Off to see the Mouse

Very shortly we're off to see the mouse in Florida, so things may be quieter than normal for a week or so.

I'm taking my iPhone and Asus Eeee, and although I won't be using the iPhone much for data stuff during the day (at £6 per MB on O2's roaming data rates you'd be foolish to), the villa we're staying at does have wifi, so I may get round to posting stuff in the evening.

Point made: City 1-1 Sheffield Utd

Cardiff City turned on the style in the first half of this match, playing better than I've seen them play since about September. They carved the Blades open time and time again, only to lack the final finish, until a screamer from Bothroyd found the top corner on 45 mins.

Inevitably, City found it hard to keep up the pace in the second period, and Sheffield re-organised and gradually found their way back into the game. On 67 minutes Quinn (Sheffield's Stephen not City's Paul) toe poked a ball which it appeared the City keeper Marshall could have easily saved, but seemed to want to tap it away, only for Quinn to follow up and prod home from a yard.

Chopra replaced McCormack late on and almost made an instant impact hitting the bar, but it was not to be and both sides had to settle for a point. The Blades will be the happier of the two with that result, this being a match in my view that City should have won - but at least they played some decent football.

One other talking point was referee Danny McDermid, who in my opinion made several "bottle" decisions. twice in the opening 10 minutes City players appeared to be elbowed, or at least have arms raised against them, only for yellow rather than red to be brandished. In the end he booked 5 Blades players and 2 City players. How Sheffield finished with 11 men is a wonder to me. Frankly the quality of refereeing in this division this season has been very poor.

Steady: City 3-1 Watford

Another three points in the bag for City who are now 5 points clear of 7th placed Sheffield Utd who visit CCS on Wednesday, and we have a game in hand.

In truth, this was a games of three sides. City before they scored their first, City between scoring their first and half time, and City in the second half.

The opening spell by City was reminiscent of those first few games of the summer when we were pinging the ball around and scoring for fun. The goal came after a deep Whittingham corner was volleyed home by Ross McCormack. Immediately after the goal, City retreated (as usual), and were massivley second best to a poor Watford side who could have levelled and gone ahead by half time. Howe City still led at the break was anyone's guess.

In the second period, City grabbed the game by the scruff of the neck, and started to play football again. When they do that, they're a match for anyone in the division. The games was effectively made safe on 63 minutes when Whittingham headed home without having to leave the ground, and Burke wrapped it up with a good finish after a long solo run.

Inevitably, City couldn't keep a clean sheet, and Watford grabbed a consolation in the 3rd minute of injury time.

Still, City looked better overall with McPhail and Whittingham in the middle, but defensively, we're still a bit all over the places.

Blades on Wednesday. Bring it on!

Up the City

Massive: Coventry 1-2 City

City won for the first time in ages (or so it feels) with a last gasp penalty at the Ricoh Arena in Coventry. In an end to end game, both sides had chances, and it was Coventry who went ahead in the first period with yet more sloppy defending from a leaky City defence.

Just before the half Whittingham had a goal ruled out for offside, but Chris Burke from short range levelled it going into the break.

City had two great chances early in the second period, but both sides could have made further inroads. In the end it was deep into injury time when City were warded a penalty, and Peter Whittingham added to an impressive goal tally under the severest of pressure to ensure City travel back to South Wales with three massive points in the bag.

With Forest and more importantly for Bluebirds fans, the Jacks both above City in the table, losing, the gap has narrowed to 5 points between the Bluebirds and Swansea and Leicester. City remain sixth, and have a three point advantage and a game in hand over 7th placed Sheffield Utd.

A massive, massive win.

C'mon you Bluebirds!

Outfoxed: Leicester 1-0 City

City's onfield woes continue, this time on the wrong end of a one nil scoreline at the Walker's Stadium.

The bright spot for City was seeing the return of Stephen McPhail, who we've sorely missed in the centre of midfield. But although the midfield is a concern, the biggest problem is at the back, where pretty ordinary defending yet again accounted for the hosts goal.

City have now only won once in the last 7 games, and lost 5 of those including the the FA Cup loss to Chelsea. How we are still in 6th spot beggars belief, but we are, and with a game in hand over most of those around us. Nevertheless, unless we can turn this run around, we aren't going to be there for very long, and this could very quickly turn into another case of "so nearly".

