27/11/2011

The Enniscorthy Derby


When we were told to start blogging we were told we could blog about stories that meant something to us. Well today was an Enniscorthy Derby match between my team Enniscorthy Town and the other team Enniscorthy United. We lost the match 5-2 and truly deserved to lose by the lackluster display we put on in the second half. I'm going to talk about the whole match anyway not just the second half. We had a strong team today bar one or two players that should be on the B team instead of the A. Our bench had only one good player on it and the other too are dirt in my opinion I'm not saying I'm unbelievable and should be playing in the Premiership or anything like that I'm just saying their shockingly bad. We have one or two new players after leaving their clubs and are coming to join in and I think the team will surely be much better with these new players acquired skills. United put out their strongest team of the season today after they were trying to bounce back from losing another town derby last Sunday against the Shamrocks. We started well in the first half with some intricate passing and decent possession. Then our striker Daihti G-Low scored a spectacular goal after he was given too much room in the box. Then our first mistake happened out centre back Mackey gave away a totally unnecessary penalty but luckily our keeper Sesal pulled off a great save. Then they scored from a corner which leveled up the match, we composed ourselves and within a few minutes were back in front after a cracking solo run from our midfield maestro Wayne Breen. Half time came as we were getting pushed onto our back foot. The second half started momentarily and the the onslaught began. Wave after wave of United attack that our back line (which I play in) could not handle. Our whole mid-field fell asleep and allowed their mid-field to run riot. They got 3 corners in succession in a 10 minute spell and scored everyone of them, basic school boy soccer mistakes. At this stage it was 4-2 and we tried pushing on our centre-back to get us a goal back in it. It wasn't to be today however and our strikers and mid-fielders couldn't hold onto the ball. Eventually United counter'd one of our attacks on the break and their was only myself and the right back Rossi to defend. Their striker Billy Miller who is a fantastic and skillful player went by Rossi with his speed and I tried closing him down but he just slid the ball behind me to his strike partner Mick Rigley and he finished with ease. So the final score was Enniscorthy Town 2 and Enniscorthy United 5. We'l surely bounce back next week and try to continue our climb up the table, we might't win the league but we only stayed up last year after a relegation play-off so staying in the top 5 or 6 this season would be an immense achievement. Then maybe we can try and push on for the league in the next year or two hopefully.


That's looks Wii-lly fun...


Going to the urinal in a bar has never been more fun as the world's first urine-controlled video game is installed in a London bar called The Exhibit Bar in Balham. Customers can play one of three games every time they need to use the urinal. The game had been trial'd in a bar in Cambridge since mid-July and supposedly it has proved to be hugely popular and profitable with the punters who are only too happy to play the game. One of the co-founders of the games a Mr.Gordon MacSween was not certain of how the game would come across to drinkers initially but as the trial went onto prove it was hugely popular and he went on to say "after I saw the trial at the bar in Cambridge I knew I was onto something good". A statistic shows that most males in toilets pee for an average of 55 seconds and the game was designed to create a valuable opportunity from that time spent by males. The bar gets advertising for their alcohol in a short advert played before the game starts so they are getting something out of the game as well. When players have finished playing the game they are encouraged to post their scores via Twitter to a live leader board in order to compete with their friends for prizes and bragging rights. There is mass distribution for selected bars across the UK scheduled for early 2012. In my opinion this would be a great site to see over here in Ireland, I believe the game would be great banter at the urinals between you and your friends. Maybe you could even play your own games and have a competition like who ever gets the highest score in the urinals gets a drink off the person with the lowest score. The Wii technology is being used in the game itself as one of the co-founders was also a founder of the Wii console.


No more selling secrets Facebook


The European  Commission is planning a new way to stop the way websites "eavesdrops" on its user to gather information that can be sold onto advertising companies. The information they gather include political views and opinion, sexuality, religious beliefs and even sometimes their whereabouts. This is done by sophisticated software tracking specific words and phrases across their users pages. It doesn't matter what setting privacy is on, the information is still available for advertisers if they are willing to purchase. The new EC directive will be introduced in January and will ban such targeted advertising unless users specifically acknowledge it and allow it. Facebook store most of the information it gathers on computers in the US but could still face huge fines and lawsuits if it does not comply with the laws. This could go on to damage Facebook's plans of floating on the Wall Street Stock exchange in the coming year. The EC vice president stated "Consumers in Europe should see their data strongly protected, regardless of the EU country in which they live and regardless of the country in which the companies process their personal data are established". Facebook is not limited to gathering information from just a persons "likes" and "dislikes" that they put on their "walls", no Facebook also gathers information about your family, friends, educational background and detects subtle changes in your lifestyle for example if you were a woman soon to be married the advertising on your page may be wedding photographers or something of the sort. Facebook also stores messages and "chats" sent via the site and keeps them on database even after they are deleted by those involved in the private online conversations which is quite scary when you think about it as they could be holding onto a persons deepest darkest secrets. The company swears it does not use that information for advertising but can the word of a company with money on its mind really be trusted? The sheer volume of data that Facebook actually accumulates on a person was made apparent last week as a 24 year old Australian student named  Max Schrems asked Facebook what information was held on him and in return he was sent a CD containing 1,222 pages of data on himself. That is shocking in my view that someone can know that much about you and you not even realise it. All of Facebook's 800 million users whether they realise or not have actually agreed to let the company use their personal information, when signing up people click to approve a 4,000 word contract and in all honesty who actually reads internet contracts? The contract can be viewed by clicking on a link in the small print- at the foot of each page on the Facebook site. Hopefully when the new legislation comes into effect people privacy rights will stop being violated to such a high extent.

