RadicalStu Blog

Rangers Scoring Sensation Quits

Not the latest scoring sensation, although many people would still be happy to see the back of Peter Lovenkrands, despite his recent heroics.  No, this is the retirement of the last Ranger to score a hat trick before Lovenkrands. Christian Nerlinger came to Ibrox with a solid reputation but recent injury problems.  Unfortunately, it was the injuries that were the defining feature of his time with Rangers rather than his talent and despite one or two promising performances he was eventually released by Rangers.  Unfortunately, the move back to his native Germany did not improve his fitness and he has now called it a day. 

Lovenkrands doesn't have the excuse for injuries to excuse his often lacklustre form.  He often looks like he is going through the motions and either doesn't know or is not interested in how to get involved in the game.  Giving him some leeway, maybe this is more the case when he is playing as a winger than through the middle but the suspicion is there that it is more lack of effort than lack of knowledge (although that is palpable as well) and that his recent run of form has more to do with the end of his contract than his renaissance as a striker.  Playing through the middle does seem to suit his fairly limited abilities better.  He can run fast and he can shoot reasonably well.  Don't ask him to do anything else and he will do this pretty well.

This, apparently, is giving Alex McLeish some problems and you can see how.  Should he even offer him a new contract?  If my advice is required, I think it is the right decision to offer Lovenkrands a new contract at a reduced salary.  He has not shown enough during his current contract to justify his current salary and a sudden burst of form at this point does not change that.  Rangers should be prepared to let him leave in the summer.  If somebody offers more than Rangers to him then good luck to them.

In the meantime, should he persevere with Lovenkrands despite the recent return of a resurgent Buffel, the imminent return of Novo and Prso, and the new arrival of Kilmarnock's Kris Boyd?  I think that one thing is certain.  Lovenkrands cannot play in the same team as Prso.  Not because there is a particular clash of styles but because it is evident that Prso does not like playing with Lovenkrands.  This simplifies the selection problems to some extent; play Lovenkrands or Prso, but not both.  At the moment, Lovenkrands and Buffel are looking as threatening as anything in a Rangers shirt this season, so I would stick with them for the moment.  If Lovenkrands form drops then he can be dropped giving you lots of striking options. 

It probably becomes more complex at that point.  It is often said that Buffel functions at his best just behind a lone striker and this does seem to be when he has played his best for Rangers.  However, I watched him play for Belgium in the game in which he was injured against Spain.  He played a stormer behind two strikers, effectively as a midfielder, so I don't think it is a given.  It actually looks like Rangers will have a number of good striking options in the new year.  It's up to Alex McLeish to pick the right one and stick to it.  Let's hope he is up to the job.

George Burley Takes Southampton Job

A month ago, I would have been shocked at this news.  I thought it likely that George Burley would be the new Rangers manager; Alex McLeish's position was surely unsustainable and the most touted replacements were either not up to the job or unlikely to come to Rangers.  Burley was available and seemed the obvious choice.  However, David Murray stood by Alex McLeish and Burley was left with no option but to take the best job available to him at the moment. 

Having seen Hearts at Ibrox on Saturday, you really have to hand it to George Burley.  He took what appears to be a fairly average bunch of players and produced a top of the table team.  With a mediocre manager, they now look like a mediocre team.  Romanov blew that one for Hearts.  Did David Murray blow it for Rangers?

Recent Links #2

BBC - Radio Homepage


Starting Javascript with ASP.NET
One of the areas that I have trouble getting right and need to work on is manipulating DOM elements. As a first start to this I am going to remember a piece of code that changes the value of a Select when the value in another select is changed.

Recent Links #1

These are some of the bookmarks I have noted recently.  This should be the start of a series.

7 Powerful Ways To Make Money From Adsense Using Only Free Tools - Sketch Ideas
Basically, some ideas on getting people to visit your web site.

My Wife Won’t Let Me Start My Own Business
Your wife won’t let you? Are you a homo sapien or a wimpus maximus?

Is That the Best You Can Do?
Good is the enemy of the best. Is that the best thing that you could be doing right now?

17 Ways To Drive Traffic to Your Blog - Sketch Ideas
Blog marketing is all about word of mouth.

OpenFootball Rangers
"Big Eck" writes insightful and entertaining essays about the Rangers experience.

