Gary Writes A Blog

Dundee United 3 – 0 Ross County

OK, so this was last week, but I cant let it go without being mentioned. I meant to post this during the week but I had a few technical hitches.

Last Saturday Utd won the cup for the second time in 100 years and the first time since 1994.

Growing up in the 80’s as a Utd fan, the Scottish cup was the mythical prize to be won. The only trophy that we hadn’t won and the one where we had been bridesmaids all too often. I was 14 when we won it in ’94, and my Dad was at a wedding down in England so we missed out going to the final.

This time my exclusion was my own fault. We had visitors from Denmark staying with us all weekend, which was actually very nice, but my heart was at Hampden and I sneaked off to watch the final online on the Saturday afternoon.

It felt very very weird watching the game by myself with no-one else realising the significance! 😉 but was still wearing my Utd strip and delighted when we won. Sad to not be at the game though so for me it was a little anti-climax.

Have to feel a little sorry for Ross County, as we have been there a few times before, but think we really deserved it, with three really good goals, especially the first.

16 years we’ve waited for this, but hopefully not 16 years more. (though to be honest that’s what makes it special!)

The output of my GPS watch makes it look good. It says I ran 34Km in 3 hours 34mins. If only it was true. Read on for the worst sporting activity of my life…

I ran 14Km a couple of days ago, so my legs were a bit stiff. Added to that the fact that it was 25 degrees and you can understand that the first 10Km was not much fun. I felt like giving up a few times, but with the race only 16 days away, I wanted to get some real millage under my belt.

I knew I could handle a half marathon without too much problem, but wanted to try and step it up to around 30Km. One reason for this is to see when I would hit “The Wall”. The wall is something I have heard about when people do marathon running. Simply put, it’s when you run out of Glycogen in your body and your body try’s to get energy from elsewhere. For most good runners, this would happen about the 30-35Km stage. For me it was a lot earlier.

I had ran a good half marathon distance in under 2 hours, but the heat was getting to me. When I got to 25Km, I had to start walking and then I didn’t feel good at all. I was looking around for somewhere to take a seat and when my watch beeped the 26th Km, I decided that the nearest tree beside the road was as good a point as any.

As soon as my body hit the ground, all energy was gone and I passed out. I lay there completely star-shaped with my arms and legs in a X formation and just slept. I was woken about half an hour later by some teenagers poking me with a stick to see if I was still alive.

Problem was that I was in the middle of Djurgården, no phone, no money, no buss ticket, so I just had to get back up and jog/walk/limp home.

My total time was 4 hours 10 minutes, but my watch stops counting the time after you lose consciousness until you get back up, so it just says 3:34. That’s a very nice feature.

All of this was painfully reminiscent of the infamous Lidingöloppet fiasco of a few years ago except this time I have another 50% longer to go to cross the line.

This has been a wake up call. A moment of clarity.

Out goes my secretly held idea that actually I would be able to somehow sneak over the line within 4 hours. No way. Time is not a factor here, purely finishing is the goal.

I’ve realised that the marathon isn’t a sporting event, it’s a beast. It’s cold mathematical brain knows no mercy. It won’t go easy on you if you look a little tired. You either cross the finish line at 42.2Km or you lose.

I’m locked in an almighty battle against the marathon. There can only be one victor.

Not long left to go now and still having a sore foot. Kind of just running out of time though so went for a run round Brunnsviken this morning before going to work.

Was 13Km and was actually just a couple of minutes slower than the time that I had when I ran in Scotland last week (where it was much more hilly). Might have been something to do with it being blue sky and 20+ degrees here though.

That might be a problem on the day of the race if it is too hot. Can easy be 25-28 degrees in a couple of weeks whereas I would prefer a light drizzle.

Last night was the coldest May night in Britain since records began.

Almost as if nature is rebelling against some sort of un-holy alliance?…

Haven’t been training for a while due to a sore leg. Tonight I decided to go a bit of a run because if I don’t get the miles under my belt soon, I won’t be able to do it anyway.

3.5 weeks till the race and I done a hilly 14Km tonight in perfect conditions, a beautiful route to run (even if it does go through Blackrigg).

OK, I’ll hang off on commenting on the election at the moment until we see what government is formed.

On to more important matters!

The last day of the predicting season is tomorrow and I have fallen considerably behind my rivals …

With 6 games left to predict, I will have to go for a clean sweep in order to catch Stideon. (I am ignoring the threat of the Rubbish Runner with the hope that he will forget to put his predictions in).

I’m over in Scotland this week and on Wednesday went fishing with my Dad to Carron Valley. Was a great day and I managed to land a couple of nice brownies and my Dad got 3 Brownies and two rainbows. A good day out!

