Posts from February 2008

London, near England - 28 February 2008

Arsenal Football Club were left reeling following another hammer blow to their chances of winning the Premiership. Last night, the French international defender and club captain, William Gallas was sectioned under the mental health act. A spokesman commented: 'This is an unusual step but the action was necessary for the safety of the individual and those around him.'

Investigations revealed that William Gallas' mental fragility was long standing and deep rooted. Our intrepid reporter tracked down his parents in Asnières-sur-Seine:

'Mais oui, Willy would often scream and thrash around on the floor if his elder sister played with his favourite blue train engine.'

'But that's not unusual behaviour for a toddler.'

'Certainment mais Willy was 23 years old at the time.'

Gerard Houlier of Olympic Marseille also remembers Gallas' fiery temperament: 'He once head butted the head coach for berating him for a single, misplaced pass in training.'

Jose Mourinho also endured a volatile relationship with Gallas: 'He disliked playing at left-back. We often had to make him sit in the 'naughty corner' until he relented. Gallas never really forgave me for giving away his beloved number 13 shirt to Michael Ballack. This was a punishment for turning up late for pre-season training. The last straw came when he threatened to score an own goal or concede a penalty in a crucial game against Manchester City. The guy is mentally unstable and we feared no-one on their right minds would buy him.'

Fortunately for Chelsea, fellow Frenchman Arsene Wenger miraculously 'had not seen' any of these previous incidents and paid £5 million plus Ashley Cole to secure Gallas' services.

Initially, things went reasonably well for Gallas who thrived on the Arsenal captaincy and quickly established himself as a favourite with Arsenal fans at The Emirates.

Sadly, the wheels started to come off for William Gallas in February 2008. Back at Old Trafford, the scene of the 'death of the immortal 49'ers', Gallas endured a torrid afternoon in a 4-0 FA cup defeat and was tormented for 90 minutes by Wayne Rooney.

Gallas lost control after Nani taunted Arsenal by indulging in a quick demonstration of ball juggling skills. This showboating was brought to a premature end by a swift and full blooded tackle from Flamini and later, by a viscous reprisal, from Gallas himself.

A week later, Gallas was tipped over the edge by a combination of unfortunate events at St Andrews. Following Eduardo's horrific injury, missing a chance to seal a crucial win 3-1 over Birmingham, then being denied a penalty, Gallas finally lost control and his sanity by another controversial refereeing decision when a injury time penalty allowed Birmingham to secure a 2-2 draw and deny Arsenal two vital points.

Gallas, the club captain, left his position and sat down distraught in the opposition half. Psychologists think this may be a cry for help and a regression to the 'naughty corner' punishment. When James McFadden converted the penalty, Gallas launched an unprovoked attack on an advertising hoarding, obstinately remained on the pitch and had to be lured back to the dressing room by Wenger, Pat Rice and two men in white coats.

Gallas' late night arrival at the mental institution triggered the departure of another high profile football star with well publicised problems. Paul Gascoigne, 40 of Gateshead, immediately discharged himself after a brief chat with Gallas: 'God I thought I had problems. I realise I am battling the demons in my head and trying to overcome long standing addictions to drugs, alcohol and false breasts but compared to Willy, I just feel like a fraud even being in here. Let me out now but please, just don't tell him I've nicked his blue Thomas the Tank engine.'

The forthcoming release of WordPress 2.5 was one reason I was hesitant to move to Habari.

However, having seen a demo of the revised dashboard in WordPress 2.5, all I can say is I am glad I made the move and didn't wait.

While I am merely an end user (not a UI designer), Michael Heilemann articulates many of my views on the deficiencies and usability of the Wordpress dashboard in this detailed analysis.

Michael also dissects the design of the WordPress 'Write Page' screen. The 'Write Page' is probably the most important one for the blog author as that's where he spends most of his time. I agree with Michael - the page is cluttered with unnecessary distractions

Compare the WordPress page with the 'blank canvas' presented by the article editor in Habari.

Those who forget the past are condemned to relive it.

The migration of this blog from WordPress to Habari is mostly complete.

I had a few unexpected problems with a significant number of comments and a handful of posts that contained mismatched HTML tags and didn't display the corresponding page at all. So I had to painstakingly review every single post with comments and correct the HTML by hand.

Inevitably, I forgot the lesson of my previous migration and didn't give any regular readers advance warning of the impending chaos or any notice of the change in RSS feeds. That's not because I don't care, but rather that I treat this blog as a chance to experiment with the technology.

Worse, I didn't sever the link to Feedburner during the housekeeping so peppered existing readers with duplicate, outdated articles.

