Ferrari claimed a 1-2 finish at the German Grand Prix under dubious circumstaces, Fernando Alonso leading home his team mate Felipe Massa after a Ferrari orchestrated overtaking move 18 laps before the chequered flag. Ferrari have been fined $100,000 for issuing team orders but the results stands pending a WMSC meeting about the incident. Ferrari issued a radio message to Massa saying "Fernando is faster than you. Can you confirm you understand?" - Soon afterwards Massa slowed to allow Alonso to pass with Massa's engineer Rob Smedley getting on the radio to Massa after the pass to say "Good lad. Just stick with it now, sorry." I can't see how this could be ambiguous in any way, Ferrari should have been excluded from the race, a $100,000 fine is a joke, that's loose change for Ferrari. As for  Luca di Montezemolo claiming hypocrisy in F1 and the drivers (including Michael Schumacher) who criticised the team orders ban; if you don't like the way the sport is run, get out and race somewhere else. Sebastian Vettel took the final podium place while Britons Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button came home in fourth and fifth respectively. Mark Webber finished his disappointing weekend in sixth place, Kubica, Rosberg, Schumacher and Petrov finished in seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth one lap down on the leaders.

Cox Communications internet connection is down again, this time property wide. I had an engineer come around and replaced a splitter outside the builder which we though had fixed the issue. But 20 minute later it went down again and has been intermittent since. Right now it is working... //scratch that; it's down again, back to using my smart-phone's dial up connection. When the connection failed after the engineer left I called up Cox technical support and they did some tests and found it was an issue with one of the outside cables; apparently there is a break on one of the lines which is causing the upstream sync to fail; no upload; no internet connection. I am now looking at another 24 - 48 hours before it is fixed, which is being hopeful as this issue has been ongoing for five months. At this time it's a real mess outside, cables laying on the grass; big holes outside the 18, 19, 20 and 21 buildings with cables exposed. Suffice to say I am pretty pissed off  by this situation, the only thing that stops me from switching to AT&T is the $150 installation fee. I have already cancelled Cox's TV package as we don't really use it very much and need to save money at this time. We use mostly streaming on demand TV services like the iPlayer, ITV Player, 4OD and Hulu, obviously a stable internet connection is vital to that working!

Meanwhile in F1; there has been a bit of a shake up in qualifying, there's a Red Bull at the front of course, but the surprise is Ferrari in second and third; Fernando Alonso lines up alongside Sebastian Vettel with team mate Felipe Massa behind Vettel. Mark Webber, by his own admission had a poor qualifying session only managing fourth on the grid. Jenson Button put his McLaren ahead of Lewis Hamilton as the two Britons line up fifth and sixth. On a Formula 1 I participate in there are a lot of people that seem to think that Lewis Hamilton is God's gift to motor racing and Jenson stands no chance of beating him in equal equipment. Frankly I am getting rather pissed off with this blinkered Lewis Hamilton love-in attitude. I really hope that Jenson outscores Lewis by a decent margin this weekend to silence all the Lewis Hamilton lambs. Polish driver Robert Kubica qualified in seventh ahead of another strong performance by Rubens Barrichello to put his Williams comfortably inside the top 10 in eighth. Merceded GP scraped inside the top 10 in ninth with Nico Rosberg followed by the second Williams of Nico Hulkenberg. Micheal Schumacher could only manage 11th place on his return to the Hockenheimring! Japanese driver Kamui Kobayashi is handily placed to pick up a couple of points this weekend in 12th. I really like the young Japanese; I think he is destined for F1 greatness; he and team mate have done wonders with an underperforming Sauber. Just a shame that I won't be able to watch the race; unless some miracle happens and Cox fix the net connectivity issue by tomorrow morning; I'm not holding my breath!

I am going to start with Ferrari wanting yet another rule change after Fernando Alonso was penalised for gaining a position by cutting a corner. Stefano Domenicali has said "We will discuss an amendment to the regulations: if the race directors are not involved within 3-4 corners afterwards, the manoeuvre is considered to be correct" - Frankly Ferrari should shut up and get on with racing. If this rule gets passed then it'd be the second time a rule has been changed at Ferrari's request in two races. I believe that rules should not be changed mid-season unless it's in regards to safety. Of course Ferrari dispute Charlie Whiting's version of events at the British Grand Prix. Red Bull owner Dietrich Mateschitz has gone on record saying that there is not favouritism within the Red Bull team, going on to say "This philosophy is not in keeping with my understanding of racing, We do not have a number one and a number two driver." - I hope this is the case, recent evidence seems to suggest otherwise. McLaren has also gone on record saying that they do not favour one driver over the other. Martin Whitmarsh was quick to quell any suggesting that Lewis Hamilton is the defacto #1 within the team with only 12 points separating the two Britons at the half way stage of the season. Going on to say "He'll want to win this weekend, he'll want to move that momentum back in his favour - and that's how it should be." about Jenson Button.

