Pre FIFA World Cup 2010 thoughts..

So only a few days to go now until all our blind optimism over England’s World Cup chances is finally over after getting a stuffing at the hands of the USA. But would that really be such a bad thing, after all, if England were to actually win the bloody thing do we really want to have Sir John Terry ..hmmm NOOOOOOOO!!!

I’m also getting increasingly fed up with media/players saying you cant tell Rooney to keep his cool as will ruin his natural game…what crap, grow up & calm down !! If Rooney thinks that kicking out at someone or arguing with the Ref’ until he’s booked or sent off is going to help England’s chances then he’s as stupid as he looks, chill out, and get your own back in the best way possible, by sticking the ball in the back of the net !!

Of course i would love England to finally lay the ghosts of 1966 to rest and actually win the Cup but equally I’m not blind to the fact we probably wont be able to do so i’m afraid…

So who do I think will win, its hard to say of course, but Spain are looking very strong and maybe this is finally their time to win it, after all for such a powerful football nation they really should do so at some point, and this looks as good a time as any!

Argentina on paper look a great bet too, the players they have are some of the very best on the planet but they also have that nut job Maradona in charge so who knows what will happen there. The Dutch are also looking strong, and stand a chance, you can never rule out the Germans even if this perhaps isn’t their best team. And of course there is always Brazil, you never know, they might just win their 6th !!

What about an African County, well maybe, but I wouldn’t have thought any one of them quite has what it takes at this time, but for the future  I would imagine it will happen at some point. And another team that might do a ‘Greece’ is Serbia, who are looking good and might cause a bit of an upset.

But really no one knows whats going to happen until it all kicks off in two days time…excited, you bet I am!!

I’m sure that South Africa will put on an amazing, well thought out, safe and very loud (all those Vuvuzela horns blowing creates quite a racket!) tournament, one that we will all look back on with  fondness in years to come. Just hope that England play a lot better, with pride & passion, belief & leadership in the coming games and can at least make the Semi-finals avoiding the Germans along the way !

I’m collecting the Panini 2010 World Cup stickers, yes i know it sounds all rather childish but way back in 1978 i was a small lad and Mum bought me the Argentina 78 sticker book for that World Cup, which i still have by the way, but she only bought one pack of stickers and I wasn’t  allowed to have any more so this year i thought I’d do it again and collect them all, over 600 of the things at 50p per pack of 5 !

Well thanks for reading, even if by the time you have read this you might know just how wrong i was !!

Canon EOS 1D Mark II N

After a bit of thought, lusting, saving and wishful thinking i bought myself a new (well technically its used) camera off ebay. I will admit i was rather taken by the fact i just wanted a 1D and all that entails, so maybe i could & should have gone for a different model due to the nature of what i mainly shoot, but there you go.

I bought a Canon EOS 1D Mark II N which for those of you that have no idea about such things is the professional Sports/Action model in the Canon range, well it was when it was new which was a few years ago, and they are currently upto the mk4 version now.

However as i already had a Canon 40D which isn’t too bad as a Sports/Action camera itself even if not at the pro’ level perhaps I would have been better getting something more suitable for weddings/portrait work, still time will tell and i could always stick it back on ebay of course !

The camera itself isn’t too bad, apart from signs of wear from its previous owner, some knocks and scuffs here and there etc. It also needs a good service and clean of its sensor as the photos are showing a lot of dark marks even though i was told it had recently been cleaned. I hope to get it sorted out at some point soon, but having one or two problems getting it looked at for the moment. So there you go, a new camera, i just need to get it cleaned and get out & about to put it through its passes!!!

You will be able to see what i can come up with on my flickr site over the coming months ….

John Terry and English football in a nutshell !!

John Terry is a distilled version of everything that’s wrong with the modern day footballer, he’s over paid, over sexed and with far too much of an ego giving him an over inflated opinion of his talents, importance and self worth…just like by far the majority of the other players currently playing for the England team as well as running out on a Saturday afternoon for their respective clubs in front of fans who have to save hard to be able to afford a ticket that can cost anywhere from £25 to £90 …the peoples game, not anymore it isn’t…

The Clubs really need to sort out ticket prices & players wages and then perhaps they will start to fill a few more of all those empty seats you see on an ever increasing basis on the television coverage of football in this country. When you have clubs that are spending far more than they have coming in, and when by far the majority of that is going into the players bank  accounts then it really doesn’t take a whole lot of brain power to work out the solution.

Give the game back to its fan base, bring down those ridiculous ticket prices, where it takes half a weeks wages to take a family to a game, and get a sense of realism please football. You don’t have a divine right to full stadiums, the players don’t need to be driving around in Bentleys, and instead of trying to earn as much as your grubby little hands can get as soon as possible during your playing days so you’re set for life just get another job when this one ends, that’s what happens in the real world, but then i guess most players don’t live in the real world do they but just in a fantasy one in which their every want, need and desire is happily met and that’s what you get the issues as we have seen recently with the likes of John Terry and his colleagues.

