Cav's Place

There was a time, when elections were looming, when I had to rush so I wouldn’t end up needing to post something during the last two or three days of the month in order to stick to my rule of posting on at least two separate days each week, because the server the blog is on was exhausting its allotted monthly bandwidth early due to the high traffic generated by the blogs of some politicians, also hosted on it. But it’s been quite some time since that last happened, so I was no longer worried about it. Yet this month the bandwidth limit was exceeded over a week early, and it’s no longer the server that’s to blame.
As you may know, Jen was kind enough to host my blog on her site, so the bandwidth allocation is for the entire site, not just for my blog. I believe early on the limit was 5 Gb per month, which was just manageable, with my blog’s part being completely negligible. Then the allottment increased to 10 Gb per month and, despite a total of five blogs being hosted on this account, the amount used was only about 6 Gb per month, so it was never a question of hitting the limit. My part of it increased drastically once I posted that beginner’s resource guide for Perfect World International, averaging some 500 Mb per month ever since.
Yet Jen started using her personal blog less and less, eventually abandoning it around the end of 2009, which pretty much halved the monthly bandwidth usage, making it appear quite impossible to ever have such problems. But here we are today, with the limit actually exceeded for the first time ever, and so far from the end of the month too. I would be feeling guilty for my part of it if this would have happened just before the end of the month, seeing as my blog’s not really supposed to be there in the first place, but the total bandwidth used by me during the first 22 days of the month equals the amount used by the most active part of the site in about a day and a half, so removing me completely would have merely delayed this outcome until tomorrow evening.

Still, seeing as, for reasons as yet unknown, Jen’s been ignoring me completely for some time, I was starting to very seriously consider looking for hosting offers and talking to dad about paying for one in order to move to my own site. I mean, it would make sense for her to withdraw the friendly offer of hosting my blog now that she apparently no longer wants to have anything to do with me, so I didn’t want to be caught with my pants down when that happened. And dad found my blog some time ago as well, so hiding it is no longer an issue, though apparently the fact that it’s written in English was thankfully enough of a deterrent for him after a short while.
But I didn’t want to bring it up this month, still hoping to figure out what exactly made her stop talking to me and preferably also solve that problem, as that’s the most important part of this. If things didn’t improve, I was thinking about bringing it up in August, possibly even in the second half of August, and probably move in late September or early October if it worked out all right. But if this high traffic trend continues I’ll likely need to bring it up sooner and possibly even make the switch before it’ll happen again towards the end of August.

Since the site will likely be blocked for the rest of the month, there can be no further developments there, so I’ll need to wait until August to figure out whether the bandwidth issues require me to make the switch sooner anyway. But this did light a fire under my existing concerns regarding this issue, so I’ll be actively looking for options. I certainly don’t need much in terms of space and monthly bandwidth, so I’ll be looking at the cheapest offers from that point of view, but excellent reliability and proper management tools are a must, as there’s no point in paying for something unless it’d be better than what you could get for free, and I had a pretty good thing for free for quite some time now. As for the domain name, unfortunately the one I’ve been thinking about eventually getting for the past 11 or 12 years has been taken some years ago, but I have two more options, one of them being to simply change the TLD I had in mind for the original name, assuming the company that now owns the one I had my eyes on won’t have any problems with that.
Until then, I’ll be making use of the LiveJournal account I made to be able to follow Ami‘s posts, so I’ll stick to my plan of posting on at least two different days each week, then move the posts once I’ll regain access, preserving the original time and date of posting, deleting them from there at the same time.

