Chris

Plus a civil case for the sexual assault pending.

If it finishes like this it's Brasil's biggest ever defeat. Eclipsing the previous effort by Uruguay's 6-0 in 1920...

Couple of videos with onboard footage from the first two days: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-pbN-hmQO0

Can't really get excited about Goodwillie signing. Was pretty rubbish on his loan spell at United and hasn't shown much form since he left Scotland. That's before you even start on his off-field problems. Still it's only a one year deal and gives us a bit of cover which will be sorely needed if we want to progress in all competitions.

Well I woke up on Sunday feeling fine! It was another tough race. Fucking hate running a race in sunny weather and there was very little shade or breeze. It made for a very hot run which was just great on a hilly course like Stoney. Still, despite being ill all week I managed to beat my time from 2 years ago by two minutes - 2:03:43. Pretty happy with that all things considered. Might have been a bit better but for two things - one a brutal stitch which appeared as I was running down Belmont Brae to the finish. Had to walk for a minute to recover, which was pretty demoralising so close to the end. Just couldn't breath and was in agony. Reckon the conditions were to blame for that as I never get stitches normally. The other thing was a timing mat 50 metres from the finish which they were using to bring up everyone's details for the announcer. I, and many other runners, slowed down or stopped as we went over that mat thinking it was the finish only to be told to keep going. Oops.

Well that was an interesting first stage! Gutted for Cav. Amazed he hasn't got a broken collar bone after that crash, hope he can carry on and get over the disappointment of not winning that stage. Cancellera just caused chaos with his last minute break. Very entertaining to watch. Crowds looked superb throughout the stage. Amazing to see.

Still available. Will go on gumtree this week

Still available. Will go on Gumtree this week

Just catching up on Metallica's performance. Thought Creeping Death was a bit shoddy but it got better, a lot better, as the show went on. By the time they got to One and Master of Puppets they were immense. Swear James looked younger the more songs he played.

Merde.

I kept meaning to buy a shruti box. But bot a synth instead. Now loads of people use shruti boxes and it's not so weird and exotic anymore.

I don't own many obscure instruments (doubt a glockenspiel counts). Probably the most obscure would be my ESP LTD Hybrid-300. Don't think anyone else bought one! Not pointy enough for ESP's core demographic I think, they stopped making them after a year or two.

Currently on a 1 week in 3 on call rota at work. One of my team members just handed his notice in, so I guess I'm now on a 1 in 2 on call rota

At the moment it's 50/50 if I'm even running. My cold seems to be getting worse

That's when running starts to make sense as a hobby. When you can just relax and let your mind wander while you jog along. Great when you get to that stage! Stoney half marathon on Sunday. Feeling like shit this week though so not looking forward to it. Forecast is crap as well. Nevermind, everything will come good on the day I hope. Had an amusing (well it's funny now) incident on a run the other week. Decided to skip club training and go for an up and down on Kerloch, a decent sized hill near Banchory. I've done it loads and there's always been "Beware of Cattle" signs at the gate where I park my car but I've never seen actual cows there. Well, this time there were cows there. Lots of them. With calves. I jogged along the path and they were all standing beside it, so I slowed down and walked past so not to spook them. They watched me closely but didn't seem too bothered. Well they were fucking bothered when I came back again an hour later! Took me twenty minutes to walk through them on the way back while they made an almighty racket and ran around in a panic. Was a few dodgy moments (especially when one calf ended up on the other side of the path with me in between it and it's mother) and I was shitting myself at times but managed to get back to the car without being trampled by a bunch of angry bovines. Would rather not do that again...

Vive La France! Our relentless gallic march to the final continues. Now we're nicely set up to avenge the defeat of our upstart colony by beating Germany on Friday. Allez les bleus! Deschamps has now gone 10 games undefeated at the world cup as a player and a manager

Man Of Steel Christopher Nolan and Zack Snyder watched Independence Day and decided it would be improved if they replaced Will Smith with Superman. They were wrong.

I finished watching S1 of Agents of Shield yesterday and wanted to fill in some blanks by watching Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier. The film is no longer showing in cinemas yet it's not possible to watch it anywhere now. I tried all the legit sources I could find and it looks like it's gone until August when the BluRay is released. I then turned to torrents but 2 were dodgy camcorder in a cinema jobs with asian titles and very dark lighting making. Generally poor quality and not good to watch. The 3rd one I tried actually turned out to be Rio2. I hope the motherfucker that did that ends up in a particularly distasteful part of hell. Probably being forced to watch Rio2. It seems like movie studios are still not grasping the potential of the internet to make them money. They have a product but instead of using it to generate ongoing cash they're withholding it in the hope that they make bumper sales on the physical release instead. Then when it is released to streaming companies it will just be for a short window or for overpriced download models like BlinkBox. Very frustrating.

Standing re-start is such a bad idea. All that's going to happen is more safety cars as the start is the most likely time for an accident to occur. They're fixing something that isn't broken, the rolling restart is great and can result in passing.

Cheers, few folk at work have mentioned First Mortgage so I'll try them then look at some others if they turn out to be dicks. Last IFA I used was a total tube (lied to our faces about why documents hadn't been submitted, lazy, pushed policies we didn't want) so keen to avoid similar arseholes. Have done a lot of the groundwork ourselves this time just want to talk it over with someone face to face before getting a decision in principal.

Can anyone recommend a good independant mortgage advisor?

Dual Terror is 30W of valve if you like the TT but think it won't have enough headroom for you. Can be switched down to 7w. If it's just for backup though the most bang for buck would probably be a decent solid state amp I'd have thought, especially as you don't use valve distortion.