Think, to learn

Saw this quote popped up from the Quote-A-Day programme on my hw6828 and thot I might blog it down.

"I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think."
~Socrates

So go out to the world not expecting to be taught. But expect to think.. and you shall learn much.

Some interesting World Cup stats

Arsenal donated players to no fewer than 11 competing nations. That's more than a third of the teams in Germany and must be a record. Space is too short here to list them all, but it is easy to count them up yourself. All are fairly prominent Premiership players with the exception of the two who have not played for Arsenal yet.

Number of Brazilian coaches in the competition: five (if you include the Costa Rican, who was born in Brazil). Number of Dutch coaches in the competition: four. Number of coaches from former Yugoslavia: four. Number of French coaches: three. Germans: two. Argentines: two. Swedes: two. Number of English coaches: none.

Number of Dutch coaches going home empty-handed: None. Even Leo Beenhakker, in charge of the tiniest nation ever to compete in the World Cup finals, took a highly creditable point from Sweden. Number of Dutch coaches through to the knockout stages: Two. Number of coaches England missed out on through to knockout stages: Two. But don't worry. Steve McClaren's still around, too.

From Paul Wilson, The Observer

Bellamy for Liverpool?

Rafa, it seems is an admirer of the Bellamy school of football. Liverpool has agreed a 6m (Sterling Pound of course) fee with Blackburn and have the permission to discuss personal terms with Bellamy.

Bellamy (a Liverpool fan) has also declined a 65,000/week pay raise in order to be able to take the Liverpool offer. The 65k/week pay would have made Bellamy the highest paid player in Blackburn, that's how much they value him.

You Never Walk Alone

Exploding toads mystery?

This might be old news to some (happened in Apr 05) but I just happened to come across it. Apparently last year (around Apr), hundreds of toads in Germany were found to self-explode with their entrails propelled up to a meter away!

Baffled? So were everyone back then including the scientists. They have even closed the pond where these toads lived (and exploded) and named the place "The Pond of Death".

To find out the answer, read my (upcoming) post. :)

The link to the BBC report
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4486247.stm

Bears for Daddy?

Look at these cutie bears, designed specially for Father's Day by one of the more innovative hybrid retail shops I've seen - Vermont Teddybear. They specialises in handmade teddy bears.



I've yet to order one from them but I'm on their mailing list, and they never fail to send out a newsletter each month to keep their customers updated with new bears and special offers.

eBusiness marketers, take note. Vermont understood one key principle of success - "It's not so much what you know but how consistently you execute those game plans that determine your success".

If you like what you see, drop by Vermont's website at www.vermontteddybear.com and get one for your Daddy.. better still, grab another for yourself :P

Oh, and to echo their tagline (btw I *do not* own any shares in Vermont hehe), "All Vermont Teddy Bears are Handmade in Vermont and Guaranteed for Life!"

I wonder what my beagles have to say about this claim? LOL

Brazil won (just)

Brazil won 1-0 over Croatia with a wonderful strike by Kaka. But overall I do not think they played well. Sadly Ronaldo is no longer the Phenom he was, esp with the extra weight he's carrying around his waist.

Have to say Italy impressed me most when they played against the Ghanians. They were lean, mean and fast.

Who is Liverpool's greatest ever manager?

A recent poll was conducted at the official site that ran for 9 months and attracted more than 73,000+ votes for Liverpool supporters to decide who's the GREATEST ever Liverpool manager.

Results were announced today and I was not a bit surprised by whom everyone chose. I was surprised though on the 3rd place manager! Who do you think he could be? Hmm...

The poll results in full

1. Bill Shankly: 29,030
2. Bob Paisley: 24,302
3. Rafael Benitez: 13,350

4. Kenny Dalglish: 3,452
5. Gerard Houllier: 1,722
6. Roy Evans: 455
7. Joe Fagan: 377
8. Graeme Souness: 329
9. John McKenna: 195
10. Phil Taylor: 113
11. Don Welsh: 102
12. William Barclay: 93
13. George Patterson: 64
14. George Kay: 63
15. Matt McQueen: 60
16. David Ashworth: 50



To read more about Bill Shankly,
http://www.theica.com/SessionsShankley.html

Boardgaming blog moves to Boardgamecafe.net

Now that we've completed the upgrade of the Boardgamecafe.net site to v2, I'll be doing my boardgames blogging over there (in the Midnite Gamer blog) and leave this blog for my other non-boardgames passion!

