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here we go

Didn’t take long. Please welcome Roland, err, Bianchi.

damned with faint praise

My son, Norman Junior III, plays competitive junior tennis. When I watch him play, I tend to stand at a distance and remain completely silent. Outwardly at least. I always try to offer positive encouragement - congratulations if he wins and commiserations after a defeat.

My son wins some matches and loses a handful more. However, he always enjoys playing, he doesn’t scream and shout or thrash his racket into the ground. He wins and loses with the same good grace which makes me just as proud as his sporting prowess.

out with the old, in with the new

A minor irritant with uninteresting email cluttering up my Inbox has resulted in some minor changes to my Web 2.0 first-team squad.

Akismet, the popular and widely used anti-spam solution, was letting an increasing trickle of irritating comment and trackback spam through. As I had configured email notification for all blog comments, this was generating pointless, tedious, worthless emails that simply had to be deleted. A complete waste of time and energy.

a doctor writes

Dear Cathy and Claire

I wonder if you can help me. I recently was asked to host a deluxe barbecue for some Scottish friends who live in a town called ‘Glasgow’, near Scotland. I live in London and had stocked up on decent cuts of meat, firelighters, barbecue coals (impregnated), vegetable kebabs and fish because some veggie always turns up unannounced.

As my wife is so quick to prepare her lovely potato and pasta salads and often brings the baked potatoes out before my BBQ is actually hot enough to start cooking, I took the precaution of stocking up on a few gas canisters and hundreds of gallons of fuel accelerant. She won’t mock me in front of my friends this time. Oh no.

Manchester City announce two new signings

Newly appointed Manchester City manager, Sven Goran Eriksson stunned the football world today by opening the transfer kitty and swooping within hours of his appointment, to announce two high profile signings from two major Premiership rivals.

The new arrivals are a combative 24 year old midfielder and an experienced, classy central defender

• Joey Barton (Newcastle - £18.4 million)
• Silvain Distin (Portsmouth - £7.2 million)

beat the bookie with Brightside

Seven weeks ago on this blog, I predicted that Manchester City would appoint a foreign manager.

‘However, I have a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that, in seven weeks, Manchester City Football Club are going to appoint a foreign manager.’

I also suggested the name of ‘Sven Goran Eriksson’ as the most likely candidate to be appointed.

Now, seven weeks ago, you could get decent odds from your local bookie on Eriksson being appointed: 100-1 in fact.

SEO wars: Google versus Yahoo!

When I moved this blog from hosted Wordpress , I submitted the site to Google and Yahoo! After that, I noted the respective crawlers indexing the blog and thought no more of it.

I subsequently registered the site in Google Webmaster and Yahoo! Site Explorer and added a sitemap to help the robots index my site more efficiently. After a while, it was clear that Google was responsible for the vast majority of traffic to my humble blog. Mainly ‘one-hit wonders’ but welcome nevertheless.

raw deal for UK smokers

LHR-NCL (BA1326) Dep: 09:40 Arr: 10:45

‘Ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Newcastle airport where the local time is 12:50. Once again, we would like to apologise for the [2 hour] delay to this service. We hope this does not inconvenience you and wish you a safe and pleasant onward journey.’ ‘Passengers wishing to smoke should note that, following changes to UK legislation that came into effect over the weekend, smoking is not permitted anywhere in the terminal building.’

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practical parenting

If you are the parent of a teenage girl, I have some fantastic news for you.

Good news - You will never have to purchase an air freshener for your car again. Ever.

I kindly gave my daughter and three girlfriends a lift yesterday. As each young passenger boarded, pleasant smells and odours of various perfumes and fragrances wafted and swirled around the car interior until it resembled a perfume counter at Boots.

under the covers at Wimbledon

This year, like the previous three, we applied in the LTA ballot for Wimbledon tickets. This year, unlike the previous three, we were allocated two tickets for Court 1 for the middle Saturday in blazing June.

I checked the Order of Play on Friday night. My wife asked me who was playing. I casually replied ‘Oh - just some ladies playing pit-a-pat tennis then Djokovic (Men’s #4 seed) against Kiefer followed by another ladies singles match.’