Thursday, February 12, 2015

Wedding vows

I heard "Uprising" by Muse today for the first time in quite a while. It's not the best song in the world, obviously, and whenever I listen to it I always tune out the mumbled lyrics of the verse and only notice it during the cool bellowed chorus, "They will not force us! They will stop degrading us! They will not control us! We will be victorious!"

And every single time I hear the song I expect the second line to rhyme with the first, and when it gets to "They will stop de-" I mentally complete the line to say "They will stop divorces!" and start imagining it's singing the praises of some militant group who are out to uphold the sanctity of marriage by any means necessary. That might actually be a cooler song altogether.

Sunday, February 08, 2015

Meet the Extremers!

No, wait, let's call them The Extremities! That sounds even cooler. X-Tremities. X-Tremites. X-Termites? I'll think of a cool name later.

Qualification is finished for the 2015 XMT, and if all the people who've qualified do decide to go to the actual tournament, the lineup looks like this - 7 Germans, 5 Mongolians, 3 Swedes, 2 Filipinos, 3 Americans, 1 Norwegian, 3 Britons.

The quarter-finalists from last year qualify automatically - this includes Simon Reinhard, Boris Konrad, Mark Anthony Castaneda and me, who all decided to take part in the online qualification anyway, and Jonas von Essen, Johannes Mallow, Christian Schäfer and Ola Kåre Risa, who didn't. Then there are the top sixteen of the online qualifiers, as below:

RankNameCardsImagesNamesNumbersWordsTotal
Simon Reinhard133.00123.61108.7081.1691.84538.31
1Johannes Zhou69.54154.00117.3971.4187.76500.10
2Yanjindulam Altansuh52.15167.22113.0467.2587.76487.42
Ben Pridmore107.08133.8765.2279.5079.59465.26
Boris Konrad74.96169.49100.0074.99419.44
3Enhkjin Tumur57.90158.2365.2292.9738.78413.10
4Johann Randall Abrina99.06116.28100.0037.8551.02404.21
5Enkhmunkh Erdenebatkhaan89.3475.7878.26117.5342.86403.77
Nelson Dellis52.3272.99117.3966.1585.71394.56
6Annalena Fischer42.18129.7086.9644.0483.67386.55
7Tsogbadrakh Saikhanbayar51.58130.2678.2649.0575.51384.66
8Anne Reulke43.87125.47100.0037.3877.55384.27
9Lance Tschirhart70.1966.86100.0073.5871.43382.06
10Tuuruul Myagmarsuren46.29123.15113.0437.8559.18379.51
11Alexander Mullen53.04101.9782.6169.7071.43378.75
12Marwin Wallonius58.70115.4373.9171.8157.14376.99
13Marlo Knight62.88101.1191.3055.1859.18369.65
14Akjol Syeryekkhaan37.9680.52121.7452.9273.47366.61
15Katie Kermode30.3776.36117.3942.4497.96364.52
16Johnny Briones45.6993.87100.0038.3375.51353.40
17Purevjav Erdenesaikhan69.2384.2265.2276.9257.14352.73
18Konstantin Skudler34.59116.9678.2642.7169.39341.91
Mark Anthony Castaneda87.9095.6573.3265.31322.18
19Tsetsegzul Zorigtbaatar51.5094.1665.2249.9259.18319.98
20Norbert Reulke37.96104.5760.8740.4665.31309.17
21Brad Zupp42.1862.8891.3037.3867.35301.09
22Juliane Fischer23.62122.2565.2233.0655.10299.25
23Tuvshintugs Nyamdorj53.9953.7465.2275.8848.98297.81
24Clay Knight33.7496.9669.5745.4348.98294.68
25Florian Dellé30.3789.0760.8732.5853.06265.95
26Oddbjørn By23.6281.3969.5737.3840.82252.78
27Brice Trejo44.6481.2643.4843.8338.78251.99
28Omkar Kibe29.5362.3760.8725.8848.98227.63
29John Graham24.4670.0395.6532.10222.24
30Javier Moreno19.4055.1165.2215.3342.86197.92
31David Billington25.3135.0069.5728.7536.73195.36
32Khaliun Bolor-Erdene32.9055.3569.5736.42194.24
33Luis Angel Echeverria22.7856.7852.1725.4030.61187.74
34Andrej Savickij26.9950.0026.0935.4634.69173.23
35Chris Forde10.9771.7765.2214.38162.34
36Kevin Horsley80.3964.68145.07
Simon Orton59.9378.26138.19
Idriz Zogaj46.6722.0468.71
37Alexis Rodríguez23.6223.62

Lance Tschirhart apparently had his words attempt disqualified and then reinstated, or something like that - I don't know if there's any kind of sensational controversy there, but it's bad news for Purejav Erdenesaikhan, anyway.

The others who were competing "just for fun" are Nelson Dellis, who will be running things admirably as always, Simon Orton providing the wonderful software and Idriz Zogaj helping out and cheering on Team Sweden, too.

How will the group stages and knockout rounds work? If I could make a suggestion before I know the seedings and so can't be accused of suggesting something that'd give me an advantage, I'd like to see a tennis-style thing (big tennis tournaments are seeded so that the 1st and 2nd seed will meet in the final, they'll each play a randomly-drawn one of the 3rd and 4th seeds in the semi-finals, and each of those four will play a randomly-drawn one of the 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th seeds in the quarter-finals, and so on) coupled with the system that I think they used in the football world cup when it had 24 teams like this:

The top six seeds will each be in a group with a random one from the three other pots (7th-12th; 13th-18th; 19th-24th), split like this:
Group A - 1st seed
Group B - 3rd/4th seed
Group C - 5th/6th seed
Group D - 2nd seed
Group E - 3rd/4th seed
Group F - 5th/6th seed

The knockout stages will then be arranged to keep the top seeds apart if they win their groups, and the second and third places in each group be ranked according to the number of points they amass (the best being called 2nd-place-1, then 2nd-place-2, and so on), and split like this:

Match 1 - winner group A vs 3rd-place-4
Match 2 - 2nd-place-2 vs 2nd-place-3
Match 3 - winner group C vs 2nd-place-6
Match 4 - winner group B vs 3rd-place-2
Match 5 - winner group E vs 3rd-place-1
Match 6 - winner group F vs 2nd-place-5
Match 7 - 2nd-place-1 vs 2nd-place-4
Match 8 - winner group D vs 3rd-place-3

Then the quarter-finals are winner match 1 vs winner match 2, and so on to the final.

Any better suggestions, bloglings? Maybe an optional rule to stop people who've met in the group stages meeting again in the round of 16...

Here's an interesting one

I went to school with a guy called Phil Inkley; we were in the same year but different classes and I didn't really know him all that well. Anyway, he's currently living in the woods to avoid electromagnetic signals and needs to raise money. Click on the link here, check it out, and maybe donate something if you've got a bit of money to spare? Hey, I myself might be described as a bit of a weirdo to some people, I sympathise with others who fall into that category.