Entries from June 2006 ↓

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Because they’re offering me one hour of free calls, that’s why! So why call yourself, loser? Well, because the sound quality over broadband isn’t great to start with, so dialup isn’t likely to go great guns.

I got an email telling me if I called out to a landline using Skype, I’d automatically get an hour’s worth of free landline calls! Internet to internet using Skype is free, internet to landline is usually 10c/min or less. Anyhoo, that’s it.

I was actually mildly surprised that I was able to hear myself for about 20 seconds before Skype got wise to the dialup. Then the 5 second gap between the beginning and end of a word proved VOIP isn’t for slow connections. Speaking of slow connections, tune in to Today Tonight this evening to find out about people who can’t get broadband where they live, they’re the new internet underclass!! My emphasis, their descriptor - quality stuff. Never mind the people who can’t afford broadband, like me. But poor doesn’t make a good story, unfairly disadvantaged middle class does. Not that I’m poor compared to 95% of the world’s other inhabitants, but that wouldn’t support my argument today.

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The highlight of the Brazil v Ghana game was seeing Ronaldo score his record-breaking 15th World Cup goal. He’s now the highest ever scorer in World Cup finals football, equalling Gerd Muller’s record in the game against Japan, and now overtaking the total which has stood since 1974. Muller scored his 14 in only two world cups, while this is Ronaldo’s fourth visit to the tournament. Nonetheless, the record is now his, and is likely to remain that way for a time to come.

France, listless on the international stage since their World Cup win in 1998, finally found their touch against Spain. France gave away an early penalty and went 1-0 down, but fought back with an inspirational performance from perhaps the ugliest man in soccer, Frank Ribery. With the high proportion of the precious, precocious, and pretty metrosexuals prancing and diving across football fields all across the world, it’s a breath of fresh air to see a man who looks like he does his own hair, dentistry and cosmetic surgery. But perhaps that’s unfair. There was a Scot, whose name I can’t remember, and after much fruitless searching have still not been able to dredge up - who probably would have taken out that award, so to Ribery I apologise.

The quarter finals then will see every World Cup winning country competing, except of course for Uruguay, who Australia so graciously dumped last November.

First there’s Germany (winners in 1954, 1974 and 1990) against Argentina (1978, 1986). Then Italy (1934, 1938, 1982) take on Ukraine, England (1966) meet Portugal and lastly Brazil (1958, 1962, 1970, 1994 and 2002) come up against France (1998) in a replay of the 1998 World Cup final.

As an aside, it’s quite amazing how quickly photos get on the web. After Zidane scored for France and was mobbed right in front of the gangs of photographers behind the goal, I wondered if they would get a good shot because the group was in their faces. Sure enough, a picture from the exact perspective I had been imagining was on the BBC site within 15 minutes of the end of the match.

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Um. I don’t want to say much about any of these games. I was gutted by Australia’s loss to Italy. It wouldn’t have been so bad if they had scored earlier in the game and we just couldn’t pull one back. But in the 94th minute, with literally seconds left before the referee would blow full time and the game went into extra time, an Italian essentially took a dive in the penalty box.

Francesco Totti scored the penalty, the referee blew the full-time whistle, and Italy won. I felt sick to my stomach - to go out like that is wrong.

I hope Italy loses badly to Ukraine. I’m not a good loser.

In other games, the two tonight are quite interesting. Brazil v Ghana and Spain v France should both be really good.

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I watched most of the Ukraine and Tunisia game, but was mostly unimpressed. Maybe Spain also only won by a single goal because they fielded an under strength side. I don’t know, but neither of those results look convincing against what would have seemed much weaker opposition.

In the other matches, at least France makes it through to the second round on their win, although Switzerland has topped that group. In the second round Switzerland will play the Ukraine, while France and Spain meet in what, on paper at least, would be a great game. As I’ve said before, France fairly well sucks, so while I’ll watch the game I won’t be expecting fireworks.

And so it’s second round time, starting tonight!

Germany v Sweden and Argentina v Mexico.
On Monday night/Tuesday morning it’s Italy v Australia and Switzerland v Ukraine. If we manage to beat Italy, I also like our chances against either Switzerland or Ukraine in a Quarter final… Perhaps I’m being a little too optimistic, but I’m at least realistic about the fact that Argentina would be a bit beyond anyone, even Australia, in the semi-final.

I don’t see anything to change my prediction of an Argentina v Brazil final.

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Guus Hiddink will be thanking me again, along with every other Australian, after we endured the heart-attack-inducing game against Croatia. In what was arguably Australia’s worst performance in their three games so far in this World Cup, we shot ourselves in the foot several times but, somehow, managed to still come away with the draw which will take us into the second round.

