31st October 2004 - 17:53 GMT
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I ended up going to the cinema last night however managed to get out of seeing Alien vs. Predator and went to see Layer Cake instead which was probably a far better choice!
Like a lot of British films it was taken from different perspectives, following different groups of characters in both the past and present. As the film progressed the characters stories developed until all their stories fell into place at the end. There were also a few plot twists which I won’t mention here!
Leeds played Wigan today and sadly lost 2-0. However it wasn’t an embarrassing defeat by any means. Wigan are by far the strongest team in the division and are so far unbeaten. Leeds put out a good performance but a couple of silly mistakes and moments of brilliance from Wigan cost them the points. There were very promising performances from Leeds youth Simon Johnson and new signing David Healy. Bring on Burnley!
30th October 2004 - 21:56 BST
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It has arrived – Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas for the PlayStation 2 and it is absolutely brilliant! I’ve been playing it for the best part of today and have only covered 1/6 th of the map (I haven’t even started on the missions!), the whole thing seems at least 5x bigger than GTA3!
The animation has been greatly improved. You can now swim, exercise, eat, get fatter or stronger and build up relationships with characters. Of course killing criminals, cops and innocent civilians is also a vital part of the game and this time it is even more violent.
I was in no way offended by the level of violence in the game but I can see how some people would be and even though the game carries an 18 certificate it’s inevitable many will ask for it to be banned.
Anyway brilliant game!
A lot has been happening with Super Leeds United since my last update. They have FINALLY signed the Preston and Northern Ireland striker David Healy. Maybe now Leeds can actually score some goals! The club have also been linked with another takeover, this time from the grandson of J. Sainsbury (the guy who owns those supermarkets).
I can see it now… a statue of Jamie Oliver outside Elland Road, the players running out to ‘Dancing in the Moonlight’ by Toploader and The Lurpak Stand being renamed “The Sainsbury’s Be Good To Yourself Butter Stand”.
Leeds take on league leaders Wigan tomorrow. Even though Wigan are flying high, Leeds always seem to do better against stronger teams and the arrival of Healy should evoke confidence in the camp. Still Wigan are a very strong side. I’m going for a 1-1 draw.
Anyway, I’ve teared myself away from GTA: San Andreas and even turned down an offer of going to my local pub to go to the cinema to watch… Alien vs. Predator – I’m mad I know!
24th October 2004 - 21:56 BST
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So Arsenal’s fabulous unbeaten run has come to an end after 49 games. They lost 2-0 in a disappointing performance to Manchester United which saw Ruud Van Horseface score a penalty and Wayne Rooney (who I only like playing for England) score a late goal to slam the final nail in the coffin.
It was a very scrappy game, often violent at times. It looked like the football games you see from the 1970’s. It makes you wonder if it had been played any place but Old Trafford a few red cards would have been shown. Still, I’m not complaining, I got to see Cristiano “Fake” Ronaldo being shoved to the ground which is always funny.
I’m not an Arsenal fan by any means, but in the past they have played some brilliant football, which as a neutral has been great to watch, this also stops teams I hate like Man United winning the league! Hopefully they can pick themselves up and stop the Old Trafford Scummers winning the title!
24th October 2004 - 11:56 BST
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Leeds lost 1-0 to Brighton yesterday. Yet another game where the strikers simply cannot score. Leeds have the best defence in the league so there’s nothing wrong there (besides two of them being sent off yesterday!) but the strikers are totally and utterly useless. I don’t know how they’re going to cope against Portsmouth in the cup on Tuesday.
I’m still playing Fifa 2005 and am on my third season, Leeds are back in the Premiership and are a mid-table club. More on the Fifa 2005 page.
I went to the cinema yesterday to see Shark Tale. It was a good film and had very funny moments. Robert De Niro, Jack Black and Will Smith were great. I highly recommend it,
It seemed that before the film started we were shown more trailers than normal. This would be extremely annoying if it weren’t for the fact that some of the upcoming films looked pretty good. The Incredibles, Robots (with Robin Williams) and A Series of Unfortunate Events all looked promising.
There was also an awful trailer for a film called The Polar Express. Maybe it was just the trailer, but the picture quality was terrible and the sound gritty and appeared to be in mono! It showed a train steaming through a festive landscape with children. It reminded me more of the Coca Cola advert than a film.
