Japanese Samurai Subs

Wow how cool is this :

 

Japanese Samurai Subs

 

After 60 years in a watery Hawaiian grave, two World War II-era Japanese attack submarines have been discovered near Pearl Harbor, marine archaeologists announced today.

 

Specifically designed for a stealth attack on the U.S. East Coast--perhaps targeting Washington, D.C., and New York City--the "samurai subs" were fast, far-ranging, and in some cases carried folding-wing aircraft, according to Dik Daso, curator of modern military aircraft at the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum, speaking in the new National Geographic documentary Hunt for the Samurai Subs.

Brilliant blog post about lower league rugby

Saw this over at My Waterloo Rugby, hope it’s the first of many posts :

So why did I fall out of love with the game?  The game started to lose its mojo a few months into our second season in National Division 2 back in 2004.  The sense of adventure of visiting away games ceased to exist, many of these newer club grounds we found ourselves visiting lacked charm, many purely sterile.  These new grounds don’t reflect the warmth of the local community, they reflect a cold ambition to win and succeed to progress, there was no joy or character and so my interest waned.  Give me a Wharfedale over Doncaster any day; these are places where the true spirit of rugby lies, not in the concrete slabs of the new Coventry ground; you walk into places like Rosslyn Park and you feel the heritage and esprit de corps come up and shake you warmly by the hand.  In Nottingham three years ago, my love of rugby hit rock bottom; there we were, 300 of us, in a football stadium on a Sunday afternoon, the moon had a better atmosphere that day.  I’m sure any first time visitor to the game that day will have ensured it was also their last; no bar, no banter and they had one of those wretched over sized cartoon mascots; not a parrot or a squid or something vaguely amusing for the kids but some bloke adorned as an eight foot mobile phone.  And then at half-time the Nottingham people entertained us with cheerleaders….

People know I have an abundant hatred of the use of cheerleaders in this country, if you go to a grid-iron game in the States you’ll see buxom blondes being thrown in the air and performing multiple silhouettes before being caught by their peers (note to self – can we learn any techniques from the Dallas Cowboy cheerleading coaches? Look up ‘awesome cheerleading stunts’ on “YouTube”- get that girl in our line-outs) but here we have to make do with 14 year olds in the middle of winter waving a couple of pom-poms; it isn’t attractive, it isn’t rousing, in fact I find it very creepy….     

….And that was the end of the love affair. Since then the numbers of games I attended could be counted on one hand.

 

Wow

How did that happen? Hayes beat Valuev!!! Bonkers. Utterly amazing sporting moment. Outstanding.

Eusebio on Goodison Park "Best stadium in my playing life"

Last night was pretty depressing but loved this quote from Eusebio

 

Eusebio on Goodison Park: "Sorry, I don't speak good English. But today for me, for my family, it's a good day, for Benfica to play here. This stadium for me is the best stadium in my playing life."

 

Everton were swept aside in the second half, Benfica looked spot on whilst we looked clueless and frantic. A game crying out for Phil Neville it has to be said. The next two games now have a fair bit of pressure on them but BATA and AEK drawing helps.

Lord of the Rings movie characters map

This is quality from XKCD

 

A graph of character interactions in Lord of the Rings and Star Wars.

 

 

 

Waterloo V Hull Ionians

Found this picture of Waterloo scoring the winning try again Hull Ionians a few weeks ago (picture by Ed Thomas).

 

Everton's treatment room xi

Everton are depressingly beatable at the moment but ultimately it's not surprising when our treatment room xi is, apart from needing a keeper, looking fantastic. Look at the team we had missing for the weekend against Bolton

Everton Treatment Room XI - 26/10/09

Hibbert - Yobo - Jagielka - Baines

Pienaar - Arteta - Neville - Bilyaletdinov

Yakubu - Vaughan

with Anichebe and Osmanalso fighting for a place too

sporting depression

Some pleasant viewing to take away the blues (and scarlets and a myrtles)

Fame at last

Last weekend I phone the Danny Baker Show in order to try and save Goodison and Blundellsands (home of Everton FC and Waterloo RUFC respectively) from his totalitarian demolition crews....I was less than successfull but Hey, it was early on a Saturday morning, I didn't do too bad.

Listen here : Danny Baker Show Podcast

Evertonians don't forget their own

Just a very quick notes, a mate of mine is off to Lisbon tomorrow with T-shirt highlighting the continuing hopes we all have for the safe return of Madelaine McCann.

We also have issued a special purple 3rd kit in memorial for little Rhys Jones (and as a fund raiser for the city-wide Liverpool Unites charity).

Footy fans are sometimes viewed as neanderthals but things like this remind us that we do not forget our own.

Who were the first Liverpool FC players to play for England?

Interesting trivia question there “Who were the first Liverpool FC players to play for England?”. It is of course a trick question because 4 players of Liverpool Football Club (as in Rugby Football) took part in the very first rugby international in 1871.

 

Step forward J. H. Clayton, A. Lyon, E. Tobin & E. Kewley. Liverpool Football Club players representing their country a full  7 years before Everton were formed and 13 years before Everton’s offspring stole your club’s name.

 

Almost as good is the one “Name three Russians to play for Everton”...the answer, of course, being “Bilyaletdinov, Kanchelskis and Gethathibbertoff” or “Name three Israelis to play for Liverpool....Cohen, Rosenthal and Judas Barmby”.

