Wednesday, May 02, 2007

Things you may not wish to know.

1/ I have one black toe nail and one white toe nail which is about to fall off. I would go to the doctor, but he/she would tell me to stop playing football, so I won't.

2/ I headed a goal from a free kick for Torpedo Entenhausen this week. I saw the ball at the last second, tried to stick my head in the way and nearly missed it. The result was a most professional-looking glancing header just inside the far post. We lost the game, but only just. Here is a completely unrelated piece of footballing commentary, in German.

3/ When sober, I can juggle 3 balls with my eyes shut for quite a while. The first requirement is to throw accurately. If the first ball thrown doesn't land in the other hand then it's a nonstarter. No matter how well you throw, though, the pattern will slowly drift away unless there is some feedback of how things are going wrong. Usually when juggling this feedback comes from the eyes, but provided the corrections are small it can come from the hands, by feeling exactly where the ball lands, and correcting the trajectory of the next ball.

(So if your blind and reeding this why not try and learn teh juggling)

I can't do the whole thing anything like this well, though.

4/ When drunk, I can't juggle two half-filled half-litre plastic bottles. I found this out whilst travelling with the U-Bahn. The moment of inertia of a half-filled bottle is a very funny thing indeed, and the bottle seems very reluctant to go round in a circle. Trying to compensate for this I gave the bottle an extra twirl, causing it to fly through the carriage and nearly hit someone on the head. He was surprisingly understanding.

5/ Australia won the cricket world cup. For some reason the final of this tournament which has, in the best traditions of cricket, been going on for ages, had to be settled in one day. And it rained. So they shortened the match and finished up playing in the dark.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I learned from an old Spektrum der Wissenschaften-article Ulrike once showed me, that a juggler also gathers feedback through the throwing hand by recognizing the way the ball leaves the hand.

When I tried juggling blind the first time, I was surprised how easy it is :)

Funnily standing on one foot blind is harder than standing on one foot blind while juggling (at least that's what I experienced trying this)

phil said...

I will try this and report back as soon as possible. I am tempted to try it in the internet cafe, but there is nothing jugglable within reach.