19th October 2004 - 22:55 BST
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Leeds went to Reading this evening for a mid-week Championship clash. They managed to leave with a 1-1 draw. In some ways this is disappointing as Leeds were the first to score. On the other hand, prior to this fixture, Reading were 2nd in the league, so going to their ground, I would have taken a draw.
I watched the first episode of the new series of Little Britain. It was very, very funny although I was slightly disappointed. I don’t know why as it was extremely good. Maybe it was the fact BBC over-hyped it or possibly the fact it wasn’t as good as some of the classic series 1 moments. Still a very good show and one I will be looking forward to watching next week.
Another favourite TV show of mine returned this evening and I didn’t even realise until about an hour before it was about to start. Wife Swap returned for its 4 th series on Channel 4. This week a lazy woman left her hard working husband to swap with a hard working house wife in Germany. It was by no means a classic. The episode had very little conflict between the swapped wives and the families. I will be hoping for more next week as it is normally very good.
18th October 2004 - 20:56 BST
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Old news this but as I haven’t done any updates all weekend I thought I would mention it. Leeds beat Preston 1-0 at the weekend, collecting 3 vital points in the progress. Leeds still had to reply upon midfielder Danny Pugh for the goal though – the strikers simply cannot score! Paula Radcliffe can finish better than those lads!
Leeds have been trying to sign the Preston and Northern Ireland striker, David Healy for various amounts £100k, £200k, £300k and today £600k. Preston keep turning the offers down which is very frustrating as Healy is desperate to come to Leeds. The good news is that he is refusing to sign a new contract with Preston, so if he hasn’t been bought by January 1 st 2005, he can sign a contract for next season with Leeds who can get him for bugger all!
I have finally mastered Fifa 2005 now and am doing well in Career Mode. Remember, you can follow my progress on the Fifa 2005 page. This is frequently updated as I’m playing it quite a lot! This may all change in 2 weeks though when Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is released – I can’t wait!
Some good news. My MMC Card for my mobile that I messed up last week has been healed. My friend used his Card Reader for the PC and formatted it. Now I can store 512mb of pictures, mp3s and sounds on my phone. Hazzah!
And now for a very important announcement:
Tomorrow night, BBC Three, 9pm is the new series of the excellent Little Britain created my Matt Lucas (from Shooting Stars) and David Walliams. It is absolutely hilarious and I urge anyone who has not seen it to watch it.
On the topic of funny things, I was listening to Radio 1 this morning and DJ Chris Moyles made a fuck up quite literally! Have a listen to this uncensored sound clip. Listen carefully for producer Rachel whisper "say sorry!".
Good bile!
14th October 2004 - 23:27 BST
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I had the misfortune on Wednesday of watching the boring England game against Azerbaijan. Sure, it’s always good to see England win and keep a clean sheet, but this game was just so slow and boring. If England had been playing a stronger team they would have lost. The only highlight of the game was goal keeper, Paul Robinson tackling a pitch invader by tripping him up and holding him until the enforcements arrived.
Still on the topic of football, Preston and Northern Ireland striker, David Healy scored a brilliant goal for his country against Austria. Leeds are said to be on the verge of signing him, so I was listening on the radio at work today for news on a bid. I heard nothing. Checked the Internet when I got home and found Leeds had sold their training ground for £4mill (on a 25 year lease back deal) and only managed to find £100k for the brilliant Healy – not what I was expecting or hoping to hear! Mind you, being a Leeds fan NOTHING the club do would surprise me nowadays. Needless to say, Preston turned this bid down. Hopefully Leeds will come in with an improved bid as he will be a real asset to the team.
I’m still getting to grips with Fifa 2005. It’s very different to 2004, therefore I’m still playing friendlies. I refuse to start my 15 Year Career until I am at least half decent!
12th October 2004 - 22:34 BST
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My long awaited copy of Fifa 2005 arrived yesterday. It is a big improvement on Fifa 2004. While the gameplay is similar to previous versions, there are many new aspects which are taking me a while to get to grips with.
A great feature in the game is the 15 Year Career Mode. In this you get to manage a variety of clubs. Your starting choice of clubs is very small, but with success options to manage much larger clubs becomes available.
As the seasons go on, the players age, so after 10+ seasons, players like Roy Keane will long since have retired but players like Wayne Rooney will be at the peak of their career.
I’ll add lots more about this game in the Fifa 2005 section asap.
