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For the World Cup in 2006, I ran an online game where players had to guess the scores for the matches played in the group stages. It’s a game that I’m sure goes on in many workplaces; it just gives a little extra interest to the competition, especially as Scotland failed to qualify.

We certainly had played it before at my workplace (it was Euro 2004), but it was ran by one of my workmates, all done on paper. We were each given a sheet with a list of the group stage matches, and we had to fill in our guesses at what the scores would be and then give the sheets back to him (keeping a copy obviously). As the matches were played, the guy running the game had to manually check everyone’s score sheets and award points appropriately, and then produce a new leaderboard sheet to post up on the notice boards in the building, so that everyone playing knew where they stood in the points table.

For the World Cup in 2006, I decided that I would run the game (the guy that did it in 2004 had since left), but I didn’t fancy all the work of manually checking everybody’s scores and awarding points etc. So I decided that I’d write an online version, where players could register and input their scores online, and as the results of the group stage matches were known all I had to do was enter them in an administrator interface, and my software would run through the database checking the result against everybody’s scores and awarding points automatically. I ended up with 60 registered players* and once a result was known, the leaderboard and awarded points were automatically updated in seconds.

I was quite happy with how the game went, the software was pretty stable, and the only reasonably difficult part was the scoring algorithm to award the points (there where three possible outcomes for points – 0, 1 or 3). My one problem was that the game was limited in who was able to play: in order to play, you had to pay a £2 entry fee, and this was the issue. The fact that you had to somehow get your £2 physically to me meant that you had to know me personally; or know someone that knew me personally. I’ll just say now that all of the money taken as entry fees was used as prize money – I didn’t make a penny out of running the game.

So, I’m thinking of running the game again for the Euro 2008 tournament, but I’d like to offer an online payment option, so that people could play without actually having a connection to me. I’m not sure how feasible this is, but hopefully it’s an option available to me. I’m just about to start writing the code for the game (much of it I will be able to re-use from 2006, but some of it I want to write differently), so I’ll see what options are available to me.

*There were 60 registered players on the site, but some people were registered more than once to have a better chance.

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Recently talking of things being “like riding a bike”, I also recently started playing my guitar again, as frequently as I did when I started to learn it years ago. I used to play every single day, for at least an hour, and quite often for longer. I built up a decent repertoire of songs that I played, and learned most of them off by heart (didn’t need the tabs).

I’ve never actually stopped playing, just that it had become a very infrequent activity, even though one of my guitars is constantly accessible as it sits on a stand in the corner of my living room. On the rare occasion when I did pick it up and play, it was a very small subset of the songs that I knew that I played on it.

Playing it much more frequently now means I need more things to play, as it gets very boring playing the same songs over and over again. So, I dug out the big box I have with all of the various tabs that I had collected years ago, and started to flick through them: cue lots of “oh aye, remember that one!”

What I find remarkable here though, is that just getting a reminder of a song that I used to play on the guitar (eg. Strong Enough by Sheryl Crow) and a quick look at the tab to see where it starts is enough. It just sort of comes back to me – my hand just moves from shape to shape without me even thinking about it. Songs that I haven’t played in six or seven years, played from start to finish without any bother.

Maybe my memory isn’t as bad as I thought it had become!

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I recently bought a bike (a pedal bike, not a motor one – that’s for another post!)

When I was younger I was always out on my bike, and used to go for some fairly lengthy journeys on it, which could easily take me a good eight or nine hours round trip. My last memory of having a bike and being out and about on it was when I was 17, because soon after that (18) I owned my first car, and so the bike was very quickly superfluous to my needs.

For a few reasons (nostalgia, health/fitness, practicality, environmental) I decided that I’d get a new bike, and start using it again. And I actually have been using it; surprisingly it hasn’t just sat there in my spare room gathering dust.

I’m quite enjoying being out on two wheels again, to the point that even when I’ve been getting home from work, if it has still been bright (and dry) enough, I’ve quickly got changed, and jumped on the bike to go for a quick run. I’m a way off being as capable on it as I used to be (anything more than an hour or so at the moment has my legs in severe agony), but I’m sure that over time this will get better and better. And with summer (ha!) approaching, I’m likely to be out and about more often.

I’m looking forward to it.

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My parents have always had jobs that meant they didn’t need to work public holidays, and growing up that meant that when the schools were off, they were invariably off too.

I’ve had a few jobs in my time, but I’ve never yet had one that gave me public holidays (at least not on the actual days that they fall, other than Christmas and New Year). So I’ve become accustomed to working when many other people are off, and to be honest, it’s not something that really bothers me; it’s not as if I’m losing out, I can take the days at other times of the year (and if I really wanted to, I’m now in a job that would allow me to take them on the actual days the public holidays fall, but I prefer not to).

One big advantage to me now that I live a considerable drive away from my place of work, is that on days like today my commute is wonderful. It was a bright sunny morning, and there was hardly a car on the road when I drove in. My commute in the morning normally takes me around 50 minutes to one hour. This morning I was at my office in just over half an hour. And going home tonight will be a similarly enjoyable experience.

I think I’ll petition the Government to get more public holidays put on the calendar.

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