I’m not sure why Hiddink chose Kalac over Mark Schwarzer in goal for Australia. Kalac may be a Croatian-Australian, but sentimentality should have played no part in his selection for this most important match. He wasn’t good against Greece in Melbourne earlier this year, and he conspired to lose the game for us against Croatia today. Apart from the near-attempt to bobble the ball into his own net when picking it up, the second Croatian goal was comic in its ineptitude. Fortunately, for Kalac and Australia, Kewell managed to get a second goal for Australia with 10 minutes left, despite a hint of offside against him.

One of the bizarre moments late in the second half was when the Croatian player Siminic received a second yellow card. A second yellow card in the same game is an automatic red card which sees the player sent off. Amazingly the referee didn’t realise he’d already issued a yellow to Siminic and he stayed on the pitch. The surreal moment came as the referee blew full time. He gave Siminic a third yellow card, and then presented the red. This has surely got to be a first in World Cup football - or football at almost any level. Siminic will, I think, be going down in the record books for a long time to come as the only player to receive three yellow cards in one game. With Australia going through to the second round Siminic may also be rightly bitter about choosing Croatia over Australia.

I said earlier that Group E was wide open and, sure enough, with the Czech Republic losing to Italy and Ghana beating the USA, Italy and Ghana go through to the second round. Czech Republic, the number 2 ranked team in the world going into this World Cup, won’t go past the group stage. That’s a bit of an upset. I had them pegged to make it to the semi-final!

UPDATE: I just watched the Italy-Czech Republic game on video. I am more confident of Australia’s chances aginst Italy now. For the entire second half, the Czech Republic played with only 10 men. In the 87th minute, against a very tired Czech side, Filipo Inzaghi went through with the ball, leaving two Italians and the Czech goalkeeper the only players in that half of the field. Italy struggled, and the Czech Republic had plenty of opportunities to score. Australia to make the Quarter Finals.

I’m really glad Ghana are through to the second round and the USA is out of the World Cup. Not that I hold any particular animosity towards my country of birth, but the arrogance of US coach Arena saying Australia were simply “there to make up the numbers” was hard to take in any good spirit.

I didn’t watch the games, but it means Australia will face Italy in the second round match at 1am, Tuesday morning. Bring it on. If Australia play like they did today against Croatia, they’ll lose by two goals or more. If they play like they did against Japan or Brazil, they’ll have a good chance of going to the quarter-finals.

Japan scored the first goal against Brazil in the 33rd minute, a great goal, and the first Brazil has conceded this World Cup. After that Japan kept pushing and playing well for the rest of the first half but conceded a headed goal to Ronaldo late on. Two more stomping goals went in before Ronaldo scored his second to make it 4-1 and equal Gerd Mueller’s all-time record of 14 goals in World Cup finals. He still looks slow, lazy and out of form, but at least scoring will relieve some of the pressure he’s been feeling from critics who say he’s slow, lazy and out of form…

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Guaranteed spots in the second round with two wins each, the Netherlands and Argentina both started their match with understrength sides. Not wanting to risk losing players, anyone with a yellow card started on the bench. If you get two yellow cards at any point in the group stage you will miss the next game. The game itself was actually quite entertaining to watch. Both teams played really well. It’s as good a game to get a draw against either of these sides (as Australia did against the Netherlands in a friendly a few weeks ago) as it is to get a win - so they had to play well to keep each other out.

Between Portugal and Mexico I actually picked Mexico to top Group D. They would have, had they been able to beat Portugal in this game, and they looked quite good throughout. They gave Portugal a penalty when Marquez (sp?) committed a stupid handball in the box. At some point they had a player sent off as well, but were outplaying Portugal with only ten men for a good portion of the second half. A good game to watch.

I didn’t watch either of the other two games, but was happy to see Côte d’Ivoire get a well-deserved win in this world cup. A bit sad to see Serbia do so badly, but cujemo se at the next world cup maybe.

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When I switched over to my own domain from Blogger I also started utilising the commenting system built into WordPress. On Blogger I had used Haloscan, a free commenting service many people use that works exceedingly well. There is an export feature, but to use it you must have an updgraded account for $12 US a year.

So my question is, are 677 comments between September 2004 and January 2006 worth 16 Australian dollars?

If after exporting them I could correctly import them to the right posts at this domain it may well be worth it. If not, and I would have to input them individually, then there would be no use paying for it - and is the very reason I’ve never taken the time to do it manually.

Looks like it could have been done relatively painlessly when I first made the switch to WordPress here…but I’m not sure I’m brave enough to tinker with it now.

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The last four days days of the group stage go to four games per day instead of the previous two.

Germany seem to be pulling it together at just about the right time. They’ll go into the second round at the top of Group A, playing Sweden who came second in Group B.