In football, Steven Gerrard has confirmed his commitment to Liverpool after talking with new Reds manager Roy Hodgson. Gerrard only signed a four year extension to his contract last June keeping the midfielder at Anfield until 2013; but it was feared that he would be leaving Anfield during the summer. Liverpool have also signed out of contract, former Chelsea midfield player Joe Cole on a four year deal which could be good for Liverpool giving the Reds more width on the left hand side of midfield. Liverpool also signed Serbian striker Milan Jovanovic on a free transfer, Jovanovic won back to back titles with Standard Liege in 07/08 and 08/09, other than than I know very little about the Serb. Liverpool point man Fernando Torres has yet to commit his future to Liverpool having not talked with manager Hodgson and is currently suffering from a groin strain injury and is expected to be out for three weeks. The Spaniard hasn't said anything either way about his future but being injured again is a real worry; both for resale value and playing for Liverpool.

Additional: I have just come back from the agency/company that I worked for last season to find out that they are not recalling anyone back. Also I find out that my background check came back within two days of me finishing my assignment back in April and no-one from the agency bothered to call me to let me know the outcome as promised when I handed in my badge and parking permit. So basically I am going to write off any chance of being re-employed, I'm not going to waste my time with a company that seems to think it's better to get new people every year rather than employing people with experience with the company and it's practices. It seems like an odd business model to me; I understand the need for seasonal workers but not attempting to call back people that have worked there previously seems crazy to me, Personally I would rather have workers than can hit the ground running rather than having to train new people from scratch!

Yesterday I attended the funeral of my wife's grandmother, Marjorie Jennings; who sadly passed away on the afternoon of Thursday 8th July 2010. It was a very different experience for me, I married into a black family so obviously the funeral was held within a predominantly black church. It was very different from what I am used to back home in the UK; the service was very upbeat, more about remembering 'granny' than mourning her passing! It was a nice service for 'granny', hearing people's opinions and memories or her. The only thing that was a little OTT for me was the preaching but that is part and parcel of the family's faith. I am agnostic so I don't really follow the preachings but I sat down and respected what Marjorie (granny) would have wanted. I will always remember granny for the way she was the first to welcome me into the family, I appreciated her straight taking attitude, she wouldn't take any crap and I admired her spirit right up to the end, vowing to bust out of the care home where her life ended at the age of 83.

Over the last week I have been building a media server for our home from an old PIII 450 machine. Obviously this machine was a little lacking when I acquired it, it was free so I'm not complaining! I bought myself 512MB of PC133 SD RAM (which is the maximum the motherboard would take) to replace the 256MB installed, a second Realtek RTL8139D network card as an Internet connection sharing NIC for use as a proxy so I can use the BBC iPlayer on the Playstation3. So far all is good; then we come to the problem child, a VIA based PCI USB2.0 card. Which not only doesn't work with my Hitachi external hard disk, it corrupted the disk meaning I had to spend over two hours repairing the drive with Scandisk on my laptop Windows 7 install. I have spent a further 12 hours looking into a workaround to get it to work reliably without success. I have tried everything from registry hacking to installing different drivers to changing PCI latency in the BIOS and hard disk settings, even tried installing ActiveSync (despite not owning a Windows phone) as recommended on the VIAarena forums all without success. There seems to be some conflict/issue with Windows 2000/XP and the VIA based USB2.0 chipset. I have now bought a new NEC based USB2.0 PCI card which was recommended by many users on various forums, let's see if that fixes the issues I am having as accessing the external HDD through USB1.1 is painful, less than 1Mbps transfer speeds, compared to the 480Mbps possible from USB2.0. This whole situation is frustrating as this should have been a simple setup procedure and now I will have to wait another week for the new USB2.0 card, the USPS isn't exactly swift in delivery often taking a week to travel up one state!

The truth is out about Fernando Alonso's drive-through penalty at Silverstone. Ferrari and/or Alonso elected to ignore race director Charlie Whiting's request to allow Robert Kubica to re-pass after Alonso cut the corner gaining an advantage. Whiting issued the request three times; and on the third and final time, Ferrari radioed back stating that Alonso was too far ahead now to concede the place back to the Pole. So in my opinion, Ferrari and/or Alonso tried to cheat and got punished for it, just the same as Hamilton did in the previous race! The rules are clear, if a driver gains an advantage by cutting a corner he must lift off to allow the driver passed back through! Alonso didn't do that, so I think that Ferrari need to stop blowing hot air and go racing!

