You may remember back in 2005 Jamie Oliver tackled the awful school meals served to our nations primary school children, epitomised by the now infamous Turkey Twizzlers. It made great television: the aim was laudable but the obstacles considerable, but by the end he had Greenwich schools eating well.
Now he's back, but this time in America, specifically Huntington, the fattest town in the fattest state in the fattest nation on Earth. As a challenge it's a whole new kettle of fish. Also, it's even more entertaining than before. Despite being what would probably be called a reality show, Jamie's American Food Revolution has all the ingredients of a great drama. Jamie is undoubtedly the underdog, faced with an array of set-in-their-way adversaries, from grizzled "cook" Alice, the American school culinary system, the kids' comfort zones and best of all, radio DJ Rod the Dawg.
Rod is a brilliant antagonist: he is immediately unrelentingly opposed to anything Jamie says or does, he's thick, regressive and agressive. 'I don't want to go around eating lettuce all day' neatly summed up his, and the wider American population's, sentiments.
Oliver gets a lot of stick from (stupid) people for being rich and egotistical, but frankly anyone that continues to hold this belief after watching not just this show, but all his other shows too, is a moron. That Jamie is tackling a serious problem only makes it more compelling, and also allows us to forgive his often cringeworthy adopted Americanisms. Why he feels he has to call everyone 'brother' I don't know, in fact it's a little bit creepy.
Wednesday, 13 October 2010
Thursday, 23 September 2010
ONE HUNDRED HITS
IMPORTANT EDIT: I completely misunderstood the hit-counter: the one I was looking at was in fact profile views, a very different beast to blog views. Rather than a poxy 100 views, I actually have 1600+, which I'm rather chuffed about. There's a really neat feature that breaks down page views in more or less every way you can think of, and while I won't go into much detail - I don't have enough time and I can't imagine it interests anyone but me - I'll still put a few of the most noteworthy down.
My most popular blog post by far is the castle blog, with 450 or so, a fair way ahead of number 2, my Everything Everything review (that said, the Everything Everything review is much younger). It's nice that the two that I consider to be my strongest have garnered the most attention.
The UK and US are exactly tied for most views at 484.
Erm, that's pretty much it. Ignore everything hereafter.
YES!
Twenty months after my first blog post, way back in February 2009, I have hit the big 100 blog views. That's one every six days, how amazing!
Okay, that is pretty pathetic. I herby declare I will embark upon an extensive campaign of blog-plugging, i.e. linking to it in all my online profiles. Let's aim for 200 by this time next year.
Blog Breakdown:
Duration: 20 months
Posts: 54
Monthly Average: 2.7 posts
Monthly High: June 2010, 9 posts
Monthly Low: April May 2009, 0 posts; August 2009, 1 post.
By genre:
Music: 18 posts
Sport: 13 posts
Film: 5 posts
Other stuff: the rest
Trends: Over the course of my blog random pieces about random things have become far more scarce, with the focus now being on music, sport or film. They are also longer and more coherent. My best one? The most fun to write was the first one about the Tour de France, but looking back on it now my writing is pretty poor. In that case, the recent review of Man Alive must be the best, and is actually the only review on the reasonably highly-trafficked SputnikMusic.
Other thoughts: Sport is really easy to write about. Weighty issues are far harder. I should write about literature more.
My most popular blog post by far is the castle blog, with 450 or so, a fair way ahead of number 2, my Everything Everything review (that said, the Everything Everything review is much younger). It's nice that the two that I consider to be my strongest have garnered the most attention.
The UK and US are exactly tied for most views at 484.
Erm, that's pretty much it. Ignore everything hereafter.
By genre:
Music: 18 posts
Sport: 13 posts
Film: 5 posts
Other stuff: the rest
Trends: Over the course of my blog random pieces about random things have become far more scarce, with the focus now being on music, sport or film. They are also longer and more coherent. My best one? The most fun to write was the first one about the Tour de France, but looking back on it now my writing is pretty poor. In that case, the recent review of Man Alive must be the best, and is actually the only review on the reasonably highly-trafficked SputnikMusic.
Other thoughts: Sport is really easy to write about. Weighty issues are far harder. I should write about literature more.