20/11/2011

Rampant Racism in Soccer
Racism in Soccer is rampant mainly in the English premiership which I find to be quite funny not the racism part obviously but the fact that all if not the majority of these players have people of other ethnic origin on their own teams. So how do they go out and verbally abuse other players of a different race when some of their friends maybe even family are of that race as well? Everyone knows racism is terrible and is frowned upon by everyone. In Ireland people have a laugh and a joke about it because the Irish are easy going people with a sense of humour that would not be welcomed in most countries around the world. In England over the last few weeks racism has become a key issue in the game again here are a few instances have happened. John Terry of Chelsea while playing against Queens Park Rangers verbally abused Anton Ferdinand by saying "you know what you are, you black c**t". The weird thing about this case is that Rio Ferdinand Anton's brother plays alongside John Terry on the England National Team. So does John Terry say the same type of things to Rio when he's playing alongside him at the heart of the English defence? I highly doubt it for some strange reason! Another case is Luiz Suarez of Liverpool calling Patrice Evra of United a "n****r" during a recent trip for Liverpool to Old Trafford. Suarez denies this charge and swears that he called Evra a "niggre" which he is an unoffensive world in South America where he hails from. The FA are investigating both issues and I have a feeling both Suarez and Terry will be charged for racist behavior and receive a 6 match ban each which is quite rightly so. I fail to see how the players who do this sort of carry on actually think they can get away with saying these offensive things to other players, there are 17 camera's in each stadium or maybe more and everything that happens on the pitch is being video recorded. That means matches can be replayed and people who can read lips are brought in to decipher what was said. In England over the last decade or so the "Kick Racism out of Football" scheme had been quite effective at stamping racism out of the game but it seems it has raised its ugly head again and the punishments should get more harsh for the players so it will be stamped out of the game once and for all!!


Travellers and Dale Farm
After the Travellers were removed from Dale Farm in England last month the local council thought the Travellers would just move away and get on with their lives, this doesn't seem to be the case. The Travellers have started moving back in to reoccupy Dale Farm and the council are not happy about it.  The Travellers will not be happy to hear the a new bill has also been passed called the "Localism Bill" which gives the local community a greater say in future planning permission projects. The main problem for the Travellers is their education issues and this is a key reason they occupied Dale Farm is the opinion of MP Eric Pickles. Most Travellers are illiterate and Traveller children are the most likely to miss school due to absenteeism or suspension. Many Traveller woman suffer severe depression and Traveller men have the highest suicide rates in the country, 7 or 8 times higher then the national average. The young and old are unable to read or write and therefore are unable to get a driving licence and when they do in a rare case get one they are faced with high premiums once they give their address as a halting site. The older generation of Travelling men are unable to get health and safety certs for building sites even though they could be the most skilled person for the job at hand. Since the Travellers were forced from Dale Farm many have moved next door to the Legal Oak Lane site while others have decided to stay on a private lane outside of Dale Farm as Dale Farm itself is actually uninhabitable as their are huge trenches dug all around the area. I hope this problem gets settled soon as their is unrest about the locals and the Travellers, there has actually been arrests for violence from at least 5 Travelling men, some got jail time while others were given suspended sentences. The Council, locals and Travellers are not happy about the situation so its up to the council to think of a solution that pleases all the parties equally.

