Over the line...

Before we start I have to state that I am not a Chelsea fan... I have sympathies and an association... but I'm not a card-carrying, scarf wearing, Shed inhabiting Chelsea fan.

However, I thoroughly enjoyed their fine win at Wembley on Sunday and have enjoyed the smiling face of notjustmum lighting up the house. She IS a card-carrying, scarf wearing and one-time-shed-inhabiting, die-hard Chelsea fan and a real bluebird and, as such, was fearing the worst, especially as it was against Spurs.

But she needn't have worried. That wonderful Drogba strike at the end of the first-half changed the game and made sure it wasn't a repeat of the recent close, tense draw at Stamford Bridge between these two Londoners.

Then there's Chelsea's second 'goal'. And all evidenece at the time supported the view the ball hadn't crossed the line. The ref even appologised to Harry Redknapp after the game, apparently. John Terry, Frank Lampard and others all acknowledged the ball hadn't crossed the line.

Yet, Juan Mata clearly claimed it had and Martin Atkinson seemed pretty sure at the time. And this picture tells us why!

You can see why Mata raised his arms in triumph...

You can find it on MSN, BBC Sport and the Daily Mirror Sport pages... I haven't Photoshopped it. Its genuine. And it looks as if the ball could be seen to be over the line. The whole of the ball? Well, certainly more than we all thought from the TV pictures. Certainly more than most post-match reactions tell us. Certainly as much as the Liverpool 'ghost goal' in the Champions League semi-final against... Chelsea.

Martin Atkinson should stop beating himself up over it OR the non-sending off of Cech. That was a correct decision too: Adebayor had pushed the ball too far away for him to contnue on towards goal and was falling before he made contact with the Chlesea keeper. Bale didn't just appear from nowhere: he was keeping up with play and was able to score the goal. So, correct decision NOT to book or send-off Cech.

However, and back to the second goal, I DO think there ought to be some kind of 21st century assistance given to refs. Having extra refs behind goal-line as EUFA use is pointless and wasteful. FIFAs argument that technology is too expensive and cannot be installed in every ground and used at every game also, surely, applies to having 6 refs per game as is their preference and the case in Europa and Champions League games. For junior football, its often a handy day that has to take the whistle as a 'ref' cannot be found!

There are enough TV cameras at BIG games already and one or two can be set-up on each goal line. The fourth official can watch the replay WE all see at home and can communcate with ref if he needs to: they are alrady all chatting to each other through the game with their radio mics!

So, there you go. I've sorted it all out and solved all the issues.

Its a mighty long way down rock n rail...

You may or you may not not know that I edit a Mott the Hoople fan-based web site, Half Moon Bay.
So, I was naturally delighted, as a fan of the band (still!), that they featured in the BBC 4 documentary How the Brits Rocked America: Go West (Episode 2; Stairway to Heaven). I remarked to notjustmum that it was a surprise, given the bands standing at the time in the UK and perceived worth in the late 70's and into the 80's. The personnel, although to many of us the finest rock 'n' roll practitioners to ever walk the face of the earth, never featured in any top 10 of the day and their final single, although tremendous and raved over by none other than John Peel, failed to sell in large numbers.
But heroes they were and, as time has gone by, their heroics and their place in the history of rock has grown and taken on more significance.
Anyway, if you can access the BBC iPlayer then the programme is well worth watching.
We're staying with BBC 4 tonight for the final episodes of Danish political drama Borgen. Excellent.

Musing on Web design…

I have, at last, downloaded Adobe MUSE to my MacBook. Have been wanting to do this for a few weeks now, since I saw http://www.hug-advertising.co.uk/

Of course, I've read all the concerns many people -- especially 'web designers' -- have about the 'pure code' that's not generated by MUSE but, I still want to give it a go.

In the past, I have been called a programmer: Macromind/Macromedia Lingo (in Director)… a bit of ActionScript too. And, I produced my very frst web pages and web sites by hand using SimpleText back in those dim and distend early/mid nineties when the internet started to get a foothold.

Yes, that was before anybody released a WYSIWYG tool for web page building. Claris were one of the first with Homepage and I immediately started using that, followed by Adobe GoLive and eventually onto Macromedia Dreamweaver.

And who used the code view in the early days of Dreamweaver? Not me, thats for sure. BUt the last thing I made with Dreamweaver -- last week as it happens -- I had code on view all the time. What's more, plenty of the elements won't display unless previewed in the browser!

Now, as graphic designer, that's not the perfect situation: I want to SEE what I'm doing as I'm doing it which was always the great thing about Homepage/GoLIve/Dreamweaver. Since those days and since the advent of CSS and Wordpress and so on, it seems code is king again.

And for people like me, MUSE offers a return to being able to design the web site visually. This IS as important as the nuts and bolts under the bonnet. Too many people call themselves 'web designers' but they design its functionality first and worry about how it looks second. For me, that's the problem with blogger tools: everything looks the same-ish. Works beautifully but dull as dishwater and all the same.

Yes, all this 'pure code' stuff is bunkum. Does the Hug web site work? Yes. What more do you need to know? Mr and Mrs average web viewer doesn't really care about the code and its efficiency.

Anyway, I'll give MUSE a go and let you know what I think.