The Obscurer

Month: May, 2006

Friday 26th May 2006

Welcome To

So you made it! The switch over from obscurer.blogspot.com to www.obscurer.co.uk went fairly smoothly, once I had figured out how to configure my archives, but all in all it was pretty hitch free.

Except.

When I checked if things were working on Firefox (yes, I am one of those Neanderthals who prefer IE) the cache or history or whatever meant that the redirect instruction from the new site back to the old site was still in place, preventing Firefox users from coming here. I’ve tried a quick fix to stop the redirect problem but I’m not sure it will work, so if you have only just landed here after a few months of trying then that is probably because the old page has dropped out of your cache. I think.

Things look the same around here, except for the absence of the Blogger navbar at the top of the page; I’m staying with Blogger for the time being because it suits me fine. I may move to MoveableType or WordPress at some point but I don’t know if I’ll ever bother; in any case, that is an ambition that will surely founder on the rocks of my own incompetence.

One thing about having your own domain name, of course, is that it is easy for anyone to find out the details of the owner of the site. This effectively has ended any possibility that I will ever reveal who I work for or explicitly criticise my employer; I haven’t done so this far, and indeed I may never have done so anyway, but I definitely won’t now. It’s no big secret, it’s not like I work in the heart of government or anything, but even my employer’s IT department must be able to do a whois enquiry, so I’m certainly keeping schtum.

So that’s more or less it; welcome to the new URL, thanks for sticking with me, although I apologise in advance if your loyalty goes unrewarded. The new Obscurer will be exactly like the old Obscurer, including the irregular long gaps between posts; indeed looking at the next week ahead, with a heavy workload, a wedding anniversary and 3 year old’s birthday approaching, not to mention over 50 minutes of holiday video that require whittling down into something vaguely watchable, I don’t know when I will update this site next; but if you’ve made it this far I suspect you know all about my ways. Hang around and the usual drivel will appear here soon enough. I’m just not entirely sure when.

PostScript: as predicted my new atom feed is www.obscurer.co.uk/atom.xml, and my FeedBurner feed remains feeds.feedburner.com/obscurer. Update what you need to update, if you understand such things.

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Thursday 25th May 2006

Happy New URL

Well, I need a holiday to get over my holiday etc. But I’m home now, and I’ve even done a few days in work readjusting to what it means to have to bother about such things as what the time is, an irrelevance when cottage bound in Cornwall; and I think I have got back into the swing of things admirably.

The “luxury” of holidaying in this country is that you can, if you wish, keep up with the nation’s toings and froings and comings and goings, so I think I am up to date on the things that matter; the final(?) flailing Blair reshuffle; the release of the “narrative” on the 7/7 bombings that rightly hasn’t ended the desire for a full public enquiry; the elevation of Melanie Slade’s boyfriend into the England World Cup squad (pipping Shaun Wright Phillips presumably because the latter hasn’t played much Premiership football this year); and inevitably, the one candidate I explicitly criticised in my last post on “The Apprentice” only goes and wins the damned thing (which either proves that what I know about business could be written on a stamp while still leaving space in the margin for some doodles, or that siralan doesn’t actually mind managerial bollocks (“I’ll give 110%”, “am passionate about…”, “dedicated to…”, “have an instinct for…”) so long as it comes parcelled up in a rags-to-riches (or Kwik Save to quick off-shorer) tale.

But of course the most important news that you are all hanging on for is my scheduled move from blogspot to my own domain; and rather surprisingly it is all on course. At some point tomorrow (Friday 26th May) I will move this whole thing to www.obscurer.co.uk and that will be the place to go for my sporadic rubbish in future. I will try to leave a forwarding post here, but I am not sure quite how that will work. If you subscribe via FeedBurner then that link shouldn’t change; I assume my new atom feed will be www.obscurer.co.uk/atom.xml, so if that is your rss/xml source you may need to do a bit of fiddling about. Check back on the new site tomorrow for confirmation.

For some of you, who have perhaps been following this blog with a certain lack of enthusiasm recently, kept on by a faint hope that I will write something as half-decent as the post that attracted you here in the first place, then amending your bookmarks or favourites with my new address may be too much for you and so this may be the time when we part company; in which case good luck, I don’t blame you and indeed thanks for sticking with me for so long. For those who do make it to the new URL I can’t promise anything other than more of the same, so don’t say you haven’t been warned.

So that’s it, and I hope to see you again soon at the new place.

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Friday 5th May 2006

Rent Seeking

Well, that’s me for a while. I am about to set off for a cottage in Cornwall for a fortnight, and when I get back this ol’ blog will be moving to its all-new-all-singing-all-dancing domain of www.obscurer.co.uk. Exciting huh? Don’t click on that link now as it will just redirect you back here in a sort of “looking at a reflection of a mirror in a mirror until infinity” type thing. I will post here again the day before the big move, probably on the 25th of May, and the new site should go live on the evening of the 26th if all goes according to plan, which it almost certainly won’t. It is all an act of spectacular pointlessness I know, the main purpose of which will be for me to plummet down the Google rankings; but holding the domain name for about a year and doing very little with it is also pretty pointless, so you takes your pick.

