Category: old blogging

Phew! Sussex win against third-placed Lancashire with just ten balls to spare, and are only five points behind Surrey in the County Championship.

Tomorrow, I shall be at the Pashley Manor Gardens Summer Plant Fair at Pashley Manor, Ticehurst, East Sussex. It’s open from 11am to 5pm, so drop in if you’re nearby and say hello. As organiser, I have to leave here at 5am so that can be there early enough to have everything set up for the participants. Consequently, I’m off to bed now.

Lemmings game, via Darren.

BBC Sport Blowers commentary game – only ever likely to appeal to TMS fans.

Gah! Just realised my AFF team is illegal, as I have three Liverpool players – the rules say only two players from any one team. I’d forgotten that Harry Kewell is at Liverpool now. So John Arne Riise has gone, and Mario Melchiot has been drafted in.
And Todorov’s injury has proven to be more serious than first thought – he’s going to be out for the whole season. Disaster! So I’ll be at the head of the queue for transfers, which are embargoed until September 1st. Gah!

Still, good to see James Kirtley in the wickets at the Test Match.

Long day at work today.
Beer tonight with Bren, Greg, Kate, Sarah, Paul, Jo, Kev, Andrea, Hamish, Ruth and lots more. Need sleep.

Widespread power cuts in the US. Solar flare?
UPDATE: According to the New York Times, the Niagra Mohawk grid was overloaded and collapsed. My dad has just called to discuss it (my parents are like that), and he wasn’t taken in by my solar flare theory – plausible, but unlikely, was his verdict. He reckons one section of the grid collapsed, which led to neighbouring sections also failing. And, in case you wonder how he might know, he worked in the electricity supply industry for 43 years.
Either way, this is a systems failure on a massive scale. Reports I’m reading right now speak of black outs extending from Maryland to Toronto and from Detroit to New York city. That’s an awfully big area, with a lot of people and businesses. And the people stuck on the New York subway right now must be really panicking.
Note also that the web seems to be holding up, in spite of the fact that a large number of nodes will be without power at the moment. Either that or their gennies are holding up.
HISTORICAL NOTE: this event is not without precedent: 1965, when a single relay failure in Ontario caused power failures over an area almost identical to today’s blackout, and 1977, when four lightning strikes in New York caused blackout within the city.

The Nursery Arms XI returns:

I’m not entering the Telegraph Fantasy Football game this year, just Andi’s (so you’ll know what AFF means when I mention it, won’t you?), in which I got to the quarter finals in the Cup last season.
This year’s team raises the following questions (feel free to post answers, and perhaps your own questions, in the comments):

• Will Arsenal be any good this year? Everyone seems ready to write them off, but I’m not so sure.
• Will Wayne Bridge get any matches? Chelsea seems now to be full of so many good players that they can’t possibly all get a run-out every week.
• Will Todorov be up to Premiership standard? He was awesome in the First Division, but this is a whole new league (haha!). I also note that he was injured in training today.
• Will Beattie have to play second fiddle to Phillips at Southampton – or will they be the dream team?
• And, as they said when they sold me that endowment policy, past performance is no guide to future returns. So which young gun should I have picked?

Snow leopards under threat. These are amongst the most beautiful of all animals. If you’ve ever been lucky enough to see one, even if, like me, it was in a zoo, you begin to wonder why anyone would want to have a dead one on their floor.

New Weebl, just to wind up Brian.