Sunday, 19 September 2010
The Long-Lost Art of the Guitar Solo
In a time now sadly passed, any rock act worth its salt had a guitarist with some serious chops. We're talking Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, Deep Purple, AC/DC - all bands with great guitarists that knew the difference between tasteful licks and self-indulgence, who didn't rely on pure speed in their solos, as many guitarists do nowadays. (Why did I accidentally put so many food-related words in those two sentences? I just ate an' everything). But barring the few survivors from those better times (Iron Maiden, Mark Knopfler) there has been nothing in the past ten years with anything to the aforementioned guitar Gods, except The Darkness.
Despite scooping four Brit awards in 2004, The Darkness were a band that few people could take seriously. They saw the spandex, the castrato, the high-camp, and for a glorious few month everybody embraced rock, and make no mistake, Permission To Land is rock at its best. Not since Back In Black had a band wielded distortion as capably as Justin Hawkins and brother Dan. But then people began to feel a bit guilty about it all. Did we really like this lot? They are sooo unfashionable! The Darkness were swept under the carpet, and the (admittedly inferior) follow-up album, One Way Ticket To Hell sold poorly in comparision, and unlike other artists and bands that rose to prominence in the early 00s, such as the Libertines and Franz Ferdinand, The Darkness spawned no immitators. They were abandoned and left to plow their own lonely furrow until they disbanded.
I think there is also a case to be made for the guitar solo being replaced by a rap break. In the 70s and 80s many pop acts featured (bad) guitar solos, just because it was the done thing: verse chorus verse solo verse outro. Nowadays a good percentage of pop releases have some sort of rap breakdown, but there are musical and not juststructural similarites. Both are largely self-indulgent, not brilliantly skillful and often incongruous to the style of the song. Now while I don't particularly miss the fashion for songs with bad solos, it is indicative of the shift away from the use of electric guitars in mainstream music.
Okay, I'm not entirely telling the truth when I say there has been no other great guitar work. Early Muse albums dripped with Matt Bellamy's signature guitar playing, though it was less soloing and more excellent rhythm playing. Then there are the metal bands, though despite being a genre that relies entirely on the guitar, bands have tended to descend into the drop D chug of, say, Meshuggah or the aimless tragic wankery of Dream Theater. The only one that springs to mind is Opeth, and while metal isn't my forte, I know enough about it to make sweeping statements that disregard the whole genre of metal. Er...
Shredding, the art of playing a stupid amount of notes in as short a space as possible, has become the dominant form of the guitar solo. It is crap. Shredding is the guitar equivalent of X Factor melismatic, gymnastic singing that people seem to think is good nowadays. It might seem a strange comparison, but it holds water. Take Alexandra Burke. She has a good voice: it's powerful and she can hit notes accurately, but has absolutely no concept of melody. Instead of finding a note and sticking with it she blasts up and down the scales, leaving you unsure as to what tune she is supposed to be singing. This approach exists on the guitar also, for instance wank-King Steve Vai and his equally bad mentor Joe Satriani. Look them up on YouTube and it won't take long to see what I mean. When Vai tries to give his playing some space à la Pink Floyd, it just sounds dreadful: see For The Love Of God. Put it this way: I can shred. Not very well, but once you know a few scales, and have quick fingers it doesn't take much imagination to play like these guys. However writing solos like the two in Comfortably Numb, both of which are fairly easy to play, takes more than just speed.
Is good guitar playing a thing of the past? Are the likes of the Hawkins brothers, Tom Morello of RATM and Absolution era Muse the last of the old guard? I really hope not.
EDIT: Just looked up For The Love Of God on Youtube and the first video is a perfect example of what I'm talking. Fret-wankage made literal at 4:30, so bad.
Despite scooping four Brit awards in 2004, The Darkness were a band that few people could take seriously. They saw the spandex, the castrato, the high-camp, and for a glorious few month everybody embraced rock, and make no mistake, Permission To Land is rock at its best. Not since Back In Black had a band wielded distortion as capably as Justin Hawkins and brother Dan. But then people began to feel a bit guilty about it all. Did we really like this lot? They are sooo unfashionable! The Darkness were swept under the carpet, and the (admittedly inferior) follow-up album, One Way Ticket To Hell sold poorly in comparision, and unlike other artists and bands that rose to prominence in the early 00s, such as the Libertines and Franz Ferdinand, The Darkness spawned no immitators. They were abandoned and left to plow their own lonely furrow until they disbanded.
