Goodbye Tony G

I pulled my bankroll off Tony G Poker this week. I went there in the first place because of a great sign-up bonus of $75 though Pokerworks.

There is nothing wrong with the site - the client works fine, there's a good selection of games at various buy-ins. There is just one problem - There's nobody there!

It was OK until they pulled out of the States. I could always get onto a nearly full table at the level I wanted. Now, at the times I play, it is deserted. I think there were about 10 players on the whole site the last time I looked. I don't know what the population is like at other times - maybe there's plenty of Australian and Asian players - but there doesn't seem to be much of a European population, and of course there are now no Americans at all.

EMI and iTunes go DRM Free

EMI have announced that they will make music downloads available without DRM restrictions. This will be done via Apple's iTunes. This is a major change of direction for a record company, and it also marks a change for Apple which, for the first time, will be selling music at different prices. The DRM free tracks will be selling for 99p, rather than the 79p the DRM encumbered music sells at. It will also be at a higher quality, 256kbps raither than the usual 128. There is also an option to upgrade previously purchased music

BritBloggerment 2 - Rosies Return!

Last night saw the second running of the British Bloggers Tournament. With another decent field of 19, we were honoured by the illustrious company of our fellow bloggers from across the pond, AlCantHang and Katitude, who both played last week, and new for this week, Mookie99. Unfortunately Kat was still out on extended celebrations of her birthday, and only made it back a few minutes after her stack was blinded away. She did finish ahead of both AlCantHang and Mookie99 though!

Rosie was back to exact her revenge on me following last week, but fortunately for me we were on different tables, Rosie sharing the table with the big names from North America.

We started 6 handed, and with me getting no cards worth playing, the blinds seemed to be coming round far too fast. I didn't see a flop until the 11th hand, and that only because I was in the big blind and nobody raised pre-flop. It wasn't until the 19th hand that I actually reached a showdown, when I limped in with QJo. Flop was Kh Th 8s and everyone checked. Jc on the turn and I made a small raise. Lzfsb3 called. Was he on a flush draw? Kings? Qh on the river and wary of the flush, I check. Lzfsb3 checks behind me and shows a measily pair of 8s, and I take the pot with 2 pairs.

After some departures one table closed, and BurnleyMik came to join us. The play continued to be tight, with only Quixote8 making any headway at this stage. Over on the other table TanOrpheus was crushing all opposition. With Miks arrival, talk started to move to football, which I quickly headed off, with a Leeds fan on the table, and Preston's defeat on Friday night, I didn't want to get into that discussion!

A few hands later I found myself looking at down at Ad Js. Blinds are 25/50. It's folded round to me and I raise 2BB. Another fold and BurnleyMik in the BB calls. Flop is 3 4 6 rainbow. I bet 200 and after a pause, Mik calls.Turn is another 3. Mik checks and I check behind him. An 8 on the river and Mik raises 900, which would put me all in. Something didn't feel right. After a long pause, I listened to my instincts and decided he was bluffing. I called, and Mik showed KQ, and I double up.

On the next hand Neil Ross goes all in with his 660 chips. BurnleyMik calls, but then SirFortune goes over the top with his 1565. Mik throws in the towel, and says he had 33. SirFortune shows Ac Qh, and Neil has 8 9c. The flop is then 6 8 3 rainbow. Whilst Mik regrets his fold, a 2 and a 10 help nobody, and Neil takes the pot with a pair of 8s.

Quixote8 was to take a big hit later, as going all in with AA, he was called by Cloud with A9s. Quixote8 flopped a set, but two spades spelt danger, and 2s on the river gave Cloud a flush and make Quixote8 the short stack. Quixote8 went a bit quiet after that, but Rosie popped up to say that she was just helping him with the death threats!

Shortly afterwards, Cloud and I split a pot with AQ, and then I busted Neil with AK. His A 10 didn't improve and my King won me the pot.

The other table closed, and unfortunately TanOrpheus, sitting on a monster stack moved into the seat to my left, and proceeded to wield that stack, bullying me off a few pots.

Things started to go down hill for me when BurnleyMik announced to the table he was going all in pre-flop. Dealt a pair of sixes, I called him, and Mik turned over a pair of nines. Nothing for me, and my stack is halved.

Short stacked, I called Acorn's raise and went all-in with QK. A queen on the turn was no use, as Acorn had AA, and I went out in 8th place, 3 worse than last week.

Apart from calling Mik with 66, I was happy with the way I played. I wasn't as happy with the cards I was dealt. I only saw 20 flops out of 153 (13%) and only went to 6 showdowns, losing 2 of them - the one that busted me, and 66 against Miks 99.

TanOrpheus's big stack held up, and he won the tournament, with the rest of the money being taken by Cloud and Resdent Evil.

Visitor Stats

I use Statcounter to track hits on this blog, and, thanks to a comment on Wil Wheatons blog, and links from British poker bloggers web site following last Sundays British blogger tournament, I'm getting more than I've ever had before. Therefore, there is actually some volume of data for Statcounter to report on:

Operating System

			Perc.	Operating System
			49.00%	Windows XP
			34.00%	Linux
			9.00%	Windows 2000
			3.00%	Windows 2003
			1.00%	Mac OS X

34% of visitors to this blog use Linux. I'd like to say that its a sign of Linux taking off, but it's really because of a post I made about wireless networking on Ubuntu. Given that wireless networking is one of the biggest problems in setting up a Linux system, it's been quite popular.

