CardiffGreens

Generally, because positivity isn't great for getting those all so precious social media interaction hits up. Watching Souness or Keane launch themselves into another angina-inducing rant about something or other seems to be what gets the views, and thus this is what we get treated to on a regular basis. One of the gaming youtubers I watch a bit of did a video about this a few months back - video games he likes and praise often got one eighth the viewing figures compared to the ones he's tearing a new one. I guess people just enjoy watching other people "telling it like it is" and just rendering everything as "shit". (Also it's easy to point out that things are bad, rather than why things are bad; conjuring solutions to problems often involves long and lengthy discussions about multiple interlocking issues with no easy answer in sight - at least one that stands up to a decent amount of scrutiny I suppose).

Well, there's a rumoured big announcement for early next week; but in practical terms Zwift dumped a huge update out last night that included 2 new worlds (though currently unavailable to the likes of you and me) which contain routes around Paris and the rest of France (rumours - or rather me looking at the new route badges - suggest Mont Ventoux (or at least the first half of it) are included along with some cobbled action on the Champs Elysées. Cycling News have written some words about the make up of the route and competition - https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/zwift-build-new-mont-ventoux-and-champs-elysees-worlds-for-virtual-tour-de-france/ Route: Competition - appears there are no "individual" classifications as such: In sort of unrelated news, it was interesting to see the slightly lighter-hearted coverage that Sky Sports mix did for "The Race" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB95wHFBu78) a couple of weeks back; at least compared to the slightly more serious stuff in the two Ineos races that have been streamed. As an aside I did the same route a couple of days later just to see where I stacked up - turns out I'm faster than Olly Murs, which is perhaps not the benchmark I was expecting to compare myself to at the start of lockdown.

The ever-optimist in me* would hope it's because we've got roughly half a million games in the next 4 weeks or so; and they're making sure we've got something in the tank for the end of the season when some teams might be flagging a little. I won't go into what the realist in me* thinks; it's around remembering to set the EPG to get quest recorded again. * Yes I know, Kenneth.gif etc and so on

I don't want to go all on topic on these fine boards. But something similar cropped up on "You are the ref" a couple of years ago when they were still being done on the graniaud. Keith Hackett explained in the notes that the correct procedure was to defer to the technology in terms of awarding/not awarding the goal rather than relying on what the officials may/may not have seen. AFAIK once the ref had stopped play for an infringement (or more accurately I imagine, once the free kick had been taken, so possibly the referee should not have allowed play to continue) VAR would not be able to intervene owing to a new passage of play starting. #LawsNerd

HR tracking, you'll also have pace/distance metrics easily to hand (rather than trying to juggle a phone mid run). Also having your phone jostling about your pockets during a run gets really annoying really fast.

Interesting - managed to forget about this so was running 10 mins behind everything. Not adverse to the design, though it's going to mess with my under-TV storage trying to squeeze that in somewhere. 4k blu ray is welcome (despite probably being a generation too late now), though PLEASE could they make it play music CDs again please, that restriction on the PS4 is without a doubt one of the most stupid things ever. Liked a few of the reveals - Kena sorta evoked some memories of lost winds from the wii in some of the visual style and was probably my pick; Little Devil Inside better have the ridiculous soundtrack the whole way through else I'm out; Stray I'd like to see a bit more of; Oddworld looks horribly brutal in a this-is-all-meaningless-in-the-end-anyway-but-lets-try sorta way; Deathloop looked a great premise, but built on Bethedsa bugs and no doubt a 15 year old engine; Horizon, looked good and reminded me I really need to sort out playing the original before the universe flares out and entropy sets in forever. Oh, and you can tell every studio appears to have a thing for either souls-like or "oooh, whats the big mystery here then, keep playing to (possibly) find out" action adventure games. No doubt I'll pick up the 2nd slim version next year or so (and then spend hours each month fishing whatever toys the 3 year old has forced into the drive slot) Oh, and other plus point; apart from the netball simulator and sackboy goes bananas, there wasn't much in there that looked like it could be totally loaded up with micro transaction nonsense (I'm sure they'l find a way though).