I think there is also a case to be made for the guitar solo being replaced by a rap break. In the 70s and 80s many pop acts featured (bad) guitar solos, just because it was the done thing: verse chorus verse solo verse outro. Nowadays a good percentage of pop releases have some sort of rap breakdown, but there are musical and not juststructural similarites. Both are largely self-indulgent, not brilliantly skillful and often incongruous to the style of the song. Now while I don't particularly miss the fashion for songs with bad solos, it is indicative of the shift away from the use of electric guitars in mainstream music.
Okay, I'm not entirely telling the truth when I say there has been no other great guitar work. Early Muse albums dripped with Matt Bellamy's signature guitar playing, though it was less soloing and more excellent rhythm playing. Then there are the metal bands, though despite being a genre that relies entirely on the guitar, bands have tended to descend into the drop D chug of, say, Meshuggah or the aimless tragic wankery of Dream Theater. The only one that springs to mind is Opeth, and while metal isn't my forte, I know enough about it to make sweeping statements that disregard the whole genre of metal. Er...
Shredding, the art of playing a stupid amount of notes in as short a space as possible, has become the dominant form of the guitar solo. It is crap. Shredding is the guitar equivalent of X Factor melismatic, gymnastic singing that people seem to think is good nowadays. It might seem a strange comparison, but it holds water. Take Alexandra Burke. She has a good voice: it's powerful and she can hit notes accurately, but has absolutely no concept of melody. Instead of finding a note and sticking with it she blasts up and down the scales, leaving you unsure as to what tune she is supposed to be singing. This approach exists on the guitar also, for instance wank-King Steve Vai and his equally bad mentor Joe Satriani. Look them up on YouTube and it won't take long to see what I mean. When Vai tries to give his playing some space à la Pink Floyd, it just sounds dreadful: see For The Love Of God. Put it this way: I can shred. Not very well, but once you know a few scales, and have quick fingers it doesn't take much imagination to play like these guys. However writing solos like the two in Comfortably Numb, both of which are fairly easy to play, takes more than just speed.
Is good guitar playing a thing of the past? Are the likes of the Hawkins brothers, Tom Morello of RATM and Absolution era Muse the last of the old guard? I really hope not.
EDIT: Just looked up For The Love Of God on Youtube and the first video is a perfect example of what I'm talking. Fret-wankage made literal at 4:30, so bad.
Friday, 3 September 2010
Everything Everything - Man Alive
After watching from afar for far too long, I joined SputnikMusic, a music reviews site where users can post their own reviews. I blogged about Everything Everything a few months ago, and their debut album is now out, and it's pretty decent. Find my review here.
Like a comic who chains complex pun after complex pun, leaving the brain scrambling to catch up, so goes Man Alive, the debut album from Everything Everything. It is an album unlike anything you've ever heard before, a true original, and at times, to borrow a lyric from Two For Nero, will leave you as "giddy as a baby in a centrifuge". What sets Everything Everything apart from the crowd is Jonathan Higgins' sugary falsetto: he delivers frequently baffling lines, "And I wanna know what happened to your boyfriend because he was looking at me like 'Whoah!'" at speed with constant octave-leaps. It can be quite bewildering.
Full disclosure: if the lyrics actually mean anything coherent it is beyond me. That isn't to say they are bad, far from it, in fact as little sense as they make Higgins has the power of an arresting turn of phrase, juxtaposing 1980s videogame nostalgia, "It's like Sega never died" with echoes of Nazi Germany, "You goosestep around the garden" in Two For Nero. He also on occasion plays with verbal jokes; decide for yourself whether the refrain in album highlight Suffraggette Suffraggette scans "Who's gonna sit on your fence", or "Who's gonna sit on your face".
The vocal hi-jinx does begin to grate by the start of Come Alive Diana. It's one falsetto-leap too far and feels like an attempt to inject some life into an otherwise stale song. Indeed, the last four songs are largely forgettable affairs, with the exception of NASA Is On Your Side, showing refreshing restrain in a slow-burning build-up over solemn keys, before peaking with an exultant chorus.
