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The freeze continues… mid-20s overnight at the weekend, and still just under or at freezing point since then. We’ve lost a few plants to the cold, including some shrubs that we really liked. Our trees in front of the house look dead as well but I am hopeful they will recover once the temps get back up. Of course this is nothing compared to the huge losses in the citrus and other crops in California. A head of lettuce could soon get expensive.

Mother Nature was having some fun with us yesterday. In the afternoon we had a series of a 10 or so little tremors, nothing really worth talking about, biggest was a 2.7. Then overnight the temperature got down to at least 25F – isn’t this supposed to be the desert?! Back up to 60F right now, though. Looks like we are going to have sub-zero temps overnight for much of this week.

[25F is -4C for those lucky readers using a metric system]

No, not me, not yet anyways…. but our good friend Eric Galvan from the local rag. Its Friday so it must be rant ‘o’ the week time and Mr G doesn’t disappoint. If you want to read it, go ahead and take a look after the jump. Of course he’s trying to be provocative but I don’t think he has the intelligence to pull it off without looking like an angry jerk. I’d say but at least it sells news papers except that I don’t know anyone who admits to reading what he writes.

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A small discussion has started on this site. Other than one of the posters thinking Mexico is going to win the World Cup in 2010, we’re all on the same page.

I have sent a response to the newspaper and we’ll see if they print it. I kinda don’t care if they don’t as I am sure Galvan will just write more crap in response, he doesn’t strike me as someone who has a clue when they should just shut up and be quiet.

I knew that my joke letter about American football would likely get a response but I hadn’t expected it to take the form of a full-blown editorial by the newspaper’s sports staff. The article is funny in its outright stupidity (billions, billions I tell ya, watch American football don’t ya know) and sad in the display of the American stereotype of everyone else being stupid for not being us.

The article is too long to put on this page so you’ll have to read it after the jump.

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Last week someone wrote a letter to the local paper complaining that it seemed ok to fly Canadian flags in the Valley, but not Mexican ones. Completely unrelated to his point in the letter, the writer had a go at football saying he preferred the kind of football where games didn’t end scoreless or in a riot. I put pen to paper and and my response appeared in Monday’s edition.

Voice: American football puts you to sleep

I write in response to the statement from Wednesday’s PROBE writer that he prefers his football with scoring and no riots.

I put it to the correspondent that the reason no riots occur in American football is that the crowd is fast asleep long before the game is finished.

PAUL SANDERS
Brawley

I’m redesigning the flying blog, and one thing I want in the sidebar is a list of the latest posts from the blogs I read. This is 2007 and Web2.0 so it’s easy right? I imported my feedlist into GoogleReader, tagged the flying blogs and made them public, got me a nice little URL.

The K2 theme comes with an RSS module, there are 10’s of WordPress plugins to display RSS (I know, I tried them all) but not one of them will display the feed properly. A little searching around suggests that it is a combination of Google’s XML and lazy coding in the plugins that is the problem. Google has two title tags in the XML per entry and that is confusing everyone. So, unless I move my feed list to a different service (any suggestions as to who?) I just have to wait. Oh, or write my own?

I’ve had the PS3 a couple of weeks now, played it more than I expected but less than the price tag deserves. There’s no doubt that the graphics are slick, all the games look very nice in high-def (well, 720p anyway) and its clear that the machine can do a lot more than anyone is asking of it right now.

Resistance of Man: Great first person shooter, the atmosphere it creates is perfect and the online match making feature is great for finding people to play with. Probably my favourite so far.

NBA ’07: Only played this for 10 minutes, couldn’t get the hang of the controls and haven’t put it back in the machine since. I’ll give it another go but I wasn’t taken with it like the others.

Genji: Not usually my kind of game but the graphics are great. Sound gets real annoying during a long fight, though. Definitely better than I expected.

Blazing Angels: Lots of fun here flying old WW2 planes and taking care of Jerry. Some vertigo-inducing maneuvers to be had, great graphics on screen. Flying by the sixaxis controller motion was impossible, though. Probably my joint favourite with Resistance.

Worthy Mentions: The demo versions of Motorstorm and Gran Tourismo HD were very good indeed, the former being lots of fun, the latter just looked gorgeous.

Sony needs to fix two things fast, though. First, downloads need to happen in the background. It is no fun to be told the system needs to update and then not be able to play for the next two hours. Seriously, background downloading is old technology. Second, the algorithm for choosing the TV resolution needs to be changed to pick the best one available for the game. If you don’t have 1080p Resistance will look best in 720p but, unless I tell it not to, the PS3 chooses 1080i for everything. Can I tell the difference? Probably not, but its definitely something that should be changed.

Yes, I know there was never an initial post to update upon but that’s just a mere insignificant detail. So, anyway, despite knowing nothing (and wishing I didn’t even know that much) about the game I entered a college bowl football pool. $20 to get in and $680 to be shared amongst the winners. With 8 of the 32 games played I am surprisingly joint first with 7 correctly predicted, plenty more games for it all to come crashing down but its a dirty feeling I get checking the scores to see how I am doing.

In other news, I was supposed to have someone come and install Dish TV today, they called last night to make sure we would be home. We got up early and then they called to say that they had been shipped the wrong receivers and they were “fighting” with Dish to get the right items sent out. Bottom line: no one coming today. My brother in law had the same trouble, except that the guys turned up with the wrong box so we’ll see when, or if, I get to kick Time Warner to the kerb.

I have fairly vivid dreams almost every night but, like most people, rarely remember many details when I wake up. Last night, though, I was a Marine fighting an alien invasion (I think I am playing too much Resistance on the PS3). Just as we are about to hit the streets to kick some alien ass, there was the following exchange:

Commander: we’re marines and one thing we do better than the aliens is salute so if you’re not sure who to shoot, get them to salute
Me: but Sir some of us are British and our salutes are weak
Commander: then you are going to die

And earlier this week our spa needed more chlorine and some pH lessening agent. Rather than make two trips outside I put the liquid chlorine into a cup and then poured the pH-down powder. Boom, instant reaction, much frothing chemicals and release of toxic gases. The smell was terrible and I inhaled enough of it to encourage some vomiting and difficulty breathing for about two hours. I don’t do doctors but I almost caved into the wife’s demands that we go to the ER. On the plus side, my cold seems to have disappeared.

And a Merry Christmas to you all.