In other news, I have actually managed to start working on that other plan of mine on Monday and so far stuck to it well enough. It’s not much, but something’s better than nothing in that case, so I’m quite satisfied with it. The quality of the results seems really bad to me, but then again how often do I think anything else about anything I do? That’s the real challenge, in fact. I need to somehow just ignore the quality, or my opinion of it, and do something, because otherwise I’ll keep saying it can’t be good enough and never get anything done.
That’s how it is with this blog as well: Just struggling to put something out there every week despite being thoroughly embarrassed with the quality of nearly every single post… Yet I have managed to keep it up for over three years already, so maybe I’ll manage something similar with other things as well. Or maybe not, because that’s much greater and more difficult than a blog…

Edit: Something strange is going on…

I know there’s little point in posting this here and basically none to write it in English, but the start of our championship is right around the corner and I found myself thinking about this once again over the past couple of days. The competition format that I came up with now is significantly different from the one I have been toying with for the past several years, but I think it’s even better. I wouldn’t be suggesting it if I didn’t, after all. It also makes for a pretty nice format for the Cup, as I took this into account as well, despite my desire to be fair and also include a few more teams from the county championships creating a potentially complicated first stage.

Explaining the current competition format may be somewhat tricky, both because detailed official information regarding the lower divisions and the first stages of the Cup isn’t readily available and because there are changes currently taking place, but I’ll do my best, starting from the bottom.
The fourth level of the pyramid is made up of 42 separate county championships managed by the respective County Football Associations. The number of teams varies, sometimes the competition format may also vary, and certain championships, those that have enough teams for this purpose, have two divisions, therefore creating a fifth level. The 42 winners of these county championships enter a promotion play-off, with the 21 winners promoting to the third division.
The third level is called Liga 3 and currently has six series running in parallel, with teams being entered in them according to geographic criteria. Each series had 18 teams last season, though than number was reduced to 16 for this season. The six series winners promote to the second division and normally 21 teams, the bottom three from each series and the three ranked just above them with the poorest results, would relegate at the end of each season. However, 37 teams relegated last season, those being the bottom six from each series and the one that finished 12th but had the poorest results against the teams ranked above it, in order to reduce the number of teams in each series by two and also make room for the four additional teams that relegated from the second division. Then again, it must be said that one team was excluded and no less than 14 others withdrew from the third division last season, usually due to financial difficulties. This season 31 or 33 teams should relegate, those being the bottom five from each series and the one or three that finished 11th but had the poorest results, to make room for the additional teams that will once again relegate from the second division.
The second level is called Liga 2 and currently has two series running in parallel, with teams being entered in them according to geographic criteria. Each series had 18 teams last season, though than number was reduced to 16 for this season. From each series, the top two teams promote to the first division and normally the bottom three relegate. However, the bottom five relegated from each series last season, to reduce the number of teams as stated above. But it must be said that two teams were excluded and three others withdrew from the second division last season. Plans call for the two series of the second division to merge into a single one, having 20 or 22 teams, starting next season, in which case 16 or 18 teams, or the bottom eight or nine from each series, would need to relegate at the end of this season, assuming six will still promote from the third division.
The first level is called Liga 1 and has 18 teams, with the bottom four relegating. There are currently no firm plans to reduce the number of teams in the first division, though calls to take it down to 16 are rather frequent and numbers as low as 12 have been mentioned on occasion, as several teams have financial difficulties.
As for the Cup, the exact details for each round are irrelevant at this time, but the 42 County Cup winners enter in round one, third division teams enter in rounds one and two, second division teams enter in round four and first division teams enter in round six. Starting from the second round, teams that promoted at the end of the last season are considered as having finished last in the division they promoted to and those that relegated are considered as having finished first in the division they relegated to, but this rule does not apply in the first round, where teams that relegated from the third division are entered and those that promoted to it but didn’t also win their respective County Cups are not. The final is the tenth round and the semifinals are the only matches played on a home and away basis. Most first division teams will be drawn against lower division teams in the sixth round, with the four remaining, weaker, ones being drawn against each other. Any lower division team that makes it to round seven or even the quarterfinals will be placed in pot three and drawn against one of the best first division teams left in the competition, which are placed in pot one.