The focus of this review has been thus-far on the vocals, but there is some really excellent musicianship on display. Guitarist Alex Robertshow is reminiscent of Radiohead's Johnny Greenwood: it's unobtrusive, varied and deft, and also provides one of Man Alive's highpoints. From nowhere Suffraggette Suffragette is illuminated by a dirty great slab of driving distortion, an isolated moment of untempered rawk. It's a fabulous addition, but it's something of a double-edged sword: the other tracks are diminished ever so slightly. Their highly polished arty and intelligent exteriors, particularly Final Form and the closing duo of Tin (The Manhole) and Weights, have their lack of fire and warmth exaggerated.
That said, with such boundless invention it was always likely that Everything Everything would take a few mis-steps, but successes outweigh weaknesses in this superb first effort.
7/10
Like a comic who chains complex pun after complex pun, leaving the brain scrambling to catch up, so goes Man Alive, the debut album from Everything Everything. It is an album unlike anything you've ever heard before, a true original, and at times, to borrow a lyric from Two For Nero, will leave you as "giddy as a baby in a centrifuge". What sets Everything Everything apart from the crowd is Jonathan Higgins' sugary falsetto: he delivers frequently baffling lines, "And I wanna know what happened to your boyfriend because he was looking at me like 'Whoah!'" at speed with constant octave-leaps. It can be quite bewildering.
Full disclosure: if the lyrics actually mean anything coherent it is beyond me. That isn't to say they are bad, far from it, in fact as little sense as they make Higgins has the power of an arresting turn of phrase, juxtaposing 1980s videogame nostalgia, "It's like Sega never died" with echoes of Nazi Germany, "You goosestep around the garden" in Two For Nero. He also on occasion plays with verbal jokes; decide for yourself whether the refrain in album highlight Suffraggette Suffraggette scans "Who's gonna sit on your fence", or "Who's gonna sit on your face".
The vocal hi-jinx does begin to grate by the start of Come Alive Diana. It's one falsetto-leap too far and feels like an attempt to inject some life into an otherwise stale song. Indeed, the last four songs are largely forgettable affairs, with the exception of NASA Is On Your Side, showing refreshing restrain in a slow-burning build-up over solemn keys, before peaking with an exultant chorus.
The focus of this review has been thus-far on the vocals, but there is some really excellent musicianship on display. Guitarist Alex Robertshow is reminiscent of Radiohead's Johnny Greenwood: it's unobtrusive, varied and deft, and also provides one of Man Alive's highpoints. From nowhere Suffraggette Suffragette is illuminated by a dirty great slab of driving distortion, an isolated moment of untempered rawk. It's a fabulous addition, but it's something of a double-edged sword: the other tracks are diminished ever so slightly. Their highly polished arty and intelligent exteriors, particularly Final Form and the closing duo of Tin (The Manhole) and Weights, have their lack of fire and warmth exaggerated.
That said, with such boundless invention it was always likely that Everything Everything would take a few mis-steps, but successes outweigh weaknesses in this superb first effort.
7/10
Tuesday, 24 August 2010
Psychology Experiments and Facebook
Earlier today I came across the excellent website http://youarenotsosmart.com, which de-bunks a whole range of mental processes and thoughts that the majority of us hold. Conditioning is the main thrust of the articles; for the unitiated all animals, human or otherwise, can be trained to follow certain thought-paths by using rewards to strengthen mental connections between actions and consequences. Perhaps the most famous example is Pavlov and his dogs: after ringing a bell and giving them food the dogs began to associate the bell with food, and as a result Pavlov was able to make the dogs salivate whenever they heard the bell, whether food was given to them or not.
However, that is not the experiment I am most interested in. In the twentieth century a famous - possibly the most famous - psychologist was a man called Skinner, who became famous for what were later known as Skinner's Boxes, in which he conducted various experiments on animals, not to mention his own daughter. He trained mice to push a lever, which resulted in food from a chute.
The mice cottoned-on pretty quickly to this, so Skinner gradually changed the frequency of the food, but the mice were able to understand what changes had occured. Food every third push was achieved, then up to fourty and sixty pushes; if the mice knew there would be a reward they would keep pushing. Skinner then set the food to be delivered at random intervals, resulting in the mice pushing it ceaselessly until they were rewarded by their efforts with food.
