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Author: Reza

  • FIFA World Cup 2018: Top Two Forwards Of Each Team

    The 2018 World Cup in Russia is just over five months away. Many bigger and not so bigger names have the chance to shine on the world stage, each of 32 teams’ forwards will try to make a bigger name for themselves and help their team advance to the knockout stages and play into July.

    Below are two forwards from each qualified team with the best chance to become (bigger) heroes in their country and around the world.

    Russia
    Fyodor Smolov: 27 years old Krasnador forward with almost dozen goals to his name while playing for his national team. Regular scorer at club level and European club competitions.
    Artem Dzyuba: Zenit player struggling with injuries. One of the stars of Euro 2016 qualifying campaign.

    Saudi Arabia
    Mohammad Al-Sahlawi: Top scorer for club (Al-Nassr) and country with a more than one goal every two games goal scoring record over his career.
    Nasser Al-Shamrani: A veteran on the team who featured for his national team as long ago as 2005.

    Egypt
    Mohamed Salah: One of the stars of the 2017-2018 European season leading the way for Liverpool after moving to England from Roma.
    Ahmed Hassan Mahgoub: Not a regular for club (Braga) but still young at 24.

    Uruguay
    Luis Suarez: The infamous player still going strong for Barcelona and his national team.
    Edinson Cavani: The owner of many missed chances is still a crucial part of the puzzle for the teams he plays for.

    Portugal
    Cristiano Ronaldo: Needs no introduction of course, heading towards the end of his career and it is his last chance to make as strong an impact at a World Cup.
    Andre Silva: Young forward with a very good national team record (11 goals in 18 caps) and praised by many but struggling for minutes and goals in his first season in Italy.

    Spain
    Alvaro Morata: Almost super star level scoring regularly for Chelsea and his country.
    Diego Costa: Hot headed but important player who fulfills certain characteristics, back in Spain after over three years in England.

    Morocco
    Khalid Boutaib: Regular scorer for club (Yeni Malatyaspor) and country. French born.
    Youssef El-Arabi: Plays in the Qatar Stars League, also French born.

    Iran
    Sardar Azmoun: 22 goals in 30 caps. The hope of the national team.
    Karim Ansarifard: Regular scorer in the Greece Superleague and the national team. A rising star in his mid 20s.

    France
    Antoine Griezmann: In demand forward likely to move from Atletico Madrid after the World Cup.
    Kylian Mbappe: One of the most expensive players in the world, still only 19.

    Australia
    Tim Cahill: Still going strong at 38. His country is very reliant on him.
    Mathew Leckie: One of the stars of his national team’s qualification for the World Cup.

    Peru
    Jefferson Farfan: Top scorer for country, one of the key reasons Peru are back at the World Cup.
    Raul Ruidiaz: Good scorer in his native land and in the Mexican league.

    Denmark
    Nicklas Bendtner: Lord Bendtner is still a key player for the national team.
    Kasper Dolberg: Rising star for Ajax and Denmark. In demand across Europe.

    Argentina
    Lionel Messi: Needs no introduction. Scored the goals that rescued Argentina from a near World Cup miss.
    Sergio Aguero: Super star. Prolific scorer everywhere.

    Iceland
    Alfreo Finnbogason: One of the national team’s leading scorers.
    Kolbeinn Sigthorsson: Scorer of a historic goal – the winning goal vs England – at Euro 2016.

    Croatia
    Mario Mandzukic: Key man for Juventus and country. Tall center forward.
    Nikola Kalinic: Poor form at club a concern.

    Nigeria
    Ahmed Musa: Not always at his best but crucial for country.
    Kelechi Iheanacho: Some important goals for Manchester City before moving to Leicester City last summer.

    Brazil
    Neymar: Record transfer holder and prolific scorer, now his own star at PSG.
    Gabriel Jesus: A rising star at Manchester City.

    Switzerland
    Haris Seferovic: Not always consistent but his goals are needed for country.
    Admir Mehmedi: The same as Seferovic. Can be inconsistent and miss chances.

    Costa Rica
    Marco Urena: MLS player who plays an important role up front.
    Bryan Ruiz: Veteran captain who has starred in several European leagues.

    Serbia
    Aleksandar Mitrovic: One of the stars of World Cup 2018 qualification.
    Aleksandar Prijovic: A good goal scorer at club level.