I'll occassionally post snippets over here with links to either the Midnite Gamer or the Boardgamecafe.net site. My intention is to make that site the Boardgame Community Portal for the South-East Asian region.

And if you luv boardgaming, hop over to Boardgamecafe.net now. We are doing the Settlers of Catan Qualifiers where you may just be the lucky one who gets a FREE trip to Germany to represent M'sia in the World Catan Championship!

www.boardgamecafe.net

Nested email forwards

Ever received one of those email forwards where the original email is nested inside the forwarded mail? Sometimes it's nested within many levels. You just keep opening mail after mail after mail just to get at the content.

But today I received one that's arguably the MOST NESTED email forwards I've ever received!! It's nested 30-levels deep!

Have you received any forwarded emails deeper than this? Tell me about it. :)

Morning Poem

MORNING POEM

I woke early one morning,
The earth lay cool and still
When suddenly a tiny bird
Perched on my window sill,
He sang a song so lovely
So carefree and so gay,

That slowly all my troubles
Began to slip away.
He sang of far off places
Of laughter and of fun,
It seemed his very trilling,
Brought up the morning sun.

I stirred beneath the covers
Crept slowly out of bed,
Then gently shut the window
And crushed his fucking head.

I'm not a morning person.

Style or Practicality?

HP has just launched the iPAQ 6828, basically an OEM Atom (O2) machine which they rebrand and possibly put in some improved ROM stuff. It looks cool too. With 2M camera, all connectivity (except 3G), Win Mobile 5 and a street price of RM2,588 or about rm400 less than the O2; it looks a good buy.

But I was also informed via reliable sources, the new HP 6900 (much awaited as it was launched in March in Barcelona) will be launching in a couple of weeks time. The 6900 is basically a souped-up ver of the current 6500 with the main intention of fixing all the "problems" found in the 6500.

The 6828 is more stylish - after all, it was the O2 Atom model! - but has a smaller screen space while the 6900 has a large screen size (slightly smaller than my existing 6315) but with a keypad (ala Treo) at the bottom.

I dun like the keypad since I'm more at home using the stylus and writing on the touchpad. This was what held me back from jumping into the 6500 and I suspect now that the 6828 has been released sans the keypad, I'm inclined to get the 6828 instead.

Unless HP included 3G into the 6900....

Sometimes think... before sending out spam mails

I just received an email supposedly asking me to do something if I want to maintain free use of my MSN account else Microsoft will levy a US$10/month fee on my usage. It even went to the extent of linking to a BBC news article to proof its authenticity.

If you read the BBC news (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1189119.stm) it did indeed say something to the effect Microsoft was planning to charge its user a fee. But if you LOOKED CLOSELY, the date of that article was 25 February, 2001! Duh...

Oh wait.. perhaps this spam mail was sent out in 2001 and only reached me today?! Nah.. can't be. The email was sent out yesterday.

As with all spamming mails, it asked you to send the message out to EVERYONE on your contact list else your accounts will be shut down.

For Christsake.. when have we stopped thinking with our brains? After we left primary schools? sigh.

How the f**k (censored due to young children reading this blog) will Microsoft or anyone else for that matter track the emails you sent out - in order for them not to shut down your account as they promised?? Jeez....

Wait.. I've another theory on the 2001 news date. Maybe this spam mail started in 2001 and it finally found its way to me - almost 5 AMAZING YEARS LATER!!

Hmm... this is interesting to professors who are studying the longevity of spam mails. This could be proof they live for 5 years or more.

boardgamechina.com

Came across this site today! Ahem... yes it's in Mandarin and with my level of Mandarin being super-duper (read: zilch), I can't make any heads of what they are saying!

Yan? Help!!

But I can see Puerto Rico, Power Grid and Princes of Florence in their homepage (drooling...). If only I came across this earlier before my trip to Shanghai *sigh*

www.boardgamechina.com

666

Today is a rare date in every 1,000 years! The 6th day of June in the year 2006 or in brief "06/06/06"

And what better day than the triple-6 to launch the 2006 remake of the classic movie "The Omen".

Movie-wise, it received good review (3 out of 4 stars) from Ebert. And I'm sure this is one movie I'll both watch and collect the DVD, having got the Special Edition Box Set of the 1976 Omen series.

"Daddy, please don't do it." The classic last words heard by Robert Thorn.

ADDED: Some interesting jokes about the number "666".

The Crouch Dance mania is sweeping England

From the Guardian

Hands outstretched, elbows rigid at right angles and jerkily moving to an imaginary beat, it is the goal celebration-***-dance craze that is shaking the nation.

