Everyone thought they could win it too – bookies made them 3rd favourites, we had better players than everyone else according to the 2 Alan’s on MOTD. And this was the golden generation – how could they NOT win the cup??

So I thought I’d take a look at whether or not we’re actually likely to win based on past World Cup & European Championship performances.

I’d like to work out whether we’re likely to win a major championship in my lifetime and how long I have to wait until we play well (and win) in a meaningful match against good opposition. I’ll go back as far as the 1970 World Cup, because I was born in 1976, and we didn’t quality for 1974 or 1978.

Matches in bold are ones I am highlighting as games against top opposition, those rare ones in bold italic are ones we won!

1970 World Cup

1-0 v Romania
0-1 v Brazil
1-0 v Czechoslovakia
2-3 v West Germany

So we won 2 against mediocre opposition, and lost against the big boys. We are 0/2 so far

1980 European Championships

1-1 v Belgium
0-1 v Italy
2-1 v Spain

Yes! The first one, although I don’t know if we played well or not as I was too young. But we’ll have it. 1/4

1982 World Cup

3-1 v France
2-0 v Czechoslovakia
1-0 v Kuwait
0-0 v West Germany
0-0 v Spain

2/7 – Rock and Roll – 2 tournaments in a row that we beat a top team – this was clearly the golden age of English football

1986 World Cup

0-1 v Portugal
0-0 v Kuwait
3-0 v Poland
3-0 v Paraguay
1-2 v Argentina

2/9

1988 European Championships

0-1 v Republic of Ireland
1-3 v Netherlands
1-3 v Soviet Union

2/11

1990 World Cup

1-1 v Republic of Ireland
0-0 v Netherlands
1-0 v Egypt
1-0 v Belgium
3-2 v Cameroon
1-1 v West Germany

2/13 – 3 tournaments in a row without a decent win

1992 European Championships

0-0 v Denmark
0-0 v France
1-2 v Sweden

2/14 (Being kind to England here – Denmark won the cup, but you’d expect to beat them)

1996 European Championships

1-1 v Switzerland
2-0 v Scotland
4-1 v Netherlands
0-0 v Spain
1-1 v Germany

3/17 (Not counting Spain because we won on pens and they were better than us anyway)

1998 World Cup

2-0 v Tunisia
1-2 v Romania
2-0 v Colombia
2-2 v Argentina

3/18

2000 European Championships

2-3 v Portugal
1-0 v Germany
2-3 v Romania

3/20 (not counting the Germany victory because we were woeful, just less woeful than Germany)

2002 World Cup

1-1 v Sweden
1-0 v Argentina
0-0 v Nigeria
3-0 v Denmark
1-2 v Brazil

4/22

2004 European Championships

1-2 v France
3-0 v Switzerland
4-2 v Croatia
2-2 v Portugal

4/24

2006 World Cup

1-0 v Paraguay
2-0 v Trinidad & Tobago
2-2 v Sweden
1-0 v Ecuador
0-0 v Portugal

4/25

2010 World Cup

1-1 v USA
0-0 v Algeria
1-0 v Slovenia
1-4 v Germany

4/26

So there you have it – in 40 years of major football championships, we’ve won 4 games that count. Four!! That’s one every 10 years, or one every 2 and a half tournaments. And I’ve also been kind, because we didn’t beat Republic of Ireland twice in the early 1990′s and they were a good team.

If I live to 80, I’ve got around another 4 matches to look forward to and the next performance will be in the 2020 European Championships. Wonderful.

If you go back further, you’ve got the 1966 win which may skew the results – but it may not, because we didn’t win a single match of importance in ANYTHING prior to

So now I know why we’re so keen to get the World Cup hosted in England in 2018, because without it, we have zero chance of winning!

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The first version had a pretty basic component, used SOAP to communicate and had no in-built schema check to always produce valid WAPL code.

PHP Package as a Vendor

But now there is a PHP package available that handles the schema check and communication can be done by either REST or SOAP (the preferred method would now seem to be REST seeing as it has better error handling and doesn’t trigger a fatal error if a soap client can’t be created).

Plugging that package in as a vendor should be dead easy (although it does need a few little mods and upgrades of its own first) and then it’ll be just a case of writing a component and helper to make use of it.

Hopefully I’ll have something ready this week so you’ll be able to mobilize your real world cake apps!

Let me know if you have any ideas for how it should be built – as a component & helper? Maybe a plugin? Or just keep it as a vendor.. or maybe all of the above!

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1. REST or SOAP? Or don’t care?
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The setup you’d probably go for is some sort of load balanced setup, with multiple web servers and possibly a couple of database servers behind the scenes. You should also be thinking about the wonders of virtualization and all the benefits that brings but that’s for another day.

Having multiple web servers brings about its own set of issues. Your blog code needs to be deployed to all web servers (preferably at the same time) so that if you get visitors that happen to hit different machines, you give them the same experience.

