I’ve updated my public iCal calendar with next season’s QPR fixtures.

The calendar can be found here: http://bit.ly/RsycM.

No doubt there will be a few changes due to televised games and so on - I’ll try to keep it updated as & when these occur.

Ah well, eventually I crumbled and renewed my season ticket… so here’s to another year of fun and frolics at QPR.

I can’t help feeling a little underwhelmed at the appointment of Jim Magilton. Not that I have anything against him at all, and Ipswich have played some attractive football in the last few years.

However, he does appear to have been sacked by the Ipswich chairman having only got them to roughly the same league position that we were in when Iain Dowie and Paulo Sousa both, ahem, departed, from QPR. Which makes one wonder what exactly the QPR board are looking for in a manager.

My fear is that they are looking for a yes man who will put up with the high levels of interference from the board that the previous three or four managers are alleged to have had. My fear is also that the fact that they met with Magilton four times has more to say about the number of other managers who were also interviewed, and who quite possibly rejected QPR (rather than the other way round). There are a lot of managers unemployed at the moment who have a better pedigree on paper - one wonders how many of them have said “QPR? You’d be mad to even contemplate it.”.

Hope springs eternal, however - so I’m going to do my best to trust the board, get behind the new manager, and behave like a loyal customer fan… and only put a modest bet on him being gone by Christmas.

This open letter to QPR from James Higgs echoes my sentiments about QPR at the moment.

Like him, I’m seriously considering not bothering to renew my season ticket.

Lauren Dempster asked a question (about a year and a half ago!) which got me going when I read it today:

http://www.laurendempster.com/2007/11/27/the-golden-compass

This was going to be a comment, but turned into a full-on rant!

The BBC news output is of an increasingly poor standard, if you ask me. Much of it is inane, self-obsessed, drivel or pointless “analysis” which actually amounts to stating the bleeding obvious.

For example, a news announcer gives a nice précis of a story. So far so good.

They then “go live” to a correspondent who is standing outside the venue describing how events are “unfolding”. Said correspondent then repeats the précis, often word for word, adding no additional information. As with most events, the unfolding generally takes the form of nothing much happening for long periods of time. Often, nothing more is going to happen anyway, because the “event” has already taken place.

To fill in the gaps, the correspondent is asked to speculate on why/what/how “it” happened. They happily do this with minimal recourse to factual information (as they have none at this point). Quite often this speculation will end with a reiteration of the précis.

No better informed than we were when we started, we now return to the studio, and cut to an “expert” who has joined the announcer. They are then asked to comment, generally resulting in further reiteration and inane speculation. They have minimal actual knowledge because nobody actually knows what’s going on.

Aaaargh!

This is all bad enough, but it becomes much, much worse when the story is about the media itself, and exponentially worse again if it is about the BBC. Ross & Grant anyone?

Then there’s the use of phrases like “stepping up” and “the pressure is mounting” or “is under increasing pressure”. These are typically used to indicate that something is still happening, or even just that the media are still talking about something that happened a while ago. So they will say “Gordon Brown is under increasing pressure today as revelations about the donuts-for-honours scandal continue to emerge” - when what they actually mean is “Remember that thing yesterday about the bloke with the donuts, well, we’re still talking about it because nothing else has happened”.

Most of this isn’t unique to the BBC of course, but I’m certain that the BBC is getting worse.

And as for the “arts” slots on the Today programme - give me strength!

Right, calm down, deep breaths…

Dear Apple, this is what I want:

• tablet format
• eInk style screen with refresh speed fast enough for video games
• multi-touch
• no keyboard (but maybe an external one which is specially designed to clip on or integrate in some way)
• high spec usb, bluetooth, wifi, ethernet ports for connectivity
• gps for location aware stuff
• external monitor port
• solid state drives
• super drive? (I’m really not sure how much I care about this)

Optional extras:

• stylus for easier typing/drawing
• wireless inductive charger
• waterproof skin that makes it safe to use in damp environments
• built in optional 3g support; especially if I can share the same account with my iPhone
• a nice little docking pod / stand I can drop it in when I get home, to use it as a desktop computer