    Germany
    Thomas Muller: Can play anywhere in the front line. Typical strong German player.
    Timo Werner: At 21 a rising star of the Bundesliga, Champions League and the national team.

    Mexico
    Javier Hernandez: Back in England after time in Spain and Germany. Divides opinion but a pure goal scorer.
    Raul Jimenez: Experienced forward. Super sub at his club (Benfica).

    Sweden
    Marcus Berg: Veteran who plays an important role in the post Ibra era.
    Alexander Isak: Youngest goalscorer for the Swedish national team.

    South Korea
    Son Heung-min: Doing well for Tottenham in England. A key player for the national team.
    Ji Dong-won: Not the most prolific at Augsburg in Germany but important for his native country.

    Belgium
    Romelu Lukaku: His country’s big hope. Strong and experienced at only 24. Subject of a big move to Manchester United last summer.
    Dries Mertens: Almost a late bloomer. A star in the Serie A for Napoli.

    Panama
    Blas Perez: 36 years old veteran still going strong for the first time qualifiers.
    Gabriel Torres: Scorer of important goals to qualify for World Cup 2018.

    Tunisia
    Youssef Msakni: Qatar based top scorer.
    Ahmed Akaichi: Saudi Arabia based forward whose goals will be needed in Russia.

    England
    Harry Kane: Outscored everyone – including Messi and Ronaldo – in the 2017 calendar year with 56 for club and country.
    Jamie Vardy: His pace and work ethic will be needed in Russia.

    Poland
    Robert Lewandowski: One of the world’s best will carry his country forward.
    Arkadiusz Milik: Injury has hampered his progress but is very capable.

    Senegal
    Sadio Mane: An offensive star for Liverpool and country.
    Moussa Sow: UAE based veteran whose contribution is required.

    Colombia
    Carlos Bacca: Highly experienced goal scorer. Sometimes struggles in Europe.
    Radamel Falcao: Back to his best at Monaco after years of injury and falling form.

    Japan
    Shinji Okazaki: Valuable experience in England has helped this veteran.
    Takuma Asano: Once of Arsenal now based in Germany. He can and must step forward and add important goals.

  • John Wick 2 Brief Thoughts


    The shootout scenes in the second chapter of John Wick, aka John Wick 2, border on the absurd, even by Hollywood standards.

    The way Keanu Reeves kills those after him in the Roman catacombs and elsewhere makes a Steven Seagal action and survival sequence seem believable. Of course Wick is wearing an especially ordered outfit made specifically for a gun fight but it is not only his survival but the ease at which he gets rid of all D’Antonio’s – played by Italian actor Riccardo Scamarcio – men that makes the movie very unreal.

    However, John Wick 2, like its predecessor, is an entertaining movie and worth watching. An added bonus for the movie series is the role his dogs plays in the saga.

    This second chapter was a bigger success than the first at the box office, part 3 is in the works and expected in May 2019.

  • FIFA World Cup 2018 Group Stage Draw

    [one_half]Group A
    Russia
    Saudi Arabia
    Egypt
    Uruguay[/one_half][one_half_last]Group B
    Portugal
    Spain
    Morocco
    Iran[/one_half_last][one_half]Group C
    France
    Australia
    Peru
    Denmark[/one_half][one_half_last]Group D
    Argentina
    Iceland
    Croatia
    Nigeria[/one_half_last][one_half]Group E
    Brazil
    Switzerland
    Costa Rica
    Serbia[/one_half][one_half_last]Group F
    Germany
    Mexico
    Sweden
    South Korea[/one_half_last][one_half]Group G
    Belgium
    Panama
    Tunisia
    England[/one_half][one_half_last]Group H
    Poland
    Senegal
    Colombia
    Japan[/one_half_last]

  • World Cup 2018 Line Up Complete

    We now know the identity of the 32 teams that have qualified for the FIFA World Cup that will take place in Russia in 2018. The final inter continental playoffs are now finished with Australia and Peru joining the other 30 teams.

    As widely reported this coming World Cup is missing a few big or very familiar teams. Italy, Holland and the USA won’t be in Russia next year as they failed to qualify  and each team will have to restart and reorganize their grass roots football structure. Other power houses missing include the Ivory Coast, Cameroon and Chile.

