Roll up! Betting’s begun. Point your nose at Centrebet. Click on ‘2006 Footbball World Cup’ in the lefthand column and select a category to bet on. ‘World Cup’ has tournament winners. ‘World Cup Group Matches’ has individual matches and ‘World Cup Group Match Specials’ has other categories.

My bets and their odds:

• 5 boodles — Germany to win the world cup — 9
• 5 boodles — England to win the world cup — 8.5
• 10 boodles — Sweden to beat Trinidad and Tobago — 1.27
• 10 boodles — Australia to beat Japan — 2.4
• 10 boodles — Michael Owen first goal scorer in game against Paraguay — 4.75
• 10 boodles — Argentina will get a red or yellow card before Ivory Coast in their game — 2.1

Google’s release of their online spreadsheet made me think that it would be handy to have an automatically embedded spreadsheet with the betting results. Unfortunately Google don’t do that. They only allow people with google accounts to view their spreadsheets. If you want to look at the results in Google spreadsheets and have a google account, email me and I’ll invite you in.

As for the embedded spreadsheet, iRows does it and the soon-to-be results are below. I’ve bet all my money so I’ve got 50 boodles invested. If you want to see everyone’s spreadsheets a search for mywc at iRows shows everyone’s betting details. Before you complain about my sloppy layout and use of functions, you should know that iRows needs a slapping — that little ho don’t like my sumif statements.

There used to be a table of results here. But it no longer exists. Life’s just a series of disappointments, isn’t it?

It is a cold winter’s day. The clouds gather forebodingly as I trudge home. My arrival is greeted with relief by M. There is a mouse in the pantry.

Round 1: He has formed a barricade at the pantry door and attempts to catch our prey in an ice cream tub. The mouse is too quick; slipping through a gap in the cereal boxes; he hides behind the tv cabinet.

Ha! M can not catch a little mouse. I will help him.

Round 2: We form a temporary obstruction across the living room floor. I’m standing on the left, ready to herd the mouse out the back door. He goes right slipping through next to the wall and under J’s door. Into J’s room.

J’s room, for the uninitiated, is a room only a mother would clean. I see the mouse is wily one. I go get mouse traps. M proceeds into the depths of J’s room.

Home again, and J has turned up. Our enemy has a name … Sebastian. United at last, we set out to best our opponent. I set the traps. Going to use peanut butter for bait. Soo tasty. Think I might have some. Some from this trap. If I’m quick I could get a lick … snap and a scream a manly scream a shout from the other room. False alarm; the trap went off in J’s hand, startling him. Traps set, we venture in.

Round 3: Standing by J’s door, I guard the gap under the door. M, armed with a vacuum cleaner, and J, with the ice cream tub, seal off J’s walk-in wardrobe. Both of them enter — prodding J’s shoes to flush out Sebastian — but it’s crowded, too crowded — there’s men and mice everywhere. J leaves to get more space — the barricade is knocked and Sebastian is away. Under J’s bed he’s on my shoe: the very same shoe which is blocking Sebastian’s access to the rest of the house. I admit; there was a moment of panic I’m ashamed to say. I moved my foot to dislodge our visitor and he’s through the crack and out into parts of the house unknown.

We could admit defeat and call T. He’d deal with Sebastian. But we’re too proud. The traps are set. I can wait.

I had a moment on the train today that warmed the very cockles of my Who fan heart. A skinny little kid on the train was reading Doctor Who novels and trying to interest a cute schoolgirl in them. Fool that he was… he gave her ‘Last of the Gadarene’ by Mark ‘Idiot’s Lantern’ Gatiss. That’s not going to impress a girl. Girls like magic realism and postmodernism. Should’ve gone for ‘The Blue Angel’, kid. You live and learn. She read the blurb, had a quick look through it and handed it back, which I thought was a pretty impressive effort.

But now, I need to talk about something less pleasant. I don’t remember getting so irritated reading reviews of Doctor Who last year. It’s like internet fandom has taken a whole bottle of wanker-pills each. Oh yes, you can get wanker pills. Just a few things I’d like to clear up.

• If you don’t know anything about science, don’t try to nitpick the science in an episode, or at least be hesitant instead of loudly proclaiming “Oh, and I notice Scooti didn’t explode in space! Hah! Wrong! I saw a movie one time!”

• The Doctor is arrogant, he’s always been arrogant, he always will be arrogant. It’s always been funny in the past, how the hell has it suddenly become an issue? He’s also pretty awesome, have you noticed? Keeps saving the day. How many times does he have to save the day before he’s justified in his arrogance?

