The Ballad of Reading Goal

--Edit 9th Oct -- The Video of the match keeps getting pulled, but the Video of Chris Kamara is much better. Unbelievable Jeff!

I just wanted an excuse to use that oh-so-clever headline. It's quite scary how many google hits suggest that Oscar Wilde wrote a poem about Reading scoring a goal, or about someone reading Goal Magazine (not just any magazine, this one has "big colour pictures"). Even the "I'm feeling lucky" hit for Ballad of Reading Gaol has goal in the URL.

SQL

Select count(men)
from
tblDeadMansChest

> 15 Aaarrrhh!

I have been learning SQL, while teaching the unemployed of Bochum the importance of "International Talk Like a Pirate Day". The tutor has saved the date in his iPhone for next year so that he can spread the word. It's good to know that you're making a difference in the world.

Torpedo Entenhausen 2 - Tote Hosen 0

5-5-3-4-5-3-3-2-2-3-2-1-5-5-8

Guess the next number? The mean value of this sequence is 3.73, the mode appears to be 5, the standard deviation 1.79 (according to this statistics website).

That series is the number of goals conceded by Torpedo Entenhausen this season in the first 15 matches. We have the second worst defensive record in the league with 56 goals. Last season we only conceded 49 goals in 26 games. This is what happens when you put an injured outfield player in goal: miskicked clearances, balls that slip through hands, balls that sail over the goalkeeper as he tries to jump with his injured knees.

Markus, our goalkeeper, was out for half a year with a broken arm. He is now back, and spent the first 30 minutes plucking balls out of the air. After that the opposition gave up shooting on goal. It looked like our firm defence would earn us a 0-0 draw, but we scored two goals in the last seven minutes. I scored the second with a point-blank-range header, after comically failing to tap the ball in with my foot.

Oh yeah, almost forgot, the sequence now reads

5-5-3-4-5-3-3-2-2-3-2-1-5-5-8

and our mean goals conceded per game is down to a slightly more respectable 3.5.

Automation

I just lost it while trying to buy a train ticket from Bochum to Erlangen. I was getting on amicably with the ticket machine until it asked me which route I wanted to take. It gave four options, each with a different price, each consisting of 3 cities I hadn't heard of and one city that I knew, but that wasn't on the way from Bochum to Erlangen. I searched the screen for the button "Just put me on the next fucking train to Nürnberg" or "Automatic route selection using arrival time optimisation" but there wasn't one.

So I decided to go to the ticket office, and tell them to put me on the next fucking train to Nürnberg. The counters were blocked by a couple planning a 3-week rail holiday and an old lady who was being explained what a railway was. I got confused, thinking how annoying other people are, how best to program a ticket-selling machine for people with simple aims who are in a rush, and how I was going to miss my train.

I couldn't keep patient enough to stand in a queue, so I headed back to the machine and selected the most expensive of the four routes, just to be on the safe side. The route was via Dortmund, the train I took went in exactly the opposite direction, but wtf.

(I wrote this rant last weekend. I was going to follow it up, locate the missing cities, draw a map of Germany with the routes on, and make a big post. After careful thought, I decided to get on with more important things and not get so worked up. I also decided that the extra 5 Euros wasn't the end of the world.)

Dead Man 'Cremated'

No, no, no, that's no good at all. Nobody will read that story. Lots of dead men get cremated. Could you have another go at the translation? Run it through Babelfish, maybe? Yes, that's more like at.

TWO undertakers put a rival in a coffin and burned him alive after a business deal went wrong. Erich Winkler, 43, was knocked unconscious then cremated under a false name before his killers scattered his ashes. Michael Schmidt, 52, had argued with Mr Winkler after agreeing to buy his firm but failing to pay. He and partner Friedrich Peters, 53, face trial in Erlangen, Germany.

So say the Sun, admittedly not the most reliable of British newspapers. The Scotsman also reported the same story.

Undertaker 'burnt alive in a coffin'

I'll admit it makes a good tale, and I always like to think that if I was to commit murder I would go for this approach. I'd like to give my victim a sporting chance to wake up, find the saw he keeps hidden in his shoes, cut a hole in the reverse side of the box as it slips into the inferno, and roll away to wreak terrible revenge on my business empire, sleep with my mistresses and kill me.