The problems that many teams keep having mean that the number of teams that can be supported on each level is lower than the one the current system assumes, which means that we need more levels and less teams on each. For that purpose, while I see no need to impose any other changes on the county championships, I think they need to be bumped down to levels five and six, with a regional championship being added as the new level four. I also think 12 teams are a reasonable number for each division or series on any of the first four levels, which would also allow for an interesting championship split in two parts. The first part would involve the teams playing each other normally, home and away, but for the second part they’d be split in two, as it’s done in certain other places of the world as well. The top six would fight for the title or promotion and the bottom six would fight to avoid relegation, each playing each other once again on a home and away basis, making for 32 rounds up to this point. However, to make the first part more meaningful, one more home and away match could be added in part two, played by each team against the one that had the opposing position in the respective half of the classification at the end of the first part, so the first against the sixth, the second against the fifth and the third against the fourth.
Moving on to specifics, the bottom two from the first division would relegate and the two ranked above them would enter a play-off against the teams finishing third and fourth in the second division, with the winners promoting or staying in the first division. In the second division, which would have a single series, the top two teams would promote, the next two would enter the play-off mentioned above, the bottom two would relegate and the two ranked above them would enter a play-off against the teams finishing second in each of the series of the third division, with the winners promoting or staying in the second division. In the third division, the winner of each of the two series would promote, the second placed team would enter the play-off mentioned above and the bottom four would relegate. As for the fourth division, the regional championship I mentioned, I’m going with the idea of the eight regions that kept being mentioned by our politicians not so long ago, so I say it should have eight series, with the winner of each promoting and the bottom two relegating, then comparing the results of the teams that finished fourth in the battle against relegation and having the weakest two also relegate automatically and the other six enter a play-off against each other, with the winners saving themselves and the losers relegating. 21 teams would still promote from the county championships, according to the current system.
It should be noted that this system includes a total of 144 teams on these four levels, while the current system includes 146 teams on its three levels, not counting the county championships in either case. My system would also allow teams that need to withdraw from the first part of the championship to still fight to avoid relegation, if they’d manage to solve their problems by the start of the second part.

If having county championships implies having County Cups, which makes perfect sense, then having regional championships also needs to imply having Regional Cups. And I plan to use them to correct what I believe to be the unfair first round of the current Cup format. It makes perfect sense for the teams that promoted to the regional divisions to enter the Regional Cups, but I also like the idea of having County Cup winners enter, so I add some more places and another round. That round is a play-off between the 21 teams that relegated from the regional divisions and the 21 county champions that lost the promotion play-off, with two or three of the winners being entered into the qualifying round of each Regional Cup. If a County Cup winner also won their respective championship, then the team they defeated in the County Cup final will take the lowest slot they’d be entitled to. So if a County Cup winner also promoted, the finalist will enter the Regional Cup qualifying round, while if a County Cup winner also won the championship but failed to promote, the finalist will enter this play-off.
Each Regional Cup will have the same format, starting with a qualifying round in which five or six County Cup winners (or finalists, in case the winners also promoted) and two or three winners of the play-off mentioned above will compete. This actually requires 64 teams, but there are only 42 County Cup winners and 21 winners of that play-off, so one more team needs to be added in one place, likely as a fair play award. Either way, the four winners of the qualifying round will join the 12 teams from the respective regional division, including the recently promoted ones, in round one, and the eight winners of round one will play each other in the quarterfinals. But this is where it gets interesting, as the four winners of the quarterfinals will move on to both the semifinals of the Regional Cup and round one of the Cup (or Romania’s Cup). At this point, the Regional Cup will pause, with the semifinals and the final being played towards the end of the season.
The first round of the Cup will involve the 24 third division teams and the 32 winners of the Regional Cup quarterfinals. The 12 second division teams will join the 28 winners of the first round in the second round, while the third round will have the 12 first division teams joining the 20 winners of the second round. The competition will continue normally after that, with round four, quarterfinals, semifinals and final.
I’d really want to see matches played home and away for the Cup semifinals and quarterfinals, as well as for the semifinals of the Regional Cups. I’d also see it as quite fair to have two pots for each draw up to and including round four of the Cup, meaning that half of the teams will be seeded and each of them will be drawn against one of the unseeded ones. This also means everything up to and including the Regional Cups’ quarterfinals, though not their semifinals as well. I think the draw for the Cup quarterfinals should be open, however.
Currently, a first division team needs to get past four rounds to reach the Cup final, while that number increases to six for a second division team, eight or nine for a third division team and nine for a team from a county championship. In my system, it’s still four rounds for a first division team, but only five for a second division one, six for one from the third division, eight for one from a regional division and nine or ten for teams from the county championships. So it doesn’t make it more difficult for first division teams, but it does make it more attractive for lower division teams, plus that it gives some more teams from the county championships a chance to take part. Not to mention that the Regional Cups give lesser teams something to play for and should increase the attention and possibly also the support they receive from their communities.