Squidoo : Lenses : Rangers FC
News, links, reports and opinions about the Glasgow Rangers and related matters.

Glasgow Rangers Football Club News.
Rangers news with linked but pretty inactive forum.

Squidoo : Lenses : RadicalStu Lens
Lense showing my various stuff from various places

Windows Live Local
The new name (and location) for MSN Virtual Earth. Currently in Beta but looking pretty good.

Discover Music - Pandora
An amazing site where you put in an artist or track and it plays similar tracks that you can say you like or dislike.

Banking on a virtual economy | Newsmakers | CNET News.com
Late last month, Jon Jacobs, an independent filmmaker from Miami, became the first person in the history of online gaming to spend $100,000 on a single virtual item when he bought a space station in the game "Project Entropia."

evhead: Ten Rules for Web Startups
Useful for any startup really.

Do It Now by Steve Pavlina
Time Management strategy and techniques - still to read

PowerToys for Windows Media Player - The Unofficial Microsoft Weblog - microsoft.weblogsinc.com
The latest Microsoft Downloads newsletter has a link to a really interesting set of PowerToys for Windows Media Player.

FILExt - The File Extension Source
search for the programs that use files with a particular extension.

Polyphasic sleep - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Polyphasic sleep is a sleep pattern specification intended to reduce sleep time to 2–5 hours daily. This is achieved by spreading out sleep into short naps of around 20–45 minutes throughout the day. This is supposed to allow for more waking hours wit

10 Business Models for Bloggers | Performancing.com
Whether you're blogging full or part-time, if you expect to make money, you need to have a clear business model. It's no good just posting and expecting the cheques to roll in, you need to plan for how that cash will start flowing.

Seth's Blog: Understanding Local Max
The local max is where you get stuck. You have to go through extra pain to reach a global max.

Seven Habits Book Summaries
A summary of each of the chapters of Steven Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Million Dollar Experiment

I am taking part in Steve Pavlina’s Million Dollar Experiment. 

In an easy and relaxed manner, in a healthy and positive way, in its own perfect time, for the highest good of all, I intend $1,000,000 to come into my life and into the lives of everyone who holds this intention.

This is based on Steve’s theory of Intention-Manifestation.  This states that the act of  stating your intention to do something will cause it to happen.  Steve is pretty convinced that this works for him.  You could make an argument for this working on the basis of you being more aware of potential opportunities but Steve thinks that there is a higher consciousness at work providing the resources to allow him to get what he is intending to get.

Instinctively, this sounds like nonsense to me.  I am a naturally sceptical person and woolly, improvable concepts like a “higher consciousness” would normally turn me off.  However, recently, I have been thinking about new concepts in a different way.  I have been wondering if there is another way of evaluating new ideas.  Rather than being completely sceptical about them, might it be beneficial to, somehow, try believing it and see what the results are?  Using anecdotal evidence in this way is something I am normally wary of.  There is bound to be an element of a self-fulfilling prophecy about this.  Is there a way, then, for me to take this into account, or even just ignore it, and still get some sort of benefit from a new idea?  Maybe, it does not actually matter how some things work.  It is even possible that analysing the process too closely could cause a negative effect.

Anyway, I am going with it.  I am trying not to dismiss any possible benefits as coincidence and to simply concentrate on the positives.  If it works, great; if not, I will have learned something, at least about myself.

So far, then, I have started this new blog.  I am making a determined effort to post to it on a regular basis.  At the moment, I still don’t have an obvious focus for the blog to keep people interested but I am just really looking at finding and developing my voice and the writing habit.  I have also added Google AdSense to this blog and my old blog and have so far earned the princely sum of $12.30.  I’m well on my way to that million.

I am a Lensmaster at Squidoo

Fred Wilson has pointed out a new service called Squidoo that allows you to create a focused web page, called a Lens.  You can add text areas, links, and content from RSS feeds all with a consistent look and feel.  You can also add modules to show content from Technorati, Amazon and Flickr.  I would expect more of these type of modules to follow.  An obvious one would be a mapping component.

I’m not entirely sure of its value as yet but I have been playing around with it and it is remarkably easy to pull together a useful site.  With a few minutes work I created two lenses.  This one and this one.  I’ll keep playing with it and it will either become useful or I’ll forget about it.

