world cup

World Cup: Links

Ashley F. Miller, , , , , , 1 Comment

I’m sure you Americans (aka 90% of my readership) are like in total hate with me right now.  I’m sorry, this link is for you.

For you other crazy kids, I’ve got the super awesome calendar.  Seriously, it’s super cool, the information is so organized and sane, yet visually pleasing.

Then there’s this:

Running a little over 70 pages, it’s a remarkably in-depth summary of each country in this year’s finals, including football prowess, economic state, and political situation. Furthermore, it provides a primer on the potential hosts of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, and, unsurprisingly but more than interesting, an examination of economic growth and decline vis-a-vis the international football teams of respective countries.

(Quote from here)

Do numbers and in-depth analysis with lots of charts turn you on drive you mad make you happy?  Then look at the dang thing, because it’s awesome.  And it has in-depth predictions of who’s going to win.

Also, this is the link to TNR covering the World Cup.

Next in my world cup coverage will probably be me explaining to you who I’m rooting for.  It’s complicated… sort of a hierarchical system rather than a “I want X to win”.  There may be maths and history lessons involved.

World Cup: Links
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World Cup: Ashley Recommends These Games

Ashley F. Miller, , , , , , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

Let us pretend I’ve spent no time on this and am merely grabbing some things out of a random hat.  The following are 6 games over the next few weeks that I think will be entertaining, in order of appearance, all times PST.

6/12 11:30 England (8) v USA (14)

England is hungry for another cup, but their line-up is a bit wobbly.  These two are probably competing for number 1 in their group, and will both make it out, but this game will show us if the US is going to actually do anything worthwhile and if England is going to make a real run to repeat ’66.

6/15 11:30 Brazil (1) v North Korea (105)

These are the two extremes; Brazil is FIFA rank number 1 and Korea DPR is number 105, the lowest in the competition by nearly 30.  Perhaps I’m a sadist, but this could be extremely fun to watch.  It probably helps that it’s really easy to hate North Korea, though there are some worries that there will be negative consequences for the players if they embarrass their dictator , so maybe it’s easy to root for the incredibly downtrodden underdogs?

6/17 11:30 France (9) v Mexico (17)

I generally think that the France, Uruguay, Mexico triad is going to be fun to watch, I think they’re very closely matched.  And I think my soft-spot goes to Mexico.

6/22 7:00 Mexico (17) v Uruguay (16)

These two are ranked 16 and 17, and it’s likely that this will be win or go home.  I suspect this will be a hard fought game.

6/22 11:30 Greece (13) v Argentina (7)

They’re closely matched in terms of talent, likely this will simply be for first, so not quite as much pressure, but I think we’ll see here if Argentina is going to be a real challenger.

6/25 7:00 Portugal (3) v Brazil (1)

Probably the most anticipated match of the knockout rounds.  Brazil, number 1, against Portugal, number 3.  Plus, they like speak the same language and stuff.

World Cup: Ashley Recommends These Games

Internet help?

Ashley F. Miller, , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Using the massive power of, um, asking a question on my blog in the hopes that someone who reads it knows the answer, does anyone know if there’s a place online where I can watch the world cup games after they air? As in, I have no plans to be up at 7am to watch the opening game live, but I would actually like to watch it. Or is this just something I have to figure out Friday?

I sort of fell off the blogging map last week.  It was one of those weeks where I accomplished like nothing at all.  But I will be better now because I’m fully recovered from having another human being (aka Mom) spending all day with me every day for 4 days.  Have you read this?  You know that phrase “you’re getting on my last nerve”?  Having people around all the time is sort of like being put in a state of permanent last nerveness.  Also, she broke down my door.  Which was kind of hilarious.

In the last couple of weeks I haven’t been watching a lot of media.  I’m well behind on Glee and hadn’t watched a movie in like weeks because I’d been reading a lot trying to do the 50 books in a year thing.  Which has actually been nice.  I spend all day at work in front of the computer watching TV footage, I think getting away from the computer is a state I have to manufacture more often.  Like, I’ve gotten some (late-afternoon, indirect) sunlight in the last couple of weeks and I feel slightly healthier and I think my skin is vaguely less albino.  But, this weekend, I watched some movies and Sherlock Holmes.  I know it’s wrong, but Jeremy Brett, am I right?

Jeremy Brett: Hot or Not?

I just did a google image search for people who are albino and they are not paler than me.  What’s that about?

Working on D4aD, trying to get beyond the outline with complete first act stage.  I tried scene cards and decided I hate them.  I’m not saying writing has to be totally organic, and having a skeleton is important, but the scene cards confuse that for me somehow.  //END RANDOM BLOG

Internet help?

World Cupdate

Ashley F. Miller, , , , , , , , Leave a comment

So, I’m not a sports person generally, and I’m not even a football/soccer fan regularly, but I really love the World Cup.  I mean, I like soccer, I’ll watch it, but something about the countries competing against each other is really cool, and it’s all in the same sport and not as lame as the Olympics.  It’s probably because I actually played soccer, and was still playing soccer when this happened:

So it’s the one sport that the ladies in the US are better at than the men.  We’ve won the Women’s World Cup twice, and never placed below third.  The boys haven’t done so well.  Right now we’re ranked 14th, which is to say we’ll probably get through the first round (weak bracket) but we’re probably not going to do well.

Anyway, the point of this post is that the schedule is up at ESPN and they’re going to air every game live.  Most of the games will also be on their website, which I have to figure out how to get to actually play on my computer.  It’s vaguely complicated.  They are, of course, not showing the finale online.

Schedule: http://www.worldcupblog.org/world-cup-2010/espns-world-cup-2010-tv-schedule.html

My favorite news: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/world_cup_2010/default.stm

Numbers for the Nate Silver in us all: http://www.worldcuppredictions.org/

I really like that last site.  It’s got the odds listed as follows:

Spain (4.75)
Brazil (6.00)
England (7.00)
Argentina (8.00)
Germany (13.00)
Italy (13.00)
Netherlands (13.00)
France (17.00)
Ivory Coast (26.00)
Portugal (29.00)
USA (51.00)

And if you’re worried, don’t be, Nate Silver will have us covered too.

World Cupdate