A recent article, citing some studies that have been around for some time, is giving me the opportunity to get back to this issue. I’m obviously just proving their point, looking for information that backs up my existing beliefs on the matter, while those who believe differently will just ignore all this, as expected. So there’s no real point in writing it, but then again there’s little real point in writing or saying anything, yet that never stopped me.
The fact that people filter the information they receive through their existing beliefs should be quite obvious to anyone who cares to look for it. But that’s just the issue, as those who believe that education and information will solve all the world’s problems because people who have the correct facts will also make the right decisions are no more likely to look for such data, or even accept it if it’s provided to them, than the ones they’re trying to educate are likely to seriously look at the facts they’re provided with. So we’ll keep having a lot of resources wasted on education and awareness campaigns that will fall on deaf ears instead of using those resources to do things that’d actually be effective in getting us closer to reaching our goals…

Now don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying that education and awareness campaigns are always a waste of resources, but only that they’re wasted on the people who already have an opinion regarding the matter at hand. Such efforts can produce good results if they’re aimed at people who really were unaware of the issue being discussed, or at least never gave it enough thought to form an opinion. But they will often backfire if people who already have a conflicting viewpoint are exposed to them, as they’ll most likely just look for flaws in the arguments, or even make some up if none are found, and possibly also blame it all on some conspiracy and therefore become even more determined to fight against the viewpoint supported by the campaign in question and reduce its believability in the future.
So what I am saying is that such campaigns are usually a poor use of resources in “developed” areas, as the people living there already have access to information if they wish it and are likely to have already reached their own conclusions, whether or not they make any sense. As for the other areas, studies should be carried out before the start of such a campaign, to determine the beliefs of the people living there and exactly what kind of information, misinformation and propaganda they have been exposed to. If they seem to have beliefs that go against the facts you’re trying to inform them about, or if they have already been exposed to the correct facts, regardless of the results, there’s little point in trying and your resources are better used elsewhere. If, however, you can find a group of people who do not have clear beliefs regarding the matter at hand, and especially if they have not been exposed to much information, whether correct or incorrect, about it either, then such a campaign could prove very useful.

But that only applies to awareness campaigns and education efforts aimed at making people realize the necessity of certain measures and actions. There is, however, a very different way in which education and information campaigns can be used when it comes to people who are already aware of the issues in question and who already believe in the measures and actions you support. I’m talking about using such campaigns to teach those people the best ways to act on their beliefs, as all too often they’ll be confused when it comes to the paths to take or likely even say that nothing can be done, especially when the society they live in generally encourages a model that opposes these beliefs. So, at that point, the best thing to do is stop wasting your resources on attempts to convince more people that you’re right and focus on those who already think so, helping them help you.
To be even more specific, it doesn’t matter why those people believe in the measures and actions you support. Though this could cause problems in the long run, it may not even matter whether or not they believe the issues you are concerned about are real as long as, for whatever reason, they agree to the practical part. It’s simply a matter of making use of existing support and helping each other for as long as possible or desirable, moving from talk to action as quickly and decisively as possible in the areas where you actually have a chance to make a difference in a relatively short amount of time. After all, it’s small groups of determined individuals that change the world, so you just need to find or form such a group and ensure its efficiency.