David Murray’s Loyalty Overdose

I’m really not sure what to make of the news today that Alex McLeish is to remain the Rangers manager.  I have to admit that I did not expect this at all.  All of the signs seemed to say that he would be moved aside and a new manager would be appointed.

On the one hand, I have nothing but respect for Alex and believe him to have successfully steered Rangers through a difficult period when he was forced to decrease the wage bill in every year of his tenure.  His two league titles came during a period that I did not thing would bring any due to the financial position that David Murray had allowed to develop at Ibrox.  When he was appointed it was clear that Advocaat could not be allowed to continue and Alex, although not universally accepted, had an immediate impact.   The ten-seconds-to-go cup winner of that season will live with me for ever as will the two last-day championship wins.  Those were great days to be a Rangers fan: all of them among the best.

On the other hand, there is this season.  This season has not been without its elements of success.  Qualifying from the Champions League group stage was a tremendous, although, long overdue, achievement for all involved.  In a normal season, this could be taken in isolation and Alex would be able to unambiguously bask in the glory.  However, this is not a normal season in this regard.  Rangers are in the midst of their longest ever run without a victory, are effectively out of the championship race by the beginning of December and, the way they are playing, will struggle to secure any sort of European place.  Before Tuesday night this was unacceptable (much earlier, in fact) and one stirring performance against Internazionale does not change that fact.

Loyalty is an admirable attribute and one that Rangers fans value.  Seven weeks ago, I thought the time had come to replace Alex McLeish and the fact that David Murray stood by him then showed his loyalty to Alex.  I think that the latest decision is plain wrong.  I desperately hope to be proven wrong but I suspect that this is a bad move for Rangers and will ultimately end with Alex McLeish being sacked in an unpleasant manner at some point in the future; probably the end of the season.

The time is right for Alex McLeish to move on and for that not to be happening, despite the qualification from the champions league, is a huge mistake.  So, how should I react in this case?  Should I be marching to the Ibrox car park and demanding blood?  Should I be throwing my lot in with Alex and giving him my unconditional support? 

It’s a conundrum, but, I believe myself to be a realist and, as a realist, I should face up to reality.  The reality here is that the decision has been made and the Alex McLeish will be the Rangers manager for at least the rest of this season.  I’m not really the protesting in the car park kind, either, but at this point there is nothing to be gained in any case. 

I’m going to go along with Big Eck and with Fat Eck.  Let’s support the team, hope that Alex has just turned it around, David Murray will be proved right and that we will go from strength to strength.  You never know.

Keeping Mum on Orange Wednesday

Penny has an Orange phone and regularly takes advantage of the Orange Wednesday, two for one offer.  Normally we go to the Showcase cinema at the Phoenix in Paisley.  However in recent weeks months there has been an obnoxious smell in the foyer that makes the experience unpleasant.  Penny has also been disappointed with the decreasing selection of Ice Cream flavours and so she prompted us to try somewhere different.  So, for the first time we spent our Wednesday evening at the Odeon at Springfield Quay in Glasgow.  This met our requirements, no smell and lots of ice cream flavours, but was slightly more expensive and slightly further away but it was all round a better experience.

Keeping Mum is a charming and innocent film about Anglicanism, country life, voyeurism,  adultery and murder.  Really, it is.  The subject matter sounds grim but the film is very light so you come out really feeling like it is the charming and innocent film I am claiming.  It is in the classic tradition of British comedies with a relaxed feel similar to movies like The Lady Killers and Local Hero.

Keeping Mum works reasonably well as a comedy.  Rowan Atkinson plays the basically straight role of the uptight vicar with his normal comic genius and the rest of the cast are just right for their characters.  The plot is complete nonsense but never takes itself seriously enough for that to matter.

Penny enjoyed it more that I did but it was fun and is worth seeing.  You won’t miss anything by waiting till it’s out on DVD though.

Personal Mission Statement

I have been re-visiting Stephen Covey's Seven Habits and trying to focus much more on what I want my life to be about.  I have come up with a mission statement that comes close to summing up my principles.  This is a work in progress and I will be revisiting it often.

