Chelsea and Arsenal cannot both win

t’s fair to see that Enzo started on a strong note after an appalling Community Shield match. ManCity is now top with a comfy gap, awaiting results from other matches.

was rather surprised today to see “Ed” finding the courage to enter the room and clean the floor in the sense that he ate the remnants of seeds scattered on it. He never had the courage to stay on any of the door handles (or the doors) to be bottle-fed, but somehow he wasn’t afraid of getting close to humans.

The training goes on. Today Rianne fed “Sweepy” and taught her tables manners.

In our experience, birds are smart and have very good memory. They know which humans they can trust and which ones they must never trust.

Based on Falkon and Firefox

‘ve noticed many strange things today in the live pages of Manchester City matches and checked in two very different browsers to ensure it wasn’t browser-specific. The score does not show up, no related information either (minute, assists, goals). No line-up, stats, scores. Only “Commentary” and video show up, the rest is conspicuously broken/missing.

These pages were always bloated and full of DRM (no way to disable videos either, only pause them).

So I’ll be looking for alternatives to the official site. The admins went too far.

To keep an eye on a match should not take up that many resources. Now it’s not even working.

The official PL site is no better. Also horrible bloat.

Prepaing for next year’s publication already

t’s already autumn (by some calendars) and today we resume a series about the EPO and another about the SRA over at Techrights.

We expect this coverage about these scandals to last well into next year. We have patience and resilience.

These are matters of public interest.

A perk of living next to major facilities of non-military nature (datacentres [1, 2] are used for military)

think I neglected to mention a sort of “uptime privilege” this morning. I realised this only later. It’s a kind of an “RK” privilege one can forget about. You take this for granted when you’re next to international games or actions.

My computers have high uptime records owing to good electricity infrastructure (reliability/uptime/availability); we have a sort of fortune or the mere luck of having very reliable electric grid (near a very large and famous stadium) with persistent connections and decent hardware nearby, fallbacks included, with no natural disasters, not even floods (we’re in a slope).

In some parts of the world they have extreme weather this year, including prohibitive costs of living (UK minimum wage a lot higher than the average in Europe), war, conscription, and worse. Here, unlike Ukraine, no shelter time (or risk of being hit by missiles), is expected, so carrying on as usual is almost always possible. Until someone from another continent pays $130,000 to drag you down to London. But even then, your computers remain turned on at home.

Life goes on

think it is fair to say that our life this year has been good and we’re more productive than ever before. Tomorrow it’ll be exactly two years since we sued Garrett. We sued him in September 2024 [1, 2]. We didn’t invest much in our lawsuit because, according to legal professionals, even if we won, he would not pay. He was already broke (his wife shed light on that), he lived in another continent, and he had really bad character.

We move on with our lives and we do what we can do best. We curate links and publish many articles.

Don’t underestimate them

have been goalkeeping since I was a young kid. My body type suited that position and I naturally became good enough to win some medals and be the goalkeeper for Computer Science at the Victoria University of Manchester (before the UMIST merger). I still have the kit. I don’t wear it much; I want to preserve it.

Goalkeeping is not as easy as it seems (despite being idle a lot of the time) and a lot boils down to reflexes as there’s not much time to think or plan. Goalkeepers can be significantly older than the average player on the field because they compensate with experience and seniority for a declining stamina and inability to jump far/high. Many goals are scored because the goalkeeper didn’t do well enough, e.g. stood at the wrong place, spilled the ball, dribbled too much.

Goalkeepers that are good not only stop balls from entering the net; they know when to catch, when to hit the ball down to the ground, then catch (no rival player nearly and fast/strong shot – making a direct catch riskier), when to pinch/parry the ball over the bar, when to deflect the ball back into play (if a defender nearby can take the rebound), when to carry the ball, when to punch/kick the ball (and how far), and so on…

There’s not much time to think about all this. The decision needs to be a reflex, based on who’s near you, how strong the shot is, the position relative to the bar etc.

Spatial awareness is important (distance to bars, which players stand where, and whose team they play for).

It’s a lot to do with gut feeling, it’s like playing an instrument.

There is also a lot to be said about how to handle different ways of taking penalties (e.g. kicker stops near the ball to trick the keeper into jumping prematurely) and one-on-one situations where the keeper can run outwards to face the player or stay close to goal, wherein the position of the feet can help obstruct a kick, but not while “on the move” (must know when to stop moving, prepare to stretch out limbs).

There’s a lot of fine strategy involved in goalkeeping, many different scenarios to learn from (in order to improve). That’s why goalkeepers need their own dedicated coach like Caballero, usually a very experienced but greying (or balding) keeper like aging gymnasts who focus on “theory”, not “practice” (anymore). They “pass the knowledge”…

I like goalkeeping, but when mistakes are made it can be harsh.