    The 32 qualified teams are listed below along with the pots they will be placed in for the draw that takes places on December 1 2017. Eight groups of four will compete for the World Cup between 14 June and 15 July 2018.

    Russia 1
    Brazil 1
    Iran 3
    Japan 4
    Mexico 2
    Belgium 1
    South Korea 4
    Saudi Arabia 4
    Germany 1
    England 2
    Spain 2
    Nigeria 4
    Costa Rica 3
    Poland 1
    Egypt 3
    Iceland 3
    Serbia 4
    Portugal 1
    France 1
    Uruguay 2
    Argentina 1
    Colombia 2
    Panama 4
    Senegal 3
    Morocco 4
    Tunisia 3
    Switzerland 2
    Croatia 2
    Sweden 3
    Denmark 3
    Australia 4
    Peru 2

  • Buttercup Freeware Password Manager

    Buttercup (v0.21.0) is a new entry in the password manager field. It uses the usual method of storing passwords securely and locally, with an option to connect to online storage services.

    Aftewr installing the 35MB download the program launches automatically and offers to create a what it calls archive. A master password can be added here. When the program’s main window opens it is divided from left to right to the name of the archive(s) created and opened, the groups section, the entries and their respective details.

    Passwords can be divided into groups with new groups added using the button near the bottom of the section. Entries are added much the same way. When creating a new entry a password generator is an option. The user can configure the number of characters or words to be used and if it should or should not include letters, numbers or symbols. There is also a “memorable” option which generates passwords using only lower case letters. Each entry can also have custom fields associated with it, perhaps to add a note or the associated site.

    Buttercup can also import 1password (.1pif), KeePass (.kdbx) and LastPass (.csv) archives. One can also connect the program to Dropbox, Owncloud, NextCloud or a WebDav server for backup and remote storage (File —>Connect Cloud Services). A Chrome extension is also available.

  • Leaf Simple Notes For Chrome

    Leaf: Simple Notes is another small notes or reminder extension for Google Chrome. Installing the extension follows the familiar permissions based method and the extension’s icon is added to the right of the address bar.

    Click on the icon and the interface is shown. Simply type any text and optionally add relevant details. Notes are stacked to the right of the text area. Click on the header or title of an existing note and the few available options become visible.

    Notes can be dragged and re-ordered. Any note can be moved to the top of the stack. Information on the note’s creation date is also available. A note can be edited by clicking the fourth icon (see screenshot) or by double clicking on it. Notes can of course be deleted.

    A needed more recent addition is the search function. It is also helpful that is a find as you type search.

    Leaf: Simple Notes is not the first minimalist notes extension and perhaps it is too simple but it serves its purpose well.

  • Simple Gmail Notes Chrome Extension

    Simple Gmail Notes is a useful Google Chrome extension. It keeps permissions to a minimum and uses the user’s own Google Drive to store all data. For this alone it is a very good choice.

    Although given the ‘notes’ name it is somewhat awkward to use for storing personal or random notes because one has to use a gmail email for the notes. An email that exists in one’s inbox is presumably sent by another person. For the purposes of this review and for using the extension later I sent myself an email.

    Once the extension is added to Chrome reload gmail and click on an email to see the text area for the notes. One must log in to Google Drive and allow Simple Gmail Notes access. This has to be repeated on other computers where the extension is used.

    There is no text formatting. The text area itself only features the text background color option but the extension’s settings page includes options for font color and text size. The title of the note can be configured here as well and titles appear much like a gmail label when viewing the email list.

    Notes can be searched and notes history or revisions are enabled by default. These two features use the Google Drive page, when using these a new tab is used to navigate to the user’s Drive page. In a similar fashion there is an Add to Google Calendar option.

    There is also a way to share notes, this requires signing up for a gmail account and all those sharing notes accessing it. Again, as mentioned earlier, this is not the most intuitive way to work with notes but Simple Gmail Notes is an interesting extension that works well inside a popular tool that many use.

  • Five Amazing Space & Astronomy Facts

    • The Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 space probes launched in 1977 are still calling home. Carrying only cassette tapes and 256KB of memory the two probes have entered the interstellar space – the region beyond our solar system – their weak signal send temperature and other information back to earth.
    • Gravitational waves are ripples in the structure of space that move at the speed of light. They cause the distance between objects to increase and decrease. Coalescing binary neutron stars may be one (barely) measurable source of gravitational waves.
    • Neutron stars, what remains of some stars after they collapse, can rotate up to 600~700 times per second.
    • The Sloan Great Wall is a giant wall of clustered galaxies measuring 1.3 billion light-years.
    • A gamma ray burst or supernova can release as much energy as our sun will in its 10 billion year life.

