Lame

I've just finished watching the Doctor Who Christmas Special (The Next Doctor).

I don't want to give away spoilers, but as per many of Russell T Davies efforts, all style and no substance. Some good ideas (and always great production values) let down by below average writing.

Not quite the worst of his "fan fiction", but certainly containing a few of the hallmarks.

As the old saying goes, you can't polish a turd.

Playoffs

Unfortunately my Redskins (after a very exciting and inspiring 6-2 start) were eliminated from playoff contention last week, and today finished the season with a mediocre 8-8 record. A 2-6 collapse down the stretch? They just could not maintain the physical tone that their impressive running game set in the first 8 games -- and their receivers were way too inconsistent. I'd expect the Skins will go very hard in the offseason on getting some younger athletic linemen on offense.

What I am pleased to see is that the Dallas Cowboys had an even more disappointing collapse to miss the playoffs, having started the season as favoured to make a Superbowl appearance by many media outlets. And I think many teams in the AFC must be breathing a sigh of relief with the Pats somehow managing to miss the playoffs with an 11-5 record!

With regards to the Pats, this will generate some controversy and suggestions for a seeded playoff system, considering undeserving teams like the 8-8 Chargers and 9-7 Cardinals getting a home ground wildcard berths for winning their mediocre divisions. I love tradition, but I think a seeded system would be fairer and make more sense.

As for next weekends Wildcard Round, I'm expecting the visiting teams to dominate:
- Atlanta at Arizona (4.30pm Saturday)
- Indianapolis at San Diego (8pm Saturday)
- Baltimore at Miami (1pm Sunday)
- Philly at Minnesota (4.30pm Sunday)

Now that the Skins are eliminated, it will be nice to just enjoy football as a fan without too many vested interests.

(Except for rooting against Philly! But I think I will have to wait until the Divisional round for them to be eliminated. At least they took care of the Cowboys today...)

Slingin' Sammy

A truly amazing athlete died this week -- Slingin' Sammy Baugh. Sammy was the Quarterback of the Redskins from 1937 to 1952, and turned the forward pass into the centerpiece of NFL that it is today.

When I heard that he passed, I cracked open some Jamesons and started reminiscing through my history books.

My favourite columnist from the Washington Post, Thomas Boswell, wrote:

In 1936, the season before Baugh arrived, the average NFL team scored 11.9 points a game and completed 5.6 passes. The NFL completion percentage: 36.5. The entire sport threw only 67 scoring passes to 216 interceptions. A team passed out of third-down necessity or for trickery.

Then came Baugh.

Into this thudding world, where someone named Arnie Herber held such passing records as there were, the 6-foot-2 Texan, who could throw from all angles and drolly asked "which eye" he should hit his receivers in, was a revelation.

As a rookie, starting only five games, he broke the NFL completion record with 81. By 1940, he was accomplishing the inconceivable, completing 62.7 percent of his passes.

And what is really amazing is that he was posting these numbers a modern QB would be proud of with a ball shaped like a Rugby ball rather than the modern streamlined pigskin we know today. But the guy was also a legend on Special Teams as a Punter (technically, they didn't have Special Teams back then) and on Defense as a DB.

More Boswell:

The range of Baugh's skill is almost incomprehensible now. His career punting average was more than 45 yards, but from 1940 through 1942 it was almost 50 yards (49.5). Yes, they liked to quick kick then. But 50 yards is still 50 yards.

In 1940, he intercepted 11 passes in just 10 games. How good is that? No NFL player has intercepted 11 passes since 1981 and the last man to have more than an interception per game was Night Train Lane in 1952.

Sammy won championships for the Skins in 1937 and 1942, but one of the biggest surprises came about 10 years ago when a journalist interviewing Sammy at his ranch (in Rotan, Texas) discussed the infamous 1940 championship where the Skins went down to the Bears 73-0. Sammy went on to tell the story that the Skins purposely took a dive to send a message to owner George Preston Marshall regarding his meddling. Needless to say, this was a controversial revelation!

I loved what John Madden said on Sunday Night Football this week -- that Sammy actually loved the modern game, and admired how skillful the modern players had become. How refreshing compared to the stereotypical old school Hall-of-Famer who never gives the modern sport it's due.

There will never, ever be another Sammy Baugh.

Leavez

This is the end of my first official day of leave -- I'm off until January 5th. I had my office Christmas Party on Friday, and after the cigars, booze and general lack of sleep, I needed most of the weekend to recover from it. While dozing in and out of sleep on the couch, I caught up on episodes of 30 Rock, season 2 of Californication, and re-runs of Arrested Development.

(Three of my favourite American comedies right there... As an aside, Californication keeps impressing me with it's writing, but I wonder if the quality can be sustained for a third season with the upcoming changes in plot.)

Christmas just creeps up on you. I can't believe it's on Thursday. I have a number of bits and pieces around the house I need to get done before V gets back from her trip to NZ. Today was a write-off due to my debilitating sports addiction (NFL), but I did get some washing and shopping done. The good news is, after the last three days, I think I've got "lying on the couch watching TV" out of my system for a little while.

As they say where Bernard lives, "Happy Holidays!"

Fun Net Zero Gain

Had a fun game of Poker with some good blokes last night. Unlike the last couple of games which I played at the end of a work week, I was in pretty good spirits and really enjoyed myself until we closed out at 1am.

I love the Dealers Choice custom in the League of Ordinary Gentlemen; really conducive to traditional bs/trash talk that are the important staples of an entertaining game. But I was getting murdered, thanks largely to losing against a straight flush with a full house in a game of Anaconda.

Until a really late run on my final re-buy, I was slated to make a pretty big loss despite my earlier tourney winnings. But 4 Queens in a game of Spit in the Ocean saved me!

