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With so much hi-tech equipment floating around the various football stadia in South Africa during this world cup. Many consider it remarkable that none of it is used to enforce the laws of the game, the football governing body preferring to rely on human judgement. However, humans can sometimes get stuff wrng. See.

There have been a number of poor refereeing decisions in this tournament, which may have turned out very differently had technology been applied to the decision making process. For example, Brazil’s Kaka was given a red card because he got walked into. The USA have had two goals disallowed, even though the ball was clearly over the line. Argentina manager Diego Maradona has not been sent to the stands once, despite clearly being Diego Maradona.

These poor decisions have put the pressure on FIFA to reconsider it’s policy on technology.

Other sports, such as Tennis, Rugby and Quidditch have fully embraced technology, and it’s use is now an everyday part of the game. The camera never lies after all.

So Fifa have caved, and the first drips of technology are set to make an appearance in Football. There will be no video technology just yet, however, for the first time ever, a robot will take charge of a world cup final. Not just any robot either. C3P0, best known for his role in “Star Wars” has been chosen as the right man, or thing, for the job.

Yellow really brings out the lights in his eyes

C3p0′s sidekick R2D2 will act as linesman during the game, alongside Johnny-5 on the other wing.

Although the decision to allow the robots complete control of the game has been welcomed by many, some are concerned. The robots are set to learn the rules of the game from the code in the FIFA video games, which many say will lead to ridiculous offside decisions.

It is also unclear what will happen should it rain, or if a ruffian tips R2D2 over. When questioned about this risk R2D2 replied with a sequence of high pitched squeaks, but still made more sense than England striker Wayne Rooney.

Europeans around the world, well, mainly those located in Europe, will have spotted an extra annoying pop up while using Microsoft Internet Explorer recently. In order to conform to a European Union Anti-Trust ruling Microsoft must give IE users the option of downloading other browsers, like Firefox, Safari, Chrome and a few other less famous ones. This is to prevent Microsoft having a dominant share of the browser market.

Now the EU have said that this ruling may be applied to other organisations, not just Microsoft.

One of those organisations is likely to be the Church of England, which has a dominant share of the religion market in the United Kingdom.

If the ruling is applied, the C of E will have to offer its followers a choice of faiths, such as Buddhist, Islam, Hindu, Sikh, Jewish, Catholic, and even Jedi. Unsurprisingly, this has angered and upset many in the Church.

We will likely find out in the next couple of weeks if the ruling is to be applied. If this is the case, churchgoers will be presented with a leader from each faith at the next church service and asked to make a choice.

It has recently been announced than an old bar, located underneath the town hall in Evesham is up for sale. It’s been empty for years, and now the hope is that someone nice will make purchase and turn it into something ace, like an indie bar or KFC.

If I could, I’d buy it and set up a bar. How cool would that be? However, this is just a pipe dream, and one it seems that many of my friends share.

To this end, I have produced an advanced simulator that allows you to run your own bar in the old PJ’s. It is below.

(You need flash and speakers (that are switched on))

If you have been inspired by the simulator and want a go in real life read this.

Attention Legalists - Disclaimers -

This game contains samples from copyrighted audio recordings. It is believed that the use of this work qualifies as fair use under United Kingdom copyright law when used on shewy.co.uk, hosted on servers in the UK by the non-profit site shewy.co.uk, where:

1.the samples are being as background music to represent the historical context of the music;
2.the samples are stored in a way that cannot be duplicated by other forms of media;
3.the samples are short in relation to the duration of the recorded tracks and are of an inferior quality to the original recordings;

Images in this work are covered by a Creative Commons License.

Begin Science.

Yesterday, I like millions of other Apple customers received an email from Apple suggesting that I should make a purchase from the Apple store for Valentines day. Fair enough, I love Apple, I would be happy to receive an Apple product on Valentines day. However, having studied the prices of many items in said fruit based gadget store, I would have to be pretty seriously in love. I would have to love someone as much as Simon Cowell loves Simon Cowell. I would maybe consider bringing an iPod shuffle into the mix, if I was sure that I would get good return on investment.

I decided to then do some research, in the interests of all men. Don’t thank me.

I asked all of the women I know (4), how likely they would be to provide a good return on investment, based on which Apple product they received. I think we all know what I’m getting at when I say return on investment. For example, does an iPod Touch equal an iCan Touch?

Graphs are one of my unconditional loves, which is why there is one below, it shows the results of the research.

Graph to show percentage chance of some action based on the purchase of an Apple product as a Valentines day gift.

As you can see the iPhone is still a popular choice amongst the ladies when compared to similar spec iPods,  the Macbook Air also yields good results – it appears to have the same affect as around 5 Bacardi Breezers or a trip to a curtain shop. The XServe is considered to be “too geeky” and is about as attractive to women as a night in watching back to back Carmen Electra films. I also included the Amazon Kindle, the results weren’t good, you may as well turn up with some plywood and skiddy y-fronts.

The clear winner is the iPad, if you can get hold of one of these, you’re going to have the pulling power of Russell Brand and David Walliams combined on Valentines day. Well, unless she’s got hold of her other iPad, then not even Brad Pitt walking in naked, covering his John Thomas with said lightweight tablet PC would get any loving.

