Crouch scores for England. Again.

So, a less than convincing win against Egypt seals yet another worrying night of international football at Wembley.

The key question on everyone’s lips is what Capello does next. It’s a question all football fans have an answer to but a question that has been made all the more intriguing – and harder to answer – after last night’s performance.

England is unfortunately full of dull talent. Cole, Milner, Upson, Lampard Baines… they may all play well at club level but are utterly uninspiring when put on the world stage. Yes, even Baines, who had a passable game in the much hyped left back position.

What worried me last night is that several other players are creeping into that list. Gerrard, Rooney, Walcott… All three did little to convince me they deserve a starting place in South Africa this summer. Particulalry Rooney who, having put in another nonedescript, goal-less performance, was described by the eternally irritating Tyldsley as ‘our talisman’.

Sorry? He had better start scoring. That’s all that matters in his position and the brief nature of any major tournamnent.

Walcott – who I rate – was just poor at times. He constantly looks out of his depth. A real shame for a player who is sorely lacking in match practice at the moment and is vying for a place in one of the most hotly contested areas of the pitch.

Gerrard skulks around the park, rarely chasing lost balls or regaining possession he’s just given away. That’s not him, is it? What’s changed?

I’m the ultimate doom-and-gloom, pessimistic England fan, I admit, but we must all surely be mindful of the fact that our chances this summer don’t look great.

While we indeed have a manager full of intent and insistent on taming our overpaid footballers, something is still sorely missing; passion. On the pitch. Sordid affairs, clubs falling into administration and tails of gambling addiction are all recent, clear indicators of a sport which has completely lost it’s purpose.

Fabio’s right. These lads get too rich far too young and aside from the side effects we’ve seen splashed across the tabloids over recent weeks, there is one that remains forgotten – they’ve lost the passion and pride which should come naturally when selected to play for your country. Wayne Bridge’s decision to declare himself unavailable does nothing but cement this sorry fact.

Still… Roll on the World Cup.

For those interested, this track features elements of ‘I Can’t Wait’ by ‘New Shooz’.

Sleep Cycle Alarm: Faff overload

Those 59p iPhone Apps are nearly always tempting. Because they’re 59p. That’s nothing, after all. Loose change. The kind of stuff you loose down the back of the sofa.

So, it was with little trepidation I purchased Sleep Cycle Alarm. A little App which monitors your sleep patterns and wakes you up at your most ‘awake’ within a thirty minute window you preset.

Reviews, while nearly always developer-led, were 99% positive, so what did I have to loose?

Sleep, as it turned out. Far from leaving me feeling refreshed and ready for the day, Sleep Cycle Alarm appears to be largely useless, faffy and tiring.

Firstly, it only monitors movement. It doesn’t plug into your brain, so despite the statistics graph suggesting it is aware of when you’re dreaming, it simply isn’t.

This presents several problems. Firstly, unless you’re single or you and your partner posses a 400ft-wide bed, it will register every single movement both you and your loved one make.

Secondly, it must be placed under your bed sheet but away from your pillow. Once again, unless you sleep in Shaq O’ Neal’s bed, this isn’t particularly practical. It also means you spend most of the night checking the phone is still in place or hasn’t been crushed by your constantly tossing and turning head.

Lastly, the statistics graphs are interesting. Once.

There’s no snooze function, either. I understand the whole point of this is to wake you up when you’re most with it, but we’re not designed to wake up instantly. Snooze buttons are essential.

So, to round up, don’t bother with Sleep Cycle Alarm. You’ll only end up more tired.

Capello: 12 minutes. Done.

So, after exactly a week of every Tom, Dick and Harry lending their press-influenced views on the most boring scandal ever to grace football, it took Fabio Capello just 12 minutes to deliver the bad news to John Terry.

The Chelsea skipper will captain the England team no more.

I’m disappointed. Not in Capello (well, not entirely – read on to hear why); he did the only thing he could after the relentless media-led pressure we’ve witnessed over the last seven days. It didn’t matter how many people – like me – failed to see the connection between a footballer’s extra marital relations and his ability to captain the national team; there was simply no way Terry could continue to be captain with such a black cloud hanging over him. Capello did the right thing.