C'mon City, pull your finger out!

4th gen iPhone pictures? Or not

Saw this post over at JKOTR which purports to show a 4th gen iPhone.

Of course these things are never cast in stone, and it could well be someone who's more than a bit handy in Photoshop. It's funny how there's never much detail in these "leaked" shots - if indeed that's what it is, or they're just too blurry or far away to give you any real sense.

I'd take this with a hefty pinch of salt, but thinner will always be a good selling point - unless it buggers up already less than stellar battery life.

Tractor Boys 2-0 City

We were crap. Nuff said

Gritty 3 points. City 1-0 Boro

Around 1,500 "fans" marched to CCS before today's game to protest about City's dire financial situation and
demand the resignation of Chairman Peter Ridsdale. Whether they thought they'd achieve anything is a moot point. PR can't have failed to be aware of the feeling of many City supporters.

As I've said before, I think he's done a pretty decent job, though not entirely openly, and transparently, but things sem to be coming to a head now.

Anyway, City came into this match on the back of some very poor displays, and really needed to show some grit and passion. They did just that against a Boro side that have been on the up recently. It took just three minutes for City to bundle home a scrappy goal that to be honest looked way offside. Despite Boro's protests the goal stood. City were dogged in midfield, generally sound in defence, and did create some chances up front.

A classic it wasn't. City should have been 2 up on half time when Chris Burke having fought into the box was patently clipped (it was right in front of us), and the ref booked him for diving. Actually, the ref, Mr Deadman was pretty rubbish throughout making some very inconsistent decisions for both sides.

Inevitably Boro came back in the second period, and on 60 minutes appeared to have equalised from a free kick but to massive protestations from Boro players and staff, the linesman ruled a handball and the goal was disallowed.

City hung on and indeed hit the bar on a swift counter just before the end. But it was City's day and 19,800 saw a determined display from the Bluebirds.

Up the City!

Did you know?

1981

1. Prince Charles got married.
2. Liverpool crowned soccer Champions of Europe.
3. Australia lost the Ashes.
4. The Pope died.

2005

1. Prince Charles got married.
2. Liverpool crowned soccer Champions of Europe.
3. Australia lost the Ashes.
4. The Pope died.

Lesson to be learned:
If Charles gets married again, someone better warn the Pope

Toodledo

I'm still trying to find the perfect to do app for the iPhone, over a year after moving to the platform.

Recently I've been using 2Do, and it's kind of OK, though some feel it's more form than function with it's colourful, nice to look at interface, which can at times feel a bit cluttered.

I use Appigo's Notebook app for my notes, and I find this a very decent app. It syncs to Toodledo, a cloud based to do/note application, but I've never bothered with it's to do element before now.

I've forked up the £1.79 asking price for the iPhone Toodledo app (come on, it's not even the cost of a pint of beer), and of course setting up the sync was a piece of cake.

I'll see how this goes - it's more like a traditional to do list rather than the over complicated (for me) "getting things done" model, though it does have folders, a hotlist and starred list options.

Pretty much all I'm after is a basic and easy to enter in, app that tells me when a task is due to be done and can give me an alert.

I'll see how this goes for a while.

Going pear shaped:Preston 3-0 City

I've been too busy this evening to write a post as we've had visitors over. Now I'm too knackered and had a too few many drinks to do this justice.

Read the BBC report and weep.

City doing their usual post Christmas belly flop. Lucky to get a play off place at this rate

Google contacts update

I thought it was too good to be true, and so it proved. Although enabling Google Contact sync from my Macbook Pro (see post below) appeared to have synced all my contacts across to Google, when I fired up my MBP tonight, I got a message saying that Google wanted to make 40 odd amendments to the contacts in my Mac's Address book.

It wanted for example to replace a perfectly valid record such as:
Title: "Mr & Mrs" with "Mr"
First Name: "M" with "& Mrs"
and so on....

So I've turned off the syncing for the moment, until I can work out what to do for the best. All my records in the Mac Address book are accurate and up to date, and I can't risk Google's sync process buggering these up. At least of got 270 plus contact records in Google that look OK from the way they synced across originally.

