To save any content (this post aside) being lost, I am disabling commenting here for good.

Please amend all your bookmarks to take note of the new site address:

http://www.mikeserieys.co.uk/wordpress

"Couples" - teams of two try and score past a single keeper. Whoever scores progresses to the next round, whichever team fails is knocked out.

Just a small part of the vigorous régime in place at Hanley Park Rangers FC.

This bit is good both for the advertiser and the person whose site they adorn (in this case me) - the audience is targetted, and therefore is more likely to click the adverts, which means that both Google and me get paid.

Unfortunately, there are occasions where adverts that are, shall we say, less than suitable adorn someone's site. I found such an occasion here today.

Sigh.

For the record, the official Mike stance is to never ever ever holiday in Wales. I have had too many of them, and I really don't want to contemplate ever going on a Welsh holiday again. There are similarly pleasant holidays to be had elsewhere in the UK, and equally pleasant ones to be had abroad. Go to those places instead.

Thank you.

• The Pet Shop Boys are a really underrated band.
• If you meet someone who looks very very similar to someone you fancy, it shouldn't make sense that you don't fancy the new person you meet. This is odd as the original (hypothetical) fancy was (theoretically) demonstrably attractive, and certainly the new (hypothetical) one is. Yet, (certainly in this hypothetical case which doesn't exist at all) the new (hypothetical one) isn't at all (hypothetically) fanciable. Why? Discuss.
• After the BIP FC débacle, I really should have learnt that taking responsibility for another football team might be a Really Bad Idea. But no.
• If you're a criminal using someone else's bank card, it's not wise to have an invoice for items you've purchased sent to the real card owners address.
• It's time Underworld played some concerts anywhere in the North West/Midlands.
• Someone should give the Daily Show's Jon Stewart a show without an audience full of baying idiots. It'd make the show so much more watchable.
• Despite its multiple similarities to Mac OS X, and the fact that the worst things about it still remain (dll hell, the registry etc), Windows Vista is a surprisingly credible OS. Dare I say it, the core assets of the interface are possibly more visually striking than OS X.
• Starting playing The Sims again was probably a Really Bad Idea.
• On a similar note, the upcoming Intel Mac native FM2007 might rank up there in the Really Bad Ideas camp, but we'll see on that front.
• I am becoming more and more convinced that I'll end up moving to Birmingham after my degree. This is both Good and Bad for varying reasons which I'm not discussing now.

I'm not going to go into too much explicit detail here as it might prejudice any investigation, but i think it'll suffice to say this:

Logging into internet banking to discover that your previously passable balance has been eaten up by a bunch of fraudulent transactions is not a good way to end your weekend.

Folks, make sure that your cards are covered by serious and proper anti-fraud protection. Fortunately, mine is, but I didn't explicitly know otherwise beforehand. On the offchance this happens to you, it's really really worth checking.

Since the early days of the internet, weak political discussions have been one of the most popular activities. Originally these were on early BBS systems, moving on to Usenet, and now typically on blogs (you can see a modern example of this on the Guardian's Comment is Free site) all of which follow the same general pattern. A biased (in the Guardian's case typically liberal) post is replied to by a right wing commenter, who then starts an argument over broader issues with the left wing Guardian readers.

This kind of discussion lead to the creation of Godwin's Law. Quoting from Wikipedia:

Godwin's Law (also Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies) is a mainstay of Internet culture, an adage formulated by Mike Godwin in 1990. It is particularly concerned with logical fallacies such as reductio ad Hitlerum, wherein an idea is unduly dismissed or rejected on ground of it being associated with persons generally considered "evil". The law states:

As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.

{…}

There is a tradition in many newsgroups and other Internet discussion forums that once such a comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically "lost" whatever debate was in progress. This principle is itself frequently (though perhaps incorrectly) referred to as Godwin's Law.

So, I was somewhat amused to look at the BBC News website this evening and see the headline Bush compares Bin Laden to Hitler.

George, in the minds of much of the internet generation, you've now lost the "War on Terror". Congratulations.

Godwin's biggest scalp to date.

It is my opinion that lyrics are simply an addition to music. They are simply an extra layer, they are not deep and meaningful, they do not define a generation, and they are simply something for someone to sing along to. Great music can be instrumental (be it contemporary or classical), great music can contain lyrics in a language you can't understand. Lyrics can, of course, occasionally be quite cool - I have always liked the line "The year 3000 may still come to pass, but the music shall last" from Sterling Void's classic house track It's Alright - but overall they could say pretty much anything.

In short, they're just an extra layer of music which as a rule shouldn't make or break a good piece of music.

