29 May 2009: Pinnacle

Breaking news from the Echo - Pinnacle, the group attempting to take over Saints and fronted by Saints legend Matt le Tissier, have produced the funds required to enter a 'period of exclusivity'.

As I understand it, this means that they've paid half a million quid (non-refundable) to be able to talk with the administrator about buying the club, without other annoying people like Sheik Hn'Vac or Barry the Briefcase getting in the way. The period lasts 21 days, and it means that the Saints staff will now finally receive their wages for the month (after being told yesterday that they would not be paid on time this month).

So, finally, some kind of positive progress has been made. I knew wearing my saints shirt to work today would help...

19 May 2009: Returning

Just saw a flicking-through-channels news story saying Scrubs will be back on ABC next "season", although not in the autumn. Silly people, they should know when to stop making new ones.

Also saw a clip of what looked like Neil Flynn (Janitor from Scrubs) in a domestic sitcom. Sheesh. He needs to simply get his own improv show, and let him get on with it.

Finally, spent some time today toying with RDFa and Oracle's WCM. Not tying it into Spatial (for a change), but just seeing if it's easy enough to respond to Google's 'Rich Snippets' requirements (it is, but Rich Snippets is, presently at least, rubbish). Learned much more about the FCK editor than Rich Snippets, but overall an interesting exercise.

The question really is, will people start marking up HTML as RDFa just because Google says so? You'd assume yes, but without even FOAF support, you have to ask what the point of it all is.

Postscript: Saints saga drags on, Leon Crouch currently personally keeping the club afloat. One day there'll be some news, and the longer it draws on, the more likely it is that the news will be 'liquidation'.

15 May 2009: Eggface

Note to non-Saints followers: this blog entry also contains information about romantic fiction and a story about a silly man who was hospitalised by an egg, so read on.

According to the Daily Echo, today is D-Day for the front-running bid for Saints.

The Matt Le Tissier-led Pinnacle consortium will either be announced as the preferred bidder, or will be removed from the negotiations altogether. Elsewhere the Stock Exchange has received an announcement that Southampton Leisure Holdings, the parent plc of the football club, has not and will not be getting new ownership and has therefore been wound up. So - live or die time for the football club.

On the other hand, they've been saying that for weeks - but at least this time it seems something might be happening in terms of ultimatums if nothing else. The question will be: who's going to end up with egg on their face?

(The answer, apparently, is Rangers defender Kirk Broadfoot, who is currently out injured following an incident in which an egg he was cooking exploded in his face, and he had to be taken to hospital.)

In other news, my sis won an award for her new book 'Tug of Love' which isn't even out until August! Well done, er, 'Allie Spicer'...

Update 11.49am Eastern: No news as yet from Mr Fry, the administrator, but the mood on the Saints Web Forum seems to be dropping through the floor as the club suddenly seems a whole lot closer to being liquidated than previously thought.

13 May 2009: Grown-up

For the UK audience, it was Mother's Day here on Sunday. I know, I know...

As a result, they were giving out carnations at church. Not just to the mums but to all females (or at least all who wanted one). This led to an interesting exchange between myself and one little girl, whom I saw carrying a carnation around to give to her mother.

Me: Is that flower for me?
Little Girl: No, it's for my mommy.
Me: Where's my flower then?
LG: You don't get one.
Me [incredulous]: Why not?!
LG: Because... they're only for grown-ups.

So, it seems I have discovered the secret of eternal youth without even realising it. Still, I wasn't sure whether to be grateful to the little girl or not, as it made me think: sheesh, I'm thirty-four years old - at what point do I qualify as a grown-up?

I'm sure Bob Dylan wrote a song about that once.

Postscript: Can it be that Google is actually a little bit afraid of Wolfram Alpha? This report from ZDNet shows that Google are attempting to rush out something that is still very much in the incubator phase for fear of losing at least some key parts of its searching audience to the more semantically-minded tool of Professor Wolfram. Personally I'm still disappointed with both tools, but maybe it will continue to push the semantic agenda to the point where people start taking it seriously.

6 May 2009: Phoenix

Well, maybe.

BBC regional news 'South Today' reported that a deal is imminent to save Saints, which is nice because according to last week's Guardian article, Saints should have gone under about two days ago. But they haven't, and rumours persist, and something seems to be happening, and yes one of the consortiums does have the backing - and, possibly, membership - of one Matt Le Tissier, the nearest thing there is to a living legend in the world of the Saints.

So Jeff you'd better get your bid in quickly. I'm thinking ten quid and a couple of Atlanta Braves tickets should do it.

No, hang on. Better leave the Braves tickets out of it, the way the season is going so far.

Postscript: Not much time to write as I'm at the IOUG Oracle conference in Orlando, talking mainly about the Semantic Web and seeing if anyone will listen (looks promising on the back of today's presentation), but I noted a recent comment on one particular blog I wrote in November last year. Thanks, Chris!