Sadly the suspect has only been accused of a rather normal murder. According to the Nürnberger Nachrichten, the case presented by the justice authorities is that the victim was killed in the meeting room of the undertakers.

Bei einem Gespräch im April 2007 in Erlangen... soll der Geschäftsmann zusammen mit dem anwesenden Bestatter aus Geiselwind den 43-Jährigen dann noch im Besprechungsraum getötet haben.

(My bold). The case continues, innocent until proven guilty, and all that.

For Gawd's sake get me to the Church on Time

I only left Bochum once in the last 3 months, and that was for a party in Dortmund, which is the next town up the Ruhr. I've got a life in Bochum with a fixed routine. I go the the computer training, juggle, play football, cook, wash up, eat, and generally have a nice quiet life.

I am off to Erlangen this weekend for a wedding. I'm a bit scared of the whole thing, but also a little excited. I found it really hard to work out what I should do when I get to Erlangen, so I concentrated on getting there with a suit in hand. I know where I'll be sleeping tonight, and am pretty confident that I'll be at the church tomorrow afternoon.

Torpedo Entenhausen 8 - Ultras Bochum 5

I've been ill with flu or something over the weekend and am still quite tired, so I was delighted to see that Torpedo Entenhausen had 15 players available for this game. This meant that I could volunteer for bench-warming services. I would like to take credit for the 7-5 goal, where I shouted loudly that our new striker should run towards the goal. He did, and scored, but might have done so without my prompting, as it is the standard thing to do in a football match.

As part of our demoralisation plan, I came on as an "impact substitute" with five minutes left. I slipped and sat on the ball once, wasting valuable seconds. I also drew 3 fouls from the same player within 10 seconds, wasting more valuable seconds and earning him a yellow card. To finish off I distracted the keeper for the 8-5 icing-on-the-cake, as he was beaten at the near post by a fierce shot in the closing darkness.

------------------------------------------

In my computer course I've been learning about IP addresses, sub-networks, and CIDR (Classless Inter-Domain Routing). Thus was I damned to have songs by The Wurzels running through my head all afternoon. I don't see why I should be the only one to suffer. Oo aar, Oo aar.



I was worried that that west country farmer Oo aar could be confused for a pirate's exlamation. I just found out that there is a link between the Wurzel's "Oi drinks Zoider Oo aar Oo aar" and the pirate's "Aaaarrrr". According to Wikipedia

Actor Robert Newton, who portrayed Long John Silver in the 1950 Disney film Treasure Island and then in the 1954 film Long John Silver, is the patron saint of Talk Like A Pirate Day. Newton was a native of Dorset, and it was his native West Country dialect, which he used in his portrayal of Long John Silver and Blackbeard, that has become the standard "pirate accent".

The Mystery of the Fallen Roses

I de-iced the freezer compartment of my fridge over the weekend. To speed up the process, I filled a plastic bottle with hot water, sealed the bottle with a squirty top from a washing-up liquid bottle, and directed the hot jet of water onto the steel lining of the ice compartment. Within an hour, the huge chunks of ice which stopped me shutting the fridge door were falling off into the pool of water at the bottom of the fridge. The key to swift de-icing is that it is not necessary to melt all the ice, just the parts sticking to the metal. I guess the best way would be to pass a large current straight through the metal sheets of the ice compartment. This would also be an effective way of keeping fat kids off the ice cream.

Anyway, I was thoroughly pleased with my efforts, and rewarded myself with a bunch of roses. I didn't have a proper vase, so I took the biggest glass I could find and plonked the roses in. It looked a little wobbly at first, but after I filled it with water it was fine.

Well today I got back home and found the glass broken on the table, and the roses on the floor. I reached for some paper towels to mop up the water, but the floor was dry. After a cursory check that no jilted lover was stood behind me with an axe, I deduced what had happened.

I think the world is divided into two groups of people: Those who understand statics, forces, torques, gravity, evaporation and transpiration; and those who just go and buy a fucking rose-sized vase.