The Metro-sexual Revolution
Research has shown that men really do spend as long or longer getting ready as women do. Is this a bad thing really though? I for one will admit to looking after myself frequently. I would even go as far as admitting that I love myself to a certain degree. Is that wrong in this day and age when there is such a demand on how a person looks and presents themselves? An average man now spends 81 minutes a day on personal grooming including cleansing, toning and moisturising, shaving, styling hair and choosing clothes. That is an incredible statistic in my opinion! Women have their art down to a T and are ready to go in 75 minutes putting men to shame. Men even spend a minute extra in the shower in the mornings than women, 23 minutes to their 22 minutes. Men take 18 minutes for their shaving methods even though women have to shave their bikini line, armpits, legs and they can do that in a swift 14 minutes. Men also take a minute longer on toning, moisturising and cleansing then their opposite sex. I'm sitting here trying to think am I actually that bad for getting ready and my conclusion is yes! I live with 4 girls and their always complaining about how long I take to get ready. There have been countless instances of when I was going out with a group of the lads and I was taking so long to get ready that they actually went out and left me in the house by myself. That's terrible to say that I'm actually worse than a girl for getting ready. My father would not be proud to say the least. See my father part of the older generations is an old school man. Musky smell, dirty hands, sweat on the forehead etc. Women back in the day liked that sort of man but in 2011 things have changed. Most women like clean cut men who smell nice and look the part. Lucky for me I fall into this category, actually I AM this category...;)

13/11/2011

Ireland's Date with destiny


On Friday the 11th of November Ireland surprised the country by actually winning a game comprehensively. The whole country can be proud of the team finally for overcoming a poor challenge from Estonia but a challenge all the same. Ireland have not been in a major football tournament since the 2002 World Cup Finals. Back then the team did us proud and the whole country are hoping the team can do us proud again. Ireland won 4-0 on Friday night and now have the return leg in Dublin on Tuesday night which will surely be jammed packed with Euro Final supporters. Ireland should really go out and try to put on some sort of entertaining performance back in the Aviva as they do have a four goal lead and unless they play absolutely terrible their is no way they should be able to throw that away. Our team on the night was quiet good I thought even though I disagree with a lot of the managers choices for first team players. For example Ciaran Clarke, Seamus Coleman and James McCarthy should all be starting on that team as they are unbelievable players with more skills then the rest of the team have all together. I strongly think some of the older players should call it a day as they are far past the best of their abilities. Robbie Keane whom I despise even though he has 53 goals for Ireland was a per usual terrible. Fair enough he got two goals in the match but his goals were the usual, a penalty he didn't win and a tap in after hard work from Jonathon Walters. That's a player who really contributed to the team in my view. It was his first competitive match for Ireland and not only did he score a great heading goal but he consistently worked hard for the team, used his weight and ability to his maximum capabilities. In this supporters eye's going to the Euro's is a great achievement but there's no point in going to have our asses smacked by the big bad teams in the competition like Spain, France, Holland or Italy.


Next President PLEASE!!


Italy's Silvio Berlusconi in everyone's opinion is an absolute moron. The man is a great salesman, ruthless politician and deluded leader. He has driven Italy to the brink of despair and now is the time for him to get out with the last pieces of credibility he has. The man speaks a lot about communism being terrible and never being acceptable but back in the day the man who despises communism so much now was very fond of quite a few communist men. In his view they were rich paying customers that would increase the bulge in his wallet. I never knew until today that the man even once owned the great AC Milan football club. Really in reality when do politicians ever own soccer teams, that's a joke really! Berlusconi always had a suntanned mask that never seemed to falter but at a press conference a couple of years back when pressed on some key issues he snapped and hissed at reporters "shame on you" and this showed the man could be quick tempered and ruthless when he needed to be. Now the reason Berlusconi is such a media sensation is for his "Bunga Bunga" parties. Don't know what they are? I'll gladly explain! Well they pretty much were brothels for the rich and famous, basically Mr.President himself called and paid for a lot of young, attractive women. You can make up your mind yourself what you think these young 'ladies' were intended for? Theirs also been inquiries into Berlusconi's love life as it has been said he slept with a young woman that was only 17 years old, frankly I believe that this is completely true as the man is nothing but a old pervert. The sooner Italy get rids of him the better for the country and the EU at that!!


X-factor Drama as per usual.....


X-factor can safely be called a massive JOKE this year. Not only is the drama this year so scripted it could be in Emmerdale or Coronation street. There's been walk outs, throw outs and huge (suppose-able) bust up's between the judges. A contestant by the name of Frankie Cocozza was thrown out for supposedly bragging about taking Cocaine and was caught on camera saying it. He was booted off the show it was claimed, but in another interview it was claimed he had walked from the show! The whole problem with this in my opinion is that Frankie was told to be a rock star and have the image and try play up the image to the max but when he actually did he was subsequently thrown out of the competition. The boy was only 18 and his whole world was built and then tore down by the "great" x-factor. I'm predicting that the x-factor has one season left, if not two at best and after that it will be thrown to the bin just like all the other major shows that faded out after 4 or 5 seasons. Rightly so as in my opinion its only a money making competition these days.

