Say what you like …

… about graffiti, but this is brilliant

I just love it …

When the iPhone was first released and demo’d by Steve Jobs I was not overly impressed.  The swishing menus and re-sizeable photos via pinching looked instinctive, but I did not really get it and it was not as ground-breaking as I expected.  When it eventually made it to the UK in Nov 2007 it was destined to be on the O2 network only.  I have been with the Orange network pretty well since they first appeared in the UK and still have the original one-size-fits-all Nokia handset.  Therefore due to the usual human conditions of lethargy and inertia, I was not inclined to change as the iPhone did not seem sufficiently alluring to make me bother.

I had decided I was going to upgrade from my trusty Sony-Ericsson k750i to an LG Viewty, it too employed touch-screen technology and superficially looked good.  However when I visited the Orange store in Kingston and actually used the device, my interest started to wane.  A few days later I met up with my friend Amar who had recently bought an iPhone – Amar is a major-league technophobe and is very knowledgeable in this area and I often seek his counsel on such matters.  As soon as I held the iPhone it immediately felt right, the way that some products instinctively do and I am sure it is not a coincidence that most of Apple’s products have this attribute.

I then began to use the device and navigate the menus and realised I *had* to have one – I duly bought one a couple of days later.

I have bought a lot of mobile phones in the past and have tended to get a new model on a regular basis.  However I have noticed that after a few months of daily use I become a little jaded with the device and want something new / different;  I often resort to seeking out my previous handset and using that for a few weeks.  I have had no such pangs with the iPhone and still enjoy using it as much as the first day I bought it and a major upgrade to the software is due soon to make the enjoyment even more piquant.  Additionally the 3G model is imminent and this is quite simply a must-have – much to my wife’s chagrin

Foxy Frolics

In my line of work I use computers everyday for most of the day and technology is a keen interest of mine – like so many of the male of the species.  Inevitably a large part of my less productive time on a computer is based around eMail and web browsing.  My browser of choice for the later is Firefox on my Windows PCs and Safari / Firefox on my Mac; therefore when v3 of Firefox was finally released on Tue 17th I downloaded it straight away and loaded it onto my main Windows PC at home, my MacBook and my work PC.

The first impressions were favourable, it felt nimble and swift in comparison with version 2.0 and the Add-Ons I used all seemed to work correctly and reliably; particularly Foxmarks which I use to synchronise my Bookmarks – I could never grow to love Delicious despite the thousands of supporters it seemed to have gained.

Retiring Ronaldo

I wish Cristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro would make his mind up!  He has been supposedly deferring making a decision on his future like some simpering 5 year old for weeks now and I, like many others, grow increasingly weary of him.  The latest thing I read this morning is that he is now waiting to see whether Carlos Queiroz will stay at United or take the Portugal job, soon to be vacated by Scolari – grow up, you are a big boy now, make your own mind up and stop behaving like some coquettish maid!

On the night of the Champions League Final (and in the semi-final against Barcelona) he missed two important penalties; now do not get me wrong, he also scored many superb and important goals.  However in the final particularly he became self-absorbed in his own anquish and wept whilst flailing around on the ground; fortunately someone wept even more that night and this took the media’s attention.  However what seems to have evaded young Cristiano is that, on this occasion the other penalty taker s in the United team had compensated for his mistake – Giggs particularly.  When Ronaldo was asked after the presentation of the trophy if he was staying at United, he said with mock sincerity that he was – all that now seems to have been forgotten, as has the support his team mates gave him that evening.

If he has decided to go back to his Iberian roots to play for teams he supported as a child then so be it, but for pitys sake make your mind up and lets us move on.  I do not think he will meet with such success in the Madrid team without the likes of Tevez and Rooney pulling defences apart to prise open the gaps in which he can prosper.  Furthermore I feel that United could have been moving to a period of European hegemony over the next few seasons and this may not now materialise, whether the same can be said of Real Madrid remains to be seen.

As a postscript to this posting, I read this article this morning (21 June), I think it is time to cash in.

Slippery When Wet (and most other times too)

I do not like John Terry, I never have liked him and my revulsion at the man has only got worse since his “profile” has risen. Furthermore I do not like Chelsea FC, the way they play their football, the way they run their club, what they represent or many of the people who they employ to skulk around a football pitch wearing their latest fluorescent kit. However I digress, back to one of the most obnoxious people in Premiership football:

• Allegedly Terry made racist comments to Ledley King during a match
• Urinated on the floor of a nightclub
• Parked for an extended period in a disabled parking spot
• Ridiculed American tourists in an airport shortly after 9/11
• Spat on Carlos Tevez during the Champions League Final

There have been so many incidents that have been documented in a multitude of places, one particular one that caught my attention recently was this one on a Liverpool fans Blog – a good Post I thought. I think the author has got it bang-on when he says – “He’s shit out of every penalty shoot out he’s ever been involved in, but this time he puts himself forward for the fifth kick? Why, because he suddenly grew a pair? No, he wanted the glory, he saw the headlines and he wanted it to be him that scored the winning kick. ‘Mr Chelsea scoring the winning penalty’ Instead he ended up blubbering like a schoolgirl, AGAIN.” The sense of schadenfreude when I saw him miss that penalty was overwhelming and made our victory taste even sweeter.

Free Willy 3

I listen to podcasts on a daily basis and the Today programme from Radio 4 is one of my favourites. The other day Willie Walsh (the Chief Exec of British Airways) was being interviewed about why he had declined his annual bonus, some 700,000 GBP. The explanation he gave was that essentially after the Terminal 5 debacle he did not feel it was appropriate to take the bonus; additionally when given the opportunity to lay much of the blame for the problems at the door of the BAA, he chose not to and took a portion of the responsibility on behalf of BA and admitted mistakes had been made.

