Find out what your Brazillian football player name is by typing in your real name in the Brazil Name generator. Mine is Keta!

Does your pet look like a tyrant? If so send them your pictures into The Sun.

The Guardian rates the current UK TV World Cup commentators.

And take a look at the video of Harry Enfield’s old take on Association Football.

It seems the World Cup is still wide open as both France and Brazil failed to show the world that they deserve the cup without turning up. As we come up to the time where every team has played once I’m taking a fresh look at the betting odds.

To Win Tournament: Team - last week odds - current odds
France 12/1 16/1
Japan 150/1 350/1
Iran 250/1 500/1
Trinidad & Tobago 750/1 500/1

France now at 16/1 is a surprise but expected after their performance yesterday. It’s a good price though as we do know they can raise their game when expected.

There has hardly been any movement in the Tournament Top Scorer odds. Apart from Germany’s Kloser who is now 4/1. Luca Toni is still available at 20/1 and is definitly worth a punt.

The two match winning outside bets I placed both failed but I nearly came close when Trinidad & Tobago drew with Sweden. A win for T&T would have netted me £30! Here are the two bets I placed for this week:
15 Jun Trinidad & Tobago to beat England - £3 10/1
18 Jun Australia to beat Brazil - £3 10/1

You can get 400/1 on Japan and Australia qualifying, if you believe in miracles, like I did.

England rode their luck and are now placed on top of their group which makes qualification almost a certainty due to Sweden and Trinidad & Tobago’s 0-0 draw. The second half was very disappointing but I do think the heat played a part. England will not have to play another 2:00pm match again now so we won’t have the weather to blame if we’re lacklustre next time.

I watched the match round a friend’s house with a Freeview box and 4:3 CRT and the picture was really good. The Robin Hood pub had a 42″ widescreen Plasma which has a relatively good analogue signal stretched to fill the 16:9 and they played the audio too. The Hampton were willing to show the Trinidad match but the badly placed TV had a fuzzy and distorted analogue signal with no audio and loud music in the background. The Windmill’s new LCD TV was looking very good and is the best positioned set I saw that day. They have a SkyBox I believe but it’s still outputting 4:3 on a 16:9 TV - hopefully its a few setting buttons away. They promise the play audio for about half the group stage matches.

With this heat there was always a chance of some trouble occuring in Brighton when you add alcohol and football. I wandered past Gemini’s on the seafront yesterday to see some brilliant human beat boxes peforming to a very lively crowd. The whole of Gemini’s was up on its chairs dancing with the performers. From what I gather about 5 minutes later some guy decided to throw a chair onto the crowd and all hell broke lose. I’ve heard verbal reports of over 20 people arrested and tear gas or pepper spray used by police. Walking back again half an hour later gemini’s was empty with just a few police hanging around taking statements. I’ll check tomorrow’s dire local rag the Evening Argus to see if it gets a mention.

I also missed the World Naked Bike Ride in Brighton yesterday but for those of us missed out go and check out Fred Pipes’ and Shiny Sixpence’s Flickr photosets.

At last, the World Cup has started. One great game yesterday and one alright but we’ve had suprises already. So much for my outside bet on Costa Rica. If it wasn’t for a couple of well-timed German responses it could have been a different story. Remember, Labrokes are giving you three FREE £10 Bets on the World Cup so sign up if you fancy a flutter!

I wasn’t overly keen on the BBC title sequences, a bit dour for my liking and I’ve never been a fan of Handel’s See The Conquering Hero Comes. Their post-programme World Cup Extra thing wasn’t much cop either, as it was obscured by some ‘Your Shout’ visuals which really annoyed me. Why do they always think we care what Joe from Dunstable thinks about Gerrard’s backbone? But I enjoyed the chat between Alan Hansen, Martin O’Neill and Gary Lineker, and even Alan Shearer gave a good show. I missed the ITV title sequences but they could only be better. It’s all off to a good start though.

Of course I hope that we stuff the Paraguayans today, possibly by only a goal though. The World Cup songs haven’t inspired me yet but there is a track that really made me proud be to be English. If Wayne Rooney was totally fit I’m sure that this would be number one right now. Check out the Wayne Rooney song at Kontraband. Not sure if McCartney would have given them the rights to do this though. You might as well go and see the naked photos of his wife Heather Mills (NSFW).

I do know somebody who is watching this World Cup in High Definition. Yes, a friend of mine has the HD Sky Box but I’ve yet to check a match out on it yet. I’ll report back here as soon as I see it in action. But if you were thinking of entering the HDTV minefield then please read this article from The Register that will explain everything you need to know about what you need and when it’ll be available. Personally I think my 28″ widescreen Panasonic CRT I got for £280 does a much better job than many of the LCD and Plasma screens I’ve seen. I think i’m going to wait a few years before I adopt any HDTV technology. I still can’t get ITV on Freeview though so half the matches will be grainy and in 4:3 for the time being.

Oh, and I’ve added one more bet to my list. I put £1.00 on Brazil and Croatia not to qualify to the next round (100-1). Well you never know!

As you may be able to see this site is now sponsored by Ladbrokes. Well not quite but I am an affiliate which means if you want to place a bet on the World Cup or play some online poker then click through the little Ladbrokes icon at the top right of the screen please.

I’ve formulated my betting plan for this years World Cup. I’m going to spend a total of £100 on bets over the five weeks, all from money I won from last months Graham Dott win. Normally I’d bet a £5 on the winner but this extra money will allow me to have much more fun.

