical faults from Kimi Raikonnen; and the golden boy Lewis Hamilton losing it on the first lap, the European GP at the Nürburgring in Germany provided the silver lining that an otherwise rubbish weekend of sport provided. Marky boy almost lost it on the second last corner of the race, but managed to podium for the second time in his career, holding off Austrian Alexander Wurz by 0.263 seconds, but coming in well short of the lead pair Alonso and Massa who were over a minute in front. The race was made even sweeter when Hamilton failed to score a single point, coming in at 9th.

So, we may have lost in three of the four codes of footy (carn the Storm!), and the cold realisation that there’ll be no more Harry Potters may be a bitter pill to swallow, but at least the weekend had a silver lining, largely thanks to the massive amounts of carbon monoxide now floating over South-Western Germany.

Pete

Don’t worry, no spoilers here.

Right. I’m ready to hermit-nerd it up today.

I must admit I was suprised at how many people were still getting their books from Borders at 10:30, 90 minutes after the international embargo lifted – I thought I had timed it quite well. It was much better when the local Dymocks was still open, and the line didn’t exist after 20 minutes.

Anyway, onwards!

Pete

[EDIT]22/7, 13:19. Finished! The book was great, the finale awesome, but the epilogue brought the entire book down. Oh well, no-one is perfect, not even old J.K.

I consider myself a pretty strong Carlton supporter. I’ve attended all the matches I could have been to this year (the membership has yet to miss a match although I missed one personally), and I feel strongly for the team. However I’m not a blind follower, and I’ll speak out against the club when it happens to be doing something stupid…. like right now.

I happen to heartily approve of most of the changes football in general, and Carlton specifically have made in the last couple of decades. Nationalising the competition was a fantastic idea. Moving matches away from the suburban grounds, although upsetting to the sentimentalist inside me was a economically sound and logistically sensible action to take. Most of the new rules in the league are good for competition, although I can’t help feeling that the game is losing its lustre due to rules like the new in-the-back rule being implemented, and then refereed inconsistently. However, one thing that I really can’t stand about modern football is the politics that come with the game.

Ben Cousins was an idiot yes, and needed counselling through a drug problem he had. However his alleged cocaine habit had little to no impact on his fitness or skill, and as such I don’t believe the club’s holier-than-thou crucifying of him all over the media was right, beneficial for anyone, or fair. Likewise Alan Didak of the Magpies does not deserve the flak he has been copping left, right and centre as a result of his brief encounter with Christopher Hudson, the man charged with the infamous shooting in Melbourne’s CBD last month. The man had a drink with Didak, and the media is calling for Didak’s blood. What’s worse is that the Collingwood president, Eddie Maguire promised that that the club was going to take the matter seriously, and Didak’s punishment would be severe. As it turns out, Didak was cleared by the club, however I don’t see how there is a charge to be answered: when did football clubs become higher authorities than the courts themselves? When did they become moral compasses?

The incident that really pissed me off enough to write this post is Carlton’s own Brendan Fevola, and the reaction to his giving away of two consecutive 50m penalties for mouthing off at an umpire when playing Fremantle two weeks ago. The league itself closed the book on the matter as the final siren sounded, however the club decided to enforce an internal suspension for unsportsmanlike behaviour. Granted, Fevola is a cock, and a selfish one at that – I watched in horror as he launched a 70m torp through for a point while Marc Murphy was open, calling for the ball and well inside 50. His undisciplined play against the Dockers is certainly unacceptable for one of the club’s senior players, but suspending the man meant that last Sunday’s game against Melbourne was without the league’s most prolific goalkicker, who may very well have single-handedly turned the 14.17.101 kicked to something far more accurate. 17 behinds is 85 points that went begging, and when the extra opportunities that would have been had with Fevola on the ground, the 23 point loss we suffered looks entirely preventable.

So, Pagan: thank you, you bastard. You’ve robbed us of another 4 premiership points, and lept us hovering just above Melbourne and Richmond on the bottom of the ladder. Although this means we may not be as shit on the ground as we were last year, that’s going to be small consolation in September. Thank god we’ve got Richard Pratt on board at least.

Pete

Ah the joys of costume parties. Kel is throwing a fairly spontaneous Friday the 13th party tonight. So, a costume….

Happy Fri13! Don’t let that bastard Jason get you!

Pete

THERE IS A BIG EDIT HERE – JUST CLICK READ MORE! Read more

As mentioned only a couple of posts back, I’m a big fan of my iPod. There’s a lot to be a fan of too – even though I was extremely hard on my first one it was stoic and functioned all throughout its life – although it did have two separate repair trips overseas while out-of-warranty, including one that I was convinced would be the last trip the poor bugger made. Old Huglebert is still around somewhere – I think he’s the communal bathroom iPod now, meanwhile Huglebert MkII – shiny and black and 4 times the capacity – has stepped up to the plate and is now handling all my musicy needs with the same professionalism and positive attitude his predecessor afforded me.

That was until I discovered the thing could play poker. It appeared at first to be possibly the greatest thing ever – for $7.50 I can now quite contently play cards anywhere I want, and it’s actually quite difficult to win. The computer players give off mannerisms and cues as to what their hands could be, but they bluff, call your bluff half the time and most irritatingly always seem to pull off whatever card they need on the river. The game is set up so that you play in tournaments, starting with a free one in California, which earns you money to play in tournaments around the world leading to a $2M finale.

