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Autumn Internationals 2024, Week Four

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The last full weekend of matches and a number of relatively predictable games essentially topped and tailed by two good looking matchups. France v Argentina On paper this looked like a good game. France are transitioning in a number of positions and while their youth are good, they lack experience. Meanwhile, Argentina had a number of senior, valuable, players returning and looked stronger than the side that narrowly lost in Ireland. They will also have the anger of that defeat in their mind. The scoreboard would suggest it wasn’t all that close - France won by 14 points. In the sense that the game is about scoring points, more points than the opponents, it’s not lying. However, if you watch the game, it didn’t feel this unequal. The big difference between the sides was that France were more clinical, especially in the first half, and took their chances. Argentina were much more profligate with their chances, and ultimately that was the difference. Some of that was French brilliance...
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Autumn Internationals 2024, Week Three

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After a southern hemisphere whitewash last week, can the northern hemisphere mount any sort of resistance? There are some interesting matchups, will Ireland bounce back or can Argentina claim the final Top Eight scalp and their first victory over Ireland at home? How will France and New Zealand and then Wales and Australia match up? One is a clash of two of the rugby elites, albeit both of them weakened by injury, the other is a match of teams trying to rebuild, one buoyed by a good win and the other becoming desperate after a record-equalling string of loses. Australia's win last week was unexpected, can England repeat that unlikely victory to upset the current world number one Springboks and also reverse their recent dismal record? Ireland v Argentina Despite what the (Irish) commentators would have you believe, this was not a good Irish performance that answered the questions hanging over them. It was, undeniably, a better Irish performance and there were moments when they lo...
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Autumn Internationals 2024, Week Two

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The Matches This weekend mostly saw North v South (France v Japan was a rare exception) and quite a few new and old grudge matches lined up, with replays of various matches from the World Cup coming through. Ireland v New Zealand This game was a huge start to the weekend. It saw the number one v number three sides in the world facing off, but for around 100 years New Zealand never lost a game to Ireland. Over the last five years, Ireland have beaten the All Blacks no less than eight times, including a 2-1 series win in New Zealand but a quarterfinal loss in last year’s World Cup. This might not have the history of the rivalry between New Zealand and South Africa, but over the last few years it’s become just as intense. Defensively you can argue that the game lived up to expectations. There were some huge tackles, attacks were stymied, ball spilled under the weight of the tackles and so on. Both sides only scored one try. The All Blacks handled that better and played most of the game i...
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Autumn Internationals 2024, Week 1.

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There were only two matches this weekend, as most northern hemisphere countries were gathering players into training camps still. England used one of their agreed training weekends to pull their squad from the premiership a week early, and faced the All Blacks, Scotland used their home-based players (so were basically Glasgow) against Fiji, who were also missing their overseas players and were basically the Drua. England v New Zealand This was an odd, but compelling game, in part because of the way it played out. In the end there were two points between the sides, with England pulling out an eight point lead with about 20 to go, but New Zealand scoring the last ten points to win. The All Blacks scored three tries and butchered four more, England only scored one - that from an interception - and didn’t really ever look like scoring any more. Even when they had a 5m scrum in the last minute it didn’t feel like they were going to score. As it was, the AB scrum shunted the English pack b...
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Legend Of Vox Machina

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Somehow I didn’t review LOVM seasons 1 or 2 so I’m going to do all three seasons at once. The Legend of Vox Machina is an adaptation of campaign one of Critical Role, an Actual Play streamed D&D game with a bunch of self-proclaimed nerdy-assed voice actors that started as a birthday present for one of them, grew into a regular home game, then a steamed AP, then a creative and gaming giant in its own right. Next March will be their tenth anniversary as a streamed game. By the end of season three we’ve had 36 episodes and a bit under 18 hours of animation. We’re also, depending on how you look at it, either at episode 85 or 100 of the show. That’s over 350-400 hours of content compressed into Blindspot for a lot of campaign 1 and the start of campaign 2 and was frequently away. But she’s available throughout the filming of this, and present a lot more. She does have a bit of season 1 where she goes away and comes back through astral projection at a critical moment - that mirrors ...
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Slow Horses (season 4)

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The rejects in Slough House are back. The series continues to mix the two styles of British spy stories, Bond and le Carré, flashy and seedy. This time we have a classic trope of both genres: the long buried secret. This is nicely woven into the existing characters in a way that, in retrospect I should have seen coming but, as each twist was revealed, it felt at least surprising, sometimes shocking. It’s hard to really talk about without spoilers. It’s an adaptation of a spy novel where there’s a necessarily intricate plot to satisfy the spooks fans, but I will say that, as mentioned above, there’s some lovely character work here too. Part of that is because we have a larger cast. Even with some of the slow horses being functionally red coats, walking fatalities waiting to happen, albeit slightly more filled out than the classic Trek version - we know something about these characters rather than them being a non-speaking extra hired for the week - we have quite a number of characters ...
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Duolingo (for Welsh)

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I’m a qualified teacher but not a language teacher. Like most people my age I was taught languages at school, French and Latin in my case, and I’ve dabbled with other languages at various points since. I know a bit of Mandarin and some conversational Portuguese plus a smattering of Māori. Learning languages, or attempting to, is something I’ve done, on and off, over the years. Duolingo is the latest of those. In terms of my Duolingo experience I’m up to 100 days experience, so this review is based on that first three months or so. I’m aware that what it teaches changes somewhat as your experience in the language increases, but I haven’t got there yet. I’ve been learning Welsh, but as I understand it the general structure is the same for other languages. At this point, there is a very distinct approach to learning a language with Duolingo. It’s loosely conversational. You could describe it as “advanced phrase book” learning. You start off with introducing yourself, saying hi, talking ...
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