Month: February 2009

Not a bad advert though apart from the snow thing 🙂 Citroen seem to be developing a habit of getting noticeable adverts out.

Unfortunately the sports are being a bit of a letdown – the Ireland v England game was so poor I’m glad I didn’t have to sacrifice any cricket watching to see it !

The cricket people are being interesting more for rules things (new referral system) than for wickets … And the 5 day game doesn’t move on without wickets.

In the current economic climate I think the car manufacturers are willing to play on anything to get a sale, including people’s nervousness about driving in snow. I suspect it’s s feature they had already but didn’t push over here until the recent cold snap! As you say, nice try Citroen, but I bet some silly bugger falls for it! 😉

Hope you are having a good evening watching your sports. Netchick does too 🙂

… Mainly sparked off by what I’ve been watching lately !

First up – a mini-rant 🙂 Citroen have an advert on at the moment that’s probably looking to take advantage of the snowy period we had here a few weeks ago. It’s about a traction control feature called Snow-motion. Interesting idea … But a bit wasted on us over here as a “Snow”-motion feature would only be useful for a week or two every year. And even in those periods, non-essential trips should be a minimum anyway. So a selling feature that’s utterly irrelevant to most of its audience. Nice try Citroen ! More research required.

Adverts again – I don’t pay too much attention to adverts but the latest Daily Telegraph one on fashion made me laugh earlier. It has girl trying on clothes against a mirror and the two of them singing a version of “I can do anything better than you” to each other. Made me laugh 🙂 It’s not going to make me buy the paper but it’ll make me remember it 🙂

Internet vs Telly – There’s 2 sporting events on today, both of which I’d normally be glued to. However, they clash. So what’s the solution ? Well – we have cricket from West Indies on the telly via Sky Sports. And then there’s 6 Nations Rugby on the laptop via BBC’s iPlayer. How does it work ? The 17″ laptop screen on my lap actually gives about the same view size as my 28″ telly from across the room. But whereas the telly picture is as sharp as normal definition can be, the iPlayer live picture suffers from lots of compression artifacts. It’s trying hard but an average of 1Mbit/s isn’t quite enough to get live pictures across as sharp as telly.

But 🙂 It’s better than watching the cricket via Cricinfo 🙂 And iPlayer and Skyplayer give pin-sharp images on programmes that aren’t live.

It’s a “Man’s” Game – or maybe not. Sky are currently putting the trailers in for the Women’s Twenty20 World Cup cricket. Could be an interesting tournament this one. Women aren’t usually equipped with the kind of physique an Andrew Flintoff enjoys or the 6 foot 4 height of a Steven Harmison. So as they can’t go for the bully-boy tactics that the men can employ, which means playing the game a little differently. Instead of power and extreme pace, the women go for guile, subtlety and skill.

You can always learn something from watching from how other people go about their business, especially if your own physique shares more with smaller, slimmer women than the huge & burly blokes. While I could bowl fairly quick, I never possessed a bouncer that would scare anyone. My batting was solid enough but I never had the strength to be a destructive hitter. So by watching the girls play the game, maybe there’s some good tips to come out of the matches that would help my own game.

Rugby memories – An apt bridge from the last thought this one. Rugby teams are made up of Forwards and Backs. The Forwards are the concrete core of a team and are the bigger, stronger players. They attempt to make holes in the line of opposing players to create gaps for other players to run through. The Backs are the lighter, faster, slippery players who aim to go through those gaps, with the Wingers being the fastest players in the team.

I have played in a few games of rugby, while I was at school. I’d be put on the wing because I wasn’t exactly the most solid person on the field. But I was Fast. It was good fun while it lasted, although it wasn’t really my game. Too much slimy mud 🙂 It did give a great feeling being able to pin back the ears and breeze past people, although that ended up in my first long-term injury. I have weak ligaments in my knees, caused by almost getting away from someone. They caught my right foot, twisted and that’s made a few long lasting problems. The knees still bug me occasionally but that injury encouraged me to find more efficient ways of running and walking, which made me Go Fasta 🙂

Nature of Pain – While away doing testing, I watched a documentary about 4 sportsmen who went in for a challenge which would culminate in them competing in the British Bobsleigh championships. It was a great show to watch, lots of determination on show here. Unfortunately though, for one of the boys it turned into an exercise in dealing with pain. While most people will keep a natural shape, the muscles inside that shape need a lot of preparation before they’re really ready. With me, the bowling and running muscles will remember what they have to do but aren’t ready for action until they’ve set themselves up properly again. What that means is that after the first practice session of the year, I’d have about 3 days of pain before I’d get my muscles back ! After a few sessions, I’d be able to play day after day.