Incidentally, it wouldn’t surprise me if we’ve all actually forgotten what the offence was, exactly – it seems so irrelevant now.

I’m continually impressed by an England manager who clearly doesn’t mess about. While pressure undoubtedly led him to this decision, you can be sure he made it confidently, quickly and without a second thought of what anyone else might think. He wants to win the World Cup and doesn’t give a toss who he upsets on the way. I like that.

I don’t like his decision to simply realign the captaincy, though. Ferdinand? Really? He may have been second in line but has hardly played all season. When he was playing, he was hardly at the top of his game. Yes, he’s had a chequered past, too, but this isn’t the root cause of my dismay today.

If anything, Capello should be assessing whether or not Ferdinand is fit for a place in the World Cup squad at all, let alone lead it.

He’s missed a trick here, Capello. Gerrard should have taken Terry’s place. No?

I’m willing to be proved wrong though, Fabio. Please don’t let this uncharacteristically weak decision make a mockery of my praise for you above…

John Terry: Enough Already

Yesterday, I drove roughly 350 miles. Along the majority of those congestion-strewn roads, I listened to Talksport. I usually do this while out on the road and it isn’t typically a problem. Yesterday, however, it was.

For a total of around 6 hours I was treated to one long, continuous debate about John Terry, his extra-marital relations and whether or not he should still be England captain.

Every DJ on the station (and not in the least Stan Collymore who I think may have been playing with himself whilst endlessly spurting pointless superlatives about the supposed forthcoming meeting between Terry and Capello; “Capello is a greatly morale man and will not at all be concerned with what John Terry does behind closed doors away from the big lights and spectacle of the beautiful game”) simply repeated their views again and again. As did the callers. And the guests. When all was said and done, there were only about 3 different views; they were simply regurgitated, modified and drawn out each time they were expressed. I literally had a headache as I finally turned into my street at the end of the day.

I’m not going to embellish on this massively boring subject too much further, but I will give my opinion.

What John Terry does off the pitch is his business and his business only. I find all the debate over the affair hugely uncomfortable. It’s clear us Brits have a massive problem with sex (more so than the US, I’d say) and are so easily appalled by anything relating to it that it is invariably made a big deal of when something like this happens.

He’s a great defender and a very good captain. What he does away from the pitch is totally irrelevant. End of story. The only reason this has been made front page news is because the way in which everything is sensationalised these days.

Whenever we approach a big tournament like the World Cup, the press in this country reach for their knives and start their level best to completely screw up any chance England have of doing well. Why wouldn’t they? We love wallowing in our own misery in this country; if England go out in the group stages they’ll sell lots more papers.

Finally, are footballers role models? No, of course they’re not. They swear, spit, fight, cheat and spunk their ridiculous earnings up the wall. Any notion that the are to be held on a pedestal by anyone is daft. Yes, kids admire them and want to be them, but that’s life, I’m afraid. I’m sure they want to be film stars, too, but how many parents would want their child to turn into Lindsey Lohan?

There we go. 463 words and I’m done.

Someone tries out the 'massive iPhone'

So, it’s called the iPad. After what was essentially months of mindless, pointless speculation, Steve Jobs this week unveiled Apple’s latest product: an iPhone OS-based tablet device.

We all knew it was going to be a tablet and we all knew it was intended to prove that netbooks, essentially, are crap. And that’s pretty much how Jobs started his presentation, proclaiming that the mini laptops which have taken the mobile computing market by storm are slow, uninventive and run useless operating systems (‘Windows’ to you and me). As dismissive and arrogant as always. Don’t you just love him.

During the run up to this week’s event, I commented on Apple’s mastery of marketing and their unique ability to leave the job of whipping up a storm of interest to their loyal – and not so loyal – following. Once again, with the announcement of the iPad, it worked brilliantly. We were all waiting with baited breath as Steve Jobs trudged onto the stage in his trademark black turtle neck and Primark stone-washed jeans.

