(Sorry for that rubbish title!) 18 year old Ding Junhui won his first ever UK Championship. He beat the legend Steve Davis 10-6. I watched the last few frames – a great match.

One thing about Ding though was that he seemed to show no emotion – maybe he is a Vulcan – he could be as well since we cant see the top of ears!! I think he needs a haircut!! When he finally won he did finally manage to crack a smile but it all looked like an uncomfortable smile!

Well done Ding! The first ever player outside the UK to have won the UK championship.

In some other sport news, Chelsea beat Arsenal 2-0. For once I wanted Arsenal to win. It would have meant United were 6 points behind them. A draw would have been good too. Arsenal are now 20 points behind Chelsea (and 11 behind United). It now looks like Chelseas main challengers are United and Liverpool.

Back to the actual match, Arsenal were unlucky with a disallowed goal – it was given for offside but Van Persie was onside and it looks like they gave offside for Henry (who was not ‘active’ in play). Also Essein once again was at the centre of some controvery – looked like he tried to elbow someone and also in another challenge looked like he just tripped someone up. Out of about 3 ‘tackles’ he got 1 yellow card. One other thing to note is that the 2 managers didnt shake hands at the end of the match – Jose just walked straight down the tunnel – Arsene Wenger said it wasnt deliberate but I think it was!!

Today was the last Top 40 chart before next weeks Christmas charts. No. 1 was the JCB song by Nizlopi. Wasnt too sure to start with but I like it now. It reached No. 1 and beat Westlife to the top (so thats one good thing!!). However the general state of the UK charts is rubbish. Evidence of this is the Crazy Frog – Jingle Bells/U Can’t Touch This is No. 5. What on earth is going on!!! Also Robbie’s new song is No.8. One surprise is that McFly entered at no. 9.

Related link

BBC News

Its the season of goodwill and all that (and also the season for eating and drinking too much). I went for a meal last weekend which I helped organise as part of the BBC Organisation I am the member of.

We had a Christmas meal in Pitcher and Piano. The food was OK. I had chicken salad for a starter but it only had 3 pieces of chicken and actually didnt taste that good. The main course was duck which was really nice. For dessert I had just cheese and crackers – it wasnt the best dessert in the world but you dont expect too much from cheese and crackers. The chocolate pudding some ppl had looked really nice and wish I had that instead!!

Afterwards we went to the club MTwo till it closed about 3am. Was really tired and I played football the next day for over 2 hours!

Yesterday I went out for meal etc in Liverpool. We went to Mei Mei near Chinatown. Had a really nice meal including lobster. We then went to the club Modo in Concert Square. A very good night. Thanks to the ppl who organised it all

Photos are now online. (You need login details to access them so email me for them). Liverpool pics | Manchester pics

Space Cadets started on Channel 4 last week. It sounded like a great idea but too be honest its been a bit dull. I watched the first couple episodes and caught a few bits here and there. The idea is that they have picked 11 ppl to ‘go to Russia to some space camp and then go into space’. The ppl they have chosen seem to be some of the least intelligent ppl in the UK. Out of all the contestants there are 3 actors. They have chosen 4 ppl to go ‘into space’. At the moment 3 contenstants and 1 actor are in ’space’ and the rest are in the space camp (called STAR). The ppl live in the space camp, as far as I know, have not been shown at all so they are just doing nothing!!

There is a rumour that they are all actors and the joke is on us – one of the contestants is in the Give Blood advert.

The rating has been going lower and lower and is now below 2 million. I plan to watch it tonight because the ppl in the space camp will be told they are not in Russia (and are just near Ipswich). Tomorrow the others find out they are not in space. Its rumoured that Channel 4 have spent £5m on this show. Personally I don’t think its money well spent. The actual ’space-ship’ didn’t seem to be that well made and when they went in one of them almost broke it! What is quite funny is that a few of the contestants have almost guessed what is really happening.

UPDATE: I watched the final episode on Friday and it abit better but it was all relative – it was still disappointing. When they came out of the ’space pod’ instead of being all shocked they were actually shown a video clip just before going out so they were not as shocked. It was so embarassing for them but they got £25000 out of it and also prize to really go to Russia, STAR and a weightless plane trip.

Related links

Channel 4 – Space Cadets

United played Wigan today in the premiership and won 4-0. Rio scored his first goal for United (about time!!), Rooney scored a couple and Ruud scored the penalty he won.

I only saw the last part of the second half and not much happened but from what I have read we played really well in the first half. Ronaldo came on in the 2nd half and looked like he was trying to be more of a team player more but I think he was trying to hard and passing the ball at the wrong time a couple times. He is still young and has time to learn. We are now 9 points behind Chelsea – they play Arsenal this weekend. For once I will be cheering on Arsenal. United are playing Villa the day before so its possible we could be 6 points behind them by Saturday night.

Related links

BBC Sport

The draw was made for the World Cup 2006 in Germany tonight in Leipzig. The draw was pretty complicated because certain teams couldn’t play in certain groups because FIFA wanted only certain number of European and African teams in certain groups.

England are in group B. The complete group are:

England
Paraguay
Trinidad & Tobago
Sweden

We are playing Sweden again!! We havent beaten Sweden for ages!! Sven didn’t look too pleased!! LOL

List of all the different ‘pots’.

I personally think its a good draw for England – We didn’t get Netherlands!!! I would not have liked to face S. Korea either since they play really well and work really hard. Also pleased we didn’t get US because they are a pretty decent team too. Also very happy we didn’t get Australia, Czech Republic and Portugal.

