Video Technology

A great deal of the sport pages space has been dedicated to the furore surrounding Thierry Henry’s handball over the last week or so, so I thought that I would offer my own perspective.

As far as the situation goes, it was most certainly magnified by the significance of the match, as proven by the handball by Wigan Athletic’s Paul Scharner yesterday that went more or less unmentioned. Whilst the situation in either game was entirely different, surely the principal is the same, and so it could be questioned as to whether in the light of last weeks World Cup qualifier, Scharner should indeed have owned up to his crime. Also, whilst it is easy to say that honesty should indeed have prevailed, given the opportunity to send your country to the World Cup following a dubious decision that wasn’t your responsibility to make, wouldn’t you do the same?

A solution to the problem is almost certainly video technology. It has been tried and tested in Rugby and Cricket, and has worked wonderfully well in both, so surely there must be a point at which an error becomes so costly in football that video technology trials are deemed neccessary. Just a trial. Please. The amount of over the goalline disallowed goals and wrongfully awarded penalities should have made the case for this solid enough by now, but it hasn’t, and you would think that this “hand of God” act would tip it over the balance.

Many people argue that the game of football is too fast to facilitate the implementation of video technology, but I disagree. A minute or two to ensure that a correct decision is made wouldn’t low it down that much, and will surely be a benefit to the game, and will give fourth officials something better to do than bumbling around on the touchline telling off managers for voicing their opinions.

Whether this will tip the balance is to be seen, but personally I feel that the calls for video technology now have a cause to be stronger than ever.

Let The Football Begin!

So, the football season has just begun, and it has been a great start to the campaign for Newcastle, who have somehow managed to win 4 games from 5 and remain unbeaten for 5 matches, winning their first away game for 6 and a half months last weekend. Awesome.

Also just starting is the campaign for my Sunday League football team, Aylestone United, and we will be looking to make our first game of the season a positive one a week on Sunday.

Just when people thought it was not possible, I am set to take my annual immersion into football to new depths. I really cannot wait.

Up the Toon!

Absence = Movement + Holiday + Offline

Well folks, I know it has been a while since I posted, but there have been a number of reasons for this, which I will proceed to tell you about:

1. I have been in the process of moving house for some time now. Obviously the initial move included the majority of the furniture, but alas, the majority that was is now a minority. Over the past month and a half me and my sidekick, Jenny, have amassed enough bits of furniture, utensils and other various items of utter crap to feed a car boot enthusiast for about a month. This of course, wasted a considerable amount of time, but was all, in the words of Jenny, “necessary”. Yeh, sure.

2. I have been on Holiday. Yes I know, it seems like all I ever talk about on this blog is my holidays. This time we went to Nice in the south of France, which was absolutely marvelous and I would certainly do it again. Highlights were mostly the weather and the food, with a low point being me paying 8 euro for a Stella Artois, which I promptly proceeded to knock over all over my crotch. I resist the urge to swear.

3. I still have no internet at home. Indeed, slight stumbling block there, made even worse by the fact that had I managed to get the internet sorted much earlier, I could have avoided wasting all that time buying crap for the car boot sale guy and spent it wasting time on here instead. Must get that one sorted.

Anyway, I am back in the real world now, so expect to hear much more from me. Or not. I probably said the same last time.

Brighton and Those God Damn Internet Ticket Touts…

Last weekend me and my girlfriend made the trek down to the south coast to Brighton. I wasn’t really sure what to expect to be honest, with many different stories that I had been told creating several different images of the place in my head.

As it happened it was lovely. The sun scorched my skin three days in a row (fortunately I tanned) and the flat that my uncle kindly let us stay in was beautiful. The main highlight was getting to visit some fantastic pubs, and eating some truly wonderful food. I was lucky enough to get to visit Jamie Oliver’s Italian twice, and both times I was treated to a culinary feast. Loved it.

Yesterday saw tickets for Muse’s Resistance Tour go on sale, which promptly sold out in a matter of minutes (28 to be precise) and I was unlucky enough to not get one. I was infuriated by the number of tickets that immediately appeared on Ebay shortly afterwards, which made me wonder that surely us honest fans should do something to try and get this made illegal. It just seems so unfair on the honest diehard fans (like myself) to have to miss out on the gig, or even be extorted by these t*****s by having to buy tickets at a premium on Ebay (an act which I flatly refuse to relegate myself to).

As may be obvious, not a great deal is happening on this wet Saturday night, as I am fairly skint after last weekend, and many of my usual drinking companions are otherwise engaged, hence why I am blogging. I have just got hold of a number of new albums, and so am going to take this opportunity to go and listen to them very loud on my headphones. I will report back my findings at some point.

Dot to Dot Festival and Relegation

So last Sunday was Dot to Dot Festival in Nottingham, which was pretty awesome in that I got to spend the whole day watching great bands, drinking lots of alcohol and getting sunburnt. To summarise, the main attractions for me going into the day were My Vitriol, Ladyhawke and Friendly Fires.

Ladyhawke was pretty good, the crowd only really got going when she closed her set with My Delirium though, which made me wonder why she didn’t start with it? In terms of hotness, she was a smoking 9, although the fact that she was playing guitar may have added some value for me . She’s a good musician.

Friendly Fires were wicked, really energetic and the crowd was mental, I’m sure Rock City must have broken some regulations because it felt like they were waaaay over capacity, all good fun though! My Vitriol were good too, although the sound techs messed up their microphone configurations so you couldn’t hear the lead singer very well, which was a shame because his voice is brilliant.

Little Boots stole the show for me, I wasn’t sure what to expect but her brand of like “technoelectronicpop” really surprised me and she has a fantastic voice. I think that the rescue rooms is a much better venue in terms of sound, but nevertheless she was brilliant. And she aint bad looking either.

So that was Dot to Dot for me. The day was great for me in that it acted as a cushion for the pain of Newcastle United being condemned to relegation that afternoon, which soon returned to hit me properly later in the week. But hey, as Bobby Moncur himself put it, “nobody died”.

I would prefer not to talk about this subject for a while, please respect my wishes and leave me to grieve with dignity.

The New Guy…

Well, having just completed a month at Punch Communications, I can honestly say that I have learnt more in the past 4 weeks than I have in the last 6 months.

Central to much of the work I have been doing is Youniverse, a social network which allows users to build up their VisualDNA, which is a picture based reflection of themselves. Users give a series of answers in the form of images to questions in several different models of personality test, the images they choose eventually forming the helix of their VisualDNA.

The past month has been hugely enjoyable, and whilst I am continually challenged, I am also very proud to be part of this fantastic team of people who are so vehemently dedicated to what they do.

Whilst the pace seems to show no sign of slowing, I will enter my second month armed with an armoury of new skills and enough social media profiles to crash a Google party. You have been warned!