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Le Over

This years Le Tour de France was tops. There was a heap of drug-related embarrassments along the way, and although I’d rather they didn’t happen, it kept things interesting in what can sometimes be a boring event.

I didn’t really keep full tabs on the race but a few riders and teams were impressive and kept me interested.

The Tour kicked off on a 7.9 kilometre time trial in Londres. Fabian Cancellara (Team CSC) blitzed it. I was a little bit sad that Stuart O’Grady (Team CSC) - never a contender for anything except the time trial and the odd sprint - crashed.

Stage two will be remembered for the crash that involved every man and his dog. Actually it was one of the few crashes that didn’t involve a dog. Certainly every man and his bike. Robbie McEwen (Predictor-Lotto) was left behind but managed to not only chase down the peloton, but also beat Thor Hushovd (Crédit Agricole) and Tom Boonen (Quick Step-Innergetic) who were set up by their respective teams pretty well in the sprint.

In stage four Hushovd crossed the line first in Joigny after one of the best lead-outs I have ever witnessed, by team mate Julian Dean. It was awesome to watch.

Stage five brought the first climbs of The Tour between Chablis and Autun. Sylvain Chavanel (Cofidis) attacked early, and was the mainstay in a breakaway that kept ahead of the peloton for around 150 kilometres. Chavanel crossed all the climbs firstto take the polka-dot jersey. Alexandre Vinokourov (Astana) and team mate Andreas Andreas Klöden both crashed, which caused a stir as they were favourites for the overall win, however the crash turned out to be the least of their dramas.

From Semur-en-Auxois to Bourg-en-Bresse it was pretty much all Bradley Wiggins (Cofidis). 2 kilometres in to the race, with 197 kilometres still to go, Wiggins broke away solo. He gave team sponsor Cofidis some serious air-time, took every bonus of stage six, and was caught with 7 kilometres to go. Nonethless, it was great to watch him.

After watching Wiggins make a name for himself the day before, Linus Gerdemann (T-Mobile) went one step better on stage seven. He escaped the breakaway on the hardest climb of the day and never got caught. He ended the day with the stage win, the yellow jersey, and the white jersey.

In stage eight Michael Rasmussen (Rabobank) took the yellow jersey. A few riders crashed one the main descent, including O’Grady, who was taken to hospital with ‘back pain’ which turned out to be three broken vertebrae, five broken ribs, a broken scapula, both clavicles broken, and to top it off, a collapsed lung. He retired from the race. McEwen finished outside the time limit and was eliminated, and Michael Rogers (T-Mobile) dislocated his shoulder, leaving Cadel Evans (Predictor-Lotto) the only serious Australian contender - pretty much the best thing that could happen really, I could concentrate on Evans and not have to worry about the other Australians winning the minor prizes.

The mountain stages are cool. Especially the descents.The speeds are crazy. I want tot ride in a race where it’s all downhill.

In stage nine Juan Mauricio Soler (Barloworld) really hit his straps in the mountains. I like Soler. He took the polka-dot jersey because Rasmussen who was leading the mountains classification was wearing the yellow, and didn’t let go of it for the rest of the race.

By stage fourteen Alberto Contador (Discovery Channel) and Evans had come to the fore. Contador took the stage ahead of Rasmussen, while Evans slipped slightly from second to third place overall. Vinokourov lost eight minutes and any hope of a win, and the Rabobank machine was awesome to watch as they displayed some serious power in the uphill chase, led by Thomas Dekker.

Between stage fifteen and sixteen team Astana were asked to withdraw themselves from the race after Vinokourov tested positive for an illegal blood transfusion. Twenty-four hours later, between stage sixteen and seventeen, Team Confidis had also withdrawn after Cristian Moreni tested positive to unacceptably high levels of testosterone. Then overall race leader Rasmussen followed suit, sacked from Rabobank for violating team rules. Contador took the lead, but no yellow jersey was worn until the riders got to Castelsarrasin.

Some of the roads in the mountains look like they were built be bored, or high engineers. There are quite a lot of bends and loops that serve no purpose whatsoever but to make the road more interesting to travel on.

On the ride in to Angoulême the third dog of The Tour made its appearance, causing Sandy Casar (Française des Jeux) to crash and take a large patch of suit and skin off his right butt-cheek. Because he was in the breakaway he didn’t stop to change, instead opting to have the team doctor hang out the window attending to his buttocks while he rode on. He won the stage.

The time trial that started at Cognac was the stage I (and every Australian) got into the most. Evans had two minutes to make up on Contador to take the yellow, while Levi Leipheimer (Discovery Channel) had a minute to make up on Evans. Leif Hoste (Predictor-Lotto) went out hard so he could report back on the course to team mate Evans. He set a fast time early, eventually beaten by George Hincapie (Discovery Channel) and Vladimir Karpets (Caisse d’Epargne). The three leaders really gave everything though, as they had to, being so close. Leipheimer took the stage win, but couldn’t make up enough time to beat Evans. Likewise Evans finished twenty-five seconds down on Contador.

The final stage was just a formality, but it was very entertaining watching the riders messing around a bit on the way down the Champs-Élysées.

Also very entertaining were the spectators, especially on the mountains. The lack of constraints and rules is just bizarre. Apart from a few dogs causing crashes, there were also horses in fenceless paddocks being inadvertently herded towards the road by the helicopters. At times spectators had parked their cars in the road. A few times I saw spectators standing on very thin concrete barriers with cyclists inches from them on one side and vertical drops of many metres on the other side. At one stage I also saw about twenty bikes strung up on a wire ten or so metres above the road. Who does that?

Overall it was pretty fun, apart from it being televised so late. If they started the races earlier in the morning (French time) it’d make it a lot easier…

Oh Tristan a Falling Star

I watched Transformers.