Skinner also tried to work out how long the mice would take to stop pushing the lever after the food-supply had been cut off. The mice with regular food deliveries realised fairly quickly, but the mice with random distributions of food took much longer to cease with the lever-pushing.
I have come to realise that Facebook has had this effect over me. In my case, notifications are the food equivalent. I check for them several times daily, and far more often than not I am not rewarded. I do, however, get notifications occasionally, and it is this that keeps me coming back. The distribution of notifications is effectively random; my friends post statuses and comments whenver they want with no thought for me personally. I know I will get a notification eventually, just as the mice knew they would get food, so I continue to check Facebook, despite the fact that usually there is nothing of interest.
I wonder if these studies passed through the mind of Mark Zuckerberg and the other feller as they were designing Facebook. My knowledge of psychology is only a day old, but I'm fairly sure that my conclusions are correct.
However, that is not the experiment I am most interested in. In the twentieth century a famous - possibly the most famous - psychologist was a man called Skinner, who became famous for what were later known as Skinner's Boxes, in which he conducted various experiments on animals, not to mention his own daughter. He trained mice to push a lever, which resulted in food from a chute.
The mice cottoned-on pretty quickly to this, so Skinner gradually changed the frequency of the food, but the mice were able to understand what changes had occured. Food every third push was achieved, then up to fourty and sixty pushes; if the mice knew there would be a reward they would keep pushing. Skinner then set the food to be delivered at random intervals, resulting in the mice pushing it ceaselessly until they were rewarded by their efforts with food.
Skinner also tried to work out how long the mice would take to stop pushing the lever after the food-supply had been cut off. The mice with regular food deliveries realised fairly quickly, but the mice with random distributions of food took much longer to cease with the lever-pushing.
I have come to realise that Facebook has had this effect over me. In my case, notifications are the food equivalent. I check for them several times daily, and far more often than not I am not rewarded. I do, however, get notifications occasionally, and it is this that keeps me coming back. The distribution of notifications is effectively random; my friends post statuses and comments whenver they want with no thought for me personally. I know I will get a notification eventually, just as the mice knew they would get food, so I continue to check Facebook, despite the fact that usually there is nothing of interest.
I wonder if these studies passed through the mind of Mark Zuckerberg and the other feller as they were designing Facebook. My knowledge of psychology is only a day old, but I'm fairly sure that my conclusions are correct.
***
Another web-related phenomena within the established fields of psychology that I think applies to me is the theory of the 'extinction burst'. The extinction burst occurs when one tries to quit cold-turkey on a long-standing habit, be it smoking, daily schedule, or in my case, Internet use. The theory follows thus: once we quit said habit our need for it diminishes steadily, until a point not long after the initial quit-date, a few days or so. At this point our need for the vice in question abruptly spikes drastically in our body's attempt to keep hold it. Think of it like death throes, a last cry for help. The effect causes millions of people world-wide to resort to their previous behaviour, and unless you see it coming it is very hard to overcome.
At the start of this year I made a concerted effort to cut-down on my internet use. The time I wasted on the Internet could have been spent doing things far more constructive and engaging: studying, reading, playing the guitar etc. I had some success, but at some point I reverted to my old ways: the questionable lure of Facebook, the Guardian and IGN proved too strong. (In fact, my previous hypothesis could be applied to the latter two; I browse both daily hoping for updates, though with better results than Facebook.) Whether it was the combination of three conditionings (?) or the extinction burst, or both, that drew me back I am not sure, but here I am, writing a blog that no one reads.
Wednesday, 18 August 2010
The Evolution of Robot Wars
Holidays, when devoid of sporting showcases, are apparently not conducive to blogging inspiration. However, I need to write about something, so why not the third most entertaining show on television at the moment: Robot Wars. (fyi, Sherlock and Shooting Stars are first and second respectively.)
The compeitors are frequently cringe inducing (Plunderbird boys - you are not funny, get lost), as is Craig Charles' leery demeanour, but the fun in seeing pathetic lumps of metal getting shredded, crushed and flipped by a core of five or six really decent machines remains undimmed.
