The Lair

And surprise, surprise, I’m not talking about the weather. Yet.

Alt Search Engines wants everyone to stop using “the five major search engines”, just for tomorrow. Actually, I intend to follow that – I think my Google usage is fairly low and I’m looking forward to giving Clusty and a few other contenders a go.

This will also help me determine my stage of Google addiction. Place it accurately on a scale of coffee, watching pointless television, heroin, Warcraft 3 and mindless coding procrastination. I’ll be able to find out tomorrow. I’m not looking forward to a day of cold turkey though.

Vaguely Goog related, an interview with their search quality team.

Oh and I’m now wondering if the hype about that boy Hamilton is justified. Just a thought. Oh and mad mad props to CY for calling the result [ok, not too hard, but still a 50-50 chance] and predicting the number of sets to take the win in the French Open men’s singles. woo. I thought Feds would take Nads to 5 sets meself. And err. this is article gives the Nads butt grabbing wedgie theory a bum’s rush.

I was watching Eurovision a few weeks ago when Terry Wogan intro-ed the segment where the votes were presented.

He said – ok, now you can shout at your TV.

I was eating dinner at the time and I remember being amused at the very idea. Shout at the TV? What does this Wogan chap think I am, uncivilized?

So the vote for Scooch was less than great; I’m sure patriotic Brits would have been shouting at their TV. Me? I was unmoved. Ok, so I cheered a little bit when the hapless Maltese gifted us 12 points. But that’s it.

Fast forward a few weeks later and Beckham won a recall to play at the Brazil-England game at the Wembley. A bit of background, I am most emphatically not on the bring Becks back bandwagon. In fairness though, the guy has earned his place, he’s done the job better than most – recently against Estonia.

Be that as it may, the prematch conversation had started and then Alan Hansen produced this genius piece of fancy verbal footwork. Speaking of the McClaren decision to bring Becks back, he said (paraphrased roughly) “Well, we never said dropping Becks was a good decision, we just said it was a BIG decision“. Umm. Yeah. He never said anything like “Beckham has to go.“. No sir.

What did I do? I squawked in outrage at the TV. Poor innocent TV.

And then, that awesome Apprentice semi-final last night. Where the much despised Katie was told that she was in the final. What did I do?

I shouted at the TV. More like wailed in anguish actually.

Which goes to show that I’m completely unaccustomed to watching television in a family room now.

Ed, don’t read after this bit. It’s a spoiler. You have been warned.

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It’s been a strange strange week for any number of reasons – ranging from the utterly bizarre to the mildly WTF-ish moments. I could comment on the random asshattery that has been invading various parts of blog land but … ah, can’t be bothered.

So instead, I’ll jabber on about the bizarreness that was Eurovision. Let me explain how things work, for the uninformed. A bunch of countries get together, each nation (not just European nations, but Russia and Israel and a few other almost West Asian countries are included) puts forward a song for vote. Each nation can in turn pick 10 favourite songs (excluding their own, of course) after the performances; with a variable number of points being awarded by rank. When all the votes from all the nations have been tallied, the highest rated song … wins. Sounds simple and above board, does it not?

It isn’t.

(more Eurovision hate)