Stains

I fixed the brakes on my bike today, as I was cycling into town and have been reduced to braking by foot for the last week. When I finished, I looked down at my shorts and saw they were covered in tomato sauce from last night's tea. Only a slob would go to town in tomato-stained shorts, I thought, but I couldn't be bothered to change them, as the pockets were full of useful things and I was all ready to go. Then I realised my hands were covered in bicycle grease, and that by wiping the black oily stuff on my shorts I could cover the tomato stains.

So here is my guide to stains. More stains may follow as time and fortune allow.

Tomato-sauce: Glutton, slob, lazy bastard.

Oil: Man, hard worker, knows one end of the spanner from the other, too busy mending stuff to keep changing clothes.

Household Tips

Don't store your dirty clothes outside together with onions when it is raining.

Household experts will already know that onion peel is great for dying things, and can probably imagine the results. Why would anyone want to do this? I moved the onions outside a couple of weeks ago as I was worried that some flies might eat them. On Sunday, I had a great time playing football in the rain. When I got in I made a cup of tea and threw the wet stuff on the balcony, right on top of the onions. It's the "out of sight, out of mind, out of the window" approach to a clean flat.

Thinking about it, it's not really a very good approach. At one point in my previous flat I had a cauliflower on the second floor window sill for over a week. I hoped that birds would eat it, or something, but it just went mouldy and started to smell.

I had a tough weekend, as I didn't feel like tidying, washing, or cleaning. I had to have strong words with myself yesterday to remind me that I need to do these things so that I can play football in the rain. I spent this evening cleaning the flat and sorting out the balcony. Things are looking better.

Random Thoughts

I'm doing some proof-reading. Do I not like "On the one hand, on the other hand" expressions. One the one hand they are padded, inexact and cliched, on the other hand they are still padded, inexact and cliched.

Stop offering me lifts! I actually enjoy going by bicycle, even when it's raining. I get fresh air and exercise, and am mostly free from worrying about petrol prices. On the other hand, if my bicycle has a puncture I might retract this statement and crawl into your car.

On the one hand, you might want to look at this video. On the other hand you might not. If we'd been born with three hands would we use "on the third hand"? Does our physiology limit us to binary thinking?

On the one hand, that's an interesting thought. On the other hand it might be bollocks, and a misrepresention of cause and effect. On the third hand, I could google "on the third hand" and see if someone already wrote a science fiction book about it.

Anyway, that video. I've not laughed so much in ages. Check out the guy in the blue suit.

I bid you to burn.

As part of my psychotherapy, I am trying to limit my perfectionism. I have been juggling with torches a lot recently, and noticed that I become slightly obsessed with doing better and neater tricks.

This perfectionism leads me to learning a new trick quickly, and making it look really nice. The problem is that the good feeling lasts only a few minutes, and then I think of something new and improved. So when I see myself doing takeouts (first trick in the video, those nice long arcs) I think how it would look better if I mixed them with a few reverse takeouts. When I do chops, I notice that my left arm isn't as fast as my right arm. When I carry one torch up and across, I think how much more symmetric it would be if I could do it first with the left hand then with the right hand.

So I made an effort to load this video. It's not perfect (very little is); I drop the clubs a few times, not everything works, but there are some very nice bits which I am proud of. I try to ask myself how I would react if someone else had been juggling in the video, but that's difficult when I know it's me. I just watched it again with squinted eyes so that I could only see the torches and not myself. The torches make some really good patterns in the air, and that must be true no matter who is creating them.

Tales of Great Valor

I've been reading Lord of the Rings. This evening I had a nice game of football, just a turn-up and play affair. The opposition were a bit too ball-hogging, and not too good at shooting on target.

So, as the golden sun set over the western woods, the game moved toward the eastern goal. Thus did their striker the ball smite, that its resting place in the bramble thicket lay. The left-back, clad in long socks and leather shoes was driven back by the sharp spikes of the blackberry bush. The striker strode round the bush, eyeing for the missing leather orb, but was led astray by the sweet taste of blackberries, and searched no longer.

