I haven't learned my lesson back in June. Last Thursday I went back for more body pump. This time my boss didn't even convince me to go. In the morning she simply announced she was going to body pump at 11 and jokingly said "You coming?", thinking I'd never ever do it again. I opened my mouth and before I realised I said "sure, why not? I've got my gym stuff with me."

The class itself was less painful than the previous one and this time I actually managed to do about 75-80% of the exercises. Only near the end I started to feel a bit dizzy, which I think was partly caused by the cold air near the window I felt when I went over there to drink some water. It wasn't until well into Friday when I really started to feel it. By Friday night walking was difficult. Saturday things started to gradually feel better, which was good as I was going to the record fair in Utrecht on Sunday.

On Sunday I got up at 8:15 and felt quite OK, much to my own relief. Went over to Levvi's, from where we were to catch the train to Utrecht. For years it's been me, Levvi and Levvi's dad going to the fair, but this time VampireGirl was making her debut. This was fun as she brought some new touches (start the day with coffee and cake) and we got to explain our rituals to her. You see, a fair isn't just walking around, it requires rules and rituals. We start in the south-east corner of the hall, which was immediately a panic moment as we entered the hall halfway through on the west side. From there the ritual insists we walk up the aisle, but only look on the right side. No ifs and buts, we always look on the right side. The other side is for when we walk down the same aisle. It makes things easier to remember in case you have to go back to a certain stall later. Another rule is that we skip vinyl (too much, too costly if you really find something interesting) and we skip stalls that don't have good indexing. The latter rules out quite a bit as well, as some sales people don't even bother putting their stuff in alphabetical order, let alone have tags per artist and/or type of music. I actually did notice that the better the indexing is, the worse the actual quality on offer.

In the end I went home with 3 CDs (Dark Angel - Leave Scars, LWS Inc. - Welcome to the Asylum, 2 Ton Predator - In the Shallow Waters) and a DVD (Iced Earth - Alive in Athens), which was a better harvest than last time.

Another cool thing was the presence of Doug Bradley at the fair. Mostly known for playing the part of Pinhead in the Hellraiser movies, he did some narration on 3 Cradle of Filth CDs. I got him to sign all 3 albums and we also had a little chat with him as it wasn't too busy. He's a very nice guy, with a real interest in what the fans have to say.

Right now I'm largely pain free, but just as a precaution I've moved my Monday gym session to Tuesday, also because Monday-Wednesday-Friday doesn't really suit me this week.

So there's the first names out of the high hat of Walt : Adam Kennedy and Kip Wells. At least it sounds better than last off season!

Once again the Cardinals pick up another one of their draft picks, as Kennedy was the 1st round number 20 pick back in 1997. In 1999 he made his Major League debut with the Cards and in March 2000 he was traded to the Angels with Kent Bottenfield in return for Jim Edmonds.

Of course Kennedy is now reunited with former righthand David Eckstein, which definitely should be a huge benefit over the uncertain and unsteady second base situation last season. Looking at the fielding of last season's Cardinals vs Kennedy last season, Kennedy's numbers per 1000 innings are lower by quite a margin. However, this also includes errors : 7.9 per 1000 against 11.9, which is over 30% less! Less speed, more precision, I would say.

                Inn     PO  A   E   DP  Fpct    Range   PO/k    A/k E/k     DP/k
Cardinals 2006  1429    340 492 17  127 .980    5.24    238     344 11.9    89
Kennedy 2006    1141    205 361 9   76  .984    4.26    180     316 7.9     67

Offensively it's a simple story. Put Kennedy's numbers against those of Aaron Miles and Ronnie Belliard and let the numbers do the talking.

            Avg     OBP     Slg     SB  HR  AB  R   RBI
Kennedy     .273    .334    .384    16  4   451 50  55

Miles       .263    .324    .347    2   2   426 48  30
Belliard    .237    .295    .371    0   5   194 20  23

Kip Wells then. His record isn't overly impressive with 57-74 in 8 years and everything he has led the league in was negative (walks and losses in 2005 and wild pitches in 2001), but you have yo keep in mind that of the 8 years he only pitched for a winning team twice. With a winning percentage of .422 in his 4 full years in Pittsburgh against the team's .442, there is reason for caution, but it's not completely hopeless. It's quite similar to Sidney Ponson's .429 over 1999-2003 in Baltimore. Oops, wrong example ;) Hey, he might be like Frank Tanana : 31-49 in 3.5 years with the Rangers followed by 51-37 in the following 3.5 years in Detroit between 1982 and 1988.

While looking at the above, I noticed that only 3 Cardinal pitchers broke the 100 innings mark this year, Carpenter, Marquis and Suppan. 100 innings, not 200! That's the first World Series winning team with less than 4 pitchers in triple digits since.... the 1889 New York Giants! Between the two only the 1997 Indians reached the World Series.

What's very curious is that between 1901 and 1990 there were only 6 teams who had less than 4 pitchers over 100 innings (excluding 1981). Since 1990 there have been 28 of which 12 between 1995-1997! The tendency towards less endurance actually started around 1980. Then the average number of innings pitched was 97 (from starters to closers). This steeply declined to 72 by 1990 and over the last 10 years has been hovering between 64 and 69. Meanwhile the number of games for pitchers who ended up with between 50 and 100 innings has been on a steady incline, suggesting the development of bullpen usage.

Labels: Baseball, Cardinals

Another concert last night and another chance to see Cradle of Filth in action. For me it was the fifth time in as many years that I've seen the band in action and I must say it was one of the better shows I've seen.