Everyone was saying it was great, but it wasn’t really. It was just okay.

For a movie that is obviously going to have children making up a large percentage of the target demographic, that tart who did not have enough clothing on at any stage in the movie was completely uncalled for.

The much-hailed Transformer CGI was good, but ill-directed. Were they animorphs mechanimorphs or machines? While the idea of a walking talking robot mechanically rearranging itself into a car, tank, or helicopter is funky, the idea of a cybernetic blah blah blah morphing into the first large moving object it sees is pretty boring.

Our main character, Sam Witwicky, was a fool. In fact, all the human characters were. Sam had a messed up relationship with love interest / tart, his parents, and his friends. The whole cast were terrible communicators. And the only characters with character were poor racial stereotypes. I have no idea why the Autobots would want to save humanity.

I like John Turturro. He should not lower himself to such mediocrity.

If You’re Second Then You’re Last

As a senior high school student it was my duty to pick on kids in the younger years, especially when they made it easy with their nerdy little fads, like Tamagotchis and Pokemon.

The Harry Potter fad was particularly fun, as all the dorks somehow gained some sort of false confidence from their fellow dork Harry. It was my good pleasure to rise to the challenge and ‘crush the losers’ as the ‘Gurge would say.

About the time that I lost interest in picking on people Harry Potter became a little bit more than a fad. Now friends who I love and respect tell me they have finished the new Harry Potter book just a day after it came out. I am in conflict with myself.

If You talk about Harry Potter and I happen to blurt out that you’re a loser, I’m really very sorry. It’s just that… well, you are.

Season Cycle

The volume of sport about in recent days is making me happy.

After losing our indoor cricket semi-final last week, no time was wasted in kicking off the new season this week. Our first round game was against a new team in the competition, and while they weren’t a bad team, they were all getting towards middle-aged, and weren’t sure of all the intricacies of the indoor version of the game. Our batting was more aggressive than usual (a good thing), and we made 150 with relative ease. Under some peer pressure - Dave tells me between every ball to ‘have a swing’ - I put all of my massive upper body strength* into a couple of shots that just got me out.

Our bowling was a little sloppy, however our fielding was better than usual, because there wasn’t as much pressure put on us. I had to keep for a bit, which is always fun, and I effected a couple of runouts and a stumping. I tried a slower ball while bowling, and it went over the batsman’s head. I tried it again in my next over and it came out much better. The batsman swung too early and was bowled. I then took two wickets in the next two balls for a hat-trick, and ended up with four wickets in five balls. Just in case you thinking I may have talent, this was all in the last over of the game, when it was all well and truly decided already.

Le Tour de France has been tops the last few days. The mountain stages have been great to watch, and last night’s Stage 9 in The Alps was tops. Soler came up with the stage win after a good attack on the mountain, and Cadel Evans finally got in the game. I wish it wasn’t televised so late at night, I’m getting tired.

*I estimate this to be about 0.25N by the time actual strength and timing are taken into account.

Scorcher

Health Kick Update

Since my big effort to buy back some energy from my web developer lifestyle a lot of people have asked how it went after the first morning, when I got up half an hour earlier to go for a run.

I’m afraid that since then it hasn’t gone so well. In fact it hasn’t gone at all. I only managed it the once time, and then my laziness got the better of me. It’s worth pointing out though that for seventy two hours following that twenty minute run I felt absolutely fantastic.

I realise it doesn’t really make sense - the extra energy gained from the run means it’s much easier to get up and do it again. But sometimes I can be quite lazy. Also it’s mid-Winter and I dislike the cold a lot.

(Coincidentally, two days ago I started aching all over. Mid-afternoon I started shivering, and left work. By the time I got home I was shivering violently. That subsided though and I’ve been steadily improving).

So tonight I’m going to start a new fitness scheme, one that’s tailor made for me. It is going to involve listening the extended version of Do It Again by The Chemical Brothers (if I’m feeling particularly energetic I’ll watch the film clip too), and watching Le Tour de France - because just thinking about riding a bike for six hours is so exhilarating it gets my heart rate up.

FaceWorm

So, FaceBook.

I signed up for FaceBook ages ago. I don’t remember when. I sign up for most of these sorts of things when I hear about them, just to reserve my preferred user name. If the hype warrants it, I go back for another look, generally six months to a year later.

FaceBook released their development platform recently and suddenly FaceBook is where it’s at. So I checked back, and had a play around. I updated my profile, and even created a group! Yeah, chillin’ with the scene kids. Crazily enough, I wasn’t repulsed by it like I am repulsed by MySpace.

There’s a lot of FaceBook/MySpace comparison going on lately, with headlines like, Facebook = Smart, Rich, Cool; MySpace = Dumb, Poor Loners?. Most of those articles are defeated in the credibility stakes before they’ve started.

But why do I not hate FaceBook? First, FaceBook does not look like crud. When I look at the FaceBook site I can read it. Sure, what I’m reading outlines a whole lot of entirely redundant, time wasting activities, but at least my brain doesn’t turn into Slush Puppy before my eyes have time to focus.

The second non-bad thing about FaceBook is that music artists don’t feel obliged to forsake their annoying flash-based website for a more annoying flash- and ego-based MySpace. I detest artists putting up placeholder pages on their websites that redirect me to MySpace. It’s easier just to use Wikipedia or Last.fm for the latest updates. Web 2.0 is really screwing us over.

(That Web 2.0 thing was a joke. I’m no holier-than-thou purist. When the dust settles it will have its place).

Of course the open approach too application development on FaceBook also helps its cause, but that’s all boring technical talk, so who cares.

In conclusion, a comic (via Dave).