06/11/2011

25 Years of being a Champion


Sir Alex Ferguson. The man, the myth, the undeniable legend. 25 years at the helm of the greatest club on Earth and no thoughts of walking away yet. Absolutely phenomenal!! 36 trophies  is the mans legacy at Old Traffords "Theatre Of Dreams". No doubt in anyone's mind that this is the greatest manager that there has or ever will be in the game of football. When Ferguson took over United they lay 19th in the old First Division. They had not won a title in 19 years and Liverpool were the English colossus of Football (far from it now the Scousers). He came to Old Trafford when he was 46 years of age he'l soon be 70 in a couple of weeks. He turned United from a stadium with a capacity of 56,000 to a super-structure of 76,000 and created the state of the art United Carrington training complex. He created one of the first incredible teams which featured the likes of Giggs-Beckham-Scholes-Nevilles and Butt. That generation Ferguson fully believes will be reincarnated in another of his youth FA cup winning squads in the near future. Ferguson never fearful to question the FA of England has had multiple quarrels with them over the years, his latest win over them has been in terms of English teams being allowed to recruit youngsters that are not just living within an hour of the club.Ferguson's enthusiasm is stuff of legend and his relentlessness to win and overcome the odd's is the driving force which makes him still capable of managing a team of United's stature coming up to his 70th birthday. Other managers in the game are in awe of the man and the respect in which he has earned over the years is simply sensational. One manager was quoted as saying about Ferguson "its 24/7 as far as he is concerned and a way of life. Management is what he is, not what he does". That pretty much sums Ferguson up in my opinion. Most teams have one great team a century. United have had 6 different great teams under Ferguson and in his view he had many more to create and mould into champions. Ferguson in my opinion will not stop until he has made United the great European powerhouse he truly believes they can be. Until United knock Barcelona off their pedestal I don't believe the man can or will rest. I love United with all my heart and its going to be a sad sad for football when this man retires. So from this United fan to the great Sir Alex Ferguson in the words of Andy Gray "Take a bow son" because your a once off in my opinion no one will ever live up to the great Sir Alex...

Facebook's "Robot Hackers" 


A Canadian university has researchers that claim to have created computer programs that are capable of infiltrating social network sites such as Facebook with the intent and purpose of stealing highly private user data. The program is called "The Socialbot Network: When bots socialize for fame and money". The program which was run by the University was able to swipe 250 GB's of user data from Facebook that is a phenomenal amount. In fairness you would have to be pretty desperate and stupid to answer friend requests from people you have neither heard of or met, now wouldn't you? There are people out there however who did and the Socialbot software succeeded in taking their private data. The software is high-tech and the amazing thing is that the Socialbot's mimic human users of the site and put up status's pictures etc, obviously the pictures are stolen from real users and generally good looking one's in order to trick people into accepting friend requests. The Socialbot experiment proved to be highly successful with a success rate of up to 80%. Now I would not accept friend requests from anyone I did not know or thought I had met on a night out or something like that, I however am vigilant in keeping my Facebook account safe from hackers and information thief's. The Socialbot's were able to harvest data from thousands of Facebook accounts including their news feed, profile information, wall messages and photo's. This is extremely dangerous software and in the wrong hands could seriously damage a persons life. The weird part of the experiment was that only 100 socialbots were deployed and yet thousands of people information was succeeded in being processed, that's an incredibly scary thought that so little socialbots could take so much data. The socialbots were also not controlled by the researchers instead by a "masterbot". Now for the Facebook security side of the story. The anti-hacking measures in Facebook were only able to block a mere 20% of the socialbots and that was only as a result of users flagging the socialbots as spam. All Facebook could say about the Socialbot software was that "they had serious concerns about the methodology used by the researchers".  This software threat should get Facebook to wake up and actually make their site one of the securest in the world considering how many people actually use the site, well that's my opinion  and I have a strange feeling many others would agree with my way of thinking....

The Head Shop Phenomenon


Head shops are retail outlets that specialise in recreational drugs, party powders, herbal drugs and legal highs. Most of these drugs are substitutes for illegal party drugs. The head shops drew people in as the drugs they sold were much cheaper then those on the street and there was no fear of being arrested by the Gardai as everything was street legal. The legal highs can still be gotten over the internet but are now being sold under new names so they can get threw loopholes in the law. The legals highs had different names such as mephedrone, methylone, wild cat, dogs bollix, MDPV and GBL to name but a few. In May new legislation came into being and all these legal highs were banned as were the Head Shops behind them. Now if someone is caught selling any of the prohibited substances there is a jail term up to 7 years. There have been many documented cases of people just dabbling with the drugs in a recreational sense and dying from it. These drugs were highly addictive maybe more addictive the cocaine and ecstasy themselves? Just a warning to people I myself know people who have tried these drugs and others, their lives are not better, their not cooler and they are none the better. So please think twice before you decide to try anything that is put in front of you at a party...