However, there was a support act worth mentioning as well : Deathstars. Based on the few bits I'd read about them on the 013 website, I was expecting something similar to Gothminister. To a certain extent that was true, in the way that the music resembled a mixture of Marilyn Manson and Rammstein. However, this band needed less theatrics to convince the audience. The singer came across as a combination of Marilyn Manson, Mick Jagger and Andrew Eldritch (Sisters of Mercy), adding a bit of a gay touch when he took to wearing a feather boa thrown from the audience. Nothing wrong with that, it was quite entertaining. Problem with the music was that after a while it started to sound alike and got a bit boring.

VampireGirl and me had a ball before they started as the in house PA was playing some old Motley Crue we really enjoyed and sang along too. Poor Levvi had this look of "I'm not with those two!", citing that he didn't want to show his age. Pffft! Be proud of your rock heritage!

After a long long wait Cradle finally appeared. The stage looked superb with its graveyard theme (not a rainforest as I originally thought :) ) and the lights were fantastic with lots of yellows and reds creating a warm atmosphere. First eye catcher : another drummer! Yep, another line-up change. Don't think I've seen them with the same line-up two times in a row. Personal favourites in the setlist : Dusk and Her Embrace, Her Ghost in the Fog, Nymphetamine, From The Cradle To Enslave, Cruelty Brought Thee Orchids and of course the 80s new wave Heaven 17 cover Temptation of which you can watch the video below.



This show was a very good comeback from the mediocre show Eindhoven was a few months ago. Not quite up there with their performance in Amsterdam last year, but to me the second best show I've seen of them. The big question that remains : who was the guy behind the drumkit? He was pretty good, even when he made a few mistakes. On the official website's forum any enquiry about Adrian Erlandsson's whereabouts or whether he's actually left the band seems to be shut down rightaway. Definitely something weird going on.

Edit :

Found pictures of the show at Metal Experience.

Edit 14 November 22:36 :
The drummer's been named Martin by Sarah (the band's background vocalist) on the band's forum. No word on whether he's permanent or not, but as far as I'm concerned he's good enough.

Labels: Music

As previously mentioned, we've been working hard over the past period. We made the first deadline for the most critical parts and we made the deadline for the second part, which consisted of fixing something that had been wrong for 3 years, but they only now found out. The final phase was to fix whatever was deemed "non-critical" for the first phase. All cosmetic stuff, not too difficult. Last Friday was the deadline for that and we made that one as well. Great achievement for all and even before it all was officially done and signed off, the bigger boss issued an invite to celebrate it.

Cool gesture, but wait a second.... Friday 17:00-18:00. Not so cool after all and for several reasons. One : Lex works from home on Fridays. His input has been vital as he knows by far the most about the system. Two : It was Cathy's last day before her holidays. She's got better things to do than stay in the office. Three : Michael's got to pick up his son from the daycare centre. He's another key player in this, who's put a lot of effort into making it all possible. Four : me. The boss knows I come in early and prefer to be out on time to beat the traffic. Five : Marc, the project manager. He's at another office on Fridays. Of all the people who spent their weekends, evenings and in general way too much time, my manager was the only one who actually could attend. Not even sure whether she hung around as she had an early flight to England to catch on Saturday.

For all the people who worked hard and sacrificed their personal time, mr. big shot manager organises a party that's outside their working hours, but within his own. No wonder morale is low and people are leaving. I declined the invite, which was replied to with an email stating it was a pitty I couldn't make it as I was a key player. At least he didn't forget me completely. This morning he dropped off two cans of Red Bull on my desk as my part of the loot. Too bad he didn't add a bottle of vodka ;) Ah well, Saturday spent, 3.30 eur saved.

I'm lucky enough I can write everything away and otherwise let it flow of my back and deal with it that way. The environment is still a cool and relaxed one to work in and I won't let myself be fooled by the grass being greener on the other side. Once you're on the other side, the old side will be the other side where the grass is greener.

Labels: Work

Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger is furious once again. The governing bodies of football are talking about introducing a rule that says teams must field at least six player from their home country. Why is Wenger angry? According to him because "Elite sport is first about quality, I wouldn't like to say I paid £2m for a player as he has the right passport." Obviously the truth is that it endangers his scheme of running an English club without English players. Most likely he'll play one Englishman in this weekend's league game.

So far Wenger is the only one to complain, but looking at this week's Champions League lineups, none of the big teams have six home grown players. Most of them have three or four at best. Wenger thinks that this rule will endanger the quality of the game. Why? He's a manager in England, not exactly a country lacking good football players. Of course they'll come at a higher price as English players will be in demand, but as Arsenal aren't exactly among the poorest clubs, it will be less of a problem for them as it will be for the likes of Aston Villa or Wigan. Those teams will no doubt have to sell as they can't deal with the increased demands English players will make. If anything this rule is going to reinforce the position of the traditionally strong and rich clubs.

Another way to get quality local players is to invest in the development of youth players. This has always been a stronghold of Ajax here in the Netherlands. Last Thursday they started the game with five players who have come through the ranks of the club's youth system, with another four starting on the bench. The advantage is two-fold. First you're not paying someone 2 million for a player. Paying another club allows the other club to strengthen themselves. Investing the same 2 million in your own youth system will help more than one player to develop. Secondly, if the player gets good enough for other clubs to want him, he'll generate income, which then can be reinvested. In a way a good youth system funds itself.

So don't Wenger and his Arsenal don't have a good youth system? Not really sure, but looking at their reserves/youth team on their website, it list 15 Englishmen and 13 foreigners from 10 countries. That's the highest level of their youth system only, but it does show a tendency to get foreign players at a young age.