Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged

Given my current status I seem to have somewhat more time than in the past for watching TV and even with hundreds of channels available via the dish, expected to find decent programming fairly hard to come by. I suppose I would have to admit to a certain snobbery towards US output but I think it's time to put that aside. Not that all is rosy though, stuff like 'Chuck' make their way over here with great fanfare and turn out to be 15 minutes of good material padded out to an hour's worth of air time, 'Dollhouse' where the acting couldn't be more wooden if they threw a dining suite in front of the camera each week and I think that 'Lie to me' is overrated. Claims of Tim Roth's acting chops in this seem to be somewhat exaggerated, I don't see the towering talent required to cock your head to one side and say, 'he's (not) lying'. That's not to say I don't watch it and find it entertaining but it's a one trick pony at the moment and needs something more. But getting to the better stuff, the pilot of 'Burn Notice' looked interesting, NCIS is good, though I suspect that they cover a load of plot gaps purely due to the pace things are moved along at, I've watched some of the various flavours of 'Law and Order', all of them seem grim indictments of the rules of evidence and plea bargaining system and if the US justice system is portrayed by 'Law and Order' as screwed in general, then 'The Wire' suggests it's particularly screwed in Baltimore. I'd heard plenty about 'The Wire' before seeing it, but it seems to be very much as billed, very, very gritty, smart, slow burning procedural cop show. I managed to catch the last episode of the one currently showing on FX via Sky Anytime, it's about time it did something useful other than take up half of the HDD in the Sky+ box. The other gem that it's turned up is 'ReGenesis'. I caught the season finale again, I think for season 2, I'll find out shortly as I have the boxed sets of season 1 & 2 already. I can't believe this show has not received more hype, maybe because it's a Canadian production and hasn't been pushed through the usual distribution channels? Maybe it's the Canadian sensibility, as well as the subject matter, that gives it such a different feel. If anyone is old enough to remember 'Doomwatch' on the BBC in the seventies, well it's a bit like that, with 'roid rage, a lot of attitude, bad language and a little titilation. What's not to like??

Just a little heads up to all the twitter users who believe they have the perfect marketing tool for me to use on twitter; you don't, to all those people who think twitter is a pissing contest; it isn't, to all those people who imagine I want tools to increase the number of followers I have; I don't. Here's what I want you to do, come close, I'll whisper the shattering news in your shell-like; this is what I want you to do.....I want you to eat shit and die. There, I hope that was sufficiently unambiguous but should you require any clarification don't hesitate to ask.

I know it's very seductive seeing the number of your followers go up and up and imagining that your inane witterings are of interest to the widest audience you can possibly generate, they are not. I know that 90%+ of my posting are of no interest to anyone and the remainder to just a handful but I will still continue to tweet unless at any point I consider going out of my way to arbitrarily jack up the number of followers I have in order to cram my opinions down the throats of those who have given no possible indication of any interest.

All I want from twitter is for it to be a source of info on a few subjects, astronomy, technology, baseball, ice hockey, weather and the odd other miscellaneous feed, and a communication tool for a few friends. And when I joined that's what is was but the fuck wits seem to be moving in, in ever increasing numbers.

Not that they are in need of them yet. Let's not beat about the bush here, the Aussies got hosed yesterday. It was one of the worst umpiring days seen in recent times, a wicket off a no ball, a phantom edge given out and a catch that didn't carry. The last one was the most disappointing. I only saw two replays and I utterly fail to see how Strauss could claim it, the umpire in the middle could think it carried and if it went to the third umpire, how he could possibly have supported the decision made in the middle. I've thought for a number of years that there seems to be a conspiracy amongst the commentators, all ex-players, about whether catches have carried and the assertion that the player doesn't know if it's carried. I think this is complete bullshit. I caught a few and I knew every time if it carried or if it didn't, you can feel the angle it comes into your hand, is it still going down or going up, if it's going up into the heel of your hand and you haven't had at least three fingers crushed getting under the ball, it's not a catch, if you take enough catches there may be the odd one where you are not sure, in these circumstances the answer is not out. It really is that simple. Don't go looking to blocky, pixelated images to bail you out and commentators should stop vindicating these cheats by suggesting that they may have thought it was a good catch when they know that it wouldn't have felt right going into the hand.

