Apr 02

Boat Race 2006

Today was the 152nd Oxford/Cambridge Boat Race. This is a strange sporting event, a private match between 2 universities but which is watched by thousands from the bansk and millions on the TV. It’s over 4 miles 374 yards, over a tidal river, nothing like the straight, controlled 2000m international racing, But all of the competitors are internationals, focusing on a completely different type of race and training to take part in this unique event.

This year, I watched the race on TV from a boathouse next to where the crews disembark. Watching the build up, looking at the wind and rain, I knew it was going to be a hard race. I’ve been out on the Tideway in similar conditions – they are not nice at all, especially on that last bend at Barnes. Bookies were offering 20-1 on one of the boats sinking (difficult with today’s designs) but Cambridge looked like they were close. I’m naturally biased towards Oxford, in fact 2 of the crew went to my college, so was extremely happy with the result 😉

Here’s the winning crew as they come under Chiswick Bridge.

winningcrew.jpg

And a picture of the trophy, abandoned as the crews and followers went to get dry.

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More photos here

Apr 01

Gretna champions?

In an unlikely story, Gretna, a small town in the Scottsih borders with a population of 3000, has made it into the Scottish Cup Final. This event usually finds the likes of Rangers and Celtic competing. Surprisingly, the team had 4000 supporters at the match.

Apr 01

Creative Challenge

Via Mit Advertsing lab, In what I assume is a tie in with the US version of The Apprentice, Chevrolet have opened a competition to make your own advertisement. In a very nice website, it allows you to combine video shots and music and text however you wish. I can’t work out the way to get to the ads online, but you obviously can…so some have been grabbed for your viewing pleasure.

Whilst many will be complimentary, funny or just plain bad, the competition has also opened the doors to those who do not agreee with big cars. There’s a series over on YouTube (for the while at least) and some more here on Eco-Geek..

These things were inevitable – they would have (at least I hoped they were) covered in all of the preparation for the campaign. The acid test will be what do Chevy do next. Leave the negative ads out there, not go chasing to have them taken down, whilst. hopefully, listen to what they are saying and learn something? Or prove that they are still, really, a command and control marketer, don’t want to listen to their customers and not really interested. I guess we’ll see next week – assuming the lawyers aren’t working the weekend 😉

Apr 01

April Fool Stuff

I’m going to keep this post updated for my own info….

Here’s something from Google. It may not be completely an April fool, but there’s an element of fun about it.

Google Circles is a free service which lets you explore the interests of groups of people around the world, in your hometown, at your workplace, and at your alma mater.

. Try the domain driven pages, and read the FAQ…

How do I keep my own queries from contributing to one or more Google Circles?
The only way to keep your searches from contributing to a Google Circle is to not use Google’s services. There are several other search engines to choose from, none of which receive enough traffic for their operators to successfully perform data mining at this scale.

Think Geek is offering some interesting products. I particulary like the USB Desktop tanning kit and the RFID blocking Tshirt.

Google swap one Matt and 2456 computers for one a href=”http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/006571.html”>Jeremy

Slashdot
goes pink for the day, and runs some interesting stories (Lucas film goes adult!)..although you can’t always tell with slasdot..
slashdot2.JPG

Go and take a look at Flickr’s Interestingness page – it seems to have been taken over by cats. And more cats. Start here and flick through the months.

On the Register, a couple of stories. Although the one about Bush preparing emergency powers to stay on in office is worryingly believable. Meanwhile, China buys Google and announces it secretly.

Some Newspaper stories (all from Tim Worstall)

The Guardian on the Marie-Jesu Pica’s rise to power in the country of San Serriffe. The Bodoni machine guns are a nice touch.

The Guardian also has my favourite – there was a little bit of work gone into this. Chris Martin from Coldplay announcing his support for Tory leader Dvid Cameron, by releasing a new version of a song. Here’s the song…and here’s the lyrics.

And the Daily Mail announces a tax on pencils

A lot of bootstrapping on the web came from the openess of the code, which also allows things like this, announcing George Galloway’s resignation from his party. By the ‘BBC’…or someone who can copy their style.

And another Google site..Google Romance..with contextual ads.

6. What is Contextual Dating?
It’s a free date plus the added accrued value of the past decade’s worth of post-Industrial Age online marketing genius, all tied into a real-time, video-based, GPS-tracked, psychographically astute and environmentally pervasive promotional system.

And even TechCrunch gets in on it, with a write up of Goop:

The most interesting aspects of the service, however, are a number of del.icio.us/flickr-like features to allow anyone to create their own topic-based version of the main service, create a mashup with any XUL or LUX interface and prominently display the results to users on a Soap based platform with fully closed APIs. At this time, the service is available for download on the Mac platform only, using the Internet Explorer browser.

Meanwhile Yahoo is getting fed up with buying up Web2.0 companies one by one and have decided to take the plunge and buy them all at once. Think of the legal fees saved.

And on that…going to leave it..as Wikipedia has a far more comprehensive list

Posted in fun