I will:

Be happy.  Misery feeds on itself.  Work at being happy.
Be enthusiastic.
Take care of myself.
Work to improve my fitness and intellectual capabilities.
Deal with responsibilities in a timely manner.
Think through consequences.
Think about how my actions will affect others and how it mill make them feel.
Think seriously about maintenance and planning.
Look for something to do each day that will be enjoyable.
Strive to focus on whatever I am working on and not get distracted.
Try not to hurt people.
Work at making life better for my family.

David Murray Must Take Responsibility

"Managers have a shelf life at a club."  Those were the words of Alex McLeish after another awful display by Rangers Football Club.  In this interview he seemed to be accepting that his time with Rangers is up.  Since then Rangers have staggered to a lucky draw in Porto and another humiliating draw against Falkirk.  Alex is not a bad manager.  In fact, I think that he has done an excellent job during most of his time in charge of Rangers.  Things change, though.  Sometimes, a situation just gets out of control and you need to face that fact and make a change.  Everyone now assumes that Tuesday's match with Inter Milan will be the last in which Alex is the manager.  However, even if this is the case, the situation has been allowed to drag on for far too long.

David Murray must hold up his hand and accept that he has made a mess of the situation at Rangers.  In October it became apparant that Alex McLeish was not going to be able to turn round a terrible start to the Scottish League season.  The Rangers players were low on confidence, playing badly and looked like they expected the manager to get sacked.  The point of no return had been passed.  The players looked poor to mediocre and Alex had tried everything that he knew.  It wasn't working.  This was substantially the same set of players that had miraculously won the Scottish title in May so there is undoubtedly some quality in the team.  However, the performances of the team this season have been dreadful.

There were many people saying that November was going to be the crunch time for Alex McLeish.  In fact, as far as I am concerned, October sealed his fate.  Two wins out of six very winnable games left us looking for miracles all over the place.  The beginning of November saw Rangers going in to an extremely tough set of games.  The miracles were there for the taking but failed to materialise.  Rangers did not win a single game in November and only the draw in Porto was an acceptable result.  We went in to November hoping for the best but knew that what materialised was not only possible but likely.

After the disgraceful surrender at Parkhead in the League Cup it should have been obvious even to a non-football man like David Murray that a change of manager was needed.  Instead we got the ridiculous decision to review the situation in December.  This was a shockingly bad decision that has damaged both Rangers and Alex McLeish.  With each passing game Alex's reputation gets further damaged.  Rangers now have no chance of winning the league and will struggle to win a place in Europe through their league position.  Today's shocking collapse against Falkirk brings the run of games without a victory to nine.  This is unprecedented in Rangers 132 year history and would have been avoided if David Murray had made the appropriate decision in October.

Hopefully, Rangers will win on Tuesday and become the first Scottish team to qualify from a Champions League group.  Alex McLeish can then walk away with this achievement intact and Rangers can move on.  Win, lose or draw, the manager must change on Wednesday.  Anything else is unthinkable.

XBox 360 Availability

The XBox 360 is here.  Sort of.  Reportedly 300,000 were in Europe for the launch.  I'm not sure how many found there way to the UK but they all went immediately.  Those that managed to buy them may well have been paying a bit of a premium but not nearly as much as those that missed out but were still determined to get them with prices on EBay going from £500 to over £1000.

My experience was fairly similar.  Penny was told that Toys R Us would have them and that "if you were here at 9 you will get one."  Judging by reports elsewhere this seemed a bit optimistic and they also seemed to be more expensive than Amazon.  So we ordered from Amazon although they were saying that orders wouldn't be fulfilled until next year.  When the confirmation email came in, the predicted delivery date was the end of February.  A bit late for Christmas?  Well, it will allow Jordan to exercise some patience.  And, just maybe, they will have solved the quality problems by then.

Teenage Kicks

One of the more common commercials on TV at the moment is being run by a mobile phone company and features an easy listening version of the Undertones classic "Teenage Kicks".  Listening to the advert it is easy to forget just what a great song this is but I heard it on the radio the other day and my youth came bounding back.  It's a fantastic song and one that I loved as a spotty teenager.  It captured the energy of the British punk scene (we thought it was all new; who had heard of the Ramones?) without the negativity of the Sex Pistols and so many of their immitators.  I'm going to listen to some more Undertones.  If you want, you can even buy me something.