In my humble opinion i really feel the way things are going its all going to finally implode in on itself in the not too distant future. Surely you can only keep on screwing the generosity, commitment, blind loyalty and wallet of the average fan before they turn round and say enough is enough to then move onto something better value  for their money. Football really will only have itself to blame…

Super Bowl XLIV

So its Super Bowl weekend once more, all that over the top hype for a couple of hours of action. It’s the Indianapolis Colts v the New Orleans Saints, a battle of two of the very best offences you will get to see, a contest between two of the best QB’s in the NFL, and maybe a bit of defence too which might help tip the balance one way or the other. I really hope the Saints can pull it off, keeping Manning under some sort of wraps, whilst picking off the Colts backfield as it would be great to finally see the Saints win something after all those years of trying, and would be also wonderful to bring some happiness back to a city that not so long ago was under water. So I’m hoping its another Black & Gold Super Bowl party celebration come the end of the game Sunday, even if they aren’t the correct wearers of the Black and Gold colours, who are of course the Steelers!

As a fan of last seasons winners, the mighty Pittsburgh Steelers as I have been for over 20 years,  it’s a shame they couldn’t manage to hold things together this season and get back to the big show, but as happened the last time they won unfortunately the follow up season went wrong for whatever reason. A combination of some strange offence play calling, a defence not playing up to its own very high standards and the loss of Troy Polamalu and less commented on but as important lose of Aaron Smith all added up to a 9-7 year, not good enough in the end to even make the play offs.

I was over in Pittsburgh for my so far one and only chance to watch the Steelers play  back in the early 90′s at the old Three Rivers Stadium, all the way from here in England. A great city, friendly people, and even better the weather was warm & sunny too which was a bonus i’ll admit! Whilst I was there I was lucky enough to also watch the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball club  in a game, that was back in the days they still had a pretty decent team, so you can see just how long ago it all was !!

Anyway, so here’s hoping it’s the Saints who end up holding the Lombardi trophy at the end, and if it cant be the Steelers at least it’s not going to be the Cowboys or Patriots this year, anyone but them please!!

Twitter

I don’t know if you ever use Twitter, its pretty good if you’re happy enough to just put out a line or two  and that’s all. You’re able to ‘follow’ friends as well as the great & good, the famous, celebs, the ‘D’ list’ers  etc etc all of whom are happy to give you a little insight into their oh so glamourised world, which to be honest sounds the same as everyone else’s world just with a little money, fame or power thrown in.

You can even respond back with a couple of lines of your own, which you never know they might even read and answer (or at least someone might answer for them perhaps) but of course a lot of the better known people have thousands of followers so understandable they might not have the time, or even might not see your comment as it would get swamped by other fans tweets.

However that’s all well and good for the well known Twitterers but what about the normal people, the ones that just went on there to pass the time of day with friends etc and then find they have a fair few followers too, unfortunately this has started to breed a type that are getting a little too over excited with their popularity , the egos growing along with their followers list and they dont feel the need to respond anymore to all received comments. They used to be quite happy in their own little world, but after getting some attention online they are starting to act occasionally as  though the ‘followers’ are fans and therefore slightly lower down the pecking order!!

It’s something I’ve noticed a few times, ok you expect the odd D list celeb to act that way, in their mind’s they are ‘very important people’ who arent going to mix it up with the likes you or I (not all are like that however, after all, but why post something expecting a response but never acknowledge it) but why are a few of the normal twitterers acting accordingly too !

Oh i know that at the end of the day we can do what we like, the option to respond or not is our own to decide on, and theres no reason to feel we have to justify it or not, so if a celeb gets comments then thats all part of being a celeb, but for your everyday Joe Blogs then surely it’s not too difficult to respond to the couple of messages  (dont forget they are only 140 characters in length)

So am i talking rubbish .. quite possibly, after all, what does it matter, and who cares what’s going on in someone’s world thats not directly related to yours, but still, it wouldn’t hurt to respond would it surely?

Anyway, thats my rant over with, i’ll go and have a lie down now….

BBC iPlayer

Do you use BBC iPlayer, if the answers no then you really should think of doing so. I have to say its one of the greatest features on the internet in my opinion, so easy to use, making it so easy to catch up on missed BBC TV programmes and you can even catch radio shows you might have missed out on too.

I must admit I don’t tend to use it for watching TV, I just cant get into the idea of passively watching TV on the computer, it never seems quite right to be sitting in front of the mac and not surfing the web or paying a game, but I do catch up on a lot of radio programmes. I love BBC Radio 7, which broadcasts classic comedy, drama and quiz shows, well worth catching up on old Hancock episodes, or Dads Army, Whatever happened to the Likely Lads, The Navy Lark as well as more contemporary stuff and so much more …and its all for free!! (well, it is if you live in the UK anyway)

So go it try it out, just go to the main BBC website and follow the links..its so easy to just having the radio shows playing in the background as you surf the web or when you’re working…. please let me know what you think, or have watched/listened to !