I think they may have screwed up with this one, I’m afraid. Apple’s product line, almost without exception, is successful because of one common element – desire. We want everything they make. I have an iPhone. I don’t need it. Any phone will allow me to send texts and ring people. I use a Mac in my music studio. I don’t need it; a decently specced PC running Cubase would do the job just as well and at half the cost. However, I parted with hard earned for both of these things simply because they were desirable.

Look at the entire Apple range – iPods, laptops, all-in-one computers… even their keyboards are sights to behold and use. Expensive they may be, but for a company that can claim a worth of around $50bn, it doesn’t seem to matter.

The problem with the iPad is that I just don’t think the desire will be there. It is a very odd product which simply doesn’t seem to fit any gap anywhere. ‘Pick up the iPad laying in the kitchen’ said Jobs as he idly flicked through the NY Times website during the demonstration. Indeed, at times, he seemed to be nodding off; hardly a ringing endorsement for a product he has labelled ‘one of the most important things we’ve done’.

It remains to be seen how it will fare once it’s thrown out into the wild. One thing it has on its side is price. It is, like few Apple products, genuinely affordable. That might just be enough to carry it through, but one question remains: are we going to want this enough for it to be a success? I’m not convinced.

...cue raucous laughter, applause and lots of whooping

It goes without saying that, as something of an Apple nut, I look forward to their ‘events’. These are essentially conferences held at key times during their financial calendar at which new products are announced, impressive figures are embelished upon and much back slapping is dealt.

On 27th January, Apple will be holding their latest event in San Francisco, unveiling their ‘latest creation’.

The rumour mill has been spinning for longer than usual on this one with many people citing the long-awaited tablet as the main focus of the conference, with further suggestions that iPhone OS 4.0 will be unveiled, along with the next version of  iLife. Apple Insider’s take on the latest rumours can be read here.

So, what’s Apple’s secret? How do they market these events so well and generate such a furore of interest? Its pretty easy, as far as I can tell. They do one thing, and that’s… nothing.

Granted, few companies are at the level of social revere as Apple, but their mastery of suspicion, rumour and the sheer weight of expectation is a sight to behold.

We’re told that they purposefully release incorrect information or ambiguous titbits for us all to apply our own theories to, but the truth is they really do very little. They don’t need to – we do the marketing for them.

None of us know what next Wednesday holds and you can guarantee 99% of the reported content will be wholely incorrect. That is irrelevent, though; interest is drummed up at such a rate of knots that by the time the event comes around, everyone is eagerly tuned to social media waiting for the spotlight to fall on Steve Jobs (or whichever minion he has summoned to do the job for him).

I don’t mind admitting I’m excited about this one. I’ll report back with my thoughts after the event…

Anyone who makes music will know the eternal frustration that comes from listening to the same eight bars of a melody or bass line 300 times in a row. Those poor people living with bedroom producers will also be keenly aware of how hugely irritating this practice can be.

It’s easy to loose sight of what you’re doing or trying to achieve if you over-listen. Whilst it might seem necessary to loop those eight bars and jam over the top in an effort to inject a new lease of life into your first verse, it can also be very counterproductive.

Like many people, I’m always working on two or three tracks at any one time. As soon as I start to get frustrated with something, I’ll save it, bring up another project and move on. Leaving it to settle, even if only for a couple of hours, can work wonders. When you come back to it, it’ll sound fresh and you’ll instantly be inspired to add to it*.

Quite often, I’ll bounce a rough mix, or even just the basic outline of a track to MP3 and stick it on my iPod. Then, using the ‘I’m just going out to walk the dog’ excuse, I’ll get some fresh air and have a listen. It’s incredible how different a track can sound when you take it out of the studio. Just remember to make a mental note (particularly if you are dog walking) of any changes you need to make on your return.

Try it. Walk away from what you’re doing. Like a good bolognese, music needs some time to settle. Daft analogy, but true. Sort of.

*Very occasionally, it’ll sound like dog shit. In this case, consign it to your trash can – you were right in the first place.