A Season With Verona

Very few journalists “get” football and in particular the fan’s relationship to and all-consuming identity with their team.  You only have to look at the self serving, hypocritical, sanctimonious pap that is served up by the Scottish press in reporting the game itself or news about the game.  The fans hate the journalists.  They are perceived as lazy, incompetent and ignorant.  They are perceived that way because they are that way.

We go through life not noticing this, or, at least, accepting it.  Then some writing comes along that shows what is possible when writing about football.  Writing that understands the game and what it means to be a fan.  “A Season with Verona” by Tim Parks is just such a piece of writing.  Tim has lived in Italy for 20 years and has grown to love Italy, the Italian game and Hellas Verona. 

For the season 2000-2001, Tim set out to go to every game, home and away and to write a book about the experience.  Setting out to write a book is one thing.  Following the club that you love up and down the country in the company of people whose commitment to the club goes slightly beyond the sane is another.  In A Season with Verona, Tim finds this out and the experience changes him.  At one point he is in a conversation with an older fan that used to go the away games but doesn’t any more:

Pietro shakes his head. ‘If you do the away games, it takes you over. You lose a sense of proportion. It fills your whole life. It’s too strong.’  At once I’m aware that he is describing something I have felt growing in myself, a sense that I am losing control of my thought patterns.  My mind is full of chants.  I’m constantly whistling the triumphal march of Aida or ‘Guantanamera’.  Even at the breakfast table, even in the corridors at the university.  And after every away game the bus rumbles on longer and longer in my head.

The Verona fans are castigated by the press and opposing fans as racist and fascist.  Most of the fans are indifferent or resent this stereotype but the die-hards have a slightly schizophrenic reaction to this reputation: partly denying and partly taking pride in it.  But to some extent, it’s all an act; something they have to do to be a real fan.  Something that is part of their identity; an identity that they feel makes them better than the fans of other teams.  Whether it’s the privileged fans of Milan and Juventus, the despised southerners or the local hatred of Bergamo and Brescia and Vicenza, there is an assumption that the Verona fans are the best.  And the fact that the team are perennial strugglers only ties the bonds tighter.

Reading this book brought many moments of recognition for how the fans actually feel.  It’s not a simple thing; there is a huge emotional bond but not all of the emotions are positive.  Tim Parks captures this remarkably well.  This is a book about identity, about hope, about despair, about euphoria, about hate, about love, about Italy, about buses and all in the name of the beautiful game.

The 46 Best-ever Freeware Utilities

Gizmo's The 46 Best-ever Freeware Utilities is a fabulous list of free programs for almost every purpose.  I am already using some on his list and I'll certainly be trying out some more.

Number 1 is the Best Browser.  There really is no question in my mind that this is Firefox.  The tabbed interface, the extensions and the extra feeling of security all make this a must have.
Number 3 is Best Free Adware/Spyware/Scumware Remover. Again, the recomendation is one that I would heartily endorse.  Microsoft Antispyware is one of the first things I install.
I've been trying out Number 14.  The Best free Clipboard Replacement Utility.  The recomendation is Clipboard Recorder.
I have also tried Number 15 - the HTML editor from Nvu.  My immediate requirement was to edit some ASP.NET custom controls.  Nvu didn't like these, so I was back to editing the text and Nvu was gone.

Many of the others I have used, some I still use and others I have never had a use for the type of product.  There are a few others that I will be trying, though.  Any fantastically good or bad experiences will be reported here.

My name is

My name is not RadicalStu but the sentiment is.  I've had a blog in the past and I'll probably keep posting work related stuff to it.  It's a bit staid, though.  It's hosted on my employer's server and that puts a damper on some of the things I might say.  This blog will be a lot more shoot from the hip, very much Ready, Fire, Aim.  Let's see what works and what doesn't.
Let's start with some info about me.  I live in Paisley, near Glasgow in Scotland with my wife (no link but I'm trying to get her interested) and her two teenage children.  I work as a developer in Bellshill, Lanarkshire and so have to travel through Glasgow each day, unless I work from home.
My work is mostly developing database solutions using Microsoft products: ASP.NET, VB.NET, SQL Server, Access (unfortunately, I've been unable to get away from Access).
My other interests include football., reading (buy me stuff here) and technology (toys:)).
I'll try to be occasionally entertaining, occasionally informative and might be occasionaly controversial.  Well, I'm  ready.