Petrolheads After Top Gear

You lucky Brits with TV licenses:) There's a new show on BBC 2, right after Top Gear. It's called Petrolheads where a bunch of, you guessed it, petrolheads get together and do some funky stuff on cars. Another new car variety show to "watch". Sneak preview on Top Gear's website.

First Podium for Malaysia in the A1GP at Indonesia

Alex Yoong has finally done Malaysia proud by securing a great 2nd place in the Indonesian A1GP feature race. He also finished 4th in the sprint race. Best results for Malaysia thus far in the A1. Just need to go one more place up after this. Well done!

Yes!!! English Premier League is well alive again!!!

Yes!!!! Middlesborough 3 - Chelsea 0. It's no joke. Steve Mclaren's team has done the unthinkable: giving Jose Mourinho's Chelski something to think about. Please, Portsmouth, West Brom, Tottenham and co, learn something from Boro, Man U and Charlton.

Remember 12th February

There will be a special Top Gear episode on the 12th February in conjunction with the Winter Olympics which will kick off on the same day. The theme of this episode? Winter Olympics, of course. Source from Times Online. Nice!

Top Gear Top Tip

Here's a Top Gear Top Tip. If you like Top Gear, go to FinalGear for its latest "news";)

Another Promising F1 Season in Store

So many changes will be seen in F1 2006. Amongst them:

• Biggest change is the engine step-down from V10 3-litre to V8 2.4 litre. This change even made Ferrari swap their usual chassis naming from FXXXX (where XXXX is the year of competition. E.g F2005 for season 2005) to 248 F1. The 24 represents the 2.4 litre and the number 8 represents the 8 cylinders in the new engine
• Qualifying format will once again be changed where there'll be 3 stages (2 15-minute sessions and 1 20-minute session) in the the 1-hour session. 1st 15 minutes will be see everyone go out in with any amount of fuel they like and do as many laps as they wish. Bottom 6 will then be knocked-out and take the bottom 6 places for the race the next day. Second session will be the same as well with 16 drivers competing and the slowest 6 be knocked out again. The 12 drivers who were knocked out are allowed to put any amount of fuel they like. The last session will see the top 10 drivers slug it out for the 10 spots with again, no restriction on the number of laps. The only condition is that they must enter the session with the amount of fuel in which they intend to start the race the next day. At then end of the session, they are allowed to fill up to the original amount of fuel. Nice!
• Tyre changing. Michelin-shod team fans wont be happy but Bridgestone fans will be shouting for joy. Drivers can change tyres once again during race. This should make the races more interesting.
• First race of the year will be at Bahrain. Australia is hosting the Commonwealth games this year during March. So the first race will be held at Bahrain (+3GMT). Will be interesting. New cars, lots of sand, new rules, rusty drivers. Nice!

So many things to look forward to. So many drivers I wanna see them do well (M Schumacher, Alonso, Raikonen, Fisichella, Button). I'm hoping that Schummi will win this season and retire at the end. He'll retire with glory with 8 championship wins and let the younger drivers have a go in future seasons. I would like to see Raikonen switch to Ferari in 2007 teaming up with Rossi or Massa. That's my hope. Well, you never know in F1. That's the appeal of it, I guess. All eyes will be glued to Bahrain on March 12 2006. Cant wait!!!!

Liverpool 1 Manchester United 0

Two things wrong about my title. First of all, it was played at Old Trafford. Second of all, the scoreline's the other way round. However, I sent this exact message through SMS to my housemate. What's the big deal you might ask? First of all, he's a big Liverpool fan. Second of all, he was on the way to Holland when the match was played. I could imagine his smugness when the first SMS he received was this score the moment he turned on his phone in Holland. Well, apparently this smugness was there till today (Tuesday) cause he didnt had the chance the check the Net. What a great housemate he has, isnt it.

Which brings me nicely to the enigma of the current MU team. In the 90s, they would always sweep aside all the lesser teams but fall victim to the bigger teams like Arsenal and Liverpool. However, the points they accumulate against the smaller teams would make them Champions by March or April. Well, the tables have turned, boys. Nowadays, it's the other way round. Dogged, determined and fantastic against Arsenal, Chelsea or Liverpool but dreadful against Blackburn, Middlesborough and Man City (of all bloody teams). Plus the scores of draws they accumulated.