Here are some serious tournament bets:
France to win World Cup: £8 12/1
Top Tournament Goalscorer:
Luca Toni - £8 18/1
Frank Lampard - £2 50/1

And here are some of my current stupid outside bets:
Japan to win World Cup: £2 150/1
Iran to win World Cup: 50p 250/1
Trinidad & Tobago to win World Cup: 50p 750/1
No own goals to be scored all tournament: £1 16/1
Top Tournament Goalscorer Joe Cole - £1 100/1
Group B Winner - Trinidad & Tobago - £1 40/1

And here’s some crazy match betting:
9 Jun Costa Rica to beat Germany - £3 9/1
10 Jun Trinidad & Tobago to beat Sweden - £3 9/1
15 Jun Trinidad & Tobago to beat England - £3 10/1
18 Jun Australia to beat Brazil - £3 10/1
20 Jun Equador to beat Germany - £3 7/1
22 Jun Japan to beat Brazil - £3 11/1
23 Jun Saudi Arabia to beat Spain - £3 9/1

Thats £45 in bets leaving £55 for the rest of the tournament.

If you dont fancy betting with money then why not play a World Cup fantasy football game for free. I’ve signed up to play one with Yahoo here. My team name is KingOfMyCastle. Leave a comment below if you enter your own team.

Well I’m gutted but the I’m so proud of the way we played. I hope the West Ham boys are all proud of their efforts as they gave us the most entertaining FA Cup final I’ve ever seen. Well done Liverpool.

As Hanson says, “This was one of the classic Cup finals and it is desperately unfortunate that they should lose on penalties. West Ham were the better side and should have won, but Liverpool had Steven Gerrard.”

And…

My friend Tony Pitt side-projects just get weirder and weirder. Check out his giant Munchie at Pimp My Snack.

And I presume EVERYBODY has seen this already but if you haven’t here’s the Cabbie who ended up talking about Apple on BBC News 24. Ha, still makes me laugh.

This is for the typonerds out there. Notice how the clock on 24 changes ever so slightly? Well obviously not as we have better things to do.

I made the unfortunate decision to get drunk yesterday so I’m watching the FA Cup at home and nursing my hangover. This way I do actually get to listen to all the commentary and pre-match build up, which for once I’m actually interested in.

West Ham could really do this. We have the correct mentality but we’ll see today if we have the skill.

My money, literally, is on Nigel Reo Coker to score first. There’s a bonus multiplier if Liverpool win 2-1.

Great weekend for football. West Ham had an impressive win over the green-faced Spurs and Henry consolidated my top spot of the Fantasy League I do. Looking forward to the FA Cup next weekend where hopefully West Ham will score a goal and Liverpool wont score any.

I see that Tom Cruise has been publicly mocked by internet bloggers. Well I think I’m the only person who actually rates the guy. Sod his strange religious convictions, I think he’s a good actor. But I know I’m in the minority.

Tonight on Channel 4 (23:05). Jon Snow reports about Iraq: The Hidden Story. he’ll compare TV footage with actual footage to see what kind of message the media is sending.

I’ve been busy tracing my family history using Ancestry.co.uk. Seems that my line goes right back to West Ham, Stepney and Tower Hamlets since 1861, where I traced my earliest ancestor. Her name was Eliza and she was born in Poplar (then Middlesex, now Newham or Tower Hamlets in London) in 1823. She lived with her son, two nieces, her sister and a male servant. I haven’t traced the husband so he was either dead or working overseas at that time. But servants, eh? I’ll have to look into this further.

My great great grandmother, Harriet, ran an oil and colorman shop in West Ham during 1881. An oil & colorman shop is a paint and hardware shop. Her husband William was a gas fitter and they had 5 kids. Try checking your own family tree out.

An even busier month here on KingOfMyCastle. I had over 1500 unique visitors this time.

Unique visitors: 1651
Hits: 40218

I only posted 12 posts, well I have been busy, but the visitors have still been coming. Typing “Parcel Force Gatwick Depot” into Google brings my site up first, which is strange. I presume Parcel Force themselves would like their site at No. 1

Having fun by replacing the photo of the cat with my horrible image got the most hits with nearly 200 people from The V Forum turning up. This forum has now moved from Delphi and can now be found at www.thevhive.com.

As ever, here’s the fantasy football situation:

Daily Telegraph League: position 2465 (out of 260,000) , thats in the top 1%.
Kevin Isaac’s League: position 1 (out of only 9 this year).
Yahoo Fantasy Football: position 2500 (out of around 100,000), top 2%.
Free Fantasy Football: position 5737 (out of ?? - probably 20,000), top 25%.

Not a brilliant football month but I’m still there or thereabouts.

Its been a busy month here on KingOfMyCastle, and the unique visitor count has passed 10,000!!

Unique visitors: 980
Hits: 17674

Fantasy Football is going well too, although I’ve dropped a few places since last month:

Daily Telegraph League: position 2345 (out of 260,000) , thats in the top 1%. (I did get to 800th at one point)
Kevin Isaac’s League: position 1 (out of only 9 this year).
Yahoo Fantasy Football: position 1795 (out of around 100,000), top 2%.
Free Fantasy Football: position 440 (out of ?? - probably 20,000), top 3%.

And online poker is going well too, I’m now up to $89 from my initial stake.