But unfortunately, the key word here is should. I have a sad example of how lyrics can, and have, utterly changed a track. The track in question is one I've linked up to the right here for many months now - Changes by Scottish DJ/producer Chris Lake. It's a relatively simple track steeped in the traditional sounds of earlyish house music, capped off with a very simple yet incredibly effective house piano riff. I think it's a fantastic track. No lyrics, just a beat, some bass, a few effects, and the piano riff. Nothing more was needed.

Clearly someone disagreed. The result is, shall we say, nothing short of horrific. The lyrics have been layered on top with seemingly little thought as to how they will impact on the acoustics, and they are utterly meaningless drivel.

Listen if you dare.

Late last week when in Wolverhampton en route from Birmingham to Stoke, I stopped off in the local chav sports shop Sports World and purchased two items - one Aston Villa away shirt, and one cheap as hell Umbro football. While the football was fit for purpose - acting as it is as an unorthodox foot stool - I got the shirt home to discover a rather unfortunate yellow stain smack bang in the middle of the shirt. It was clearly some kind of manufacturing defect, as the yellow even showed an outline of the above sponsors logo.

Oh well, I think, it wasn't a malicious error, and I should have looked more carefully in the shop, so I'll just go to the Stoke branch and exchange it for another one. Mike approaches a perfectly pleasant looking blonde and begins the delicate process.

"Hi there, is this the right desk for exchanges?"
"What?"
"Exchanges, can I do them here?"
"What do you want to exchange?"
"This shirt, I got it in the Wolverhampton store and got it home, and as you can see it's got this horrible stain on it."
"We don't stock that shirt."
"I'll swap it for the home shirt then if I can, can you reach one for me?" (The Villa shirts are suspended 8ft+ in the air on incredibly high racks.)
"What size do you want?"
"I'll take one in 46-48" please." (MIke likes baggy shirts, although he won't pretend to be much slimmer than this size…)
"What?"
"46-48 inches, this is what the label says."
"What size is that?"
Mike finds label on stained shirt
"Here."
"I have no idea what that is."

Turns out in the end that they put their stuff on colour coded hangers, and this particular size goes down as XL. Not entirely sure how I was to know that, but still. I still think she was a bit dense.

Yes, this entry is a bit bitchy, we've all had bad days at work in the past, but meh, it's my blog so I'll rant as and when I see fit.

Before the match, I was expecting Villa to win relatively comfortably. From the first matches of the season for both teams, I felt that Villa's strong back line and Reading's clumsy one would be the main factors contributing to Martin O'Neill's first three points in B6. And, for all of three minutes, my theory was not disproved.

It was at this time though when Reading's Irish striker Kevin Doyle was in an area of space the size of the Pridnestrovie Moldavskaia Respublica, and unsurprisingly dispatched the header with ease. 1-0 Reading, and for the next twenty five minutes or so, it only looked like increasing. Erk.

But things turned on around twenty-five minutes, and two disallowed goals later, Villa got a deserved penalty after the hapless Ibrahima Sonko tripped and stumbled on a clean through on goal Luke Moore. Inadvertent? Perhaps. But it denied Moore a clear goalscoring opportunity, and the sending off was the inevitable result. A cucumber cool penalty by Angel made it 1-1, and at half time this was the score. The feeling was that it wasn't a question of if Villa would score again, it was a question of how many.

Yet, to Reading's credit, it was far from a walkover. Despite having mucho possession, a new pioneering form of Horizontal Football proved entirely unsuccessful, being as it was a complete waste of time. Observe.

Somehow though, a bit of normal football came, Barry scored, and a deserved 2-1 lead - and ultimately win - came from it. The game I think said more about Reading than it did Villa - they were a very difficult team to play against, and Villa didn't carve too many clear chances out of the game. Also, it was difficult to gauge how good Villa actually were in having all this possession as Reading were down to ten men for most of the possession hungry period.

The opening three games of the season are proving an interesting acid test for Villa, offering three very different tests. A draw at Arsenal has proved that, on a good day, O'Neill's Villa can cope with England's best teams, and defeating Reading suggests that there is little realistic threat of relegation. Tomorrow's game against Newcastle should indicate just how far Villa can progress. Defeating Newcastle would suggest that a top six position might just be within reach, whereas a draw would suggest a solid mid-table finish. I'm expecting a solid 1-1 draw tomorrow.

