Posts

End of an era ?

The Glazer takeover was not the end of an era. Manchester United is a PLC not a football club.

The departure of Roy Keane was not the end of an era. Players (even great ones) come and players go.

The death of George Best was not the end of an era. Death and taxes.

However, last night’s 2-1 defeat to Benfica in Lisbon just might be.

Ricky Gervais podcast

Ricky Gervais is one of my favourite comedians (The Office, Extras) and has produced the first in a series of podcasts for The Grauniad with Stephen Merchant (co-writer) and Karl Pilkington (who has a hard time).

The podcast is 30 minutes of chat and improvisation but very funny.

Guinness brewery tour

Scobleizer’s trip to the Guinness brewery reminds me of a similar visit I enjoyed many years ago with a few friends.

After enduring the 45 minute tour of the Dublin brewery, we finally settled back to enjoy the free samples which were willingly dispensed in 1/2 pint glasses of sheer perfection.

After a while (seven halves), I sensed the barmaid was about to ask ‘Shouldn’t you lads be moving on now ?’ but one of our party got in first with ‘Have you not got any pint glasses back there ?’

SonicStage 3.3 released

Don’t know where, don’t know when but SonicStage 3.3 is available.

Includes ATRAC Lossless format, ripping WMA CD’s, wider range of bitrates for ATRAC3Plus and MP3.

However, SonicStage remains the only software application in the modern world without a ‘Check for updates’ option.

separated at birth

• The Killers - Smile Like You Mean It
• U2 - City of Blinding Lights

Wonder if Brandon got up and played the piano when U2 recently supported The Killers.

probably the best blogging platform in the world

In a previous article, I wanted to add a trackback to properly cite an article on Ben Gillbank’s blog about his Regulus theme.

I couldn’t find the trackback URL but, as ever, WordPress is doing all the donkey work for me and now I see my posting does indeed appear as a comment in Ben’s original article.

No manual intervention, head scratching or wasted time. Exactly as it should be.

BlogShares

I quite enjoy the idea of BlogShares.com which a fantasy stock market for blogs. BlogShares places a notional value on your blog based on the number (and value) of inbound and outbound links. Shares in blogs can then be traded.

BlogShares is also useful for identifying blogs by people with similar interests. For example, most Oracle technically minded people usually link to Tom Kyte’s excellent blog and their blogs are also worth reading.

new Regulus theme for WordPress.com

Those nice people at WordPress have opened up WordPress.com to the masses and added a couple of new themes. I really like the ‘Regulus’ theme from Ben Gillbanks because it looks clear and uncluttered, the tag line is displayed and the RSS feeds for the blog and comments are obvious.

The only polite suggestions for improvement would be to relocate ‘Blog Roll’ under the ‘Archive’ and ‘Categories’ to let the main body text occupy more of the screen and for ‘Message ssage’ to be fixed in the ‘Comments’ section.

so farewell then, George Best

Not a brilliant week if you are a United fan…

A few years ago, I was drinking in the Chelsea Potter on the Kings Road and a mate said ‘That’s George Best sitting over there’. I replied ‘Yeah, right’. I looked across to the bar and saw a plump, bearded figure sitting on a barstool, clad in a hideous blue shell-suit, sipping a Coke. I was stupefied. After a while, he finished his drink and left. I was still gawping at him like a lovestruck teenager and I swore he smiled at me on his way out.

How to track your blog

Don’t bother. Focus on content. If people care, they will comment.