For the second consecutive match, the substitute that came on for Del Piero scores the winning goal. Fabio Capello must know something we don't.

Just finished watching Juventus beat Real Madrid in extra-time after David Trezeguet scored to level the aggregates 1-1 at full-time. It was another efficient performance from the bianconeri, though they wasted several chances as Real Madrid looked content to defend first.

Cannavaro gets my vote for best player for defending superbly, while Camoranesi and Ibrahimovic also had good games. The former's crosses led to both goals and the duo created most of the bianconeri's chances.

Zambrotta and Emerson would be disappointments of the night. Expected the former to go marauding down the left but didn't remember much of both player's performances.

Del Piero was substituted yet again, though if it were a computer game I'd substitute Zalayeta for Trezeguet. However Capello replaced Del Piero instead and both Trezeguet and Zalayeta scored to win the tie and vindicate his decision.

Juventus are now third favourites behind Chelsea and Milan to win the competition after their odds halved to 5.6 from 14.0.

Trezeguet replaced Del Piero in the 57th minute and scored an acrobatic reverse kick from a Ibrahimovic knock-down off a Camoranesi cross.

In extra-time Tacchinardi and Ronaldo got sent off. The Juventus midfielder was already booked and allegedly elbowed Ronaldo, who responded with a petulant kick. The referee consulted the linesman and sent both off.

Zalayeta intercepted a desperate Raul Bravo clearance and shot into the corner. Capello brought on Olivera for Zalayeta in the final minutes as Juventus held on to win.

Chelsea beat Barcelona 4-2 in a pulsating match last night. It's a real pity that one of them had to lose in a matchup that neutrals hoped to be in the Final. Barcelona played very well and the only thing they should blame is their lack in concentration resulting in Chelsea's three early goals.

Chelsea are now favourites to win it after their odds were halved from 9.8 previously to 4.0. Milan are second at 4.8 after repeating their 1-0 win against Manchester United at the San Siro stadium.

Regarding the controversy around Terry's goal, I certainly didn't see much of a protest by the Barcelona players, though if you read some of the news reports it seemed as though one of the world's top three referees missed the supposed "cheap trick" and were hounded by Barcelona players, disrupting play.

According to a particular reporter, a Chelsea defender supposedly "stood on the line to block the goalkeeper from reaching to the ball". I wonder how Carvalho managed to do that from the other direction where the ball was heading.

Carvalho could've tugged Valdez's jersey or held him back, but TV replays didn't show much and you'd think a referee like Collina would've spotted it. Even Barcelona manager Frank Rijkaard admitted as much when he said he didn't see much from the bench.

So enough already.

Spent the morning and half the afternoon redesigning the homepage of the Singapore Pools website to validate in xhtml and css. Though not pixel-perfect, the redesign looks similar when tested in Firefox 1.0.1 and Internet Explorer 6.0.26 on Windows XP.

Excluding images, the original webpage is 7.04KB while after redesign the html code shrunk to 4.86KB. That's a save in bandwidth of 2.18KB, about 30%. The styling is placed in an external css file which comes up to 1.18KB. Even if inline styling was used the homepage is still only 6.04KB, saving 1KB of bandwidth or 14.2%.

However, I re-aligned (joined and re-sliced) the images of the header portion to better accomodate the layout DIVs, resulting in an increase in size from 15.2KB to 17.6KB. That's 2.4KB, larger than the bandwidth gained previously. But I'm rather certain it's due more to my poor image manipulation skills (and possibly tools; I use freeware) than anything else.

In any case the original (header) images look fudged. Garbage in, garbage out.

But it's not done yet. There's no point in replacing Table layouts with DIV layouts if there is still no semantics advantage to be gained. Next up: To work on the semantics.

Spent half the day digesting A List Apart's Image Slicing article and learnt how to create that nifty CSS Image "Slice" rollover trick like how Zeldman, Fortymedia and others do it. Used their images for practice as well.

Pity about the problems regarding Image Replacement.

Added an alternative stylesheet for Firefoxers and other browsers capable of displaying them. In Firefox, select "View" then "Page Style" and you'd be able to select an alternative style if brown reminds you of sinful food like chocolate and coffee.

IExplorers will have to wait until I digest A List Apart's Body Switchers article. Or perhaps the new Internet Explorer will add functionalities such as Stylesheet switching. And Text Zoom. And Tabbed Browsing.

By the way, foxers do remember to upgrade to Firefox 1.0.1.

Anybody interested in the archived results of Singapore Pools' 4D Lottery draw? I have in my posessions a soft copy of all the results (Saturdays, Sundays, Wednesdays) since 1986 May 31st.