England will play Ecaudor in the other second round match in five days. England played their best game so far against Sweden, but still were a little disappointing, not being able to hold the Swedes out. Michael Owen twisted his knee badly within two minutes of the opening kickoff which was pretty unfortunate - for him and England.

Not that my second-round predictions should be entirely difficult, but I’ve picked the winners and runners-up for Groups A and B correctly so far. We’ll see how we go tonight with Groups C and D.

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• Our bath problem is much worse. Having mentioned the fact that it drains very slowly several times in maintenance requests, I timed it again yesterday. A full bath took one hour and 26 minutes to drain. I kid you not. A full, correctly draining bath takes less than two minutes to fully empty. Obviously, ours is not one of these.
• I’ve been spending a lot of time watching the World Cup (no kidding, you say), although less so in the last four or five days…
• Kate and I had our 6-month anniversary on Saturday. I got some more of Kate’s favourite perfume - Shiseido’s Relaxing Fragrance - and we had some nice Laksa pasta Pad Thai for tea, made by my amazing wife. Well, I enjoyed it, but the shrimp sauce was a bit overpowering for Kate
• I have an exam Thursday at 5.45pm, my only one this semester. In my Newsroom Operations course I missed out on a 7 (highest grade) by 3%. I lost 10% of my overall grade (91%) by handing in the two assignments late, but had I handed them in on time I wouldn’t have got the grades I did.
• Before next semester I have to decide whether to persevere with French, or go with a new major where I will likely lose credits for two French classes. That major will be European Studies if I take it, although leaving French is palpable failure to me.
• I’ve applied for membership at my church. It doesn’t change a great deal the way I fit in there since I’ve been committed for a long time, just not officially.
• I can’t think of any other dot points right now, so that is my very quick update.

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Kewell’s anger at German referee Markus Merk was clearly because of the 25 fouls awarded to Brazil, compared to Australia’s nine. Kewell shouldn’t have gone at the referee, and is probably lucky to escape any disciplinary measures by FIFA.

According to the BBC, FIFA decided not to suspend him “because of the inconsistent nature of Merk’s report, according to communications director Markus Siegler.”

I also heard on late TV news tonight that FIFA were themselves unhappy with the way Merk refereed the game, but that was on a commercial network and I haven’t yet seen it mentioned anywhere else. It seemed to be that if you were Australian and you dared to touch a Brazilian, it was an offence. Brazil, however, were not subject to the same rules.

Another reason for Australian ire was the fact that Mark Viduka was not given any opportunity to get an explanation for decisions from Merk. As captain, Viduka is entitled to have decisions against his team explained to him by the referee, but Merk refused to talk to him throughout the game.

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Again, I didn’t watch any of these games.

Tunisia scored first against Spain, which would have scared a few, but winning it in the end they’ve easily gone through to the second round and should have an easy final match. That will be against Saudi Arabia who lost badly to Ukraine.

Ukraine’s 4-0 loss to Spain in their first game was unexpected, but despite that I was confident they could still go through in what is arguably the weakest group. Given this result, I’m sure they will.

Togo’s loss guarantees they won’t go through, but Switzerland’s last game against Korea is likely going to be the deciding one in Group G.

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The most important match here is of course Australia v Brazil. I was absolutely gutted to see us lose. Not because I had gone into the game expecting we would win, but because we played so well we could have - should have - won.

It was 0-0 at halftime, and Australia had dominated much of the half, putting five shots on goal to Brazil’s four. Unfortunatley for Australia, Brazil scored within a few minutes of the second half kicking off. Instead of putting their heads down and conceding defeat (as Serbia had done against Argentina), Australia fought back, creating scoring opportunities throughout the half. It was a source of pride to see Australia making Brazil uncomfortable and pushing for a goal all the way to the end.

In pushing for a result, however, they left themselves exposed in defence and another Brazilian goal was scored late. So I was devastated. The referee was pretty bad. That’s no excuse for Australia losing - they made the chances and had opportunities to score - but the free kicks were something like 23-5 in Brazil’s favour. Kewell gave the ref an earful at the end of the match. You can read more about that later.

In the other match, Croatia and Japan each took a point out of their goalless draw. I was grateful to the Japanese ‘keeper who saved a Croatian penalty and denied three points to Croatia. Australia only need a draw against Croatia to go to the second round, but I’m not entirely convinced the Japanese can’t beat Brazil, so am hoping we get a win against the Croats.

France to my mind are decidedly crap. Having won the World Cup in 1998, they’ve since gone goalless in World Cup finals competition until this goal against Korea. Yes, as defending champions they didn’t score a single goal in 2002 and so obviously didn’t go through to the second round. They’ll like their chances against Togo in their next match, but should they make it through to the second round won’t beat Spain and would find it tough against the Ukraine.

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