1 Chelsea
2 Manchester United
3 Arsenal
4 Liverpool
5 Newcastle
6 Tottenham
7 Everton
8 West Ham
9 Blackburn
10 Aston Villa
11 Charlton
12 Portsmouth
13 Fulham
14 Middlesbrough
15 Sheffield United
16 Bolton
17 Man City
18 Wigan
19 Watford
20 Reading

Since I first visited London in 2000, I have tried to visit at least once a year for this very purpose. Until this time last year though, I had largely left one area of Central London untouched - the City. Since then, it really has transformed into somewhere I love being.

The area now known as the City - affectionately known as the Square Mile - is the financial capital of London, the UK, and arguably Europe. It is unique in that outside of the rush hours, the streets in the City are almost deserted. Despite its location smack bang next to the West End, the permanent population of the City is only 9,000 with around 320,000 people flocking in to work there during the week. So outside of these hours, what you have is a massively impressive shell of a city with all the amenities needed, except a population. It is bizarre.

So when I went down to London on Saturday, my first stop was the City. Arriving there at around 1030, on exiting the tube I found a relatively quiet street, a handful of pedestrians, and on an absolutely perfect day, it was a perfect time to photograph the area.

As the site of the original settlement of London, the city has some absolutely remarkable architectural juxtapositions. For example on Coleman Street, one can find this church.

Walking a little further down the road you can see this:

And I am still to get over the absolutely spectacular Swiss Re Building, aka the Gherkin. Not only is it stunning, but it just reeks of modernity and coolness in its position:

I'm not going to go on for too much longer about this, because I'm getting boring and geeky, but I have a set of a few of the photos from Saturday on my on my Flickr page.

If you're ever in Central London and have an hour or two to spare with a camera and don't fancy slumming it with the masses at Buck Palace/Piccadilly Circus/Madame Tussauds, head to Bank station on the Central Line, Northern Line (Bank branch), District Line, Circle Line, Waterloo & City Line or DLR (there's enough ways to make it there) have a peek.

In the middle of opening a new account on Wednesday, the caller - who despite being young, female, and from Central London, had more than half a brain cell - asked me where we were based. It seemed like a fair question, and as she had a pretty strong American accent, I decided to go for reasonably non-specific details:

Her: "So where are you actually based?"
Me: "We're based in Newcastle, but not the big Newcastle, the unfamous small Newcastle in Staffordshire."
Her: "Oh?"
Me: "Yeah, it's alright here I suppose, but it does have the disadvantage of being right next to Stoke-on-Trent."
Her: "Oh, I always thought Stoke-on-Trent sounded really nice."
Me: "No, in all honesty it's an absolute hole. I wouldn't recommend a day trip here."

It was at this point that I noted a steely silence around me, and the thought kicked in. On the table around me are five people from Stoke-on-Trent and the surrounding area, and I heard my boss saying "Did you hear what Mike just said about Stoke?" Erk, I thought, wondering if I could escape my way out of this, and for the rest of the call I was thinking of my escape strategy. Fortunately, I had a guess at what might come up, and it came up trumps:

An entire group of angry women: What did you just say about Stoke?
Me: Erm, well I said that it wasn't the greatest of places…
An entire group of angry women: But you're from Wolverhampton.
Me: Yep, and I have direct experience of what rubbish towns are like.

It worked in the short term, although I have since been threatened with physical violence by a couple of them. Still, it's not my fault - they shouldn't have listened to me.

Text me to say:

"Am unable to post reply to your post on your blog - I keep laughing too much."

A few, however, are clueless. Totally and utterly clueless. Without wanting to stereotype, they're usually women about my age working in Central London branches, and they really annoy me. For example today:

Each branch or business centre is allowed to apply a different interest rate to the product to a certain number of customers, generally in order to sweeten the deal for the richer people to prevent them from going elsewhere for their banking needs. Applying a price discretion usually only takes five minutes or so, but this woman tried my patience to the extreme by:

• Complaining about the standard rate, not noting that she was changing it anyway, and that I am merely an employee, not a director.
• Being stupid.
• Changing her mind every couple of minutes, making it impossible to know what she wanted.
• Having no idea about how the product worked.
• Being impatient with me when I got confused. Sigh.
• Then, ten minutes into the call, changing her mind.
• After changing her mind about the price discretion, then asking me which I wanted to do. My reply: "It has nothing to do with me. What do you want to do?" I'm usually quite jolly on the phone, but she drove me up the wall.
• After changing her mind and deciding to place a deal - which is dealt with by a different department - I said I'd have to transfer her. She asked if this was really necessary. My reply: "Yes". What I wanted to say: "Yes, you utter, utter bint".
• Upon transferring her, with her on hold, I told my sob story to dealing desk person, who sympathised with me. Not remembering her name, upon request I called her "A truly horrendous woman".

Grr.

So: enjoy.