Part of it is to support the German team, but mostly it is about the stories behind the people and understanding what this all means to them.

For the last winter Olympics that we were in the UK for – Nicole watched the German coverage on our TV but also had a laptop showing her the BBC interactive coverage so that she could see every event going on – and follow any news and updates in English and German from various websites.

This year is not so good though – although the first two channels in Spain have coverage all day of the Olympics – they are very focused on Spain – and keep reshowing their great moments – forgoing live action for endless repeats of cycling and other things they are good at. The have a web streaming service but mostly this just rebroadcasts what is on the TV – which is not really the point.

As we are in Spain the BBC and German internet streams are not available to us – so Nicole is coping with text based updates and the odd illegal feed over the internet.

However Gary has just said that he can do some technical jiggery-pokery and help Nicole watch the BBC coverage from here across the internet. Hooray for Gary – what a great and fine (if a little short) man he is.

It is Nicole’s birthday in a couple of days and this is the best present she could get at the moment!

Thanks to Gary!

We went to our usual football bar last night to watch the match, it is right by the football stadium and a popular bar for Spaniards, we watched the German semi-final on Wednesday day there also. On Wednesday we had to get there early to get seat – getting there at 8pm for the 8:45 kickoff. Last night we thought it would be more crowded and got there for 7:45 – but it was already full.

The indoor part of the bar is so small that you can only get people queuing for the bar and toliets to fit inside, but outdoors there are hundreds of chairs, from the main bar and two additional bars on either side.

We had to watch the match from a side bar which was a shame, but co-incidently this was the same bar we had watched Russia and Spain play their first match of the tournament. Previously there had been a drunk guy sat in front of us who was quite unpleasant but bearable, this time we got the Spanish National Front as company.

We could not get seats and could only stand leaning on some railings, we were squeezed in behind a table of guys smoking unlawful substances, but the wind was brisk and the fumes were not a problem. Around us though were many skinheaded guys carrying (what I found out later was) a Neo-fascist flag. These guys kept saluting each other with one arm, which came to be quite noticeable.

I had already said to Nicole that if things started going Russia’s way that I didn’t want to be in the area at the end of the match – as it was there was no problems from that. Some of the goals celebrations were great and loud – more like being in a stadium than a bar! I have embedded the three goal celebrations below – you will notice they ran out of fireworks for the third! :-D

We moved to the back of the crowd as the 90th minute went – not sure what to expect as a celebration of the 3-0 victory. It was interesting to note how many people were keen to get away from the area quickly (out of the one and half thousand or so most left quickly).

First Goal:

Second Goal:

Third Goal:

Clay Shirky at Web 2.0 Expo SF

The basic manifesto this guy has is that there is a huge “Cognitive Surplus” out there that is not being used – it is mostly be wasted watching TV and spending time being passive. He likens TV watching to alcohol consumption and the Industrial Revolution – saying that people needed Gin then to cope with having too many people around them. TV watching has been the way to cope with having too much spare time in the post world war II lives we need.

Clay thinks that the internet is being to create ways to better use the time when we are not working – wikipedia being a very constructive example of the “cognitive surplus” being used and not wasted.

He also thinks the next generations are waking up to live in this world and are treating TV watching as a previous generation started treating alcohol and substance abuse during the industrial revolution.