It's for sale at a reasonable price of a day's wages for a professional who earns, say $10k per month. Which for the mathematically-disinclined, means $350 including G.S.T.

Why would you want to pay for it? Good question!

Imagine what you could do with it! Like write a software which analyses past trends and use it to increase your chances of striking 4D every week! Although, if you need to obtain my data, means you're not much of a programmer.

The new design was supposed to go live today but I guess sometime in March will have to suffice. I've still to finish the horizontal site navigation and perhaps a new logo.

Ideally the horizontal navigation should be similar to alistapart's image slicing article. There's also some problems removing the bullets using alistapart's taming lists article. Suddenly the bullets disappear.

Did I mention the layout's based on A List Apart's css?

Working on a new layout while waiting for the UEFA Champions' League match between Real Madrid and Juventus. Pardon the fugly background color, it's supposed to be the color of the month, according to colorstrology.com. Will be adding more color later.

I've decided to go with a brown theme, which is color of the year according to fortymedia's forecast. Although not in the manner they forecasted. Heh.

Forza Juve!

Thinking of a new layout (about time) to practise CSS.

CSS Box Model

1. Box Model is made up of Content area, Padding, Border then Margin from inside out.
2. Specified width of box is width of content area only. IE4-5.5/Windows incorrectly sets width of box as content area including padding and border.
3. Use Tantek's Box Model Hack and "Be Nice To Opera" (rule of greater specifity) hack to pass browsers correct values.
4. IE and Netscape have "whitespace" bug. Remove whitespaces to compact block items.
5. IE has "Float" bug, incorrectly applies floated content's height area. Use javascript-float workaround.

CSS Layout

1. To center content, set margin-left and margin-right to auto. IE5/Win doesn't center it though, so set text-align to center on parent block.
2. For multi-column layout, use float and widths.

Recently watched Dare Mo Shiranai. Translated word-for-word, the title is "Who(-ever) Also Knows Not", but is better known as Nobody Knows. Lead actor 14-year-old Yagira Yuuya won the Best Actor award at the Festival de Cannes 2004.

Below is an excerpt from Kinocite, a UK web site which reviews movies. It explains the background story which was hinted at but never fully explained. As for the ending, to me there wasn't any, much like the movie itself, which seems to always stop short of "milking the tears".

This film is based on actual events: A young woman, happily married with one child, was wondering why that notice to enroll her son at the local elementary school never arrived – after all other children in the neighbourhood had already started going to school she went to the local board of education to find out what was going on.

She found out that her child didn't exist, that she had never married in the first place (in Japan you are legally married when both partners have put their hanko-seal on the required documents and have handed those in at the local city hall). Her "husband" had never had their "marriage" registered and her son wasn't registered either – her son didn't exist for the city hall – which is why she never got that letter to enroll him in school.

Something went wrong – she should have asked for help but didn't and tried to hide all this. She made up lies "I graduated from Keio University", "My husband is a diplomat and works abroad", "My son attends a prestigious junior high school" – But her "husband" was long gone. Before long she had four other children, all from different fathers – in 1988, when the eldest boy was 15, she had three daughters aged 7, 3 and 2.

As for the ending, to me there wasn't any, much like the movie itself, which always seem to stop short of "milking the tears". Unlike shows like, say, "Pay It Forward". Watch it.

Went to Sim Lim Square to check out PSTwo prices. One shop is selling it for $480, while another (which sells it at $299) advises me to wait for a couple of months before getting it. I'll wait.

Went shopping before watching Kung Fu Hustle. Specifically, checked out the prices of Sony's Playstation2 (PSTwo) and Playstation Portable (PSP).

Sony Gallery is retailing the PSTwo for $285 while shops at Lucky Plaza are selling them at $350 to $380, standard package. Think I'll be getting it from Sony Gallery within the month, after I decide which game is worth spending good money on. Like "GTA: San Andreas" or "MGS3: Snake Eater".

Sony Gallery doesn't carry stocks for PSP as it's officially out-of-stock, but shops at the basement of Lucky Plaza have them going for anywhere between $580 to $688. Way off my budget and it's over-priced since it's out of stock.

Happy new year indeed! Went shopping during the last week and saw some new stuff on sale. Finally.

Saw the new and slim Sony PlayStation2 at Sony Gallery (Junction 8). As well as the PSP at the Games store on fourth floor of Junction 8, beside the Cinema. And SingTel is retailing the Nokia 7280 for $828 with two-year contract ($1028 without). Damn steady.

Didn't manage to check out the price of the PSP, but it'll probably be about $340. In any case I'm getting the PS2 if it's only just $288, within my expected budget.