You would have thought in this day and age, something as obvious as contact management would have evolved a fairly standard sync protocol. I appreciate some of the more esoteric fields found in certain address books might cause problems, but it can't be beyond the wit of man (or coders) to at least be able to come up with a standard for title/first name/ last name syncing?

Obviously it is.

Contacts in the cloud

I've used the sync to Google function in my Mac to sync my contacts to Google Contacts over the air. Everything seems to have come across although the way Google works I've ended up with a few duplicates. I'll sort those out soon.

I now have (I think), what I really wanted which is my contacts in three (or is it 4) places. They're on my Mac in the Address Book, my Phone in the Contacts app, on Mobile Me in the cloud, and now on Google in the cloud. That might sound a bit like overkill, but as someone who's got a bit of OCD about keeping things in sync, it suits me.

I'm trying hard to start using Google for a lot more. I'm migrating to it slowly as my main email address way from my long time ISP pop email, but it wasn't that effective without all my contacts available. Should be fine now.

I've migrated two of the three websites I've built and maintain (Chepstow Male Voice Choir and Dinas Powys Cricket Club) to Google Sites, and I'm in the process of switching the third (Hendre Eynon Caravan and Camping) as well.

I haven't really used Google Docs much, but as I keep all my important and most frequently accessed docs in the cloud too on Dropbox, it makes sense to start using Google Docs more as well.

And of course, Google own the Blogger platform that this blog is based on. I also use and love Picasa for photo management and organisation, and Flickr for online photo storage, and my default search engine of course is, Ask Jeeves. No it's Google. I was joking.

Add all that up, and I've almost become a Google junkie without even thinking about it.

There's no doubt that Google has matured well enough for me to stat making the move more consciously. Given that all of the above is free as well (bar the Flickr premium account), I'm amazed more people don't make the move. I've got over my concerns about cloud data storage. I haven't done anything specific to dispel those concerns, rather just accepted that provided I'm sensible, it shouldn't be any more risky than using any other storage mechanism.

Grim: City 0-2 Barnsley

I don't know what to say. I really don't. I know City are struggling to find 11 fit players to put out on the park, but the ones that are there just aren't showing the quality (or rather any quality).

Our defence is a shambles, there's no midfield to speak of, Chopra couldn't score if you put the ball on the goal line in front of him with no defenders or keeper, and our one fit keeper can't kick a ball to save his life.

Barnsley are a mediocre side and came to Cardiff on the back of three straight losses. In the first 5 minutes City were all over them like a rash, and Chopra scoped the ball about 10 yards over the bar from 4 yards out. That should have told us it wasn't going to be our day.

We were then undone by two through balls that split our defence - well perhaps split is too generous - they (our alleged central defenders) never even looked as if they were on the same park, and Bogdanovich, that well known Maltese striker showed Chopra how it should be done with two clinical finishes three minutes apart. Twelve minutes in and we're two down. Their confidence went sky high, we looked more jittery than a team who's looked very jittery for several weeks, and so that was that.

In mitigation, the ref who was about 3ft 2" high got in the way of two great passes from our boys that night have opened something up, we played marginally better in the second half, and ha a five minutes spell where the pressure on the Bransley goal was intense. But we missed a header from a yard, hit the bar and generally didn't score. Not the way to win a football match.

Even Dave Jones summary has moved on from the "we've got injuries all over the park and we're all in need of a rest" to a more pragmatic "We've not really played well". Yeah, Dave, we didn't. It was crap. Again.

But, miraculously we're still fifth.

What makes it even worse is Swansea are now fourth, and even if we win our game in hand we'll still be a point behind them.

PC Pro - smartphone labs

As regular readers will know, I'm a fan of PC Pro magazine/website. I find their "labs" comparisons informative and generally accurate, and as I've said on many occasions, have made many purchases based on their recommendations and have never been disappointed.

The current issue of the mag (April 10), has a round up of smartphones which makes for some very interesting reading. On some of the sites I visit, and PDA247 is the one that springs most to mind, the iPhone is generally seen as a decent "consumer" device but not really in the same league as Blackberries for real "power" users (whoever and whatever they are).