I've got their "Deep Tea Diver" (with a weighted canister in case you're trying to infuse a thermos flask I guess), their "Mr. Tea" one (with his holey trousers) looks like he's enjoying a wee into your cup (though my tendency to brew fruity herbal numbers would make that an even more unpleasant sight)

A bit of a bump I grant you, but given some of the more recent (coughs) discussions around the emergence of eSports as a direct analog to real life sport in some of the Other Football threads, I thought it might be worth mentioning. Looks like ASO are in discussions to get a virtual Tour de France going this year (during the usual race period, since the acutal one has been pushed back to August) through the VR training/riding game Zwift - 6x 1hour races spread over 3 weekends the race would normally be held on - https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/virtual-mens-and-womens-tour-de-france-on-zwift-set-for-july/ This is interesting to me in a number of reasons; Firstly cycling being a much easier sport to replicate into esports than say football (sticking a bike onto a turbotrainer = far closer to a cycling race than say playing FIFA20 on a PS4 is to playing football in real life), so it feel more "acceptable" in terms of comparing what you see in the virtual world to a real life effort - as well as "accurately reflecting" real life in game (ish, see later); Secondly, this version of eSports is essentially a competition between elite athletes (rather than say a bunch twitch streamers, nothing against them), where their usual training and abilities will have a direct impact on their performance in game - but again this'll help build the idea this is some form of comparable racing to what we'd have had otherwise IRL Thirdly, the shorter format (an hours racing per day) will allow for more attention to be given to Women's cycling, which in some cases you could argue is more exciting due to the shorter format of their races (as opposed to a lot of mens stage cycling races, which basically consist of letting a breakaway form and get away, slowly reel them in over a period of 5 hours and do a mass sprint finish at the end; back to the hotel and repeat until they get to the mountains). Fourthly (and this is more from a selfish personal reason); it'll require Zwift developers to up their game a bit; it's a cracking platform - but their race/spectator options stink (as witnessed with the first Team Ineos race up the Alpe du Zwift last month), basics things from a spectator PoV were missing (no live finishing standings for instance - once someone went through the finishing line they disappeared off screen which made for some difficult commentary work), there's no way to find a rider to watch on your own game (something you can do if a friend hops on for a ride), so it'll be interesting to see what they bring in here for this race and how that affects us mere mortals that use the game. Fifthly; what sort of dynamics the "missing" features that zwift can't/doesn't capture will have on the races; the Ineos Alpe race was won by a Time Triallist; there could be a number of factors for this - it's only an hour effort, also whilst the trainers they have will increase the incline on your bike, you haven't actually got to worry that lugging "excess" weight up against gravity will add to your fatigue as you would have in the real world. There's also no in game wind, so no echelon forming on flat stages; there is also no sort of steering or braking, so descents are a bit of nothingness in game. Sixthly, the whole "how is compliance with anti cheating/weight doping" going to be controlled - you'd like to think pro teams wouldn't be into ANT+ data manipulation, (i.e. cheating the game into thinking you're putting more power than than you actually are) but given there are plenty of ways to cheat the game if you wish; it's something that'll have to be thought about at the least.

Massively nerdy answer incoming I suppose. Nokia 3210; my first phone, also had the benefit of clip on covers - so naturally I got a spring loaded one that doubled the phones size but made it look vaguely like it was out of the matrix (things you do as a 16 year old). HTC TyTn II; vaguely smart phone the size of a small house with a stylus-only-touchscreen and slid-out keyboard and limited internet functionality? Sold. HTC Desire HD; my first proper Android smart phone, the step up from the TyTn felt like I was in the future. And I still think HTC Sense's weather clock widget (silly unlock animations and all) is the best evs. Motorola Moto Z 2/3; nothing like locking yourself into a range of phones because you've gone out and bought wireless charging shells, Polaroid printers, extra battery packs, a mini boombox and a flipping projector that only work by attaching to the back of your phone...

Damnit, forgot to tune in for this. Thanks for the video though :). Not sure if the 3 month old was staring at the footage because it's flipping awesome, or just because it was just in their eyeline anyway. And those returning stages were something you'd half expect to only ever see in kerbal.

The lead singer from the Icelandic group, stuck in his apartment, surrounded only by potted plants and synthesizers, singing all his favourite eurovision hits, for an hour? Go on then.