• Rose is not a perfect human being. There’s less of them about these days; even Jesus had his selfish moments. Saying something slightly selfish to try to get your neglected but loved boyfriend to stay with you is not grounds for h8, however you spell it. I dread to think how some of you people would cope watching Six Feet Under. There wouldn’t be enough h8 in your soul to cope with all the selfish stupid things people do on that show.

• I take that back, that bit before. Stop spelling h8 with an eight. It’s silly. Unless it means ‘mild dislike’ when you write it like that, in which case I apologise.

• I agree that the technical details of how the science works are not unimportant. I’d like it if all the episodes fitted together as neatly as ‘The Empty Child’. But in the grand scheme of weighting of episodes, this factor is not the plot and does not count for half the episode’s worth. Stop making it out that because the Wire doesn’t immediately make consistent sense that ‘The Idiot’s Lantern’ is below average.

• Murray Gold writes the music — he does not mix the final edit of the show. If you don’t like the sound balance you’re blaming the wrong person. Probably.

• Stop ignoring explanations given in the show so that you can go on to criticise the show for not making sense. The Clockwork Men in ‘Girl in the Fireplace’ were broken. That’s why they do crazy things. How can you in all seriousness start saying “Waiting for Mme de Pompadour to reach 35 years of age is just silly”?

• When two people are happy, that’s not a justifiable reason to want to slap them. Seriously, it might be better if you didn’t leave the house until you work through your issues. That time with the werewolf, that was a bit off. The Queen called them on it. Making a joke when they leave the TARDIS before they meet anyone is not on the same level.

That’ll do for now. I hope this has been a learning experience for all of us.

For this World Cup, as well as actual betting, I’m running a virtual betting competition, called My World Cup. If you’d like to enter My WC with me and have the chance to lose the shirt of your back, or win big, just express your intentions below. Any number of people can partake in My WC, the more the merrier. Entry’s free so stop tossing up about it; come join atypicalreview’s largest betting competition.

The system is thus: at the start of the round robin everyone will have 50 virtual dollars, called Boodles, to bet on the matches. Post the amount you are betting and the odds (taken from tab) and what you are betting on.

At the start of the knockout phase everyone will get another $50 to bet so those who lose it all early will have a chance to get back in.

• June 1st: DS Lite released in Australia
• 2nd: iinet installs DSLAMs in Cheltenham and start transfering customers to faster broadband. We buy a faster modem.
• 3rd: Doctor doesn’t accidentally land in London and prevent an alien invasion.
• 4th: Angelina Jolie turns 31
• 5th: The one true iPod is supposed to be released but isn’t.
• 8th: Mario returns (For sickos who like old Italian plumbers with moustaches)
• 9th: Football World Cup begins. Get your betting caps on.
• 12th: Public Holiday. Woooooo!
• 14th: Lois and Clark season 1 DVD release
• 15th: Brain Training released.
• 17th: DS connection tour at Chadstone
• 18th: DS connection tour at Eastland
• 19th: Bug Off competition in Animal Crossing.
• 20th: World Juggling Day
• 25th: George Orwell turns 104
• 26th: The one true iPod isn’t released again.
• 29th: Superman Returns
• 30th: Superman’s Birthday. He got back just in time for presents.

After spotting the awesomeness that is Lightbox 2 online, I thought, I should get me some of that for the games screenshots on atypicalreview. And I installed it, and it was good. Or rather, it was good on everything but PC Firefox (except at my work, where PC Firefox could handle it). I went through many amusing days of saying to Andy — look at this! and having him ask What? When I click, it just loads the image by itself.

And then I thought; this stuff would be awesome for our canada pictures too. So here’s the relaunch of Andy’s fantastic journal of our travels at the end of 2003 and the beginning of 2004.

And at around this time, I discovered that PC Firefox seems to prefer it if you load the javascript for our stats program, Mint, first, and then the three Lightbox javascripts after that. Amusingly, IE started complaining at that point that it liked things the other way. So I’ve had to do a few IE tests to get things in the right order.

Of course, being a bit of a Javascript n00b, I have absolutely no idea why it’s doing this — but at least it’s fixed. The Canada Gallery should work on both IE and PC Firefox (and everything else). The Warrior Within screenshots might not work in IE at time of writing. Or, neither of them might be working for you at all. Let me know if there are any issues. Except for there being no thumbnails for any other game reviews save the one I sent you to. I know about that one.

[update: I switched from Lightbox to Litebox. The difference is subtle but speedy. I also discovered that I was an idiot; there was a mint extension called outclicks causing the javascript issues. It’s since been updated to fix such issues.]