What's lacking? Class and consistency. First half against Liverpool was atrocious and it's very obvious that the midfield just isnt working. Defending by Wes Brown and Rio Ferdinand (quite a "lazy" hero, according to that Sleazy Swedish Sven) was superb. Rooney and Ruud were trying their best. It's midfield that let MU down in the first half. I mean, it used to be Giggs, Scholes, Keane and Beckham. Come on, Richardson, Giggs, O'Shea and Fletcher??!! Doubt their names will strike any fear in any other teams. Second half performance was so much better when O'Shea was taken out and replaced by Louis Saha. Rooney's switch to the right-side of midfield didnt do much of a difference since he was everywhere most of the time.

And consistency. Great one match and grubby the other. The story of Manchester United 2005/2006. Wednesday's cup-tie against Blackburn at Old Trafford? Predictable? Not a chance, mate.

Anyway, I'm sure well Sir Alex is more aware than anyone of this midfield problem. Just hope the Glazers still have some small change to buy one or two good central midfielders despite the 500 million pounds debt they have by buying MU. MU fans, don't hold your breath unless the Glazers struck oil in Tampa Bay's stadium:P

Football Sites

Wanna start by sharing these two sites which keeps me occupied everyday (except days when United lose. In case you don't know what team I support, just look at the screenshots below). Everything you wanna know about football are in these two sites. Transfer deals, "rumoured" transfer deals, results, tables, fixtures, injuries. You name em, they got em.

Soccernet:

Ever since I've started using the net for soccer news in 1996 (in fact at that time, it was the only reason I was using the internet. Pathetic, i know), Soccernet has always been my source of information. Run by ESPN now (used to be maintain by British fans or a British company, hence the emphasis on EPL, supposedly the most exciting league in the world), it loads very fast, has very up-to-date news and has all the information a football fan needs. I like the bit where you can customize your favourite team so that news about that particular team appears in a separate column (great for quick scans on your team's ongoings).

Drawback:
Created with Microsoft ASP and runs on IIS. Therefore, rendering of pages on non-IE browsers can be very screwed-up. In fact, you cant browse the pages with Apple's Safari browser at all due to the way it handles redirection.


Teamtalk:

If Soccernet doesnt fulfill you, head on to Teamtalk. Teamtalk is more news-centric, they seem to pick up more details on nitty-gritty stuff. Just like soccernet, they have dedicated pages for each team and these pages seem to have more stuff on your favourite team.

Drawback:
Always loads some Java applet(s), which in turn runs the Java Runtime Environment if you've installed it. This eats up loads of memory and CPU. Especially with Firefox, where you tend to open many pages in multiple tabs at once. But nice about Firefox is that disabling Java is also straight forward: Tools-> Options-> Content->Enable Java (untick this). Do this and Teamtalk loads without any problem.

I'm sure everyone has their own favourite football sites. Please share them if you will:))

New Focus

Suddenly felt that my blog is very directionless. So, from now on, I wanna go fulltime into 2 areas, which I feel extremely passionate about. Football and cars (hence the new blog title:) ) . Will be posting stuff about these two stuff only. I really got a lot to say about these two things since they consume a lot of my attention. Of course, occasionally, I'll still blast about something totally out of the topic;)

Why Art Thou So Slow, Apple Malaysia

Apple US:



Apple Singapore:


Apple Malaysia?


One of the many reasons why I think I'm Stuck In Malaysia;)

Another Feather On Jeremy's Bird's Nest Cap

He has been known to make one's blood boil (think Transport Ministries, environmentalists). He has been known to destroy, annihiliate cars (think Perodua Kelisa, Nissan Sunny, Bugatti Veyron(well initially, at least)). Well, he's got another achievement now besides that honorary doctorate from Oxford. Read more about it here. And it's all due to my careless YM broadcast:))

The World is Watching the MacWorld

Hours before Steve Jobs monumental keynote at the Macworld San Francisco 2006. Got this screenshot of the Apple Store:)


There's also the new MacRumorLive page created by MacRumor specially to cover MWSF. Neat! Rumours are flying hard here and there on other sites as well. Stay tuned!