This story on BBC news says that Microsoft’s Internet Explorer’s market share has dropped to around 60% of all users. This would be great, but I think it’s a bit far fetched to say that.

To find out, I had a look at some of the stats of websites I’m involved in.

First of all, we have a site purely for professionals working generally in big companies and US based. This is where I would expect to see the highest use of IE. Here’s the top 5 browsers for all of April 2010:

1. Internet Explorer 73.95%
2. Firefox 17.44%
3. Safari 4.12%
4. Chrome 3.23%
5. Opera 0.90%

Let’s take a look at another site which is almost totally UK based. It’s for a fishing club, so is more of an “everyman” site, but people probably still access it a lot from their offices…

1. Internet Explorer 68.89%
2. Firefox 19.45%
3. Safari 4.49%
4. Chrome 3.71%
5. Mozilla 1.23%

The third site is one heavily targeted towards the 15-30 year old demographic and people who use services such as Skype (i.e a bit computer savvy). The results are very interesting.

1. Firefox 44.32%
2. Internet Explorer 26.08%
3. Chrome 18.11%
4. Safari 9.32%
5. Opera 1.62%

The final site is one targeted towards artists and in particular song-writers. Again, a younger demographic.

1. Internet Explorer 38.86%
2. Firefox 33.01%
3. Safari 17.41%
4. Chrome 9.19%
5. Mozilla 0.70%

So there you have it!
I.E still dominates within big organizations and with people who don’t know the difference between a computer and a toaster. Amongst the tech-savvy young hipsters of the day (or just people who know you don’t have to use the default browser that comes with the PC), I.E is still a major player, but it’s in freefall from it’s former monopoly position of just 5 years ago.

Last night was the last debate and after the loss of the court case I wrote about in my last post, it was the same characters that took part in the last 2 debates.

Listening to the radio reaction this morning is totally focused on these three parties and how their leaders acted during the debate, did they look confident etc. and not actually about what they say they will do in power.

There is 6 campaigning days left and of course there is time for one of the parties to make a severe gaff that changes everything, but as long as no hidden microphones are forgotten, it looks pretty clear to me what will happen.

Overall, I can see a UK wide win for the Conservatives, probably enough to get an overall majority.
Think that Labour will get second place in terms of number of seats and although the Lib Dems have had a lot of publicity due to the TV debates, I don’t see it being enough to get them into 2nd place or cause a hung parliament. It’s one thing to get a lot of clicks on Youtube and another to get people to actually go out and vote in enough numbers to cause any difference in a first-past-the-post system.

In Scotland, I would predict it will be pretty much like last time we had UK elections.

I think the biggest losers on the night will be the SNP. Although they are the government of Scotland in the Edinburgh parliament, they have been made to look completely irrelevant in this election. Their core vote will still turn up, but they will be lucky to hold on to the (poor) number of seats they got last time.

Tories will win a couple of extra and I reckon that Lib Dems will stay roughly the same as they don’t have the same “Think Different” effect in Scotland than they do in England as that space is already taken by the SNP.

From our 59 MP’s I would predict at the moment:

Labour 38 – 40
Lib Dems 12 -14
SNP 4 – 6
Tories 3 – 4

But of course, I may be as good at predicting elections as I am at predicting football scores, in which case we will have a Monster Raving Loony Party landslide! (Let’s hope so).

These election debates (which I have had to watch on Youtube) featuring the three main parties in the Westminster parliament have really taken over the whole election. Almost all coverage of the election has been centered around these debates and it shows the power of them that previously unknown to most of the public Nick Clegg has a real chance of leading the Lib-Dems to at least second place in this election.

Slight problem is that the broadcasters have decided not to include one of the main Scottish parties, in fact the government of Scotland at all in any of these main debates. Ooops.

Worse still is the BBC’s role in all of this who are paid for by a substantial and compulsary fee/tax on anyone who has a TV, regardless of whether or not they watch BBC. They have a duty to be impartial and a lot of people feel strongly that they have compromised their impartiality.

I think at the least they have been guilty of not even considering the political landscape in Scotland and just going with what suits England best. But they are also Scotland’s national broadcaster and to me they are not acting like it.

On Sunday, the SNP said they would fight this in court if they could raise £50,000. Well, anybody who has been to the pub with me knows it takes a lot to get me to put my hand in my pocket, but me and 1600 others gave a little to ensure that 31 hours later, they had the money. Court papers were served in Edinburgh’s Court of Session this morning.

Unfortunately, there is the chance that this will back-fire. The media and the 3 UK parties will spin it as being petty and trying to stop people from seeing theses debates and I feel it’s too late now to have any effect on the election that is only 9 days away.

However, hopefully it sends a message to the BBC that it can’t treat Scotland as an afterthought in future elections.