I’ve been playing Fifa 2009 online against other players. There seems to be a ‘leaderboard’ where you can check how much you progress. Though, it’s all very unclear and EA doesn’t have a reasonable explanation. So I’ve done some research and here’s the result:

When you play someone online (in a ranked match) you receive or lose ‘skill points’. The more ‘skill points’ you get the higher your ‘skill rank’ becomes. How much ‘skill points’ you receive or lose depends on:

• Skill rank of the opponent.
• The difference in stars of the teams being picked. (If you pick a 3 star team and beat an opponent playing with a 5 star team you will get more skill points when you win).
• You get skill points for completed passes, possession, shots on target, successful tackles, etc.

You only get ranked in the leaderboards if you are one of the top 10.000 players. At the moment you have to get a 1600+ skill ranking to get into the top 10.000.  I believe you can get a maximun of around 50 skill points for one match.  Also when you play a match and the game is paused or finished you will see points being displayed below your username. These points are not your ‘skill points’ but your ‘EA World points’ so you can ignore them. To see your ‘skill points’ and ‘skill level’ go to ‘Player Hub > Career Stats > Skill Points.’

Good luck! If you have any questions please comment.

Today I wanted to put some new music on my Zune. I tried to boot the device as I haven’t used for a couple of days. But my Zune decided to stop loading and got stuck on the start up screen. When I went looking for a solution I discovered that it’s an epedemic. Many Zune users report the same problem. It looks like a software problem and I hope Microsoft will fix it soon. Because the Zune isn’t being sold in the Netherlands I’ll probably wont get any support. I’m already looking for a replacement. iPod maybe?

Update: My Zune works again! I booted it yesterday evening and it went in ‘upgrade mode’. I had to put all my songs back on but it works OK now. I guess it was something do with the internal clock not capable of registering a leap year (366 days) and which resolved itself when the new year started.