one scots thoughts

There were two big tournaments over the past week, ATP 500 events in Basel, Switzerland and Valencia, Spain.

Valencia marked the first piece of ATP action World #4 and British #1 Andy Murray has seen since his 4th round exit at the US Open in August (excluding his participation in Britain's loss to Poland in the Davis Cup – which is a non-ATP event ) after injury forced him to miss two scheduled Asian Tournaments (including the Shanghai Masters). After a 6 week lay-off from competition Murrays victory at Valencia was never a particular surety to me, despite his status as top seed at the event. Nevertheless Murray prevailed, and although his form wasn’t quite 100% throughout the tournament he battled through a tough SF against home crowd favourite Fernando Verdasco en route to a relatively easy looking final against unexpected (and unseeded) finalist Mikhail Youzhny (who himself battled past compatriot and Shanghai Masters champ Nikolay Davydenko in his SF). In the end Murray took the title 6-3, 6-2 in the final, his 6th of the season and 13th ATP level career title.

Over in Basel the field was slightly stiffer with both World #1 Roger Federer (a Basel native) and #3 Novak Djokovic competing. Seeded first and second respectively both made it to the finals in a rematch of their recent clash at the Cincinnati Masters prior to the US Open which Federer won in a comfortable two sets. I had personally thought this would be Federers for the taking – I was to be surprised. The Basel final began 45 mins prior to Valencia, I fully expected it to be over by the end of the first set in Valencia, this was not to be the case as Djokovic took the first set 6-4 before Federer bit back taking the second 6-4, but it proved to be a mere delaying action as Djokovic managed a double break in the decider taking the set and the championship 6-2. A shame for Federer who was looking for his 4th successive title in front of his home crowd.

Djokovic actually had to save 3 match points in his SF against Radek Stepanek on Saturday, so for him to have come back and taken the title in the end is rather impressive.

This coming week sees the final open-entry tournament on the ATP calendar for 2009, the ATP 100 Masters in Paris. With 1000 juicy points on offer this is the last chance the guys in the top 12 have to advance their rankings into the 7 and 8 slots (currently occupied by Nikolay Davydenko and Fernando Verdasco) and qualify for the Tour Finals in London in two weeks time. The field is tough however as Paris is one of the 8 (of 9) Masters tournaments the top 30 players in the world are required to play (except in case of injury), and those players aiming to qualify for London not currently in a position to do so will need to reach at least the final in Paris to stand a chance – this means potentially that they would have to defeat two top 4 players in the process – no easy task.

Incidentally, if you’re as nuts about Tennis as me then this might interest you for the 2010 season: http://challenge.atpworldtour.com/

It’s an interesting competition, you attempt to guess the entire draw for a variety of ATP tour and Grand Slam events, each correct pick nets you points that contribute to a leader board. After a year of events the player at the top of the leader board wins a VIP trip to the tour finals. There are also prizes for a couple of runners-up and additional prizes in the unlikely event that someone makes a 100% perfect draw for any of the events during the year.

Unfortunately as I only found out about this on Saturday my chances of winning anything this year are pretty much nil, but I gave Paris a go. So far I’ve made 6 correct picks out of 11 matches, that ranks me 6984th out of 10065 btw .

Hopefully they’ll run it again next year and I’ll have a chance at winning some tickets for the 2010 finals. As for this year, Helen already won us tickets to London

freedoms_stain, still going to LONDON BABY!, out.

Labels: Andy Murray, Tennis

If you haven’t seen it already (and why the fuck haven’t you?) you should check out the latest episode of South Park. It’s a hilariously awesome attempt to reclassify the word “fag” from a derogatory word for homosexuals to a general insult for people who are loud, obnoxious and inconsiderate, because, to paraphrase the episode “it’s just so much fun to say”. The episode has the same sort of vibe as the short “Porch Monkey” section from Kevin Smith’s Clerks II.

Unfortunately despite the fact that the episode is completely gay-positive some gay folks still managed to take offense.

Well, I reckon we should take it back, because dammit fag is fun to say! Why else would the British use to same word to describe such a commonplace item as cigarettes?

Fag is just a word, it’s meaning is simply what we choose it to mean.

I mean, it’s pretty funny if changing the meaning of Fag means that everyone who tends to use the word already then becomes a Fag.

On that basis alone I think it should be done, although for maximum comic effect nobody in the Southern US states should be told until the rest of us have had a good laugh at them.

Sorry if you’re from the South and not a bigot, but those of you in that situation usually understand the generalisation, much to your general dismay.

freedoms_stain, hates fags , out.

Labels: society

A few weeks ago I heard of a competition to win tickets to the ATP Tour Finals in London through the ATP RSS feed from the event sponsors Barclays. I was unsuccessful

My girlfriend Helen on the other hand, was

So we’re going to London baby!

We’ve got our travel plans organised already, so we will definitely be at the evening session on Wednesday the 25th. Can’t wait.

Don’t know who’ll be playing that day/session yet as there are still a couple of places left up for grabs that won’t be decided until the outcome of the Paris Masters (which begins next week) has been played. Whoever it is we’re guaranteed two top eight male singles players and two top eight male doubles teams, so it should be good, although obviously I’d prefer it if it was two of the top 4 or 5 than say the 6 to 8 guys.

freedoms_stain, excited and out.

Labels: Tennis

So, you know when you're going to see a band but you don't want to see
the support, you've got to make the decision, you know thw band will
probably be on like 8.30 or 9, but do you turn up for 8.30 or 9? Of
course you invariably choose 8.30 because if you chose 9 and they went
on at 8.30 then you miss stuff.

Well, it's about 8.30 now and the arsing support are still on, and no
offense to them, but it's severely not my thing, which is why I'm
standing blogging on my phone instead of paying attention to their
wailing.

Roll on 9pm and the headline act: Idlewild!

Well at least this killed a few minutes.

Oh, and the bastards ran out of my size in the cool t-shirts :(

freedoms_stain, needs time-control powers urgently, out.

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Sent from my mobile device

One thing I really don’t get about the games industry is “preloads”.

So the game is finished, you’ve let me download it to my computer, but I can’t play it until you say?

Why, oh why, oh why, oh why?

It makes very little sense, it’s done, it’s in my possession, let me play it!

Of course not releasing finished works before a set date is not unique to the gaming industry, but it is more frustrating when they let you have your toy but won’t let you actually play with it.

You have the power to make content available as soon as it’s ready Entertainment Industry, USE IT, because if you don’t, things like this will happen and continue to happen. Your out-dated release model encourages piracy. Sort it out, Mininova shows ~2000 seeds for the top 3 DA:O torrents, that’s 2000 people who have and are playing the game days earlier than people who legally bought it. There are a further 35,000 people in line who will be in the same boat shortly. Many of them probably bought the game but Pirate to play now rather than later.

Understand your audience. If you won’t satisfy their needs, others will.

freedoms_stain, spitting the dummy out, er, out.

Labels: gaming, Piracy