In a surprise move so late in the season, the Real Madrid president Florentino Perez has announced that Manuel Pellegrini has been sacked as the manager of Real Madrid with immediate affect. He will be replaced by the more experienced Colin Mercer.

In an announcement made at the Estadio Santiago Bernabéu earlier Señor Perez blamed Pellegrini for Real’s current league position and lack of success in cup competitions, stating:

“…a change of personnel is required if we are going to turn this season around…”

Mercer has had successful Football Manager campaigns at Liverpool, Monaco and Barcelona to mention just a few, most recently taking Liverpool to the Premier League title and Champions League final in his 2nd season in charge.

It is rumoured that he will look to bring players from his previous clubs like Torres, Gerrard and Messi to the Bernabéu.

This news comes as less of a surprise to the panellists on Revista de La Liga who predicted Pellegrini to be on the way out yesterday.

Sometimes funny things happen when you least expect them to (is that what makes them funny?).

I’ve recently been arranging pre-season Cricket nets for the club at one of the local colleges. I have selected to use Radley College as they have some of the best facilities in the area and because Straussy went there.

Radley College is over 150 years old, and very much set in its way. The cliché boys boarding school: no girls; lots of lessons; strange looking tutors; almost military discipline. Check out the grounds, oh yes they offer Golf as a sport and have their own course:

I would have gone there myself, but my hair is too long, and I quote:

No dyed or highlighted hair is allowed.

Hair should be kept neat, tidy and off the ears and collar at all times, but not excessively short.

Anyway, I digress from the story…

I emailed them earlier today, asking for confirmation of my booking after being told on the phone early last week that someone would get back to me ASAP with information. Nothing happened so I emailed. Now, I don’t know what goes on in Colleges like this, but the reply I got surprised me:

I told you about this lesbian just in case u cant remember, 3.30 down the road still, plus can drop off more leaflets and posters…..

It’s a lie, they didn’t tell me anything about lesbians, for a boys school this seems slightly off the cuff.

I spoke recently to people about how augmented reality was going to be the next big thing in mobile tech and this seems to be a big step in that direction.

Recognizr is an app which links a real person’s face to their social presences.

Recognizr works when the user points the camera at another person. Inbuilt face recognition software maps a 3D model of the subject and transmits the information to a remote server where it is matched with an identity already present in the database. This information is then sent back to the handset along with any relevant social networking information associated to that person, conveniently displayed above the persons head using little social icons.

Basically meaning that I can point this at strangers, and instantly follow them on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube etc…

Unfortunately, this only works on people who are signed up, so its more like stalking people who want to be stalked… not entirely sure if its still stalking if they want to be stalked?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GqJHaNRlas

Read more on The Next Web or check out the official page.

Dear Jonathan Ross…

I saw you presenting the BAFTAs last night and thought you did an excellent job. However I saw the part where the guy from Gavin and Stacey threatened to take the job away from you next year and when they cut to you there was a sense of resignation in your expression. Is he bullying you? Has Dickie Bird Attenborough been covering it up? With him gone now, I’m sure if you go and tell Prince William about the problems he will help!

If he can’t let me know, I have a contact number for Mr T (found it on the back of a Snickers wrapper), or if you get really desperate we can call Chuck Norris (If you say his name 9 times backwards whilst holding a transformers car he appears).

Hope the family is well.

Sincerely,

Colin M

Tonight was spent watching Starship Troopers, with the lovely Denise Richards, Casper Van Dien, Dina Meyer and a bunch of others (who cares hey?). Why I hear you scream, well I got bored of the program that was on about Hiroshima…

Just to clear that opening sentence up a bit, Denise Richards plays one of the main parts in the film, I didn’t mean that I was watching it with her. That would have been ace, but unlikely, unless she is reading this and would like to sort something out?

One thing which interested me was a comment from someone I was watching it with, they said that the CGI was terrible and having not seen the film before assumed that it had been carried on the strength of its CGI in the past rather than the story. I actually think the CGI is pretty impressive, the Spaceships are damn cool, and the Insects are pretty advanced. Especially the landscape scenes where there are thousands of Insects attacking all with separate motion patterns.

More importantly, back to Denise Richards, I looked up her IMDB earlier, and apparently has a film out late last year called ‘Deep In The Valley’. Now on hearing this you assume Welsh Porno, which doesn’t appear to be too far off the mark. Denise plays someone called Autumn Bliss, pornstar much? Off to Blockbusters I think…

So today I was lucky enough to take delivery of a Mio Moov Spirit V505 from Brands2Life. The in car Sat Nav system which as a little quirk works as a built in TV as well, this isn’t something which I’ll be fiddling too much with today though.

Tonight we are driving to London, to a part of London we haven’t driven to before so an accurate Sat Nav will be a lifesaver. First thoughts on the Mio are good, the big buttons make everything easy to do, and I’m sure even easier when driving along! I have already been able to program in the destination for later which saves time, I don’t have a GPS signal in my room to plan the route however, which is no surprise as I struggle for Vodafone signal as well.

As a comparison I will also have my N97 out, to test out the new(ish) free Ovi Maps navigation support. It’s about time this service became free, could this be the thing which clinches the mobile Sat Nav marked? And probably more importantly pushes Nokia users to use Ovi services instead of Google ones… Until now I have always been a Google Maps man so we will have to wait and see how it goes. My main concern is battery life, I some what doubt the N97 can handle 2 hours worth of ‘doing’ without a charge.

So what points will I be comparing:

• Time taken to plan out the route
• The planned route
• Accuracy of route
• Appropriate warning times
• Display + Instructions
• Anything else which comes up

Yes indeed, it is all a matter of perspective, looking at the above picture, what you don’t realise is that each of those desktops are the same size!

Ok so that is bollocks, but I hope you are enjoying the view of my Nokia N97 + Asus EEE PC + Samsung 32” LCD. Each one has a very important part to play in my working set up at the moment, as you can see below…

All that tech, and still probably the most important thing is the note pad and pen… weird hey?

Oh yay its Sunday, the day of rest, the day built for relaxing and doing very little. I don’t know why they have Sundays in Spain, every day seems like a Sunday…

The day started off in a similar way to which the last had finished, with a nice beer. After getting up and stuff we headed to a local Tapas place for food. More details which I can’t remember about, the name of the place we went to and the name for the drink we had. It was basically lager with a load of lemon cordial in it. Very refreshing, perfect for that early drink. The Tapas here was also better than the stuff from the day before (did I mention we had Tapas the day before?), highlight was definitely the croquet style yummyness.