shawThings.net : a collection of shaw things ...

A new year and time to look back on the old one. (Last year's review.)

2009 seemed to be a bit of a block-buster year for SF movies. By my count I saw five big movies at the cinemas this year: Watchmen, Transformers 2, Star Trek, District 9 and Avatar.

I also saw Serenity this year, which was very good, but given that it's from 2005 must be excluded. The Twilight Series is more strictly fantasy and is not counted here - also quite good though.

A good, solid episode with lots of action, several portents of the future and the Doctor overreaching himself. After a long wait, it was good to have him back on TV.

The sense of anticipation was increased with the draw for the World Cup Finals being completed. We now know who's in which pool, who can meet in the knockout rounds, etc.

Last night, New Zealand's All Whites qualified for the World Cup Finals! A massive result and great news for mine. Honestly it was 2005 all over again for me. A crucial goal in the first half. An outstanding penalty save. And remembering what it felt like for us as a country. Let's hope NZ do well.

A gutsy 2-1 win away after going down to 10 men after about 15 minutes. Rhys Williams made a clumsy challenge, gave away a penalty and received a red card for his trouble. Oman then converted the penalty (but only after Schwarzer blocked the shot and they put away the rebound). A poor start in a crucial match. But Australia rallied and equalised before half-time. They then survived a sustained attack to snatch a win with a few minutes to go.

Yet another match I didn't get to see. Following the match on Twitter is no fun. There was a lot of talk in the lead up that Australia needed to win: because we must qualify for the 2011 finals; and Pim Verbeek's job could be on the line. Clearly World Cup qualification is not enough for the FFA!

Against a team ranked #74, we should be able to win at home. But it took until the 74' for us to break the deadlock. Guess who? Yep, Tim Cahill again. 1-0 win. Job done.

A home town match featuring the world #3 team ... of course, I was there. The match was of a pretty good standard, but was more tense than exciting. The Netherlands was the dominant team, but we battled well and got away with a 0-0 draw.

Spotted the following images on Eurosport yesterday. Some poor editorial control has seen some HTML leaking into the scrolling news bar at the bottom of the screen. This happened two days running.

Not long after we'd risen to our highest place on the FIFA rankings (14th) we turned in a sub-par performance in this friendly. Yes, it was the B-team, with many players given a chance to prove themselves, but if we play like this again we can forget about doing well at the World Cup Finals.