Liverpool 5 : Alavés 4. The UEFA Cup final was perhaps the most entertaining football match I've seen in a long time. It was 4-4 after 90 minutes, and an own goal (ouch!) gave Liverpool a sudden death victory on extra time. Well, I suppose that an own goal on a World Cup final would be worse, but that player definitely got the most humiliating moment of a lifetime. Despite this, it was a truly, truly spectacular match and no one in the world can dislike 'soccer' after watching such a wonder (although the basque supporters might disagree). Great. ¶

Work. I've got a deadline next Sunday, so there'll be only a few sparse updates until then. ¶

Quit Slashdot today! News for herds doesn't matter! Viva la revolución! Erm... actually I read the Daily Nerd, and I personally think it has its degree of interest. Of course, any responsible reader must know that Slashdot is an heavily pro-Linux, sort of leftist journal, and make a discount. Like any of today's media, I guess Slashdot is OK as long as you also read the opposite propaganda.¶

Well, it's also that time of the year: allergy time. That means I will try to stay away from screens and other things that increase eye strain, as my eyes are all itchy and it's incredibly annoying to work. However, I am still browsing the tips a few good people send me, like Deconcept which remembers me of my own Lab sandbox, except that my site looks crapper. I definitely need to redesign asseptic.org, but definitely not now.¶

IRC, the other day. Well, I actually don't care much about IRC, I just logon to the usual network, on the usual channel... And I let mIRC stay there on the background, with a pile of browser windows on top, hoping something worthwhile happens. I rarely engage into private conversations, and I never start them. However I had this nice conversation the other day: Besides exchanging a few URLs of arty websites, I had a good conversation about blogging, and how many people turn blogging into a bore by using weblogs as personal diaries. I mean, personal diaries are typically little black books kept on a secret drawer because no one will ever read them. Readers don't need to be reminded of their own problems, so blogs should be, although from a personal point of view, informative and interesting. Depression-based blogs will only appeal to sadistic types who will think "There's someone worse than me". Ain't I right?¶

My TV set is broken. Which means from now on I'll be a better, well-adjusted person.¶

Porto European Capital of Alcohol: It's that time of the year. The Queima das Fitas ('Burning of the stripes'), the annual celebration of college students that, apart from some parade on Tuesday, consists of having thousands of people in some field just getting drunk and listening to crappy bands. Portugal leads all European alcohol statistics, and check this: Here in Porto, during this week, people will buy more litres of beer than during the whole Munich Oktoberfest (the most famous beer party in the world). If you consider beer is only half of the story — there's vodka, wine, and incredibly poisonous absynthe-based 'shots', drank by 16-year olds — it's not hard to imagine the biggest pukefest in the world. Which is nice, because while everyone is at it you can get yourself a table on the usually overcrowded bars and pubs.¶

If anyone could tell me what's a Second Bad Vilbel, that'd be nice. But if anyone could tell me what unknown Autechre/Gescom record I jave just captured from this hard-to-read art site (under 'illegal', of course), that'd be nicer.¶

Speaking of illegal stuff, a new version of WinMX is now available, now it seems to have its own protocol, along with the dying Napster and dozens of OpenNap servers. Just don't forget to use a firewall if you live in a country where police goes after Napster users (like Belgium).¶

As seen on Slashdot: Denmark, a small country that doesn't export almost anything else but overrated moviemakers and beer (definitely it doesn't export musicians), is considering legalizing music sharing and weakening copyright laws. Mind you, this is very important indeed as Denmark is part of the EU. I hope naapstär.dk lives long enough until the EU decide to kick Denmark out because of this and their anti single currency tradition.¶

By the way, if you are stuck into Windows and have a reason not to use Internet Explorer (which is a MS product but a good one), and must use a Mozilla-type browser, you could try this one. It's based on older 0.6 build but at least never crashed on me. And it's way faster than NS6.¶

I spent some time finishing IF THEN ELSE at last, adding an archive viewing system and fixing a few CSS glitches. Many webloggers use Blogger which is fine for almost everyone, however I enjoy being different and I use a mix of my own PHP code along with a customized NewsPro, which is actually a news posting script meant for several users, but I rather use it instead of other blogging/journal scripts, as I feel much more comfortable with it and I kinda know NewsPro inside out. As always, I lost 90% of my time fixing things to prevent it from going wrong on Netscape, used by less than 10% of you. Netscape might have that guerrilla edge, but when I stay up late because of it I can't deny it: I am a Netscape hater.¶

I'm starting a new exhibition on We Are Unreasonable People, a few proto-goth images I created/bastardised for a production that was never finished. They are not my usual style, but I am so happy with those pictures I had to exhibit them.¶

The Monocromatica website has been updated yet again. Now that's a lovely logo! For those who don't know, it's a portuguese electronica record label run by a fellow blogger of mine at Cafeína. He has some nice music there, and a few MP3s to download, so I recommend it.¶