As hopes faded, Mr. Endofphil took it upon himself to find the lost ball. Starting his journey to the western woods, he found the great wooden sword carved by storms past. He took it in his hands, and named it Stick. Weary, without food or drink, and with the weight of Stick slowing down his already tired legs, he returned to the bramble bush. The sight of those fearful spikes which had torn many a mortal leg to shreds roused his anger, and smiting Stick with all his might did he force a way through the bush. The bramble bush was resilient, but as he smote to the left, to the right, and to the floor, the path became clear. He saw the ball and dropped Stick so as to hold the ball tightly. The brambles sensed their chance, and began to rise again, determined to take their toll. As the stalks rose, pushing their spikes into his legs, Mr. Endofphil ran, jumped, and landed safe from the bush. The ball was once more on the Pitch, and Stick may be found by future adventurers.

Datenschutz

Germans get quite worked up about protecting their private details. It might have something to do with bad experiences with the Gestapo and the Stasi.

Sometimes I think that the British ought to be a little more careful. I needed to send a letter to my parents, but had forgotten the house number. Luckily, I could remember the street name and the month they moved in, and by looking it up on nethouseprices I got the house number, as well as the exact date of sale and the price they paid. This is one of many websites in England which make money by telling other people the details of your house purchase.

Any house sale in England is registered with the government land registry. This seems a sensible way of recording what belongs to whom. The fun-lovin' staff of the land registry decided that it would be great if everyone could find out how much the neighbours had paid for their house, and will tell you any sale price for three English pounds. They were undercut by private websites which are funded by advertisements.

So Mr. A sells his house to Mrs B, and lets the government know. Then Mr. C starts a website, gets the government Database and takes money from Mrs. D (who knows Mrs B. from the Womens Institute) to reveal how much Mrs. B is worth. Mr. C then probably gets rich, and lobbies the government to reveal the NHS records, so that Mrs B. can see whether Mrs. C had breast surgery.

So the next time you get a letter from England, take your correspondent's address, put it into that website, note the price, and in your reply mention that they have been ripped off as the neighbours seem to have paid 32 grand less despite their garden being 5 square yards bigger. If you are German, be sure to write at the end of your reply

In ze fatherland, vee hev vays of knowing zees sinks

Difficulties

My programming course is going well. I am learning the language c# and am having no trouble implementing abstract classes, void functions, public and private variables etc. It all makes sense, and I was surprised to see the difficulties that some people in the course have.

Today came the first really difficult thing: booking an appointment for an exam. I have to ring a number which could connect me to anywhere, speak to whoever answers the phone, and book an appointment for a centre I've never been to. For some reason this fills me with dread. I will do this tomorrow morning.

The other hard thing this week has been doing the washing. The weather is warm but humid and each evening it threatens to rain. Having managed to start the machine and remove the washed clothes, I decided to hang them outside, but it thundered and they got very wet. The next time I think I'll just put the dirty laundry on the dryer, throw a handful of soap flakes over it and wait until it gets washed and dried by mother nature.

(I wrote this about 3 weeks ago)

Eternal Postdoc

I have started a training program as a data bank systems developer. I now spend 6 hours a day learning programming techniques in the language c#. The people on the course are all unemployed, but come from a mixture of backgrounds. Some have broken off a computer studies degree, some were working in the IT field and made redundant, and some are unemployed academic types. I'm one of two former particle physicists on the course.

I went to lunch with "Karl", who has spent the last 20 years at the Ruhr-University of Bochum. He studied there, did his PhD there, spent 8 years as a post-doc there, and is now unemployed. I only managed one year as a post-doc, but maybe completely failing to fit in was a blessing. I don't want to suddenly wake up and realise that I'm 37, unemployed, having spent 8 years treading the concrete flagstones of the university. I think the German Chamber of Commerce should give Karl a job as a "Ghost of Postdoc future". He could spook the corridors of university departments showing what will probably happen to students if they never set off into the real world. He could quickly scare them into getting a job far from the university.

On second thoughts, there is no need to pay someone to do this. Every university department I've ever been in had their own version of Karl. Not all are unemployed, some are happy enough, but they all give the air of stagnation.