What a refreshing change, a person in a senior position and in the public eye who will actually admit culpability for something. I know that when he was at Aer Lingus he had some problems with the unions, but notwithstanding that it is like a breath of fresh air to hear someone actually accept some responsibility, I was impressed and I will be watching Mr Walsh’s progress henceforth with interest.

Hail Hadrian

I was born in Manchester and as I have commented on here in the past, like many other people I have a fondness for the city of my birth. On Wednesday last week the UEFA Cup FInal was held in Manchester and one of the teams partaking was Glasgow Rangers. The fans turned up in large numbers, many without tickets – it is good that they have so many loyal supporters and I have also travelled to foreign fields to watch football without a ticket – in the hope of getting one “on the night”. However I was somewhat annoyed when I received a text message from my brother advising me that many of their fans had congregated in Piccadilly Gardens and were singing songs about the Munich Air Disaster – for Man United fans that is regarded as despicable. A few more SMSs flew between the two of us, none of which were complementary about our Northern visitors.

As the evening wore on the jocks got even more out of hand; some large screens had been set up around the city by the Council, to allow fans without tickets to watch the game. However when one of them stopped working and an engineer attempted to fix it, he was pelted with beer bottles and sundry objects for his trouble. As a result of this objectionable behaviour I was rooting for Zenit St Petersburg to win the match – which they eventually did. I am not a great fan of the Police force, but they do not deserve this anymore than Rodney King deserved what happened to him.

As if this not annoying enough, there have been two further repercussions of what a section of the Rangers fans did that day; many of my fellow Mancunians who could not make it to Moscow will now be denied the opportunity to watch the game with other like-minded fans and a victory (hopefully) parade has also been denied us. Thanks a lot yer Jock b*stards.

Minus One makes Two

Peter Kenyon is (in my view) a duplicitous bastard – let me get that out there

He is not a man I would trust to keep guard of my pint while I went for a leak, let alone have him as my boss. Therefore it came as no surprise to read various items of news relating to his part in the sacking of the “Special One” and a few days before the axe fell he was voicing support for Mourinho – always the kiss of death in football. However what did come as a surprise was the reported skull-duggery in the morning’s Observer of John Terry; I have not been a fan of John Terry ever since his rise to “fame” and his supposed racist views did not endear me to him any further. However it would now seem he was involved in the ousting of the best manager Chelsea have had in years, an accusation he subsequently denied. He has threatened legal action against the Observer – this being the recoil defensive action of so many “injured parties”. I listened to a podcast on which the journalist (Duncan Castles) who wrote the article was a guest and to me he seemed pretty confident of his facts and doubted any legal action would be forthcoming. On a related note I heard recently that Messrs Allardyce and Redknapp had now expired on their timeframe to issue a legal action to repudiate the “bung” claims made against them by Panorama – strange that!

Ominous Omelettes

I was awoken this morning to the peep peep of my phone, as an SMS arrived – it was from my brother Patrick and simply read “Mourinho leaves Chelsea”. This came as somethings as a shock so I powered up my trusty MacBook and checked the web myself. The SMS was correct, he had left and Avram Grant was now in charge. I have no love for Mourinho as I have mentioned on here before and in some of his outpourings recently he seemed to be losing the plot, his last plaintive cry to Abramovitch was Cantona’esque in style (nice advert for Waitrose though). However I do feel sorry for him this morning, or at least as sorry as one can feel, for a man who may be payed up to 25 Million English Pounds to sit on his sun-tanned arse at home!

Apparently Abramovitch decided to invest in English football after watching a Man United game, the open attacking style of this game appealed to him and this is how he wanted the team he bought to play. He chose Chelsea, mainly because they were on the verge of bankruptcy and hence cheap.

One of the first things Abramovich did was sack Ranieri, a good manager and an honourable man; the way this was done and his potential successors were publicly courted was deplorable. Jose Mourinho was chosen, primarily on the back of his recent success in the European Cup with Porto, a somewhat fortuitous result in my view and other people’s too.

However, where I have some sympathy for the self-appointed “Special One” is that his teams prior to Chelsea have never been of an open attacking style, they have been built on a solid defence and grinding out results – not surprisingly that is how Chelski now play under his stewardship. It would seem that their Russian benefactor will not tolerate that style of football, so why he chose Mourinho in the first place is not clear. In some ways I will miss Mourinho as I think personalities like him provide some respite from the usual drivel that footballers and managers drone on about … “out on the park”,”set out our stall” .. blah blah.

I feel sure that after sitting in the sun for some time, Mourinho will re-surface at another club and hopefully that will be in the Premiership.

Flashback

I am a big fan of The Sopranos and the sixth (and final) season is currently showing in the UK. The programme has finished in the US and if I bothered to look on the HBO website I could find out how it all concludes, but what would be the point of spoiling it. The episode I watched most recently was Stage 5 and the theme of it was the beginning of a power struggle in the families as people jockey for power and advantage. The episode was dark and it was obvious that old tensions were starting to re-surface and it had the mandatory effect of such a series of making you look forward to seeing the next episode.

At the end of each episode the producers have a different tune playing as the credits roll and this time it was a tune from someone I had forgotten about … John Cooper Clarke. They played a song /poem of his that was suitably sombre for the episode – Chicken Town. I first saw John Cooper Clarke some years back in Manchester when he was supporting Elvis Costello on tour – he was fantastic. I did not really know what to expect beforehand, this was pre-Google days so it was not that easy to un-earth obscure facts; all I knew about him was what I had read in NME and that was not much. I now plan to order as much of his back-catalogue as I can lay my hands on – I think he still tours occasionally and I will be keeping an eye out for such an event.