It really should be obvious that you can’t usually change people’s minds, especially when it comes to the truly important issues. So, when you have big plans and limited resources, you shouldn’t waste them on such attempts, but instead focus on what could actually yield results. That may also mean informing those who have not been previously exposed to the issue, or at least have not yet formed a clear opinion about it, but what it certainly means is helping those who already agree to act. It’s simply a matter of efficiency, of doing what actually works, or what at least has a reasonable chance of working, instead of what just sounds good or appealing.
People are far less rational than they believe themselves to be, not to mention that intelligence usually far surpasses wisdom even among those who could really be considered intelligent. These facts are used by those who currently hold the reins of our society for their own benefit, but they could be used equally well by the “good guys” for the benefit of the causes they fight for. It just requires no longer assuming that people will make the correct decisions if given the correct information. Seriously, most don’t and likely never will.

It would have been our eighth anniversary today… Instead, it’s getting close to five years since she left and about two and a half since we last spoke. So it’s just a very painful day for me, quite possibly the worst of the year, though there are a few others that could rival it… Either way, I don’t want to get into serious discussions that aren’t personal today, much less do anything that has any tangible results in any way. Talking to friends is always welcome of course, but I won’t get involved in things anywhere else. I just want to sit here, with the blinds drawn, and try to dream myself into a life worth living. Or at least remember the time when I used to have one and just imagine that all of this is nothing but a nightmare and I’ll wake up again someday.
It’d be nice to talk to someone, and I’m happy that I found Ami on right now. Would be far nicer to have someone who could understand these things and really be willing to go through feelings and memories with me, not just put up with it, if even that, as it’s usually the case when I don’t hold back just because I know it’d be unpleasant on both ends. And, of course, really nice would be to have such a person that I could also cuddle with. But that’s not going to happen. Neither of these is likely to ever happen, in fact, considering how things have been during these nearly five years. But this was still unexpected and nice in itself, and I’m enjoying whatever it is we’re talking about.

Otherwise, I seem to be able to find out a few things, though nothing important and certainly nothing certain. In a way, it’s nice that I can figure out even that much, but on the other hand it’s really painful that it’s not actually from her, and obviously not knowing what I need to know means I’m growing more and more worried every day, as always. But I probably said way too much about this already, so I’m not risking more, even though the odds that anyone who’s talking to her is reading this are slim.
Then again, I am wondering if someone hasn’t started talking to her again, or at least learned something of her that she doesn’t want me to know. Of course, the latter would include pretty much anything, but the less I’m told the more I worry that it’s something important and really devastating for me. So the fact that I’m not getting as much as a word anymore from that person either makes things seem really bad…

But I’m used to being ignored. Always happens. Still wondering if there has ever been even a single person that I chose to have any sort of relationship with who didn’t mean far more to me than I meant to them. Obviously only talking about those who seemed to desire some sort of connection as well, at some point, since in the other cases it’s clear how things stood.

I’ll try to post this tonight, but don’t expect any links or very detailed information because I won’t be looking for them. If anyone who happens to read this notices any mistakes, please let me know.

This edition ended with a final between a team that certainly should have been there and one that shouldn’t even have made it into the quarterfinals, and possibly not even past the group stage. Unfortunately, the latter even won the trophy! So I was happy that Italy didn’t even make it past the group stage, but had Spain go all the way to the final and then even win it. Infuriating either way, because of the message this sends to any team that could be inclined to play in a way that’d give even neutral viewers something to cheer for.
Sure, Spain probably deserved to win the final itself, judging by what happened during it, but that doesn’t excuse their general attitude, noticed during the final as well, of doing just enough to get by and barely managing to scrape by each round with an 1-0 victory. Netherlands, on the other hand, gave viewers plenty to watch and cheer for during most of their matches, as did Germany, these two being the teams I saw as the probable and deserving finalists all the way through, until of course Spain got in the way.
Otherwise, I need to point out that both Australia and New Zealand impressed me, compared to what I expected from either of them, despite neither making it out of the group stage, and Ivory Coast also deserved a better fate than the one they ended up having. South Korea offered more than I thought them capable of as well, while the fighting spirit of the USA and Uruguay also deserve a special mention, with the added note that Uruguay even obtained a semifinal appearance for their efforts.