Deployments and Uploads

But that’s not so much of a problem – you could deploy code to all servers with Ant or Capistrano, or even write your own system to do it exactly to your requirements.

However, in this kind of setup, you’re going to come unstuck with plugins, themes and uploads. WordPress has an awesome upload utility, but the file you select from your local computer will get uploaded to a location on a single machine in your server farm. When a visitor lands on a different machine, they won’t see the upload. If you’re using the automatic add plugin or theme wizard built into the newer version of WordPress then it’s the same situation.

Link to NFS locations

But the situation is not nearly as dire as you may think though. There are loads of ways to combat it – and it’s a piece of cake if you’re using Linux! The easiest way is to create an NFS share on web server 1 and link to it on web server 2 so that the “/plugins” directory on 2 actually points to the location on 1. Easy!

If you’ve got a file server, even better – create your NFS on there and link to that location instead so that content really is separate from your code!

With windows it’s just as easy with shared directories – same principle, just a different terminology.

The only issue you’ve got left is that some plugins may have the paths to their files built slightly oddly so that they load the wrong files. But then, if you’ve got errors with the plugins, it may be time to look for alternatives!

Have you had any problems with WordPress on load balanced servers? How did you solve it or did you choose another setup?

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His reckoning was down to the fact that most specifications for functionality aren’t tight enough. For example, if the spec for an adding function was to add two numbers together, adding 5 and 9 together and returning a value of 162 was acceptable. Even returning nothing, or null, or a gazillion was also ok. The specification should have said that the function had to add two numbers and return the correct mathematical result.

For a developer, this is great news. You don’t have bugs anymore, you have “undocumented features”. Feature specifications get better and it’s easier to write code that satisfies the requirements.

It’s a bug!

But I personally think blaming bugs, and they are bugs, on the specification writers is lazy. Bug reporters, whether they are developers or not can get quickly hacked off with being told that an error they’ve found isn’t actually a bug, but it’s the fact that it’s actually been implemented exactly to spec.

A bit of common sense in all of this is definitely required. If you need an adding function, it’s obvious to anyone that it should return the result. If the spec doesn’t say so, just do it and move on.

And if you need a function to return the results of whether a visitor is a mobile device or not, it’s probably wise to actually return the value rather than store it in a cookie. Oops!

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Take my Wapple Architect Mobile Plugin for WordPress for example, and the way it used to communicate with Wapple’s web services. It used to use SOAP simply because that was the protocol we chose to employ as our means for delivering web services.

SOAP is not always available!

Now don’t get me wrong, what we’ve got is a really smart, well-designed and developed web service that’s both extensible and easy to use. But the fact was that if you hadn’t got SOAP, you wouldn’t be able to use it. And if you’d only got a shared host available, you might not be lucky enough to have a decent one like me (Evohosting) who allow you to install SOAP on your server.

So what we’ve done is to create corresponding REST web services so you can use Wapple Architect and your dev key, but either request data through a URL by modifying a query string, or through a POST request with something like curl.

Nothing can stop you now!

This is fantastic news all round. For developers who are experimenting with Architect, it’s even easier to develop. And as we’ve already incorporated this new technology into our plugins for WordPress and Joomla, you can use it even if you don’t want to delve into code!

The latest release of the WordPress mobile plugin is out now (version 1.4) – have a read of the full feature list and the new REST web service support in an article over at Mobile Web Junkie.

On a more general note, what do you prefer to use, SOAP or REST? Or maybe XMLRPC? If you haven’t got a clue about any of this but would still like to have a go at leaving a suitably technical comment, here’s a few words you may want to include: “combobulating”, “aerodynamics” and “flux capacitor”.

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The record had been slowly inching it’s way down from ever since Carl Lewis‘ 9.92 in Seoul in 1998. Second by second, slowly but surely, and scientists in white lab coats were telling everyone that the limit of human speed was on a curve that would slow down year on year.

But then Usain Bolt happened.

He’s lowered the mark by as much in three years that it took the rest of the sprinting world 40 years. Jim Hines was the first under 10 seconds in 1968 and Asafa Powell did 9.77 in 2006. I’ve just seen Bolt do 9.58. Incredible!

Who knows how fast or how far he can lower the mark. 9.4? 9.3?

I’m sure that there is a physical limit to how fast humans can run. It seems that the top speed for a cheetah can be defined as 68 mph and an emu at 31ph, but then cheetah’s don’t have the benefit of track spikes, coaches and a dietary plan designed for speed.

Maybe if they did, cheetah’s would be bombing around faster than the TGV, but until then we’re left to speculate as to how far Bolt can lower the world record!

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Unfortuntely, the powers that be decided that the new version didn’t need them, so rather than sulk about it (ok I did sulk a bit) I’ve turned those hand crafted cumulo nimbii into a WordPress plugin!

All that work designing the clouds, making sure they appear at random locations and animating them so they move across the screen as if blown by a category 5 hurricane. None of it has gone to waste now it’s available for everyone!

