It's a game of 10 halves, Binary

Thanks to Satan for this revolutionary pre-match analysis: arsenal.com vs fcbarcelona.com

Environments
-------------------------
Both running on windows, a dull start...
Arse 0 - 0 Barca

Homepage
-------------------------
Both have splash screens before you enter the main site (yawn), the Barca
one has a nice language selection menu, the arse one invites you to gamble
(which we all know is very bad)...
Arse 0 - 1 Barca

HTML etc
-------------------------
Equalizer for the arse as the wisely decide not to use tables, however an
own goal for the over stuffing of keywords (a redundant tag as we all know)
and the use of 7 javasript includes. The arse score again as barca forgot to
declare a doctype and declare backgound colours and widths outside the css!
Another goal for the arse as barca use a spacer gif over 100 times (got
bored counting), and omit both a noscript tag and a separate print style
sheet.
Arse 3 - 2 Barca

Content
-------------------------
Barca equalize due to greater language options, less encouragements to
gamble ('betting' is an option on the arse main menu - very evil) and no
blatant plugs for their own tv channel and less rotating banner ads. The
arse site appears to have a greater range of club related content, history,
stats etc (ladies team - shouldn't that be women's team) and gets quite
nerdy. Visually, I prefer the barca site, it's cleaner and more readable.
Hence:
Arse 3 - 3 Barca .... Penalties it is!!!!

Product placement 3 - Henderson's Delectable Relish

Owl or blade everyone in Sheffield likes Henderson's and with good reason, it is an excellent condiment, similiar to Worcestershire sauce but a lot nicer. The Weaver picks us up a bottle from Sheffield when we run out, but you can buy online for £10 a litre or just pick up some Henderson's merchandise: interestingly, one of the recipes listed in the recipe book is "Ash, Meat & Potato Pie". I must ask the Weaver what's in it..

Network hardware

I replaced our wireless router and it's a true boiling-frog experience: now everything 'just works' again the contrast is spectacular. Anyone out there struggling with a Linksys BEFW11S4 should just start saving for (or spring for) a new router: they aren't very good.. My cat sat on mine for a year which didn't help.

I bought a Linksys WRT54G for £50 (incl tax & post) and it seems fantastic in comparison because I can upload via FTP again, which is a real boon when maintaining websites! This has been a complete pain for a year or so.

Some protocols fared better with the failing device than others. I expect the situation is analagous to teetering on the fringes of a wireless network: HTTP seemed to manage (with occasional network and page errors), BitTorrent wasn't fussed, SMTP is occasional anyway, but FTP hated it. Something in the connection would fail and FTP uploads would hang: for a while I just did HTTP uploads but they started falling over as well and I couldn't upload any files of any size. HTTP downloads seemed to be unaffected, FTP downloads were less happy, but this is probably a function of browser/client/UA used.

Windows (server 2003) fired TCP/IP errors 4201 and 4202: Network Adapters dis- and re-connected, not necessarily in that order: Mac OS logged "mDNSResponder: Repeated transitions for interface ..[RFC1918IP].. delaying packets by 5 seconds."

I am also seeing another error though: Windows' event log records

The system failed to register host (A) resource records (RRs) for network adapter with settings ... the reason the system could not register these RRs was because the DNS server contacted refused the update request.

Mac OS on the other hand says this:

Wide-Area Service Discovery disabled to avoid crashing defective DNS relay 194.168.4.100

Code

That's one of NTL's DNS servers, I recognise it from setting up static IP addresses on Virtual PCs (it makes things a lot easier - as does activating a base copy of Windows before using it on different virtual machines). No need to ask Yossarian or Occam what's going on here, I think. I could use different DNS servers (I believe you can specify any server, but I would hope my own ISPs traffic was optimized) but everything's working now with my shiny new router so 'errors schmerrors'.

I vowed while driving home on Friday night that I would learn to touchtype: I suppose I should keep myself to it. Wish me luck..

ps I realise this post is somewhat incoherent but I becoming totally consumed with nerves over the upcoming European Cup Final starring Arsenal FC.. wish us luck, thank you