  • Freeware Astronomy With KStars

    KStars is a an open source freeware planetarium program from KDE, the linux platform group. KStars is available for Windows, requires the Microsoft Visual C++ 2015 Redistributable to run on PCs and it will automatically download it if it is not installed.

    The program features 100 million stars, 13,000 deep-sky objects and thousands of comets, asteroids, satellites and other sky object in its catalogue. Objects can be added manually or via other downloaded add-ons (see the Data menu).

    As with other similar programs choosing a location is the first task after running the program. The program can import and use .fits images for detailed imagery. Moving the mouse object names are displayed as tool tips and right clicking on any provides a wealth of information about the object including viewing images and the option of adding it to a wishlist for observing.

    The program window can of course toggle on and off display of horizon, stars, deeps sky objects, planets, milky way, equatorial grid, constellation lines, names and art and also supernovae and satellite positions.

    Besides viewing the sky from any location one can also chose a time to view the sky, choose any set time or move in steps to the past or the future. The passage of time can also be sped up to view the changing sky faster. The Pointing menu can change the view based on which direction the viewer is looking at and also center on an object and keep tracking it.

    The Tools that come with KStars are really useful for both the amateur sky watcher – with an ‘auto suggest’ tool in the works – and the professional. The calculator provides a lot of information such as object positions, coordinates and radial velocities, Julian dates and sun and moon rise and set times. The Observation planner displays information based on a chosen object, a list can be created and saved for any upcoming sky viewing. The planner includes a ‘What’s up tonight’ tool and the objects added to the wish list can be viewed here. The Sky calendar displays or plots planets’ tracks in the sky.

    The program also supports interfacing – using INDI and KDE’s own Ekos platforms – with telescopes to drive the viewer to an object and capture images.

    A KStar handbook is accessible from the help menu that provides a wealth of info on every feature available.

  • Freeware Planetarium Hallo Northern Sky

    Hallo Northern Sky is an educational, fun and fascinating planetarium program for windows and linux machines. It features around 30,000 objects and many more stars in its catalogue and can find any of them, provide descriptions and high resolution pictures with planets ones showing surface features. It can retrieve updated information online for more objects such as asteroids and comets too.

    The first action after installing the program is to save a location, the program prompts the user to do so on first start or if there is no location saved. The only input type requires the user to know his/her location’s longitude and latitude (as opposed to a program like Stellarium that can set a user location by name). The program settings is where one can download or update the aforementioned additional or newer lists and images. Within the same settings (File —>Settings) the program interface can be tweaked to use bigger fonts, different fonts (instead of the default Comic Sans) and different colors. The Settings tab of the Settings (!) has options to change local file settings, use different equinox epochs and make corrections for atmospheric effects.

    The program has multiple editors to load or edit astronomical data including images (.fits) files and asteroid and comet databases manually. The Search menu loads object (planets, moons, deep space objects, stars, constellations) names and can center on an object’s location. Supplementary or extra databases can be downloaded from the developer site and searched as well. These include additional galaxies and stars. The Objects menu is like loading specific supplements or databases and acts as a filter to view certain objects, for example to filter magnitude or use other deep sky maps that show farther objects. The Date menu can show the sky as it looks 1 hour from now, 1 day from now, tonight or any date.

    Moving the mouse on the program window and left clicking on an object provides information about it on the upper left side of the window. Name, brightness, right ascension, declination, magnitude and more is given. Right clicking offers more like centering on the object, downloading images of an object and if no object is selected using one of online resources to search that chosen area of the sky. The Animation option (Screen —>Animation) lets the user visualize movements in time increments and follow planets or star movements.

    Use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out or Ctrl+R for the aforementioned animation. The program has many hot keys built in. The extensive help file on the same page has lots more info.

    Information can be copied to the clipboard when it is displayed on the status bar, just left click on the status bar to copy information about the clicked on area. ASCOM is supported, Hallo Northern Sky can interface with compatible telescopes and direct them to point to objects.