Over the five series natural selection has seen four design staples rise to the top of the pack, each with a robot of excellent design as the epitome of that class. These are: Chaos 2, Hypnodisc, Razer and Tornado, armed with a flipper, scorpion claw, fly-wheel and raw pushing-power respectively. These four are in essence unbeatable by the vast majority of the competition, barring mechanical defects.
Chaos 2 was the first to have a really effective flipper, pioneered originally by Cassius. The first time Cassius jack-knifed after being overturned was a watershed moment in the history of Robot Wars; not only could it flip other robots but it was also impervious to being itselt flipped. Any robot with serious ambitions would need to be able to self right, and while the flipper was not the only means of self-righting - interesting scrimechs can been seen on the aforementioned Hypno-Disc and Razer - it remains the original and most effective. The third series was dominated by Chaos 2, which perfected the flipper, which differed from Cassius in that it was forward facing active flip rather than a push.
Tornado was essentially a response to the flipper; scrimechs are great and look good, but why not make the robot invertible? It was by no means the most attractive robot, with the simple yet effective tactic of relentless bulldozing, but it worked, defeating Chaos 2 at least twice through sheer bloody-mindedness. It had very few weaknesses: unflipable, robust and had unmatched pushing-power thanks to two engines and rubber tread. There was one robot that could beat it, and beat it easily, however.
Razer was unquestionably the most aesthetically arresting while being the most destructive. The hydraulic beak immoblilised more robots than any other, and for a long time it only ever lost through electical or mechanical issues. Had it not beached itself in the second round of the heats in the third series vs Aggrobot, Chaos 2 may well have finished as runner-up. As it happened, Razer and Chaos 2 only met several years later, and Razer quickly punctured the CO2 cannister of Chaos, causing it to commit the first ever Robot Wars suicide by diving arse-first into the pit. It wasn't invincible, though. Pussycat defeated it twice, once when Razer got stuck on the wall and a second time when it popped a wheel off. Later, Tornado fixed a protective cage around itself to specifically neutralise the claw of Razer; Razer could do nothing and lost to a judges' decision. It was within the rules, but hardly fair play.
Lastly we come to Hypnodisc. It has a poor record against these other three, but when it comes to fucking shit up, Hypnodisc is unparalleled. The first victim, Robogeddon, faced the most complete destruction of any robot, ever. The bodywork was gone, the insides ripped out, the battery destroyed...there was nothing left. Its design is simple: a disc spins at only a reasonably fast speed, but the sheer size of it means the two lumps are going very quickly indeed. It is in essence a bludgeoning device as opposed to the standard slicing circular saw.
The compeitors are frequently cringe inducing (Plunderbird boys - you are not funny, get lost), as is Craig Charles' leery demeanour, but the fun in seeing pathetic lumps of metal getting shredded, crushed and flipped by a core of five or six really decent machines remains undimmed.
Over the five series natural selection has seen four design staples rise to the top of the pack, each with a robot of excellent design as the epitome of that class. These are: Chaos 2, Hypnodisc, Razer and Tornado, armed with a flipper, scorpion claw, fly-wheel and raw pushing-power respectively. These four are in essence unbeatable by the vast majority of the competition, barring mechanical defects.
Chaos 2 was the first to have a really effective flipper, pioneered originally by Cassius. The first time Cassius jack-knifed after being overturned was a watershed moment in the history of Robot Wars; not only could it flip other robots but it was also impervious to being itselt flipped. Any robot with serious ambitions would need to be able to self right, and while the flipper was not the only means of self-righting - interesting scrimechs can been seen on the aforementioned Hypno-Disc and Razer - it remains the original and most effective. The third series was dominated by Chaos 2, which perfected the flipper, which differed from Cassius in that it was forward facing active flip rather than a push.
Tornado was essentially a response to the flipper; scrimechs are great and look good, but why not make the robot invertible? It was by no means the most attractive robot, with the simple yet effective tactic of relentless bulldozing, but it worked, defeating Chaos 2 at least twice through sheer bloody-mindedness. It had very few weaknesses: unflipable, robust and had unmatched pushing-power thanks to two engines and rubber tread. There was one robot that could beat it, and beat it easily, however.