However, PC Pro gives the iPhone 3GS top spot and a place on its venerated "A List", citing slightly less than brilliant battery life and the tie in to iTunes as the only blots on it' copybook, whilst the Blackberry Bold aside, other BB's lose out due to high price allied to lack of features like HSDPA, washed out camera images, and no digital compass (C'mon - how crucial is having a digital compass for God's sake?)

That doesn't mean it doesn't rate any other smartphones. In fact of the 24 phones tested, and 15 that were worthy of a full review, four got a recommended award and one a best value.

If you're feeling snubbed by the iPhone's top spot, take heart if you have one of those that got a "Recommended". They were

• HTC Hero
• Nokia N97 mini
• Blackberry Bold 9700
• T-Mobile Pulse

The phone that walked away with the best value award was the HTC Tattoo.

Now as ever, everyone will have their own opinions, and I'm equally aware that a discussion about which is the best (or worst) smartphone can generate a heated debate. This at least is how PC Pro sees it. Other will see it differently. Don't blame me.

Network congestion and the iPhone

I love my iPhone.

It suits me down to the ground. It's "smart" enough that I can do all the things I want to do that aren't "phone" things - Twitter, electronic password wallets, contact/address lists, emails, to-do lists, camera for quick snaps, notes, sat-nav, internet browsing, games, utilities....the list goes on and on.

However, some people argue that in itself, it's not a very good phone. Call quality could be better etc when compared to Nokia's or Blackberries so it's said, though I rarely have cause for complaint.

One area I do have some issues with though is trying to use the thing when there's any degree of congestion on the network.

This is most apparent at what is probably an extreme end of the scale - when I'm at a football match. When I'm in the Cardiff City Stadium with anything between 14,000 and 24,000 other people, there's very little point in me trying to tweet, text, check emails or use the phone, because it just ain't gonna work - or it'll take forever refreshing Twitter for example to get anywhere.

Although it can be argued that at least immediately before the match, at half time and just post match there are thousands of other people in close proximity using their phones, so therefore it's not surprising I have problems, what's strange about this is, that it doesn't seem to affect anyone else!

I can see hundreds of other people with their phones to their ear, or texting away whilst I struggle, even though my signal meter is showing wall to wall O2 and 3G signal strength. My son sitting next to me has no problems with his SE candybar phone, though admittedly he doesn't use data. But even texting/voice for me can be an issue.

I'm beginning to think it's down to me and my "karma" - or lack of it. It's difficult to know if this is an iPhone thing, or a smartphone (data - as opposed to voice) thing. Most of the phones I see at football are standard feature phones, so it might be.

It's a miracle: City 1-1 West Brom

A miracle that is that we're still in 5th place.

This was a dire football match between the divisions two top scorers, who managed a grand total of 5 shots on target between them in 97 minutes of football.

City, ravaged by injury and struggling to find 11 fit players went ahead on 8 minutes through a Peter Whittingham penalty after Jay Bothroyd was hauled down inside the 6 yard box. How the Baggies No. 3 stayed on the pitch is beyond belief - how can a man in the 6 yard box not be in a clear goal scoring opportunity? He didn't even get booked.

After the goal, City retreated deeper and deeper and their passing and tackling became worse and worse. When they did get the ball they either kicked it away or gave it away far too easily. West Brom scored in the 3rd minute of added time in the first half. At that point I'd have bitten your hand off for a draw. Peter Whittingham had also worryingly gone off injured.

The second half was better - just, but both sides created little, and I can't think of any one City player who was worthy of a man of the match performance. Kennedy in particualr was awful (again) at left back, but he was only the worst of an average bunch tonight.

City did spark towards the end in a 5 minute spell when Chris Burke missed an open goal, but to be fair a draw was probably all each side was worth.

On this form, I can't see either side being good enough for promotion, let alone putting up a fight in the Premiership. Keep an eye on Derby who seem to be hitting their straps at the right time.

Next up for Cty, Barnsley on Saturday at home. City players all need a rest, but they aren't going to get it, so they'll have to make the best of what they have. At this moment, I'd accept sneaking into 6th spot come the end of the season.

Blooobirds!

FA Cup Dream over: Chelsea 4-1 City

So the FA Cup dream is over for another year. Thoughts of a giant killing vanished inside 3 minutes as Drogba beat the offside trap to slot past the helpless Marshall.