Sticking with the topic of football, it came of little surprise to me this morning when I hear the revelation from David Beckham that he got booked deliberately on Saturday’s game against Wales as he knew he would miss the Azerbaijan game tomorrow through injury.
The funniest part of the whole thing is his quote…
"I'm sure some people think that I have not got the brains to be that clever. But I do have the brains. I could feel the injury. So I fouled Thatcher."
If he had the brains, he would have kept his mouth shut. He now faces strong disciplinary action. What an idiot!
Moving on from Beckham, England play Azerbaijan tomorrow at an early(ish) kick off of 5.30pm. England need to be careful not to underestimate Azerbaijan as they have already shocked Wales and Northern Ireland. The England players are highly professional (most of the time!) and I still think they will get a victory, especially now with the return of Rooney and the improved defence.
My prediction: 2-0 to England
10th October 2004 - 10:41 BST
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Well done to the England boys, winning a very respectable 2-0 in yesterdays game against Wales. Frank Lampard got the first goal in the inside 4 minutes. England then continued to pummel the Welsh goal.
The Welsh did experience some periods of possession but they were unable to capitalise on it. David Beckham finished the game off in the 76 th minute with a truly stunning goal to make the final score 2-0 to England.
The most frustrating aspect of the game was that following his wonder goal anf England were cruising, Beckham got booked for a ridiculous foul, therefore automatically getting suspended for the game against Azerbaijan next week. He was also injured in the process, so even if the referee had been more lenient, Beckham would be out with injury.
The game did have its comical moments, the moron who is Craig Bellamy getting booed every time he touched the ball being one of them and Newcastle United team mate, Nicky Butt’s tackle throwing him to the floor!
Now, moving on from the topic of football. I have been having some computer problems with Spyware. Somehow Gator got onto my system – I don’t use Kazaa, Overnet or any other peer to peer services on my PC so I can only think it came from a website or ICQ. Gator thought it would be clever and asked me if I wanted to install some crap called Precision Time. I said no, but found it installed on my system anyway!
Anyway, I ran Ad-Aware and Spybot and it removed all the crap. I then installed SpywareBlaster, which looks very good. It runs in the background of your computer and stops trojans, dodgy cookies and spyware before they even install themselves. Hopefully, if I keep that up to date and continue to stay away from p2p software on my PC, I’ll be ok.
Good Luck England!
9th October 2004 - 10:29 BST
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Today is the day all England and Wales football fans have been waiting for.
Both National teams will meet at Old Trafford at 3pm today in a massive World Cup Qualifying game.
The England line up is still unknown with some saying Sven will start with 3 strikers – Michael Owen, Wayne Rooney and Jermaine Defoe. I’m still undecided as to whether using by far all our best attacking players at once is a good move by Sven or one of a man too scared to drop a big name like Owen from the starting 11.
Naturally, I want England to win and think they will. While both teams are improving, I simply don’t think Wales have enough quality players at the moment to get a result against Sven’s men.
Both sets of players will be up for it and Wales will give England a hard time, especially Craig Bellamy and Ryan Giggs.
My prediction: 3-1 to England
C’MON ENGLAND!!!
LET’S MAKES SOME DRAGONS CRY!!!
Still No Mobile Joy
8th October 2004 - 23:04 BST
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My attempts to re-format the MMC card using the portable PC have failed. There is 1 other method I will try this weekend or early next week – formatting the card at DOS Prompt using an alternative MMC Card Reader.
If that doesn’t work, I’ll be very annoyed but will probably just give up on it for the time being. These kind of things I can spend ages doing, get nowhere and just get unnecessarily stressed, which I am not prepared to do.
Anyway, fingers crossed I can sort it!
Still, I should be in a good mood really. England are playing Wales tomorrow in a World Cup Qualifier and I am hoping them ( England) to do well – C’MON!!!
and the "Friday Idiot Award" goes to...
8th October 2004 - 18:04 BST
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Me! My 512mb MMC Card arrived today. I stuck it in the phone, checked the memory screen on the phone, it only read 80.2MB. I panicked a little and decided to format the card using the Nokia 6230. Formatted fine, but it still read 80.2mb.
I then went onto a web forum to find out what was wrong and learnt that although it reads 80.2MB it is, in fact 512MB and that I must NEVER format the card using the mobile! Aaaaarrrrrggggghhhhh! Why didn’t I check the forum first!!??
Anyway, all is not lost, you can buy USB MMC Cards for as little as £8, which can be used to format the card back to its original, working condition. I may also try formatting in my friend’s IPIX Portable Computer.