Razer was unquestionably the most aesthetically arresting while being the most destructive. The hydraulic beak immoblilised more robots than any other, and for a long time it only ever lost through electical or mechanical issues. Had it not beached itself in the second round of the heats in the third series vs Aggrobot, Chaos 2 may well have finished as runner-up. As it happened, Razer and Chaos 2 only met several years later, and Razer quickly punctured the CO2 cannister of Chaos, causing it to commit the first ever Robot Wars suicide by diving arse-first into the pit. It wasn't invincible, though. Pussycat defeated it twice, once when Razer got stuck on the wall and a second time when it popped a wheel off. Later, Tornado fixed a protective cage around itself to specifically neutralise the claw of Razer; Razer could do nothing and lost to a judges' decision. It was within the rules, but hardly fair play.
Lastly we come to Hypnodisc. It has a poor record against these other three, but when it comes to fucking shit up, Hypnodisc is unparalleled. The first victim, Robogeddon, faced the most complete destruction of any robot, ever. The bodywork was gone, the insides ripped out, the battery destroyed...there was nothing left. Its design is simple: a disc spins at only a reasonably fast speed, but the sheer size of it means the two lumps are going very quickly indeed. It is in essence a bludgeoning device as opposed to the standard slicing circular saw.
Saturday, 24 July 2010
39 Seconds
39 seconds: the timegap between Alberto Contador and Andy Schleck after the final competitive stage of the Tour de France. It's the second narrowest margin in history after the great LeMond/Fignon struggle in '89, but the significance of those 39 seconds is far greater than that.
Contador attacked on the Port de Bales earlier in the Tour following a freak mechanical problem on Andy Schleck, and gained - you guessed it - 39 seconds. It cannot be certain that Schleck's attack would have succeeded, in fact he lost time on the descent while pursuing Contador, but he would at least have finished at the same time, hypothetically preserving Schleck's 31 seconds lead.
Many predicted that the result at Bagnères-de-Luchon would decide the outcome of Tour, and how right they were. Had Contador refrained from attacking we could have seen a dead heat for the first time ever; I have absolutely no idea what protocol would be followed had that been the case. Enough has been said about Contador's decision to attack so I won't add anything other than retrospectively as a race-winning move it was justified, but also deprived us of a truly epic battle up the Col du Tourmalet.
The other surprise was how poorly Contador performed in the time-trial, finishing in the mid-30s, just 31 seconds ahead of the typically far weaker Schleck. When compared to last year's penultimate day time-trial - which Contador won ahead of Fabian Cancellara - a drastic collapse in physical power is evident. There is no chance of an accurate analysis of the reasons for this, but I suspect Contador was simply shattered after a Tour de France in which he was pushed all the way. Interestingly, Schleck actually lost less time over 50km than over the 10km prologue: 31s vs 42s.
So many ifs and buts! It's been engrossing, but hopefully 2011 will end in more satisfactory fashion.
PS Probably the last TdF blog until next year.
Contador attacked on the Port de Bales earlier in the Tour following a freak mechanical problem on Andy Schleck, and gained - you guessed it - 39 seconds. It cannot be certain that Schleck's attack would have succeeded, in fact he lost time on the descent while pursuing Contador, but he would at least have finished at the same time, hypothetically preserving Schleck's 31 seconds lead.
Many predicted that the result at Bagnères-de-Luchon would decide the outcome of Tour, and how right they were. Had Contador refrained from attacking we could have seen a dead heat for the first time ever; I have absolutely no idea what protocol would be followed had that been the case. Enough has been said about Contador's decision to attack so I won't add anything other than retrospectively as a race-winning move it was justified, but also deprived us of a truly epic battle up the Col du Tourmalet.
The other surprise was how poorly Contador performed in the time-trial, finishing in the mid-30s, just 31 seconds ahead of the typically far weaker Schleck. When compared to last year's penultimate day time-trial - which Contador won ahead of Fabian Cancellara - a drastic collapse in physical power is evident. There is no chance of an accurate analysis of the reasons for this, but I suspect Contador was simply shattered after a Tour de France in which he was pushed all the way. Interestingly, Schleck actually lost less time over 50km than over the 10km prologue: 31s vs 42s.
So many ifs and buts! It's been engrossing, but hopefully 2011 will end in more satisfactory fashion.
PS Probably the last TdF blog until next year.
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