From Burnham-on-Crouch to Crouch End, people are doing the Crouch.

The 6ft 7in England striker premiered his own unique version of robotics at the Beckhams' lavish World Cup party just over a week ago. While Wayne Rooney gingerly wiggled his metatarsal and Rio Ferdinand archly clicked his fingers on the mirrored dancefloor, the gangly Liverpool forward was head and shoulders above his peers as he shape-shifted to James Brown's funky beat.

Games games games....

Been on a slight buying binge for last month. Added close to 10 games to my library! Going for my century game soon (sic). Anyway the games added last month (beside the 4 card games I got from Spore) were Battle Line, Saint Petersbury, RA and Settlers of Catan (finally got my own set!)

Battle Line. Another Knizia classic card games. A step-up (maybe even two steps-up) from his equally good Lost Cities, this is a card game for 2. But this game offers less luck and more angst in your decisions. Objective is to either take 3 adjacent flags (for a Breakthrough victory) or 5 flags out of 9 (for an Envelopment victory). Like his other game Samurai, this game requires you to decide which fight you need to fight and which one you concede. A very enjoyable game that plays under 30 min.


Saint Petersburg. A sleeper but yet to play it so cannot comment much except it comes with good pedigree having won the International Gamers Award for Best Strategy Game in 2004, hmmm.....







RA. Knizia again. This time an auction game themed around the Egyptian world. Nile, flood, Pharaohs and pyramids are what you'll be bidding for. A very fun and sometimes tense bidding game. If you like Boomtown, you'll mostly like this. Like the way how the bidding token (represented by Suns) are interchanged among the players with each successful bid!

Settlers of Catan. The game that started all these Euro Designer games trend.. yet the game that's acquired as Game #76 for myself! Anyway I've played this at Gamecon-1 last year and just didn't seem to have the strong urge to get this, though my OH Yan likes this game very much. I'll be looking to add the Seafarers of Catan expansion now that I've the basic game.

After having played Railroad Tycoon last Sat at GC, I've added it to my Wish-list. Not a Must-have but certainly a game I won't mind adding to my library.

Have placed a pending order with Funagain for Havoc, Kuhandel (You're Bluffing) and Rook 100th Anniversary. Getting another copy of Havoc for my Klang gaming mate, LostBoyz as well.

I wud have bought from Timewellspent except that Havoc is only sold exclusively thru Funagain! Darn.. they are still playing Monopoly there. :P

More card games....

Alan, one of my gaming buddy has been making recent trips to Spore so I tumpang him to get me some card games. He missed a few of them on his last trip but this time round he managed to get four games on my Wait-list: San Juan, Munchkin, Mystery Rummy #3 (Jekyll & Hyde) and Pick Picknic (which is a special request from Yan).



San Juan, the card game version of Puerto Rico, the #1 game on Boardgamegeek. This is for 4 players and appeal to those who like the Puerto Rico theme but perhaps want a less stressful game. This is still a very good light middleweight game.



Munchkin. This game is getting hard to find. I did get Super Munchkin a few months back (and still haven't gotten to play that game yet) but nothing beats the original. The Munchkin series have since evolved into a few variants.



Mystery Rummy #3 (Jekyll and Hyde). Had wanted to get the 1st title ie Jack the Ripper but since PI has only this title, might as well get it to see how the game plays. If it's good, then I'll look to complete my Mystery Rummy collection (there are 4 titles in this series).



Pick Picknic. This is a game Yan played while at Settlers (on their opening day) and she liked it very much. A game that'll certainly appeal to the younger crowd but can be enjoyed by adults too.

To view photos of gaming sessions of the above games or to read/discuss about the games, pay a visit to my Boardgaming portal www.boardgamecafe.net

Rafa signs 2010 deal

Rafa has inked a deal to extend his contract to 2010. He is arguably one of the best football managers in Europe now, having won LFC the CL trophy in 2005 and the FA Cup in '06. We all wish he'll be able to win us the Premier League - next season?

In Rafa we trust.

Round 9 of the Chess Olympiad being held in Turin. Unexpectedly the Msian Men team turned the table on the much stronger Swiss, starting with our IM Mas's quick 21-move victory against GM Victor Korchnoi (pictured). Everyone had thought in this match, Mas would have been the "weakest link" since he's paired against the strong Korchnoi.

A defining moment indeed for Malaysian Chess! Syabas to the Msian team for pulling off this great victory.