Day five of the 2nd Ashes test, the Aussies can win, England can win, without intervention from the weather a draw is unlikely, so four days or great entertainment and every likelihood of a fifth so maybe some of the obituaries for the five day game can be put on hold for a while? Sadly it's my view that Andrew Strauss has contributed in no small part to the excitement with not enforcing the follow on and mistiming the declaration. Yes, I'm a twitchy pom this morning but I would have batted for another hour, maybe even a session, yesterday morning; five sessions should have been plenty long enough, whether the Aussies for a win or batting out time for a draw, to clean them up. If the decision was made not to enforce the follow on because Flintoff was not able to bowl if we did, then he should not have been picked, the whole strategy of the game should not be compromised by the fitness of one player, known going into the game.

Shocking news from Turnberry, The Open Championship ends two days early. Sadly, yesterday evening, it was decided that there was no point in continuing the championship as Mr E Woods decided that he would no longer be participating. Some uninformed commentators suggested at the time that it was something to do with his score but clearly this is not a credible theory. There were rumours that US TV carriers were in urgent talks with the R & A to have the rules of golf changed to compel Woods to play all four days, but seemingly to no avail and seismometers across the planet registered the crashing 'click' as 95% of inconsolable US golf fans switched off their TVs as one. And if you listened really, really carefully you may just have heard me giggling.

We'll miss you. Nobody got the crowd into the game like Flintoff. He could create a one-day atmosphere at a test match and just by doing that got the most from his game and from others, particularly the bowler at the other end. I'm as cynical as the next man, providing that the next man is a very cynical man indeed, but it's disappointing to hear suggestions that Flintoff is off for a few big pay days before calling it a career. I think his record shows that when he's been good to go, then he has been there every time, not just turning his arm over in the low 80s but giving it everything he has to make an impact. It's taken it's toll and he's fought it all the way but if he says enough is enough, I see no reason not to respect that decision.

Today was a disappointing day for England cricket on quite a few levels, Andrew Strauss' captaincy, the benign nature of the pitch, at least whilst the Aussies had bats in their hands and a blunt England bowling attack. The last, at least in part, being due to the first. I'm not a huge fan of Strauss as captain, though I understand that there are factors that mitigate against just about everyone else who commands a regular place in the team, but the reality remains that Strauss is steady rather than spectacular. He was late, very late, bringing on spin this morning and once he had done, and seen that they had a good degree of control of the scoring rate and were offering a wicket taking threat he didn't support them at all with close catchers and then throws away the control by taking the new ball as soon as it's available and runs begin to flow. Andrew Flintoff bowling with a new ball to one slip and one gulley, just what is that about? Clearly Strauss did not expect wickets to fall with the new ball, or wasn't interested in taking them by that time, but there was every likelihood that the hard new ball was going to go for more runs in the hands of the seamers that the soft old ball in the hands of the spinners. So what was the point to taking it? The result was that the Aussies scored as they wished, for as long as they wished, Strauss gave up all control of the game and seemingly did care who knew that he had.

As far as the nature of the pitch is concerned, whilst it could yet produce a result, it looks a little bland, nothing for the seamers and even the worn parts aren't spitting and jumping for the spinners, I suppose it's not too surprising that the preparation has been conservative for a test debut at the venue but I hope it's not going to be the template for the remainder of the series.

Just exactly how much better are the slew of supercomputers than Bert Ford with a crayon and a couple of thermometers used to be? When I was a kid Bert and his ilk used to get wrong just once a day, as far as I was concerned, about 6.30 after the early evening news and if I managed to stay up, well he might get it wrong again after the 9 o'clock news. But it was consistent wrongness, the forecast wouldn't change from 6.30 to 9.30. But now we have cutting edge technology to get it wrong in real time. Maybe the likes of air traffic control get the good stuff from IBM's best and I just get the junk from a ZX Spectrum but the only information you can trust, be it from the beeb, Met Office or Metcheck sites is how the weather is now. This is not a forecast, I have windows in my house, I can see what the weather is now. Maybe I should start a weather forecasting site. It's hot, it's fairly humid, it's summer; there is a high probability there are going to be heavy showers, maybe thunder storms sometime this week here. There, that's my forecast, and that's the professionals forecast as well except that they have changed the detail of the forecast from hour to hour, from rain on Friday to rain on Thursday and Friday, back to rain on Friday and light rain Monday, to rain on Friday and heavy rain on Monday all within the past 36 hours. This is not what I understand to be 'forecasting', it is weather guesswork, as it always was and there seems to be no more certainty now than there was 35 years ago beyond about the next 24 hours but now you can refresh your uncertainty as often as you desire.