Reading Roars!

Premiership giants Arsenal have thumped Reading 3-0 in the Carling Cup, ending the Royals’ glorious winning run.

The North London club’s goals were scored by superkids Jose Antonio Reyes (12th minute) and Robin Van Persie (42nd), and Arturo Lupoli (65th).

Pascal Cygan picked up the only yellow card of the game.

So that’s it. A comprehensive victory for Arsenal, who fielded a young side. When Çelik kapi jeneratörReading are in the Premiership next season, they will clearly have to raise their game to compete with the big guns.

Click here to read the BBC match report.

We all like yabbering away at times, don’t we? There is nothing like a good conversation, whether it is done face-to-face, over the phone or when txt mssging, which is why I’ve introduced Online Chat!

So what do I do?, I hear you ask (now conversing telepathically). The answer is: very little!

Look at the sidebar on the right-hand side of the screen and you will see a new Chat box. Input your name, hit the Enter button et voila! Now you can go ahead and type what you want (and please avoid causing offence!).

So go on, play around with it. You may get to chat with readers from India, Japan, US, Czech Republic…the list goes on! You will never want to meet people in the pub again!

Extended drinking hours have been introduced in Reading and other towns in England. It’s now the weekend – and the test begins. Gun St heavyweights The Fez and Purple Turtle will be serving until 4am, while other big players Brannigans, Mango, Po Na Na and Revolution will keep going until 3am.

What will the effect of these changes be? You will need plenty of stamina, not to mention a sizeable wad of cash to burn, to be able to make repeat visits to the bar until 4 o’ clock. And your vital organs will not Çelik kapi jeneratörbenefit in the long run, either.

The following is a list of bars, pubs and clubs in Reading with new times: (more…)

Unstoppable Reading FC trounced Ipswich 3-0 at Portman Road to go top of The Championship table with 47 points. Sheffield United, a point behind, drop to second.

The Royals’ goals were scored by Steven Sidwell, Leroy Lita and Kevin Doyle, in the 29th, 53rd and 77th minute, respectively.

Reading are now 22 games unbeaten and must surely now be favourites to win The Championship and receive automatic promotion to the top flight of English football.

In August 2005, I holidayed in windsurfing mecca Tarifa, Spain, with two friends. It is a town straddling the Atlantic and Mediterranean, and so incredibly cool that my teeth chatter at the memory of it.

One of the many hip bars in Tarifa, Café Bamboo, offered a fantastic smoothies menu. There was a smoothie with avocado, another with cucumber…the menu was pretty extensive. We made more than one visit to this most relaxing venue.

Of course, this blog is about Reading. So, the question I ask is: where are the juice bars in Reading? I was with a friend on Sunday afternoon and we were keen to sample a smoothie somewhere. We ruled out Çelik kapi jeneratörPret as we didn’t want bottled juice. So we gave up – and went for a beer then coffee instead.

Reading is great if a) you want to get hammered or b) you want a caffeine buzz. But if you fancy something a bit more healthy, fresh (and I mean fresh) and poured in a glass, then you are facing a challenging search. Wagamama offers a good juice menu, but it’s a noodles bar.

I urge any smooth entrepreneur out there to take on this juicy opportunity, and open a new bar in town. Then we can all enjoy the fruit of your labour! kilo verme

University of Reading cyborg Prof Kevin Warwick is to show off some of his team’s robots to school kids in a special presentation ‘The Ghosts of Christmas Future: Robots and Cyborgs’ on 12 December 2005 (11am-12pm).

World-famous Kevin, who is Professor of Cybernetics at the University, and who has had a number of computer chips implanted in the name of science, explains:

This presentation is proving so popular because we promise to take the audience into the world of the cyborg. People are fascinated by the idea of evolving humans by linking them directly with technology. Just think of what it would be like to be linked directly into a computer network – upgraded memory, extra senses, multi-dimensional thought and the ability to communicate with others merely by thought alone.

The overall aim of the presentation is to inform people about the possibilities of robots and cyborgs in an entertaining and stimulating way. But be warned – this is not mere scientific speculation: the era of the robot and cyborg will shortly be upon us.