Same clubs, different rules - Richmond take on Barnes (again)

National League Division 2 South Fixtures

 

Would dearly love to go to a Richmond V Barnes fixture :

 

Saturday, 07 November 2009

Barking v Westcombe Park, 15:00

Bridgwater & Albion v Rosslyn Park, 15:00

Canterbury v Southend, 15:00

Dings Crusaders v Worthing, 15:00

Ealing v Henley, 15:00

Lydney v Clifton, 15:00

Richmond v Barnes, 15:00

 

Why? Because Barnes and Richmond played the first ever game of association football. I’ve been to Richmond RUFC’s lovely homely ground...it was the same day I went to Twickenham and if I was brutally honest I wish I’d plumped for spending the full afternoon at Richmond. Lovely club, very similar to Waterloo.......just a hell of a lot posher. ;)

 

Where do Premier League players come from

Superb little gadget from the BBC showing all the current Premiership squads and where they are from :

 

Where do your Premier League team’s players come from?

 

Nice little cluster of home grown players for Everton as well as our foreign leagion.

 

Timmmyyyyyyy

Good old Tim :

Everton midfielder Tim Cahill dedicated his winning goal in the Europa League game against BATE Borisov to the victims of Tuesday's Pacific tsumani.

The Australian international mimed rowing a canoe after scoring in the second half of the match in Belarus. "I just felt in my heart it was the right thing to do," he told ESPN. "Me and my family are from Samoa and I've got a lot of family there that got caught in the tsunami. A lot of people are going through a hard time."

Rescue workers on the Samoan islands and Tonga are continuing to search for survivors after the tsunami which has so far claimed 149 confirmed victims.

Other than that it was a tremendous performance from Everton given the line-up. Yobo and Rodwell going down with flu (and you can bet the others were feeling ropey too). Hibbert in central defence, Osman as skipper.

 

Bit of a kick in the pants conceding the goal like that but chuffed they didn’t let their heads drop. 6 points is a great start to the group, especially with AEK rallying to beat Benfica.

The Yak is back?

Great to see Yakubu score last night and especially nice to see him make a beeline to Mick Rathbone (Everton’s head physio) and hug him. Pretty good goal too...he just makes goal scoring look so easy.

 

Hull looked very poor it has to be said...very funny to see Barmby get mugged in the build-up to our 4^th goal.

 

Osman was captain last night, it’d be great if he can pull his form round as he does looking he’s sleep-walking his way through some games. Was good against Blackburn and bagged a goal last night so let’s hope for more of the same

 

So the last 7 days basically pan out as : Everton 11 – 0 AthensBlackburnHull United. Can’t complain about that.

 

COYB COYB COYB COYB!!!!!!

 

 

Everton v AEK Athens or football spectating as performance art

Everton 4 - 0 AEK Athens

Well, not sure if that Everton being ace or Athens being poo. Apart fron a 10 minute spell in the first half where the blues were on the back foot we basically destroyed them from the word go. Very rare I, as a totally pessimistic bluenose, feel totally confident about a game. They looked very balanced in midfield with Fellaini simply stepping in and winning the ball then moving it along. At the back Distin looked solid and Gosling played well at right back (although it's difficult to tell if they just didn't have anything to test them).

One of the main points to emerge from the game was the totally superfluous extra officials. Felt sorry for the two goal-linesmen...they just stood there like lemons for the entire game.

Other then the only other thing to report was the Greek fans and there 'football spectating as performance art' co-ordinated craziness. Very distracting with the game ebbing to it's conclusion but you have to take your hat off to them. Superb support for their team. at the full time whistle they unfurled an Everton banner with our crest on and "Forever Blue - Athens Branch" written on it (how to win friends and influence people).

Top work by Everton as they struggle to get some rhythm in this stop start up & down season opening.

Oh dear, oh dear Ireland

The All Blacks have their haka, the English generally pout at the camera...the Irish prance around like McFly wannabes

Ireland launch their new rugby kit

It's not a bug in the game's code, it's a bug in your moral code

I like this novel approach to piracy protection :

It's not a bug in the game's code, it's a bug in your moral code

Anyone who attempts to direct Batman using the "glide" button finds that the feature has been disabled, causing the Caped Crusader to plunge to his death.

One gamer who got his hands on an early copy of the PC version, which is released this week, reported the apparent bug in a hastily-typed post in the game's official forum, complaining that Batman kept dying in a cloud of poisonous gas.

"I've got a problem when it's time to use Batman's glide in the game. When I hold , like it's said to jump from one platform to another, Batman tries to open his wings again and again instead of gliding. So he fels down in a poisoning gas. If somebody could tel me, what should I do there," he wrote.

But rather than sympathy or tips from other players, he received a ticking off from an employee of Eidos, the developer behind the game.

"The problem you have encountered is a hook in the copy protection, to catch out people who try and download cracked versions of the game for free," he wrote.

"It's not a bug in the game's code, it's a bug in your moral code."

Unbelievable shot from Roger Federer

Just when you think Federer can't get any better he does this :



That's just awesome

Lonely Planet Magazine

Sent this to the Lonely Planet Magazine after they labelled Anfield a 'cathedral' and Goodison Park a 'shed' in their city mini-guide section

Sir, I read your magazine with interest each month and so was particularly excited to see my own city, Liverpool, featured in your mini-guides this month.

Alas you saw fit to label stoop to gaining lazy, easy laughs at the expense of Goodison Park, home of Everton FC. I presume this stems from a lack of editorial judgement on your part and a mischevious streak on the part of your correspondant Richard Vaughan. For the record Goodison Park is one of the few old style British football grounds hosting top flight football, whilst other grounds opt for concrete and steel and modern razzamataz Goodison still retains a traditional feel.

It's worth noting that Everton remain locally owned whilst other club have been taken over by foreign billionaires. We mightn't have huge budgets, corporate investment or McDonalds in the corner of the stadium (like the "cathedral" your piece recomends visiting) but the club has, in fact, been the only antidote the big money cartel dominating the game in recent years...much more in keeping, I'd say, with the Lonely Planet ethos.....still at least your readers will be able to fuel up on Big Macs when they visit.

Regards

Stuart Brandwood