The day had started well, though early with a 6:30am wake up, and by 7:30am we were on the M4 heading for the Smoke along with 5,800 other Cardiff City Supporters. We parked at Hounslow and caught the tube in, a fairly painless experience and by 10:45 were in the ground for the ungodly early 12pm kickoff.

The City away support as usual was magnificent, singing their hearts out, though most of the songs were perhaps a bit on the "fruity" side, and predictably many of them aimed at Chelsea's absent captain John Terry. Frank Lampard also got some "Jack" stick courtesy of a short spell he had out our mates down the M4 many years ago .

Many of the City faithful were surprised though relieved to see Jay Bothroyd in the starting 11, and perhaps even more surprised to see Rae's name there too, thinking Jones would want to save him for Tuesday's big clash with the Baggies. However, Jones thinking was probably he needed to risk the fitness of Rae to support young Wildig and provide some experience to what would otherwise have been a very inexperienced central midfield.

Chelsea I think showed a great deal of respect for City with the side they put out, including Carvalho, Jo Cole, Lampard, Ballack, Mikel and Drogba, and bringing on Kalou and Malouda as subs. That's a pretty impressive line up - over £105m worth of talent. How City could do with some of that!

Drogba's early strike aside, the rest of the first half was pretty even, and the Bluebirds faithful erupted on 34 minutes when Chopra glanced home a pinpoint Burke cross. I'd have taken 1-1 at half time any day, and during the break, there was talk of holding on for a draw and bringing the Blues back to CCS.

Inevitably, it wasn't to be. In the second half Chelsea brought on Kalou for Cole, and stepped up the pace. City held out for 6 minutes before Ballack tipped home after a great move, and then Chelsea heaped further misery on City with goals from Sturridge (69) and a fantastic Malouda header (86).

so it wasn't to be, but City did themselves proud I thought. You could see the difference in class. Chelsea had more composure on the ball, their anticipation was better, and they were at least half a yard quicker. City tended to panic in defence, and kick the ball away conceding possession rather than holding on to the ball. That's not to say they were poor. They are an injury ravaged side, and they gave it their all today, but sadly it wasn't enough to beat a side on top of their game, and on top of the Premiership.

It's back to league business on Tuesday with a home match against second placed West Brom. Another big match for City. They must now forget today, and focus on a promotion push. It's going to be hard.

C'Mon City!

City get more time

Cardiff City were at the High Court in London today facing a winding up order over an unpaid tax bill, along with Portsmouth & Southend. Who said football's in crisis?

Anyway, the long and the short of it i that City have been given a further 28 days to "resolve the issue" after having allegedly paid £1m towards a £2.7m debt.

That's not quite the position that Chairman Peter "The Riddler" Ridsdale outlined on 8th January when he said "We have every confidence that all monies owing to HMRC will have been repaid by the end of January."

So where's the other £1.7m Pete?

Hmmm...

Blindingly good customer service

As regular readers of this blog will know, I've got a thing about customer service.

Recently I needed some spare parts for some vertical blinds - we've got them all over the house - in fact most houses on this estate gave - must have been a job lot when the estate was built. My googling took me to e-bay (inevitably) and specifically an e-bay shop called Blind Spares.

I ordered the parts I needed that arrived very quickly and as required (you never know with e-bay). I then found I needed to order some additional but different parts - digressing, our kitten, who's now 8 months old had basically eaten/destroyed all the beaded strings that keep the things together as well as the anchors on the weights that they clip to!

So I confidently ordered the extra parts, and the package again arrived quickly, but the wrong parts. Handily, there was a business card in the package, so I rang, where a very polite lady called Fran said she'd check my order and post out the new parts if indeed it was their error not mine in ordering - turned out it was as they'd had a glitch in their order page - I'd ordered the correct bits but they came up wrong on their report.

I was very surprised when the very next day my (correct) parts arrived - with an apology note from said Fran.

Although you might expect good customer service, sadly I find it's not generally universal. Blind Spares are quick efficient, and having spoke to a real person, I also find them polite and helpful.

If you need replacement blind parts, I'd recommend them wholeheartedly