Hail Mary

I spent Sunday afternoon juggling at the summer festival of the church of St. Mary in Bochum Langendreer. The party was disrupted by the biggest hailstorm that I've ever seen (I may have led quite a sheltered life). At first we thought that God was angry, but convinced ourselves that it was a signal to his flock to drink more caipirinhas. Here is a photo of me juggling a 3-hailstone Mills Mess.

Noughts and Crosses

I am being trained to be a Databank System developer. I don't quite know what this is, or whether I want to be one, but it is better than lying in bed all day. I have been learning to program in C#, and wrote a very nice object-oriented Nought and Crosses program with an omniscient artificial intelligence. Game theorists call this game futile, because it ends up in a draw unless one of the players fucks up. I think that programming it wasn't quite futile, though, as I learnt quite a bit.

Even though I'm learning some useful computer programming things, the most useful thing is re-learning to live. I managed to send two letters yesterday. This used to be easy, but I haven't sent one for ages. I had to find a pen, an envelope, the address, a stamp, the current rate for a letter (still 55 cents), and a postbox. I'd been trying to send it for 10 days, but kept putting it off.

I'm blogging from my flat, and the neighbours are having a loud garden party. I was going to congratulate them on their musical taste (The Wall, Money for Nothing, Spirit in the Sky), but they just started playing Cotton Eye Joe by Rednexx. Now they are on to the Weather Girls (link as seen on b3ta). I know this is going to end as a Schlagerfest. I am going to go out.

Routine

Life is complicated. Suppose you had to describe your day to a men who just fell to earth.

Woke up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head, found my way downstairs, filled the kettle, switched it on, found a cup, removed the mould from the cup, located a teabag and the milk which hadn't gone off, drank a cup...

Six months ago it was too complicated for me. I ate in cantines and pizzerias (saves shopping, cooking, and washing up), wore the same clothes for ages or bought new ones (saves washing, drying and putting away). It was easy to describe my day: I slept, sat around for hours on end, and swallowed three meals a day in various cafeterias.

After weeks of psychotherapy, I tried to do more. I wrote down a list of what I wanted to do, and when I wanted to do it. I can now look back at what I did. On the 26th January, for instance, I ate breakfast at home, got money from the ATM, bought food, drank a coffee, read the paper, tidied my room, jogged, showered and shaved. This was a lot for me to do in one day, and a really big improvement. After I'd done something on the list, I had to push myself to do the next thing. Part of me wanted to go give up and go back to bed, but I managed to do everything.

Now I can do these things more easily, because I've been doing them regularly. I eat porridge for breakfast at home every morning, and it's now easy to make. A cup of tea is a welcome break, not a challenge. Washing clothes is tricky, but possible. I still mentally break it down into the steps of starting the machine, waiting 1h, putting the clothes on the dryer, waiting 24h, and putting them away. The hard bit is finding the motivation to continue after each step.
I have got my life in enough order to start a training program in IT systems. I can spend seven hours at the institute and still manage to do the other things. I celebrated yesterday by drinking vodka and trying to catch the hot end of a burning torch with my throat.

p.s I wrote this a couple of weeks ago offline

Torpedo Entenhausen 3 - Taxi Zentrale 2

In his book "Fever Pitch", Nick Horby describes the perfect football match for a fan. Of course it isn't a game where your team wins 5-0 and play like brazil. That is just boring. The perfect match is one where your team win after going behind, one with amazingly bad refereeing decisions, stupid mistakes, fouls, lots of goals and a scene where the TV commentator claims "Nobody wants to see that kind of thing".

This may have been the perfect Freizeitliga game.

1/ We went 2-0 down.
2/ We won 3-2.
3a/ The referee gave us a throw-in, but the opposition took it, and he let them play on!
3b/ The referee blew for a free kick, I played on, and he gave me the advantage!
4/ A Slanging match between the trainer of the opposition and our hattrick hero Sajid.
("Nobody wants to see that kind of thing").
5/ The winning goal arose from a terrible pass in the Taxi-Zentrale defence. It started in the wrong direction, curled even wronger, and stopped by the feet of Sajid, who nonchalently lobbed the ball into the top corner of the goal.