If England don’t qualify from that group then something is seriously wrong. (However, England usually play better against better teams so I don’t know if its a good draw!!!! LOL).

The other groups are:

GROUP A
Germany
Costa Rica
Poland
Ecuador

GROUP B
England
Paraguay
Trinidad & Tobago
Sweden

GROUP C
Argentina
Ivory Coast
Serbia & Montenegro
Holland

GROUP D
Mexico
Iran
Angola
Portugal

GROUP E
Italy
Ghana
USA
Czech Republic

GROUP F
Brazil
Croatia
Australia
Japan

GROUP G
France
Switzerland
South Korea
Togo

GROUP H
Spain
Ukraine
Tunisia
Saudi Arabia

I think the most difficult group is Group E. Group C looks like a good group with Holland and Argentina in it. There doesnt really seem to be the usual ‘Group of Death’ though.

There is a great Score predictor here. If England get past the group stages they play the winner or runner up of Group A which is likely to be Germany or Poland.

Related links:

BBC Sport – The complete draw

United lost last night and are out of the Champions League and not even in the UEFA cup. Bottom of the group – on paper a relatively poor group. Proof of that was the number of draws in the group and the lack of many goals.

United played really poor last night – it was like most European games for United this season – we just could not keep the ball. The few chances we got were not taken. A lot of ppl have been having a go at Ronaldo but I feel its harsh to blame just one player. Rooney for once had a poor game, Giggs didnt no much at all. The only player who did OK was Van Der Saar.

Although we did not really deserve to go through on that performance (and the recent performance in Europe) Benfica were cheating diving b*stards! Whenever they got a little knock etc they fell down as if they had been shot. For example, the goalkeeper jumped for the ball near the end with Rio and then fell to the floor. He was on the floor for about 2 minutes. On another occasion Beto was ‘injured’ – they took him of on the stretcher thing and then as soon as he was on the sideline, jumped up, had a little hobble and then was fine. The referee didn’t help at all blowing the whistle for EVERYTHING and what seems to be everything for Benfica and nothing for United. For little challenges he would give yellow cards, for challenges when the player got the ball fine (i.e. Scholes) he stopped play. This did not help the game and there was no momentum in the game because of the ref.

Totally gutted. The only positive from the game, and this is the only thing is that the likes of Rooney, Rio and Neville will be fitter for the World Cup.

Related links:

BBC Sport

The Champions League game on Tuesday (Chelsea v Liverpool), was a pretty dull game with only 2 real goal attempts. The game will be remembered for the disgusting shocking terrible ‘tackle’ by Essien. The ball was no where in sight and hit Hamann just below the knee. It could very easily have broken his leg. Once again he fell to the floor and kind-off pretended to be injured. As Hamann walked off the pitch to get treatment you could see the damage to his leg – bad brusing and what looked like stud-marks on his shin.

Its not the first time that he has made such a terrible tackle and got away with it. Last season v Bolton for example. There was one occasion (it may have been the Bolton ‘tackle’) where his challenge was really high, caught the player and then faked his own injury and got away without a red card.

I hope the governing bodies look into this and ban him for a few games (and not just cause he is a Chelsea fan). Keane’s challenge years ago on Haaland got him a 6 match ban (3 for the red card and 3 more cause it was a terrible tackle). Keane was right to be banned for that. However, I will not be surprised if he doesn’t get any ban or if he gets some stupid fine (which never hurts the millionaire players or the club).

In the post match interview Hamann did very well to keep calm and basically say that the ref didnt give a card so it must have not been a red card offence. The ref could also be in trouble for not even giving a yellow card (but he was actually looking at a challenge a couple seconds before so he may be let off).

Related links:

BBC Sport – Hamann outraged by Essien tackle
BBC Sport – Essien could face video evidence

Yesterday Adobe completed its acquisition of Macromedia. They are already getting rid of the Macromedia brand – if you go to the Macromedia site now it has the Adobe logo and it says “formerly Macromedia”. The products are still called Macromedia – e.g. Studio 8 is still “Macromedia Studio 8″. They are already selling a few ‘combined products’ including the Adobe Web Bundle – Studio 8 with Adobe Creative Studio 2 Premium.

The Macromedia shares ceased trading and was converted to Adobe on December 5th.

I just pray that they don’t ruin it and lose some good products. It looks like Director and Freehand will be lost but I never really used them. However Flash Paper could be lost (brilliant program) but it looks like it will be combined with Adobe Reader in some way (so all is not lost). Dreamweaver is almost certain to be OK since it is the market leader. I hope Fireworks is still around – however the industry favourite is Illustrator. Also many ppl using Photoshop. I just hope my favourite apps are still around in some form and the programs don’t start getting really bloated and take ages to load (e.g. Photoshop!!).

One thing which will be interesting to see is the competition from Microsoft. They are releasing something called the Expression suite. It will have all the tools for web design and graphic design. It also integrates with Visual Studio for development of XAML and .NET apps.

Ole is going to be playing for the reserves on Monday. After the bad news a few days ago, it now seems he is almost back to full fitness.

Sir Alex Ferguson told the Manchester Evening News: “Ole should start or play against Liverpool on Monday.

Woohoo!!!

Related news:

BBC Sport

UPDATE: OLES BACK!!!

He played in the 1st half for the reserve match versus Liverpool. Had a couple efforts on goal and had 1 or 2 good challenges.

Related news:

BBC Sport