Part 1 (What would have been Semi Final 1 and a couple of the big 5): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNk7fAqYLiw Part 2 (What would have been Semi Final 2 and other big 5): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4A6hstelW0

Wait, this thing is two hours long. 30 secs for each performance, so that's 20 minutes of songs. 100 mins of filler. I might need to put the ciders to one side and crack open the stronger stuff to get through this...

The perils of having your parents cut your hair as shown from the Polish correspondent.

Only 30 seconds of each song? Sadface.

The mooted proposal for L1 and L2 are for them to be abandoned, rather than voided (voiding would be scrubbing all the results from history, which is what the FA have done to non league football beneath the national league and its feeder leagues). I believe there is a meeting this week to determine final league standings and therefore what'll happen to the promotion between championship / league 1 and 2 and what they decide to do for relegation.

Short answer would be that the EFL would (rightly imo) be worried that the Premier League was attempting to cut itself off from the rest of the football pyramid; willing only to take up two teams from the top of the Championship, but returning none*. Especially as it's probably likely that next season is going to be impacted in some way; and so as some sort of precedent has been set, well, they can't possibly relegate anyone under those circumstances either. Then all of a sudden it's been 3 years since the last set of teams went down. *I know there were the rumours about similar happening being mooted across the rest of the football leagues, but working out the relegation criteria for the following year (adding an extra relegation place for a couple of years for instance) is within the EFL's remit, unlike across the Premier League / Championship divide.

I've got most of the house hooked up to the Hue system. Most of the control is done though my google set up, but yeah, it just works - have a few routines in place for lighting coming on at sunset. The main downside to most of this, is that traditional light switches aren't really great for home automation; so where I've found it great is for fittings/fixtures where they're just plugged into the mains with no option for other household members to switch off the power to your new lights (lightstrips / go lamps) Other downside to Hue, they do firmware updates over the wireless network to the bulbs, and it might just be my awful internets; but they usually take an age to download so if you've got a bunch of them installed, expect to waste half a day on your phone watching a non-descriptive "progress" bar. Edit. As an small aside, it's worth mentioning that IKEA were looking at a refresh / update to their smart home offering - this was announced in December, though I'm not sure what the current state of the rollout is, so it might be worth holding out until that's been released to see if it fixes any of your woes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin?wprov=sfla1

Remember when there was the initial talk about voiding the season with the biggest voices behind that being West Ham and Spurs? Though the way some podcasts were discussing the use of coefficients to award euro places a month ago made it seem like that was an agreed protocol, rather than some back of the napkin thinking.

Real life has been as busy as I had expected (though I won't complain; if this game had actually come out on time, I'd been able to maybe get to the main menu in 1 sitting...), but got in a couple of hours last night - up to about 10 overall and just gotten into Chapter 7 (or 6, whichever the one after Plan E anyway!). Still enjoying it, I haven't much more to add than hasn't already been said - does feel a bit of a mash of a bunch of games (not bad thing) - though strangely I had a couple of bits in the session last night that drew me back to THQ's WH40k Space Marine - though that's probably down to my lack of gaming breadth; I don't imagine the whole "We need to get to over there (where we will undoubtedly run into a totall unexpected boss fight)" that marks each chapter of progress is particulary rare. I also enjoyed the couple of occasions the game doesn't deem itself above the classic trope of "what's this in a chest? Why it's a new and exciting item that potentially negates some gameplay element we haven't previously encountered; maybe think about equipping it yeah?", or "oh look, a vending machine, out here, in the middle of nowhere, I wonder why that could be".

According to this article on EPSN (https://www.espn.com/soccer/spanish-primera-division/story/4085956/coronavirus-fa-propose-no-la-liga-champions-barca-real-madrid-in-ucl-sources it's a quirk of the Spanish football governance. It's the RFEF who have proposed this solution of awarding European competition places to the current top 7 in the league standings (if the league cannot be completed)

One of my earliest sporting memories; something about that bike and the outdoor velodrome just stuck in my brain.

Come for the sequel to a light-hearted fairly-amusing song and dance number, stay for the 2 hour discussion about relative merits of various musical genres. We had a family cinema day in as our 3 year old loves the first and the holiday special. I've no idea what they were trying to do with this; just glad it was a rental, so there's no chance of having this on repeat endlessly.