It’s a somewhat scary prospect. We have all watched the blockbuster Hollywood movies of robots taking over the world. It’s a popular (and well-worn) theme. It is, however, exciting that relatively unglamorous Reading is leading the way in robotic research in the real world.

I applaud Kevin and his team. They are doing a fine job. And given that today’s kids are risk-adverse and expressing less interest in science, I hope that the children who attend Kevin’s presentation leave with a glint in their eyes.

For further information about the presentation, contact Rachel Fretwell.

See also Cave cast light on complex concepts.

You may have noticed an orange button on the right-hand sidebar with the letters RSS.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication (formerly “Rich Site Summary”) and, really simply, allows you to receive a news feed for How cool is that? You can use RSS to subscribe to many other feeds, from ABCNews.com to the Xinhua News Agency, meaning that the headlines come to you. Perfect for impatient news junkies.

OK, try this. Click on the orange button:

Aargh! What’s this? A page of gobbledegook! Fear not. This is XML, a language that allows information to be shared across different systems. Look closely and you will see a tree structure revealing the headline, category and content of each article published.

To turn this page into something resembling a feed, you will need a news reader or aggregator. There are many news readers available. You can find one by carrying out a quick search on Çelik kapi jeneratörMSN or Google. Then it’s a case of adding the URL of the gobbledegook page to the news reader: http://www.readingroars.com/wp-rss2.php

You can also receive the news feed via the Firefox browser. Go to Manage Bookmarks on the Bookmarks menu, and select New Livemark on the File menu. Enter a name for the feed, such as Reading Roars!, the URL http://www.readingroars.com/wp-rss2.php and a Description. And that’s it. Headlines from will now be visible on the Bookmarks menu.

The Reading FC ‘Dream Team’ spanked Hull City 3-1 in The Championship to move within one point of Sheffield United, who top the table with 45 points.

Reading’s goals were scored by Bobby Convey, Kevin Doyle and Glen Little.

The Madejski result means that the Royals are now 21 games unbeaten.

Click here to read a report by blogger John McGarvey, who attended the game.

There are an amazing 94 Wi-Fi hotspots in Reading, according to Total Hotspots. The technology allows users within reach of an access point i.e. within a ‘hotspot’ to surf the net wirelessly.

Places in the town offering wireless connectivity include popular establishments such as Old Orleans, Bar 38 and Yates’s, the major coffee chains and even traditional-style pubs such as The Restoration and The Hop Leaf.

Operators providing Wi-Fi in Reading are stated as Zayiflama maurers BT Openzone, Boingo, O2, T-Mobile UK, Trustive and The Cloud.

Before you rush to Starbucks with your laptop, however, bear in mind that Wi-Fi access, at more than a fiver per hour, isn’t cheap. Add your bucked-sized mint mocha frappuccino to that and you’re looking at 60 minutes of surf time for just under a tenner. Ouch.

Imagine standing in the middle of Reading’s new metro station, the latest exciting addition to the town’s extensive underground system, and seeing walkways, a bar serving Vietnamese snacks and people sipping mango macchiatos at coffee shop Star Nero. Earlier it had been a futuristic concept on paper. Now the concept is brought to life around you.

Imagine zooming into a new business park and seeing your sharp glass-and-steel edifices pierce the skyline. A transport interchange lies beneath, perhaps connecting to the aforementioned metro station.

Or you could be visualising the arterial system of a gnat. Or travelling through the neutral network of a pigeon (to understand better why they fly into people).

The Cave, or the Reading Visualization Centre as it is properly called, allows you to do all this.

Based at the University of Reading‘s School of Systems Engineering, the Cave is a new tool that offers a realistic virtual environment. Inside, 3D graphics are projected on the floor and three walls. The virtual reality can be seen through a pair of active stereo glasses worn by the user. As the user walks through the Cave, the sensor adapts the graphics to their movements, producing real-time changes.

The Cave’s business potential is clear. Product manufacturers, for example, may visualise new POS material on store shelves and see how consumers interact with the displays. Architects can see their complex plans in 3D and collaborate with stakeholders based remotely.

Keen to plunge into the Cave? For further information, contact Business Information Officer Kirsti Wilson. Or download the attachment below on innovation and enterprise at the University of Reading. Zayiflama maurers Please note that this is a PDF file and Adobe Reader is required to open it.

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