End Science.

If you haven’t heard of the Crystal Maze, which you really should of done by now, it was a mid 1990′s game show. Basically a team of chumps would attempt to complete challenges in various “zones” in the maze. Thinking about it, it wasn’t really a maze. It was more of a TV studio. Anyhow, it will return, excellent. The new modern maze will be hosted by Amanda Holden (mmmm…).

Details are sketchier than a dirty old mans notebook at the moment, however thanks to my multiple contacts in the television industry (my mate Duckface who works for sky and his missus) I have obtained an exclusive copy of the new map of the zones. The producers have chosen to modernise. Gone are the old zones of Aztec, Ocean, Futuristic and Medieval, replaced by the gritty and real zones of Yemen, Climate Change, Credit Crunch and Ghetto.

The new "modern" Crystal Maze Map

The challenges are more, well challenging. For example in the Ghetto, live ammo will be used and contestants will be expected to pop a cap in multiple arses, the Credit Crunch zone will feature mainly mathematical problems, with the option to bail fellow contestants out at the end.

Oh, I really can’t wait.

Yes, I know, they are stupid and you never keep them, but it’s the time of year for doing stupid and pointless shit. Christmas Cards for example. So hear are my five, New Year Resolutions.

1) Be More Organised – When I’ve got stuff to do, I gotta do it. I always, always, always leave things to the last minute. I’m very aware that I’m doing this and I do always get stuff done on time, just. I would much rather have that smug feeling that I’ve done it though.

2) Read more books – I need to read more, I don’t read a lot, well not properly anyway. F1 Website’s and the Sun newspaper don’t count.

3) Drive to Monaco – I will drive to Monaco, via the Millau bridge in France. Probably not when the F1 is on, because I want to drive round the track.

4) Go to America – I need to go to America again, I like it more now that Barack-O is in charge. Not sure where to go, hopefully there will be some work reason for me to go. Maybe I’ll go to some hacker conference in Vegas…mmm…

5) Buy a pink (colour, not american pop star) t-shirt – Why not, everyone does it. It doesn’t mean anything.

You may have noticed that it is a new year. Exciting. It is now 2010, yet we still lack the promised hover-cars and robot assistants. Nevermind. You may have noticed that I have changed the look of the site, I like it, and I hope you do to. I promise I’ll put more stuff on it. I haven’t for ages due to the continued pressures of exsistence, such as work and remembering to eat. Anyway, Happy New Year everyone. Except people I don’t like.

WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS MILD PERIL

I pulled up outside my house earlier, put the handbrake on and turned off the ignition. You may have guessed at this point, I was in the car. I undid my seat belt, and tried to open the door. Notice I say tried. The wind was pushing so hard against the door, I couldn’t open it. I tried again. Still it wouldn’t budge. Confused and desperate I tried once more and finally, the door came open – just long enough for me to jump out. It was a life changing experience. What if I hadn’t of managed to escape? If I was trapped in the car all night. Here is how I predict it would of gone down -

Hour 1 – I would of tried over and over to open the door. Thus tiring myself out. I would have then put on my iPod which I had with me to take my mind off it. It would of had about four hours of battery life on it.

Hour 2 – I would be getting cold. So I would turn the ignition on and try to get some heat going. After a while the heater would of made me feel sick, so I would of turned it off, and got cold again.

Hour 3 – At this point I would be so cold, for comfort I would pretend that Lily Allen was singing to me while listening to my iPod.

Hour 4 – iPod battery dies. I then do that thing where I try to remember exactly how a Simpson’s episode goes and replay it in my head.

Hour 5 – I need to drink, so I start to lick my sweat and drink that. It tastes bad, but not as bad as Yakult.

Hour 6 – Feeling that death is imminent I would start to write my will on my mobile phone. I haven’t got an iPhone so I wouldn’t have an app for this.

Hour 7 – I would realise that all I needed to do was get out of the passenger door as that side of the car was shielded from the wind.

I recently headed to the Cinema, only to be turned around because there was a power cut. Not an exciting story. I tried again a couple of days later – success! Now which film..it was narrowed down to The Fourth Kind and Jennifer’s Body. Jennifer’s Body started off the clear winner, it was written by Diablo Cody, who wrote Juno, which was pretty good, and of course it has the Megan Fox edge. Megan Fox equals several very large ticks in many boxes. However, the Fourth Kind was chosen on the basis of good reviews.

The film is good, it’s different and it is scary, on one condition. Do not Google around for information before viewing, do so afterwards, the day after you have seen the film. Google and IMDB will ruin the fun!

I’ll probably get Jennifer’s Body on DVD, and take advantage of the pause function on my DVD player.

Interesting to hear that good ol’ Microsoft won a patent today, on a truly original idea. Imagine being able to be logged in as a normal user, and then if you need run a command as a more powerful user, being able to do so without having to log out and log back in again. All you need to do is enter a password. Wow. That’s a really clever idea. Well done Microsoft. Oh, but hold on a sec…I’m sure that I’ve come across something slightly similar in Linux..oh yeah..I’ve pretty much just described the “sudo” command. I’m quite pleased though really, if more Unix stuff finds its way into Windows it’ll probably improve it.