Props to Google Calendar and Melbourne sporting teams

I didn't fall in love with Google Calendar the first time I tried it, but as a quite content user of Gmail and Google Reader, I decided to try it out again this morning, prompted by the lure of hockey, no less.

I saw that the reigning Australian Ice Hockey League minor premiers, Melbourne ICE, had their home game schedule available in Google Calendar and a few clicks later, it was all beautifully displayed with my calendar. In fact, I liked it so much, I searched for a Melbourne Demons Google Calendar. Even though there wasn't one, I quickly whipped one up. Hopefully it provides a service to one other Demons fan, I might even go post it on a Demons message board or something.

Click to add it to your
Demons AFL Games (in Melbourne)

For any ICE fans, the season is only two weeks away, and opens with a double header of home games against Adelaide. Check out their entire schedule in HTML, or the home games in Google Calendar. Gimme a holler if you're interested in rockin up!

Does anyone out there use Google Calendar? I'll probably create a fixture for the indoor soccer team when the new season starts.

Aussie F1 GP and a tiny bit of AFL

The Formula One^(TM) Grand Prix came and went and all of the annual woodwork whingers complaining about the use of taxpayer funds to support the GP or the lack of real V8 racing can all forget about it for another 358 days and whine about something else. It's a big event with worldwide exposure. As much as anyone might care to argue, if Bernie Ecclestone says he wants an Australian Grand Prix at night, sooner or later, the Australian Grand Prix will be at night or will cease to exist (in its present form).

The race itself? Not too exciting, but enough to keep interest. The Coulthard-Wurz crash was big, but Lewis Hamilton's pass around Fernando Alonso at the first corner was pretty damn confident, if not impressive. It wasn't as ballsy as Juan Pablo "Nutsack" Montoya's F1 entrance where he passed Michael Schumacher at the first corner in his second or so race in Brazil, but you can consider me a great fan of Hamilton nonetheless.

Kimi Raikkonen was near-faultless, with just a little "brain fade" that anyone who's completed a 58 lap simulation of the Australian GP on a video game can identify with. (While I'm at it: shoutout to F1 World Grand Prix for Nintendo 64, thanks for being there on Saturday mornings before I learned to sleep in.) Many people want Kimi to show a little more enthusiasm or charisma - well, you're looking in the wrong place. F1 drivers have been trained to be PR robots as not to cause controversy. Obviously Kimi takes it further. I bet he's a great poker player. But you don't need to show you're happy, and if that's the biggest complaint that the great unwashed has after a pole-to-flag victory, well, I'd cop that pretty easily if I had a silver plate in one hand and 10 points in my pocket. I'm also one of the few people who can actually understand what he's saying. I'm willing to translate!

One last F1 thing: Kimi went from McLaren, my favourite team (that actually wins) since 1998, to Ferrari, my least favourite team since 1997 when I started watching Formula One^(TM). In soccer, you'd call that a defection (harsh as it is), wouldn't you? People who spoke to me about Raikkonen's victory (family members, the pizza guy who saw my McLaren jacket) seemingly expected me to supply a bit of "Kimi, Kimi, Kimi! Ra, ra, ra!", to no avail. So while I am pleased that it wasn't a Schumacher on the top step of the podium, I can't be happy about the result. I've trained myself to not go for the red cars with the horse on them and I don't plan on getting used to them beating home the silver McLarens!

The AFL season's nearly upon us. I think I miss footy tipping more than the footy itself right now. Ben Cousins appears to have added "caught on drugs" to his growing CV of drunken antics, drink driving, car crashes and doing runners from the police. With many other Eagles' late-night behaviour under scrutiny, I wonder if they're playing a game of West Coast Bingo, just marking off each infraction.

I'll leave you with a question. In 2008, what will there be more of: blades on a shaver or captains of the Brisbane Lions? (That means over 22% of the team is a captain)

Tuesdays: toight like a toiger

You know, on Tuesdays, you can go to places like the cinemas or the Melbourne Comedy Festival and receive a discount simply because it's Tuesday. (And you're a cheapskate.)

Oh, you're familiar/not familiar with the concept? That's good/bad. But remember, it's not Half-Price Tuesday or Super Tuesday, it's Tightarse Tuesday. But now, I may have an even better moniker. One that I can't believe I never considered in the years I've been using the term Tightarse Tuesday.

We should call it Jewsday.

