lego.cx spotted in woolworths.cx

I was walking through my local town yesterday with my kids when I saw a huge poster in the woolworths window that looked vaguely goatse-like.

Now whether someone in the Lego design team is having a laugh here, or they want a whole generation of kids to grow up making models of goatse is anyone's guess. They could even be completely innocent of any goatse emulation.

You can buy your very own model of Takadox from the new range of Lego Barraki for only £7.99 !

Music I'm liking at the moment

In no particular order

Reverend and the Makers - Heavyweight Champion of The World
Dizzee Rascal - Sirens
Dan le Sac vs Scroobius Pip - Thou Shalt Always Kill
Josh Wink - Higher State of Conciousness
Snow Patrol - Signal Fire

There's lots of good stuff around at the moment.

Secret numbers and No maps allowed

This week a number has been deemed illegal or secret or something like that (the HDDVD people claim it's illegal to distribute the number). The number, a string of hex digits, is the decode key for the first generation of HD-DVD movies, and is now everywhere on the web.

As hard as the HD-DVD people will try to keep the next keys secret as well, the general consensous is that Pandora's box is now open and HD-DVD will be wide open for ever more. I fully expect the same to happen to Blu Ray soon.

It's strange, as the music biz is starting to realise that punters don't actually want any kind of DRM on the CDs and online music they buy. Maybe the movie guys will start to pay attention...

Also, in something that is completely bizarre, an American school kid has been sent to an Alternative Education Center (read: school for thugs, druggies etc.) for making a map of his school in Counter Strike. ie. They've thrown a geek (in a good way!) into an environment that he's probably not at all ready for.

The scary bit is this quote however:
[A fellow student] said, "If somebody can make a map like that of the whole school, I mean, it does kind of scare me a little bit, and make me wonder, you know, what else they could do."

It kind of scares me a little bit that this student is scared by it.

I just wonder how this kind of attitude by the authorities ties up with another article I read saying that tourism to the USA is going down hill...

The West Ham Incident

In a move that will cause them no end of problems in coming seasons, the FA/Premier League have decided NOT to dock West Ham any points, despite knowingly fielding illegal players.

The reason given (well, one of many bizarre reasons), is that this close to the end of the season, it would almost certainly condemn them to relegation. How that should affect this situation is something being discussed by football fans across the UK.

Other teams have had points deducted for the very same reason, even when it has happened accidentally, as opposed to West Ham's deliberate ploy of hiding the details of the deals from the league authorities.

The "independent" committee decided that an £8million+ fine would be better for everyone concerned at this stage of the season. But as West Ham admitted that they had broken the rules, they reduced the actual payment to £5.5million.

Of course, as everyone in the Premiership knows, staying up this season means that you'll qualify for next season's higher payouts (something like £20-£50million per team), so £5.5million is just a minor irritation.

One quote that caught my eye was "No-one wants to see a team relegated for something like this. points should be decided on the pitch." Well maybe if the other teams in the bottom 6 or 7 had fielded illegal players as well then it would be fair, but as they haven't, then West Ham have had a distinct advantage over their fellow teams.

Tevez looks like he's responsible in whole or part for around 16 points, which would have condemned West Ham to relegation anyway. Yet he still plays!

I fully expect lawyers to take up the case as and when the lower teams know whether West Ham are staying up or not. If they are going down anyway, then they are not robbing anyone of a place in the Premier League. If they are staying up, however, they are ensuring that a team that did follow the rules goes down. That's not sporting.