At the British Grand Prix there was fresh controversy concerning Red Bull's perceived favouritism towards German Sebastian Vettel. The German damaged his front wing in free practice and the team elected to take Mark Webber's front wing and put it on Vettel's car for the qualifying session leaving the Aussie using the previous specification front wing. Vettel qualified on pole position with Webber close behind but Webber incensed by having his upgraded front wing effectively stolen away from him stormed off the start line getting his nose ahead, Vettel tried to squeeze Webber into the wall but the Aussie was having none of it, holding his line exactly as he did in Turkey. Vettel fell back into the clutches of Hamilton and the two drivers touched which caused a puncture on Vettel's right rear dropping him to the back of the grid. Mark Webber went on to win the race pumping in fast lap after fast lap to which Lewis Hamilton had no answer. Jenson Button started from 14th on the grid after a disastrous qualifying stating the car was "undriveable". The Briton moved upto 8th with the first lap and finished the race in fourth place. Button could have challenged Nico Rosberg for the final podium spot but Button needed to conserve fuel to make it to the end of the race. Rubens Barrichello finished in a strong fifth place in his Williams, it seems that Williams are making big steps forward with Barrichello's input. Kamui Kobayashi finished in sixth place at Silverstone to add to his seventh place at Valencia. The Japanese seems to be getting better and better as the season progresses, it's great to see a successful Japanese driver in F1, it's also great to see Sauber at the sharp end of the grid. Seventh through tenth places were taken up by Germans, Sebastian Vettel, Adrian Sutil, Michael Schumacher and Nico Hulkenberg. These results mean that Lewis Hamilton extended his championship lead over Jenson Button while Mark Webber leapfrogged team mate Vettel. As Red Bull said that Vettel was given Webber's front wing because he was leading the Red Bull duo in the Championship, if something similar happens in Hockenheim, I wonder if Webber will get the new development part, somehow I doubt that will be the case as everything that has happened in the past six weeks points to Vettel being favourite within the Red Bull camp. If one of the Brits can't win the championship this season, I want Mark Webber to win the championship, the Australian is every bit as good as Vettel in my opinion and at Silverstone, he proved that even with an older front wing design!

In the World Cup; Spain have won the final against the Netherlands by a solitary goal in extra time. Of course there had to be some controversy; the Spanish goal came from a bad refereeing decision, Howard Webb gave a goal kick to the Spaniards when it should have been a corner kick to the Dutch. Andres Iniesta scored the winning goal less than a minute after Webb's controversial decision. Of course the Netherlands coach was unhappy with the English referee but it's simply a case of sour grapes, that's the luck of the game, sometimes the decision will work in your favour, sometimes it will work against you, that's football! I think that Spain were worthy winners as the Dutch were very dirty, eight of the XI Dutch players were booked with Johnny Heitinga being sent off for a second bookable offence. Even Dutch legend Johan Cruyff heavily criticised the Netherlands performance, labelling it as "anti-football" instead of "total football". Well done Spain for winning their maiden World Cup just two years after claiming the Euro championship!

Spain have beaten Germany 1 - 0 in Durban to progress to their first ever World Cup final! It was very a tight game; the Spaniards really stifled the Germans, not allowing the German players any room like Argentina and England did in the previous knock out rounds. The one and only goal came from a corner kick; Spanish captain Carles Puyol rising above everyone to head past keeper Manuel Neuer with 17 minutes remaining. The Spanish will meet the Netherlands in the final; the Dutchmen beat Uruguay 3 - 2 in Cape Town yesterday afternoon; it was two second half goals from Sneijder and Robben that sealed the game; Uruguay pulled a goal back two minutes into added time but it was too little, too late for the South Americans. One thing is for sure this World Cup; we'll have a new team lifting the World Cup as neither team have won the World Cup previously!

In domestic football; Liverpool have unveiled Roy Hodgson as their new manager, replacing Rafael Benitez who left the club by mutual consent at the beginning of June. Benitez was snapped up just a week after the announcement he was to leave Anfield by Inter Milan. Hodgson did well with Fulham but Liverpool are a completely different kettle of fish, much bigger club, much higher expectations; is he up to the job? I hope that Liverpool made the correct decision; time will tell I guess. I am worried about the future as I suspect a few big name players will be leaving Anfield, Yossi Benayoun has already left for Chelsea despite having two years left on his contract with Liverpool. The other names I fear will be outgoing are Steven Gerrard and Fernando Torres. If those two players do elect to leave Anfield; Hodgson could have a massive up hill struggle as his budget for new players is limited even with the sale of Benayoun, Gerrard and Torres, I suspect that a chunk of that transfer money will go into paying off some of Liverpool's substantial debt!