Trickier than a squirrel running on a telephone wire

Courtesy of Josh, I watched a copy of the weekend's Barcelona vs Real Madrid soccer game, covered by American TV station GolTV. I thought I'd seen a lot of wacky colour commentators (nearly all of them Scottish or Northern English), but they've got nothing on the one they had for the Barca-Real game: Ray Hudson. With such excitement and such willingness to make up analogies on the fly, I'm proclaiming him as the Murray Walker of soccer. At first, you think you can't stand him, but by the end, his enthusiasm becomes endearing and his nonsense entertaining!

So here's a shoutout to Ray. Be sure to check the Wikipedia page for a fair few notable quotes.

Ideal for the thirsty, lazy man...

...I believe I meet all three of those criteria! A big shoutout to the dude who made this robotic beer launching fridge. A damn sweet contraption. It may shake your beer a little too much, but this is an area of research that needs more attention!

Also a shoutout to Matt Trentini, I saw the aforementioned fridge on his site first.

Shoutout to "Razor"

If Jacques Chirac-tober proved nothing else (if anything at all), it's that theme months add a small touch of life where there was significant lack of before. Therefore, I think I've found a theme for March: the month of shoutouts.

Shoutouts are the laziest way of blog writing and that means I'll do it more often - perhaps every weekday? To add more content, I'll try and find some linkage for ya.

Today's shoutout goes to a master of the shutout: Ottawa Senators goalie "Razor" Ray Emery. This guy a fighting machine, going toe-to-toe on a goalie and then on a tough-guy skater during the Senators-Sabres brawl last week (props to Brad for the link). It's somewhere between unheard of and mental for a goalie to take on a recognised fighter - and I respect guys willing to tread that line.

When his fists aren't doing the talking, he can post a handy 2-0 shutout that gives me a big edge in our Fantasy Hockey League. Which I'm leading after trailing most of the season, may I add. And he's black. Believe it. So Razor, you're the man.

Link-O-Rama!

Hey champs and chumps! I've been reasonably busy at work recently and hadn't hit the level of inactivity/boredom required to write a blog. However, I have a small collection of notes and links from stuff I've seen online recently, so I might as well share them with you. Uncyclopedia rules all. Particularly their Did You Know section! Sports Argument Wiki isn't bad though, even if sometimes extremely subtle.

For example, did you know...
...that, according to Aesop, a tortoise and a hare agreed to race? The hare took off at a tremendous pace, but lay down to sleep on the way. The slow but steady tortoise thus emerged victorious. Moral: Tortoises frequently carry rohypnol. Never leave your drink unattended when tortoises are about.
...that there is no other word for thesaurus?
...that the flooding of New Orleans was actually caused by a suicide plumber?
...it's not the cough that carries you off but the coffin they carry you off in?
...that censorship is a tactic practiced by oppressive governments who believe in upholding an arbitrary social standard for the so-called "good of the people" while simultaneously imposing their peremptory moral values on their unwilling populace by dictating what is and what is not necessary for them to experience?

Other Uncyclopedia links:
People with distinguished names
List of weapons that don't exist but should (see Chuck-Nuns)
How to: Start a Religion. Truly brilliant and features one of my favourite style of jokes: the "say one thing but link to what you really mean". For example: Hire people to join the ministry, advertise on television, and pay stores to only accept your religion's prayers as currency. Enjoy that and you might enjoy this too, particularly if you're a fan of flowcharts. And deep down, aren't most of us closet flowchart fanatics? ... Me neither.

Escher's "Crazy Stairs" emulated in Lego!
Simpsons Movie Trailer
Movie WAVs: perfect for setting your ringtone or message tone. I recommend Eurotrip, Talladega Nights or Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.

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(O.o)
(> <)
This is an EVIL BUNNY! Well it scares the crap outta me. Aaah!

For the tech-inclined: I've converted from Bloglines to Google Reader for RSS feeds, thanks to a few nifty things with the interface and the sweet, sweet stats. Plus, I can share items with the click of a button, so any articles I feel are noteworthy, I'll share them quickly without having to assemble a post. This is something I will update throughout days at work, so check out my shared items now! I might even get around to upgrading my blog so it'll hook up with Google's add-ons. It'd be cool to see the shared items appear in my blog's sidebar, for example.

One final shoutout to the Faceoff Hockey Show, the best damn podcast there is. Currently, it's the only one I'm listening to (now that NFL season is over), so I'm trying a few radio podcasts (Tony Martin, Hamish and Andy, Merrick and Rosso) to try and uncover some gold. I love gooooolllld!