But for now my thought are for Cornwall, land of oddness both ancient and modern. We are fortunate enough to be going in time to catch the historic Helston “Furry Dance” as we did a couple of years ago, although that occasion was somewhat marred by my son’s undiagnosed lethargy throughout the festivities, which we finally found out was due to an ear infection, but not before some frantic drives between Penzance and Truro hospitals. Hopefully the Furry Dance will pass off this year without any such concerns.

For examples of recent Cornish eccentricity how about this record shop we spotted last time we were in Falmouth, surely the most unenthusiastically named shop in history. It is certainly the antithesis of CD-Wow. Or The Rising Sun pub in Mevagissey which advertises itself on its website by saying “once you have found us, please remember to KEEP THE SECRET”, an unusual tactic for any business to adopt I would have thought. I suppose it could be a double bluff, getting people like me to spread the name of the pub by word of mouth while simultaneously conveying the image that it is a lovely quiet pub, I really don’t know.

No, Cornwall is odd, but I love it; I feel right at home there. I wonder why? See you in a few weeks.

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Friday 5th May 2006

End Of An Era

It was Halloween, appropriately enough. I was sat on the bus travelling back from the City of Manchester Stadium. We had just convincingly defeated Aston Villa 3-1 to go 4th in the Premiership. The bus was abuzz with chatter about how well we were doing, my Dad was positively beside himself revelling in a glorious season; but it was there that I first toyed with the idea of not renewing my City season ticket.

I suppose all football fans have had that “what am I doing here” feeling from time to time, but this one was different. Sat alone amongst a sea of blue plastic seats when I watched us tumble out of the League Cup to Lincoln a few years ago, beaten by a comical goal in front of a few thousand spectators, you can understand why I questioned my sanity; but in those days there seemed something to fight for and I couldn’t desert my team at such a time. But to question your loyalty when you are in the top six on merit, possibly looking at a European place, and yet you are bored witless, signified something deeper.

In part it is down to City’s circumstances. For years we City fans were treated to relegation battles and promotion scrapes on an almost annual basis. Now, (more or less) comfortable after four straight seasons in the Premiership, there seems little to fight for. I never thought we would hold onto 4th spot, and we didn’t, but nowadays that is the very top of our ambitions, and it doesn’t excite me. Outside the top clubs the very best you can hope for is to fluke a good season into the preliminary round of the Champions League, where you are unlikely to even survive as long as the last of the summer’s wasps. Fall a bit short and you could still end up in the UEFA cup. Whoo-hoo. Last time we competed in that competition it just served as an irritant, forcing us to reschedule the few remaining fixtures that hadn’t already been rescheduled by Sky. So on that Halloween night I realised that for a City fan this was about as good as it was likely to get, and I wasn’t inspired.

But it’s not just City, it is football in general. I remember in the old days you would watch a match where one side would put the other team under a bit of pressure, where the crowd would roar as your team forced corner after corner, or your side would defend valiantly against your opponents onslaught which could last for 10 or 20 minutes. That rarely seems to happen nowadays as teams act so negatively, even coming to such an anti-fortress as Eastlands deciding to pack midfield for 90 minutes and get bodies behind the ball to hopefully force a 0-0 draw. Goals and chances appear, if ever, seemingly out of nothing following a prolonged period of probing and parrying. If in days gone by teams could be said to press forward trying to inflict a knockout blow, today sides spend much of the match sparring, while I sit in the stand and daydream.

I think Jose Mourinho has had a negative influence on the game. With all the wealth at his disposal he could have built a wonderful side in whatever image he chose; but he went for a solid, dependable and relentless unit. He deserves his success, but I don’t want to watch his side. He also seems to have influenced other managers in their dealings with the press; the Wenger “I didn’t see it” has been replaced by the Mourinho “I did see it, and there was nothing wrong with it”. I am getting pretty tired of referees and their assistants making correct decisions only for the managers to defend their players antics and cry victimisation. I am not trying to pin all the blame on Mourinho, but he deserves his fair share.

This all seems a bit unfair on Stuart Pearce. Under his stewardship City are more attack minded than many other sides, and in interviews he seems almost saint-like in his reasonableness. It isn’t his fault, but that is the way it is. Since making my decision not to renew my season ticket I have seen little down at Eastlands to make me change my mind or regret my decision. Almost every game I have seen, win or lose, seems to follow the same dull and un-engaging pattern. I still intend to go to the odd game, and I will watch matches on TV (in the pub or at my parents’) and on the (ahem) internet, where it is easier to sack it if it is boring; but the sense of duty which kept me going for a while is long gone. With tonight’s 3-1 defeat to Arsenal (ironically one of the more entertaining games this season) I have watched my last match as a season ticket holder, and the overwhelming feeling is one of relief.

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