Sounds great so far right? Wrong. The fucking thing freezes each and every time I get even a reasonable hand on the second tournament. Although I’ve only had the game for a day now, it’s incredibly frustrating – almost enough to say that the iPod is cheating just to stop me winning.

IT HAPPENED AGAIN!@$!#@ This time I have photographic proof though – I happen to luck into a four-of-a-kind hand, and the thing freezes, leaving a grinning wanker on the screen just to push the point home.

Fucking iPods.

Pete

I’ve teamed up – at least temporarily – with my brother for a little business opportunity. We need to sell some old PAs – at the moment about 15 various speakers (unpowered and powered), amps for the unpowered speakers and mixers for the whole lot – as well as a lighting desk and some old cans lying around. On Friday, as we were heading into the office to make a bit of an inventory, the Friday DJ set that is run each week was playing on the radio, and one of the songs in the mix was the old Daft Punk song, ‘Da Funk’ (which incidentally has a killer video clip of a human/dog hybrid wandering New York with a boom box – check it out). I am a big fan of Daft Punk, and I think it is fantastic that such a group are finally receiving the praise they were due a decade ago, although I can’t help feeling a twinge of anger or dismay that their old stuff is being played to death.

One Love, the dodgy drug-fuelled Saturday nightclub in the Prince bandroom put ‘Around The World’ on their triple CD compilation this year, almost a decade after the song first emerged. Kanye West has a new song that heavily samples ‘Harder Better Faster Stronger’ from their second album. LCD Soundsystem (another great musical project) reference Daft Punk more than once (obviously in the incredibly cool ‘Daft Punk is Playing at My House’). Add to these the insane amount of remixes of DP’s fairly lengthy repertoire, and you start to see just how big the two Frenchies are, and just how much exposure their work gets.

Now this is all well and good, but there is only one really solid benchmark for gauging whether a band has ‘made it’ or not: Youtube. Apart from the hundreds of a Capella performances of just about everything Daft Punk have released, there are also gems like this video of someone quasi-handsigning along to ‘Harder Better Faster Stronger’. The amount of practise that must have gone into it is unfathomable. He (or she?) cocks up a couple of times, but it is really quite bloody good.

Oh and give the video a minute to get interesting. I promise it will.

Pete

I posted in June last year about cracking the 7000 song mark on my iTunes library, and then used the rest of the post as a lament to ol’ Huglebert, my trusty 4 year old iPod that simply couldn’t keep up with such a large library. Fortunately since then, Huglebert Mk II has joined the ranks and his 80GB hard drive is up to the task, however thats irrelevant.

The reason I post about iTunes libraries today is that I can now happily report that the library has made the big time. While ripping a copy of my brother’s new Gogol Bordello CD (check them out by the way – they are Ukrainian Gypsy punks from New York!) last night, the tab down the bottom clicked over to 10,003. Twenty seven days, two hours, thirty seven minutes and twelve seconds of continuous music. And the best thing is, that is completely made up of full albums, with the odd compilation or iTunes free track thrown in.

Now to just find a month to listen to it all….

Pete

To any greedy bastards out there like me, thinking of changing their internet plans and suppliers in order to squeeze a little bit extra download quota, DON’T.

To be honest, it wasn’t only for extra data. I’ve had enough of being gouged by Telstra Bigpond for an overpriced broadband service that doesn’t offer the real ‘liberty’ that the plan name suggests. So after a little bit of negotiating with the household’s Ministry of Finance, I got approval to change our old cable internet connection to a newer, potentially faster ADSL2+ service provided by a different company which would end up as the same price our cheaper than our Bigpond plan with close to three times the download quota.

iiNet seemed to be the best company to try out. They have the most developed network outside of the Telstra/Optus duopoly, and offer reasonable-ish prices for their ADSL2 plans. So I signed up with them on Thursday night. On Friday, an email came through advising me that they expected connection to take place on Tuesday. I went out and bought a new modem/router, waited, and sure enough another email came through this evening saying everything was connected and should work perfectly. Unfortunately for me, that was where the problems started. The modem wouldn’t connect, and after about an hour of fiddling and tearing my hair out, I picked up the phone to ring iiNet.

No dial tone.

I thought the modem might be screwing with the phone system, but I’d placed filters on the lines as all the instructional crap had told me to do, so I unplugged the modem and started trying to troubleshoot. After fifteen minutes of running around unplugging and replugging cords and equipment, I gave up and rang iiNet. After a ten minute wait, a bloke picked up, asked me what was wrong and uh-ohed, then informed me that even though in all likelihood the disconnection was a result of iiNet technicians fucking up, as they weren’t the actual suppliers of the phone line to the house, it wasn’t their responsibility to fix it. I’d have to ring Telstra, WHO I HAD JUST LEFT to organise another tech to come and check out the problem.

Fortunately the Telstra holdtime was much shorter and the lady on the phone much more helpful. Although they couldn’t find anything wrong with the line then and there, she promised to send out a tech as soon as possible, which unfortunately for me in late Thursday. Two days without a home phone, simply because some hack technician can’t read directions as to what cable should be plugged where in the exchange. What a joke.

Pete