Taxi: -$30
Beers: -$20
Tourney fee: -$20
Pizza: -$10
Tourney winnings: +$80
Dealers Choice + 2 Rebuys: -$60
Cash out at End of Dealers Choice: +$57
League of Ordinary Gentlemen Trophy Minding Goodwill: +$3

I'm already starting to feel a little holiday-ish!

Prague Warm-ups

Over the 8 nights between 27th Oct and 4th Nov I had a peak of about 5 hours sleep a night, and an average somewhere between 3.5 to 4 hours a night.

The waking hours over that period were generally consumed by a company off-site, travel, sporting events, and alcohol-fueled debauchery. More the latter... The only price I've had to pay is a mild cold that I got once I was back in Australia (Tuesday) which has almost subsided.

I am now ready to fly out to Prague on Friday.

I've just glimpsed at the weather there -- it will vary between 3 and 12 degrees celcius while I am there!

As an aside, Hong Kong was a blast!

Netbooks

I bought my first netbook about a month ago - an MSI Wind U100, featuring a 10-inch screen (1024x600) and utilising a 1.6 GHz "Atom" processor. It is extremely light -- the laptop with the battery in it weighs about a kilo.

For A$680 it also came with a 120 GB HD (at the time of ordering it was spec'd with an 80 GB, so bonus...), 1 GB RAM, 802.11g, and a 6-cell battery (good for 4-5 hours). It has 3 external USB ports and an ethernet port. The key thing it doesn't come with: a CD or DVD drive. But that's fine.

I also bought a few 3rd party add-ons -- another 1 GB RAM, replaced the Wireless G mini PCI-E card with a Wireless N, and replaced the internal disk with a 2.5-inch 500 GB SATA (5400 rpm). This brought the total spend up to around (just below) A$1000. In terms of modifying/installing the 3rd party hardware? Piece of cake.

A couple of weekends ago I configured it as a hackintosh (10.5.4). I am very impressed with the results -- the laptop is quite snappy even with I/O and CPU intensive tasks such as running a Windows XP instance in VMware or playing video.

The only HW not working is the headphone jacks and the internal microphone (easily remedied with a USB headset, which I use when I voice-skype anyways).

While I'll keep my MacBook Pro for everyday work, the netbook should be the perfect travel companion for my upcoming trips to Hong Kong and the Czech Republic. Not only is it compact and light, but it's so inexpensive that if it came to the crunch I wouldn't be too worried about replacing it if it got flogged.

For A$1000, I think the spec is unbelievably good.

Random

Some other random thoughts:

- Apparently by 2030, laptops will be hotter than the sun. Semi-seriously, I wonder when we will start to see warnings on the side of laptops like they do with coffee cups...

- I've been playing around with the Windows port of xbmc on my Vista Media Center lately. I've played with it before on my retired Xbox, but my interest has been piqued by all the forks we have seen emerge recently such as Boxee and Plex. It's fascinating that open source leads the way in this industry, given the commercial potential.

- It's a good time to be a Redskins fan. I can't remember the last time I was so inspired by the team and it's coaching. I mean really and truly inspired. I didn't think much could top last week's win over Dallas in Texas Stadium until I watched the Skins rally from being 14-0 down in the first quarter to dominate Philadelphia at the Link. Not just winning, but winning with style (such wonderfully aggressive play-calling by head coach Jim Zorn). I am so freaking proud of this team right now, and I've been on a natural high all day after watching the game...

- ...possibly akin to what Manly fans feel about their team walloping the Melbourne Storm in yesterday's league Grand Final 40-0.

- I'm quite looking forward to going to Hong Kong at the end of the month to witness Dingo put some hurt on the All Blacks. Lots of new talent on display, and with plenty of time (4 weeks) to get ready. The Wallabies have so much upside between now and the next World Cup. We are very lucky to have a philosophy like Robbie's to go with the talent, rather than conservative, stifling thinking ala Connolly.

- I'm also looking forward to the new Coen brothers film Burn After Reading. Their humour almost always strikes a chord with me.

- With Nick doing All Tomorrow's Parties at the Sydney Festival this year, I think this is gonna be the year where I get off my butt to try and get some tickets to Sydney Festival events in a timely manner (as opposed to my usual ad-hoc manner). I love this time of year in Sydney.

- I feel a project coming on...

Phones

A couple of random phone-related thoughts:

- There were two things that I have felt were show-stopping detractors with the iPhone which have nothing to do with it's design. The first is that iPhone sales have been tied to service provider contracts featuring very (to put it lightly) uncompetitive data rates, and the second is that they've had NDA's tied to the platform SDK, curbing efforts by communities to develop for the iPhone (including writing books). Thankfully, the latter has been fixed, and the former is rumoured to be addressed in the next few months.

- In the meantime, I have allowed my company to provide me a Blackberry Bold, simply because I am entitled to a new phone once every two years. The phone has a solid design, but I'm still trying to decide whether I like the idea of carrying around email in my pocket.

- My previous phone (the Treo 680) was without doubt the best I've ever owned, but unfortunately PalmOS is a dead platform. What a tragedy. An OS with a really great philosophy that I will miss. The phone now becomes a hand-me-down for V.

Absurd Juxtaposition

If memory serves me correctly, in my first year at the University of Newcastle (1992) we had a 48 Kb connection to AARNET (i.e. the internet).

48 Kb. For the entire university.

I remember overhearing some students bickering about those pesky MUD'ers using up valuable bandwidth (probably around 2 Kb a player).

This week I spent a couple of hours watching a streaming NFL game (in HD no less) which required that I had at least a 750 Kb connection. Not a problem over 24 Mb ADSL2+.

My, how things change.