All Your Wall Are Be Projected

Found this interesting projector from Viewsonic through Yahoo's Consumer Electronic Show (CES) roundup. The PJ106D, "One-Pound DLP Projector" (for more effects, imagine Russell Peters announcing it in his Hong-Kee accent:P) is a battery-powered (rechargeable battery supposedly last 2.5 hours), lightweight (obviously, 1lb without battery, 3.6lb with battery) portable projector. Nice!

Be Cool

If you havent watched Be Cool, you should cause it's so blardy funny. John Travolta is cool as usual, Uma Thurman is hot hot hot as usual with dam funny antics by Vince Vaughn (Flea Diddy) and The Rock (gay actor-wannabe). Even Steven Tyler gives a cameo appearance and mocks himself. Full of funny quotable quotes as well, if you know what i'm saying, when i'm sayin it. Y'all dig that!

Aston Martin Rapide

If you always wanted an Aston Martin but dont want to look like a pimp for child prostituition when you bring your kids out, well worry no more....cause we now have the Aston Martin Rapide, a 4-door version of the lovely, absolutely fantastic Aston Martin DB9:


Photo was taken from Top Gear and article on the Aston is here. Beware, Mercedes CLS, Jaguar XJ and the lot. Here comes Aston Martin's winner.

What is backmasking?

Backmasking is a technique that supposedly implants sublimal messages into songs when they are played backwards. According to Wikipedia, it is used by Christian Rock bands , secular rock bands and even pop singers to send a message across to their fans. It such a pervasive technique that Sox, a commandline audio manipulating software, pokes fun of it as seen below:



Here are some samples if you really wanna listen. Do so after reading the link to wikipedia. Some guy even backmasked Jingle bells. LOL!

Test Your Love Compatibility

Found this interesting site to test your love compatibility. All the best!

Intel: Leap Ahead

Finally, after all the Intel Inside, Idiot Outside jokes, Intel has decided that the best way to counter AMD's better technology (at least on the desktop and server processors) and celebrate their new partnership with Apple is by changing some marketing and branding strategies. Yes, new logo and new slogan. Intel: Leap Ahead (but lag behind AMD). Found out from Engadget. Original article at Reuter.

Who is the Stig

Suddenly got curious about who is the Stig. I asked google and I got an aswer:) Click the following links only if you're really curious like me:
1. Old Stig
2. New Stig

And it looks like I'm not the only curious one around:))

Dear Aslan

Hi! Edmund here. How are things in Narnia? Are the Talking Animals giving you non-stop problems again, Aslan? Well, don worry too much about it cause you are the greatest King ever. Nothing is ever too big a problem for you:)

Things are improving here in England. The war's over and Finchley is getting back to normal again. We got this guy, Winston Churchil, rallying the whole of England to pick ourselves up again. He's like High King Peter really. I'm really proud of that brother of mine.

Anyway, i know only girls do these kind of things but I wanna thank you for literally sticking out your neck for me. You didnt need to do it for me but you did. That's why you're a chum and a smashing lion!

The war has left quite a big damage to England and many other countries. So many people died and families torn apart. Sometimes, I wish that you would come here and make things right. Just like in Narnia, you will remove all evil and set things right here. I told this to Lucy and she said "You can't force Aslan. He's never a tame lion, you know". That's why you're so magnificent, Aslan. You didnt need to sacrifice for me and you did.

Well, guess what Aslan, I found you out! You are here in our world as well as in Narnia. You have chosen to use another name but I know you. You are called Jesus in this world. You came as a human to make an impact on all of us staying in this world. Your blood and your death 2000 years ago here redeemed all our lives just like your death by the White Witch redeemed mine in Narnia. The Deep Magic is indeed present here as well as in Narnia.

So, Aslan/Jesus, your birthday on earth is coming up soon. Here's an early Happy Birthday! May your whiskers and fur be as shiny as ever:)

Yours forever,

Edmund the Just
High King of Narnia