So, whether you are a (non-Feedburner) subscriber who is wondering why I have suddenly stopped blogging or an existing reader wondering I am peppering your RSS feed with antiquated articles from yesteryear, I apologise.

If I was embarking on the migration again, I would probably spend a little more time checking the migrated content prior to triumphantly making the switch. However, when you have more then 750 posts and 1100 comments, that's easier said than done.

A useful tip to speed up the import process is to purge all comment spam in WordPress prior to the import. Similarly, disabling the Habari Pingback plugin also speeds up the import considerably.

Habari does not automatically ping Google of new content but Feedburner has equivalent functionality.

Apart from fixing up a few posts containing locally hosted images, the tedious administration tasks should now be complete so I can start to enjoy the various features of Habari.

One example is the media silo with Flickr integration. On WordPress, I often struggled with the seemingly simple task of inserting a photo into a blog post. Initially, I thought I was just stupid but now I know why - the interface was broken.

Owen Winkler created a screencast demonstrating the features of the Habari media silo with easy management of locally stored images as well as seamless integration into media services (Flickr, Viddler).

I simply couldnt resist the temptation any longer so this blog is now running on Habari because:

• The Habari Administration screens look like they have been designed rather than evolved.
• The WordPress import utility works brilliantly.
• Michael C. Harris created a TinyMCE plugin for Habari - literally minutes after my initial enquiry.
• Most of the required functionality (Google Analytics, Feedburner, Akismet, Sitemap) is available as plugins for Habari.
• Michael Harris also helped me configure rewrite rules so my existing WordPress permalink structure is retained.
• A gentleman called Harry from London developed this attractive Habari theme.

Saddened to read that Miles Kington died recently at just 66.

I used to really enjoy Kington's columns in The Independent. There aren't many writers capable of making laugh out loud. Kington was one of them.

Another of my favourite journalists is Giles Smith of The Times. Last week, he wrote a brilliant article about the appointment of Dennis Wise as 'Executive Director (football)'.

Similarly, Smith's piece in today's edition is about the proposed changes to the Premiership:

'606? I'm a City fan coming home from Nairobi and I tell you, we wuz robbed...'

Every club knows they will have an equal chance of being treated unfairly.

Quote from Richard Scudamore (Chief Executive Premier League)

The proposal is for an additional competitive Premier League fixture to be played around the world. Although the top 5 clubs will be seeded, this still allows for the possibility of United drawing Derby at home (in Beijing) while Arsenal visit Liverpool (in Los Angeles).

Last night, I took Norman Junior III to visit the new, improved Wembley stadium last night to see England play Switzerland in a friendly.

After paying homage to Sherlock Holmes, we changed at a packed Baker Street for the fast Metropolitan line to Wembley Park. We stood on the platform as one train departed and I was just contemplating whether we should 'go for it' when the next train arrived or step aside and wait for the next one.

A well dressed lady was complaining to a London Transport official: 'Listen - I've been here for 25 minutes and I just can't get on any train.' 'Well I'm awfully sorry madam but we currently have 90,000 football fans going to Wembley.' 'I can see that but I do need to get home. It's an absolute disgrace. What about all the ordinary people ?'

Thankfully, my dithering indecision was abruptly removed by the late arrival of some shaven headed Ing-er-land fans who charged up the steps, ran towards the closing doors and whisked us both up and onto the underground train into a packed carriage. Well, to be fair it was positively spacious compared with the Waterloo & City line on a weekday morning.

Three Swiss lads were then subjected to a deep probing English inquisition from curious Ing-er-land fans.

'Hey mate, what language do you speak then ?' 'In Switzerland, we speak Swiss-German.'

'Hey mate, what's the capital of Switzerland then ?' 'Zurich'

A brief lull and respite for the Swiss visitors before a final burst of alcohol fuelled inspiration:

'Hey mate, can you sort a bank account out for me ?'

Cue uproarious laughter all round - well from those passengers who were able to move their rib cages.

Walked down Wembley Way watching day trippers taking photos and entered the stadium. Wondered what qualifications are needed to be an 'Escalator Steward' and took our seats high up in the South stand with an excellent view.

Much to my surprise, the minute's silence for Munich was observed by the vast majority of supporters.

England appeared in yet another away kit (available from all good sports outfitters in March). The decision to play in the away strip for a home fixture was puzzling but it transpired that Capello ordered this after hearing that Ashley Cole 'preferred playing away'.

At least, we were both cheering a team in Red with Rooney, Ferdinand and Brown (or rather Wes Orange). The game got underway, Brown endured a nightmare opening 45 minutes and Matthew Upson is undoubtedly the most one-footed player ever to don an England shirt.

Switzerland were neat and tidy and comfortable on the ball without really threatening the goal.