Best of all, there’s a hot air balloon that appears at a random time and moves across your site from bottom-right to top-left!

Clouds on WordPress

Any day now, WordPress will approve my plugin (and lets face it – who wouldn’t want clouds on their site!) and you’ll be able to search for clouds when installing a plugin! But in the mean time, all of that cloud goodness is available for all to see on here! (They’re the white fluffy things at the top of the page incase you missed them).

By the way, keep your eyes peeled for any other flying objects appearing (other than the balloon) – if you spot them feel very privileged as they only appear to a chosen few!

If you’ve got any suggestions for other things that fly – Elliot on his bicycle with ET in the basket or a bi-plane are 2 that spring to mind – let me know and I’ll try and include it!

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1. WordPress Mobile Plugin Version 1.2 is here

I’m talking about an end of level boss that made you pull your hair out and gnaw your finger nails down to the stumps. A race in a driving game that you just could not win. Something that you think that trying to complete it is as futile as resisting the Borg (Star Trek not the tennis player).

My particular nemesises, nemesis’s the ones that caused me the most trouble were the last level on Driver, and the driving school on GTA San Andreas.

Driver

Driver was an immense game. Bomb round various cities doing missions for bad asses and it rocked. But it only rocked until the last level, then it sucked. The Presidents Run. 3 words that still fill me with dread.

The mission – drive the president through NYC to an underground car park on the other side of town. Over and over again I tried, left at Central Park, then right. Then straight through the middle plowing through the flowerbeds. Slow down when the limo’s bear down on you, then speed up. Go really slow so they don’t see you, then try to lure them down the wrong way. Try to time it right as you cross their paths at a crossroads.. and on.. and on.. Not a single one of those tactics worked.

And then it just clicked. I sailed through central park with just a couple of near misses, dodged a limo at the critical right turn (or left turn if you hung a right at Central Park) and tentatively made my way into the car park. Job done, Game Over.

I’ve never loaded the game since – I don’t think I could go through that again.

GTA San Andreas

The driving school was a pain. There were loads of tests to do and you could pass them in varying degrees of success – bronze, silver and gold. Most of them were fairly easy but there were 2 really hard ones, “City Slicking” and “Burn and Lap”. And getting Gold on those wasn’t just hard, it was ROCK hard.

Drive across town and back again in less than 100 seconds. Oh, and you can’t put a scratch on the car. Nearly did it a few times but I swear the game had it in for me and threw a random car in at the last corner just to put a little dent on the front wing.

After many many nights spent on the driving school, I finally finished them and got posession of a Hotknife, whatever one of those is.

Any others?

There’s got to be other games that have caused you a few problems and I’d love to hear what they were. Had particular trouble getting a gold award on Gran Turismo? Or maybe you found Rainbow Islands a bit tough – let met know whatever it was!

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YARPP

“Returns a list of related entries based on a unique algorithm for display on your blog and RSS feeds.”

Does exactly what it says on the tin – great for keeping readers on your site with links they might be interested in.
Read more…

Wapple Architect Mobile Plugin for WordPress

“Mobilizing your wordpress site using Wapple Architect and WAPL.”

I’m a little biased on this one as I wrote it, but I’ve used other mobile plugins for WordPress and not wishing to blow ones own trumpet, mine is way better. Its got more features, doesn’t forward you off to another URL, retains the look and feel of your web theme and much more.
Read more

Developer Formatter

“Developer Formatter system to WordPress”

If you want to quote some code in your post, I’ve not found a plugin better than the Developer Formatter to do it. Others tend to chop things off and have a bit of a flid when switching from Visual to HTML mode but not this one. Top Marks.
Read more

Google Analyticator

“Adds the necessary JavaScript code to enable Google’s Analytics”

Who doesn’t like looking at stats? Ok, it might be just me then. But still, it’s always good to know who’s been visiting your blog and this plugin integrates with the best Analytics software out there.
Read more

Twitter Tools

“A complete integration between your WordPress blog and Twitter”

Finally, Twitter tools – easily put your latest tweets on your sidebar. Dead easy to setup and works a treat – great stuff!
Read more

That’s it – 5 great tools that once setup, keep your visitors on your site, make sure any mobile visitors get a great experience, show nice looking code to them, let your readers know what you’re up to and finally track where they’re coming from!

Let me know what you think of my list and if there’s any you feel should be on there!

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1. WordPress Mobile Plugin 1.2.1
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The classes do all of the hard work for you – communicating with Wapple’s web services and providing functions to build WAPL for you. It’s up to date with the current schema too so by using this class it’s impossible to build invalid markup!

I’ve written a more comprehensive article over at Mobile Web Junkie – head over there and have a read all about it. If you fancy having a go without reading the manual, you can download the package from its homepage on PHP Classes: http://www.phpclasses.org/browse/package/5491.html

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1. WordPress Mobile Plugin Version 1.2 is here