zerolight

I’ve never felt the need to post about a World Cup match before, but last nights match was despicable. Not the players. Sure there were some dirty moments (Figo’s half head butt being one) but I’m talking about the referee, Valentin Ivanov. He encouraged things to get out of hand by giving out yellow cards like they were sweeties. FIFA President Sepp Blatter later suggested the referee should have been yellow-carded himself.

16 yellow cards. 4 red cards. Yes, you can do the math, 4 players sent off. Most unjustified. You could see there was no real malice between the teams merely by looking at the players who’d been sent off. They were sitting on the sidelines, Dutch and Portuguese, chatting to one another about the nutter that refereed the game.

Portugal went on to win, but they lose Deco from their next game. Deco being by far their most influential player, and top of his game at the moment. Sent off for time wasting it appears. He was grabbed by a Dutch player and thrown to the ground, yet he was the one sent off. Criminal. Costinha sent off. Ronaldo potentially injured. Sven must be overjoyed knowing the excellent Portugal are hamstrung before facing England in the Quarter Finals.

Ali hit the 11 month mark today. One more and he’ll hit his 1st Birthday. Despite the misery of last night, look how happy he is. He and his mummy had a really great day together and he’s been happy in his cot this evening. Good lad.

Ali’s 11 months today. I’m trying to be up beat and think of wonderful things to say about my little boy. But I can’t. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a terrific little lad. I love him to bits. I just feel so guilty.

You see, last night I was making dinner, the oven was on and the glass door was piping hot. Ali, as is his want, was crawling around exploring. Unfortunately, as we live in an open plan home, it’s pretty difficult to keep him out the kitchen. His exploring usually leads him to the kitchen drawers, the washing machine, and occasionally the oven. A stern warning is usually enough to keep him away from the oven. Not last night. I turned my back for a couple of seconds to dish our dinner and I heard a cry from Ali.

He was standing up leaning both hands against the glass of the closed oven door screaming his head off, putting one palm on the other but not registering that he needed to drop to the floor to let go. I rushed to pick him up, and ran cold water over his palms but he was absolutely hysterical. I think he’d been leaning on the door for about 5 seconds. Maybe less. It seemed like a lifetime. The poor little man cried for an hour while we tried to immerse his hands in cold water. Zee cuddled and fed him but he wasn’t that thirsty. We gave him a bath and used a wee tupperware tub to put his hands in some cold water, but he was inconsolable. Even offering him the Pronto remote, the ultimate prize, had no affect. I knew then that he was really hurting. After various calls to friends that are GP’s we gave him calpol, medised and cuddled him to sleep. He was crying in his sleep for some time trying to settle.

Amazingly his night was not as hard as the night before. I guess the drugs really helped. We gave him more medised and ibuprofen at midnight, he woke at 0300 and then at 0645, but didn’t seem to be in pain. By 0720 he was restless to start his day. He seems fine now, though he does have a tiny little 5p sized blister on his palm. He was crawling around, quite content, when I left for work.

Things like this make you feel like the worlds worst father. I didn’t sleep well. Kept thinking about what happened, what I could have, should have, done to prevent it, or at least minimise the damage. Live and learn I guess.

There’s a public beta of Newzbin V3 available to all members. Your regular login will let you in to enjoy the new features and layout. That said, it’s a mixed bag.

The moveable toolpanels on the left are a nice touch. The advanced searching now allows you to limit searches to your own custom grouplists, a boon if you’ve got a Mac. The look and feel is now that of a CMS or Wiki, which is no bad thing, just different. My one real gripe is that the unnecessarily large “Report Actions” tool panel takes up the top 3rd of the screen. I’d rather this was at the bottom, out of the way until you need it.

You’ll notice as soon as you login that the report view only shows 3 posts per page. Fear not, this can be changed in the preferences, where you’ll see that it was already set to 10, despite showing 3. I set it to 20 and all was well. There’s a few theme options you can choose to format the way the list of posts is displayed. I settled on V3 Newbin (with popups) for everything. All in all, it’s a nice upgrade. Obviously still in beta. Perhaps a little less friendly to novices. Check it out.

Note: Newzbin are no longer taking on new members, so if you’ve held off of subscribing to their terrific service, you’re out of luck.

Whilst browsing daddytypes today I came across this bizarre bear. Why a USB bear? I have no idea. It seems like a crazy thing to do. Check it out on voyeur-ville, sorry flickr. Just rip off teddy’s head and stuff him into your PC. Your kid will love you for it, I’m sure.