England were playing 4-1-4-1 and looked nervous. For the first 40 minutes I don't think I have seen so many sideways and backwards passes since Ray Wilkins played for United.

While I didn't hear any booing, there was the occasional Beckham chant and increasing unrest in the unpadded seats as half-time approached.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, something happened - Joe Cole remembered he was an attacker, took a defender on and Jermaine Jenas gratefully scored the first goal under Fabio Capello's regime.

After an overpriced drink, we were staggered to head the announcer proclaim 'Please welcome the teams back for the second half - Here they are, protecting their 1-0 lead - England !' The Italian influence already seems to be pervasive.

The second half improved markedly until the Swiss had the temerity to score with a well taken goal. The Swiss contingent rang their cow-bells and chanted 'La Suisse'. Ing-er-land fans responded with 'We know you speak Swiss-German and Zurich is your capital city.'

The hard working England captain, Stevie Gerrrraaaarrrrd, got to the dead ball line and crossed for substitute Sean Wright-Phillips for another tap-in.

Peter Crouch came on, Cashley Cole went off to a solitary shout of 'Where's your Cheryl gone ?' and Wayne Rooney dropped a little deeper. In fact, he was so deep he was playing at left back, conceding corners and passing balls down the line to Wayne Bridge.

England continued to press for another goal and an otherwise impressive David James made his inevitable token error, flapping at a high cross.

Die hard, loyal fans who apparently are 'Ing-er-land till I die' decided to avoid the queues at Wembley Park and streamed out of the stadium. When the full-time whistle blew, the stadium was half-full. Part time supporters.

The game ended 2-1 for England. The remaining Ing-er-land fans were happy and we started the long journey home via Wembley Central herded together like cattle on the station approach with a £6 program for company.

Adding support for OpenID to Wordpress using this plugin is quick and straightforward.

Similarly, the latest version of Drupal includes a core module providing full support for OpenID integration.

So, if you have an OpenID, you can now use it to comment on this blog.

Since accumulating 9 penalty points, Norma has been very worried about the possible consequences of my irresponsible actions and dangerous driving. A driving ban would have severe, wide reaching consequences for my glamorous job in IT consultancy, affect our busy social life not to mention the logistics of ferrying the kids to all their hobbies.

After lodging an appeal with Surrey Traffic Police, I gleefully accepted a place on a half-day 'Speed Awareness Workshop'. Attendance at the workshop cost £95 but was in lieu of the proposed 3 point penalty so was well worth the money. Plus the instructor was an attractive lady. After registration, coffee and friendly introductions, we all swapped amusing anecdotes of our various speeding offences, recounted hard luck stories and were tested on stopping distances in the rain.

After lunch (lovely sandwiches and volavons), we all looked at some horrific photographs of mangled car wreckage, listened to victims of car accidents and, worse of all, watched the instructor viciously smash a peach on the table with a claw hammer.

As I wiped peach juice off my face, I cunningly positioned myself next to the instructor for the grand finale which was an evangelical type experience where we all hugged each other and proclaimed in a single, united and very loud voice: 'In the name of the Father, the Son and Surrey Traffic Police we hereby pledge, that we will never exceed the speed limit ever again'.

The only problem was that the roads were really empty on my route back home and the weather conditions were dry with excellent visibility. I was a little late for my evening meal (Chicken Kiev on Tuesday night), Manchester United were playing live on TV and so I promptly picked up another £60 fine and the very 3 penalty points, I had spent the afternoon avoiding.

Norma was not pleased. Since then, I have been accompanied on every single trip by a new backseat driver. A voice from the passenger seat who keeps piping up:

'Speed camera, 500 yards. Limit - 40 miles per hour'

'Yes, yes OK, I know this road and I am doing 42 mph and they never do you for that.'

'Speed camera. Limit - 40 miles per hour. Reduce speed.'

'All right. All right. Just shut up will you ? I am down to 39.5 mph now.'

When the danger has passed, the backseat driver gives a distinctive 3 toned whistle and is silent until she spots the next possible hazard. Once again, my irritating back seat driver pipes up in that dull, monotone voice

'Possible mobile camera site ahead. Limit - 50 miles per hour.'

We all frantically scan the landscape for police hiding in the bushes wielding a hand held radar gun and wait for the triumphant 3 tone whistle that means 'OK - put your foot down.'

Sometimes I am sorely tempted to go for a crafty drive on my own without my back seat driver in attendance.

Sometimes, I am tempted to ask the back seat driver to shut up and just let me drive.

Sometimes, I am tempted to silence the back seat driver by cutting her communication cord.

Sometimes, I am tempted to grab the back seat driver by the neck and shove her back in the glove box.

But I can't because the back seat driver is my friend.