As the muscles rearrange themselves for the job intended, they’d feel like someone had replaced the blood with liquid fire at the same time as giving them a concrete overcoat. For one of the boys in the Bobsleigh, his cycling muscles had to adjust to a very different action, that of running. At the start, he had the pain from his muscles I’ve described above but later on, he had the psychological pain from being frustrated. While the muscles are in concrete mode, you can force them into running or jumping but that extends the time before they relax again. What makes it worse for the cyclist is that as part of a two man team, he’d not have wanted to let his mate down. Physical pain from the legs, psychological pain from not being able to support his mate.

I felt for the guy all the way through the programme, he’d gone from being a top cyclist to doing heavy sprinting and his legs couldn’t support the change in action. There’s a lesson there too, if I have any pretension to being a cricketer this season, I really needed to start preparing weeks ago. The shoulder injury means I won’t be able to build fitness by bowling like I used to, however I don’t need the shoulder to build fitness by running around.

Right – anthems are on at the moment in the Ireland vs England rugby, so it’s time to hit “publish post” and watch Rugby and Cricket simultaneously 🙂

If I knew someone thought half as much of me as you do of Miss AB then I would consider myself very lucky indeed. I think it’s one of the great sadnesses of life that we often do not know what we mean to others as we never find out but somehow the bad stuff is always made apparent.

Sounds like you’ve been enjoying work recently 🙂

Netchick sent me over this time to let you know that Prose is every bit as heartfelt as poetry – as you have just proven 🙂

Charlene – you sound like the lady who had us all gobsmacked as she walked through our office from the team next door pulling an “I’m 50” balloon along with her 🙂 50 years and more life and bounce in there than some of the newbie graduates we’ve had come through.

Seeing more years doesn’t mean having to feel them too 🙂

Mike – I think there’s a bit of responsibility in there too. A couple of posts I’ve written (Blog Mk1 mainly!) I’ve been highly tempted to go back to and scrub, they were written when I was thinking more of Game (Warcraft) than of Real Life. But just using the Big Eraser would mean not learning from things in the past.

So a bit of responsibility and ownership for what we write 🙂

And an outlet for all those thoughts that rattle-rattle-rattle round in our heads that need to escape somewhere 🙂

Although I really liked your story, I most identified with PS 1 & 3. I am not a poet by any stretch and I don't believe I have it in me. However, I can write and if I am to believe what others say, compellingly. But compelling prose is not the same as poetry.

Blogging (and writing generally) for me allows my mind to fully explore not just what I want to say, but how best to say it. The actual act of writing is transformative and I never know what will come out the other side.

Tanya sent me,

Mike

It sounds like there is only 8 or 9years difference at most. 34 is not that old. You’re making me feel old-I’m almost 48. Age is only a state of mind. If she is mature for her age, the 8 or 9 years age difference shouldn’t matter. I think you should ask her out. All she can do is day no. Nothing ventured nothing gained.

I think she’s mid-twenties, although people who I play the “guess my age” game on for me think I’m also in that range, even though I’m actually 34 🙂

(Think “acts like student while hiding all the bits that hurt due to cricket” !)

🙂 There are a good few canteens on site, plus 1 bar. Although that’s unofficially called the Moon Bar, due to its atmosphere.

Hi Pete,

Chanced upon your blog via Netchick. What a lovely description of this young lady. Is she too young for you? May I suggest that you ask her out for coffee or a drink? You sound like you have a lot to offer some lucky lady. Don’t sell yourself short.

Cheers
Charlene

Message to all indoor cricket fans who find this post through Google appearing to like me !

Apologies for there not being too many tactical insights in here, all I can really advise is :

Know your team. Figure out ways to get their strengths out while hiding their weaknesses. If you can turn their weaknesses into strengths through things like matching slow bowlers against suckers for stumpings, good on ya 🙂 It's fantastic when that works out.

Same with batting. If you've got a weak batter who can nurdle, think about combining them with a strong batter who can whack. The plan is to get the nurdler to always get a single to allow the hitter to get back on strike. But let them know they're out there to rotate the strike. Nurdling isn't glamourous but can be very effective at getting positive scores instead of negatives from wickets !

Know the conditions too – my main ball was medium pace swing but I did a few off spinners too because the floor & ball combination meant they sometimes bounced rib or head high !

And good luck 🙂 Preparation like hunting for tactics online goes a long way towards making your own luck.