The refereeing was amazingly good at first, but then mistakes started piling up towards the end of the group stage and even more so later. Even the final was full of refereeing mistakes, the vast majority of them against Spain, but at least in this one case I didn’t mind because of what I said above regarding Spain. It was far better than in 2002, but it’d be really hard for an edition of the World Cup to be more fraught with refereeing mistakes than that one was, so this doesn’t count as a good thing in any way.
It’s just another piece of evidence, if any more was needed, in support of the idea that technology really needs to be used to make matches more fair. In fact, Roberto Rosetti had the chance to make history during the Argentina – Mexico match, but he chose to ignore the replay which was accidentally broadcasted on one of the big screens and stick to the letter of the rules, not changing his original decision based on video evidence. That was a real pity, as is FIFA’s decision not to allow replays that’d reveal the referee’s decisions to be wrong, or at least questionable, to be broadcasted on the big screens.
I really can’t see any good reason to stop referees from using such video evidence for their decisions… It’d still be the referee who makes the call, but after properly seeing what happened, as you really can’t expect one person, or even two when one of the assistants is close by, to see everything as it happens and make the proper decisions every time. They could come up with something like the challenge system in tennis, each team having a certain number of challenges available, which are only used up if they’re proven wrong. When a team decides to challenge a decision, the referee would go to a TV placed close to the playing field, so this could also work on stadiums without big screens, watch the replay of the moment in question and make a more informed decision. This could also end the complaints and discussions with the referee that you keep seeing now, as players would need to either challenge or keep quiet, receiving an immediate yellow card if they complain in any way without challenging, because it means they either know they’re wrong or they’ve been wrong too many times so far and used up their challenges already.

To move on to the organization, I have to say that the problems were somewhat fewer and less significant than I expected. I maintain my opinion that South Africa was certainly not the right country to host an edition of the World Cup, but I only heard of one person being shot and the reported thefts and robberies from the participants died down shortly after the start of the competition. Now that may be a case of media bias, as they stopped finding them interesting enough to report, but it may also mean the security forces did their job better and better. Also, likely due to a combination of security and people actually thinking with their heads for once and deciding that the risk of stumbling upon one who’s HIV positive over there is too high to be worth it, prostitution was reportedly almost nonexistent. (Not that I’d be against prostitution in general, far from it, but this was a special situation.) But I’m sure someone made lists of such events, so go look for them if you’re interested in something more accurate than this.
The number of spectators was quite low though, with stadiums very rarely being full and actually even being quite empty at a fair number of matches from the group stage, but that was to be expected, considering the rampant poverty in South Africa and perhaps also the security concerns that may have made some fans decide not to go and support their national teams. That, along with what I heard was a merchandising policy unsuitable for the purchasing power of the people in the region, means South Africa took quite a loss as a result of hosting this competition, and I was even reading an article that said the loss rose to no less than two billion euros!

But I want to end this post by going back to the qualifying slots awarded to each region and point out certain discrepancies between those numbers and the actual results, which would be a good indicator of how many slots each region should actually receive. I’ll use the number of teams that made it past the group stage for these calculations, as I think that’s the best indicator.
Africa, including the host country, had six slots. North and Central America had three and a half slots and three teams qualified, as Costa Rica was defeated by Uruguay. South America had four and a half slots and five teams qualified, as Uruguay defeated Costa Rica. Asia, which this time included Australia, had four and a half slots and four teams qualified, as Bahrain was defeated by New Zealand. Europe had 13 slots. And Oceania had half a slot and one team qualified, as New Zealand defeated Bahrain. But the number of teams that made it past the group stage was one for Africa, two for North and Central America, five for South America, two for Asia, six for Europe and none for Oceania.
As you’d expect about half the teams from each region to make it through, you can see that South America really needs more slots and Africa likely has too many. Though this is a somewhat surprising result, as normally Asia seemed to have too many slots, while North and Central America is a special case as there are obviously only two teams worth qualifying, namely USA and Mexico. But I’d like a completely different competition format anyway, so I’m just pointing out some facts here…