I feel stupid right now!
Finally, is it just me or is taking the back cover from off of a Nokia mobile phone really, really hard? If the phone wasn't so expensive I would have taken a hammer and chisel to the damn thing!
More Mobile Fun
7th October 2004 - 22:17 BST
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I survived last night. There were no spider attacks, in fact I was lucky enough to not even see one! I’m still on my guard though, they always creep up when you least expect it!
My 512mb MMC Card was posted today, I’m hoping to get that tomorrow or Saturday and I’ve just this minute received an e-mail saying Play.com have dispatched Fifa 2005. As this is being posted from The Channel Islands it takes a little longer so I doubt I’ll be getting it for the weekend.
I was playing around on my phone a little more today. This afternoon on Radio 1 they were talking about Bluetooth on mobile phones (which I have) and how to use this technology to send near by mobile phone users anonymous text messages in a method know as “Blue Jacking”. (for more info on Blue Jacking, see here). Anyway, a trip to my local Sainsbury’s allowed me to try this out! :o)
When Spiders Attack!
6th October 2004 - 23:02 BST
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I have been getting on well with my new Nokia 6230. I have installed the Nokia PC Suite and now am able to transfer MP3s, images, ringtones and Java Games which I download from the internet (all legally of course!). The 32mb MMC Card which came with the phone is a bit on the small side, so I have ordered a far more impressive 512mb card from MobileMemory.com. Hopefully that’ll be with me by the weekend.
I’m on my guard tonight for spiders. I don’t like them at all and I know all too well it is October, the rain has been pissing down outside all day and my house is all dry and warm – a perfect environment for a nasty creature. My fears have grown this evening since talking to my friend Dan (of daninthemix.com) who has just seen a massive beast on his curtain. Am I safe in my house? I’ll be sleeping uneasy tonight.
Mobiles, Games and DVDs
4th October 2004 - 20:02 BST
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Well I got my new mobile - a Nokia 6230 and it is very impressive! Camera, MP3 player, FM Radio, Bluetooth and loads more. oh and it can make calls as well!
On Saturday my pre-order for the 'Aladdin' and 'That Peter Kay Thing' DVDs arrived. It's been years since I've seen Aladdin and it was a real treat to be able to watch it again, the transfer onto DVD is also superb. Aladdin has never looked and sounded as good.
I'm a very big Peter Kay fan but have never seen this series 'That Peter Kay Thing' so was very keen when this was released on DVD. I've watched the first three episodes on the DVD (six in total) and think it is brilliant! The man is a very, very funny genius!
Some of you may also have noticed over the weekend that the site was down. This was due from a server move. My old site hosts CMDHosting were very good but a friend of mine is hosting my site for me on his server (also hosting his business teamclockwork) and the offer was too good to turn down.
Be sure to check out the new Fifa 2005 section of the website. It is a set of pages dedicated to the upcoming football game (released at the end of the week!).
Getting Frustrated
2nd October 2004 - 17:54 BST
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WANTED: A football player who is confident being played as a striker for an English Championship Team. Must be capable of scoring 20+ goals a season. Will be working alongside a good selection of midfield, defensive and goal keeping players. Must be able to work on your own as no established strikers are in the team.
Contact: Kevin Blackwell, Leeds United Football Club
Congratulations to the goal keeper
Congratulations to the defending players
Congratulations to the midfield players that is all.
Leeds United who drew 0-0 with Cardiff today. The strikers are useless and can't score goals!
I'm Not Well
1st October 2004 - 21:05 BST
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I haven't been too well these last 3 days and was off work Thursday and Today. I'm suffering from a cold/flu type virus, typical for this time of year. I was feeling so bad on Thursday that I was bed-ridden for most of the day.
Today, although still feeling bad, I was able to get up and wander around the house. I used the afternoon to watch one of my favourite films that I haven't seen in years - There's Something About Mary. Very, very funny film!
I also had a look into a new mobile phone. I've been on my current contract for 12 months now, so am entitled to a free upgrade! I'm very keen on the Nokia 6230. It looks great!
Leeds United are in action tomorrow against Cardiff. There is a lot of rivalry between the two teams, especially after the FA Cup incident in 2002. With Cardiff doing so badly at the moment, I'm going (and hoping) for a Leeds win!
My prediction: a 2-1 win to Leeds
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