Browser

		Perc.	Browser Name	Version
		39.00%	Firefox	2.0.0
		37.00%	MSIE	6.0
		8.00%	Opera	9.10
		7.00%	Firefox	1.5.0
		5.00%	MSIE	7.0
		2.00%	Mozilla	5.0
		1.00%	Firefox	2.0
		1.00%	Safari	1.2

Similarly, the reason for Firefox topping the browser stats will simply be because of the high proportion of Linux users coming here.

I haven't got any weird search keywords bringing people here. The most common is "ubuntu wpa-key".

The Man Behind Bodog

The BBC has an article about Chris Ayre, the founder of Bodog. The article is of course on the back of the on-line gambling ban in the States. Ayre argues that the Bodog brand is what differentiates him from the other on-line sites. I would have thought that it would be his brand diversity that will be the key to Bodog's success, music, publishing, TV, his more limited exposure to the American poker market (unlike Party!) that will continue to make Bodog a success. The brand does nothing for me, but perhaps a married 30 something with 2 kids isn't his target audience. To me, Bodog is loud and brash, with an ugly poker client.

In the Nuts

Just when everything seemed to be going well, my flopped set of Kings turns into a boat on the river, but it gives my opponent quads!

PokerStars Game #9097380666:  Hold'em No Limit ($0.01/$0.02) - 2007/03/26 - 10:52:30 (ET)
Table 'Montefiore' 9-max Seat #7 is the button
Seat 1: Me($1.73 in chips)
Seat 2: givusabreak ($5.08 in chips)
Seat 3: Nobdi ($4.28 in chips)
Seat 5: MILFmeister ($1.37 in chips)
Seat 6: estellairina ($3.51 in chips)
Seat 7: DWolf3 ($5.39 in chips)
Seat 8: VinoDivino ($2.68 in chips)
Seat 9: DISH DOC ($1.61 in chips)
VinoDivino: posts small blind $0.01
DISH DOC: posts big blind $0.02
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Me[Kc Ks]
Me: raises $0.10 to $0.12
givusabreak: folds
Nobdi: folds
MILFmeister: calls $0.12
estellairina: folds
DWolf3: folds
VinoDivino: folds
DISH DOC: folds
*** FLOP *** [Th 8c Kh]
DISH DOC is sitting out
Me: bets $0.10
MILFmeister: raises $0.10 to $0.20
Me: raises $0.30 to $0.50
MILFmeister: raises $0.75 to $1.25 and is all-in
Me: calls $0.75
*** TURN *** [Th 8c Kh] [Qc]
*** RIVER *** [Th 8c Kh Qc] [8h]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Me: shows [Kc Ks] (a full house, Kings full of Eights)
MILFmeister: shows [8s 8d] (four of a kind, Eights)
MILFmeister collected $2.67 from pot

BritBloggerment

Had a great time last night playing in the inaugural British bloggers tournament on Pokerstars. Ironically I found out about it from an American blog (Thanks Al).

There was a decent turn-out of 22 people, mostly British, but with a couple of celebrities from over the pond, in the shape of Al Can't Hang, and Katitude.

I started out playing fairly tight - not that I had a great deal of choice , the cards were crap - but finally on hand 47 I picked up 10s Ks. Not great I know, but after the rubbish I'd had up until then they looked good to me. BB was 50, I mini-raised, and was re-raised by Rosie up to 350. I called. Flop came 7s 2h 4s I bet 150, Rosie re-raised to 550. I really should have folded at this point, but, I'd had nothing up to now, I had a King high flush draw, and I convinced myself that Rosie was making a continuation bet having missed the flop! Do I feel lucky punk? I did, so I went all in, and Rosie showed 10c Ac - she had missed the flop, I had 12 outs for either a flush or a pair of Kings, she only needed an Ace. The turn was 2s, and she was drawing dead. Thats me up to 2645, and Rosie down to 650.

3 hands later in the small blind I'm dealt Qc Kc. It's folded round to me and I miniraise. Rosie is the BB, and she goes all in. I've easily got it covered, and I call. Rosie shows a pair of nines, so she's ahead. Flop is J T K, putting me in front, a 2 and a 7 don't help her, and so Rosie is out.

Much later, I'm dealt Jc Kd. BB is 200. I raise 600 preflop, everyone folds except a10419, who re-raises 2000. I have a rush of blood to the head and call, going all-in. What a donkey. He shows a pair of Jacks, so only a King is going to help me. Flop is 5 K 9 rainbow! an ace and a 3 follow, I undeservedly double up, and take some flack from the rail (thanks Rosie).

I eventually went out in 5th place, my 10 J going down to LepRecon777's K 8. Sadly only the first three places were paid. Congratulations to Al Eleven, who came back from being short stacked to beat Cadmunkey.

Thanks to Acorn and BurnleyMik for setting this up. Ihad a good time, got to drop the hammer, and narrowly avoiding a price being put on my head - Apparently being a Preston fan is acceptable to BurnleyMik, but if I had been a Blackburn Rovers fan it would have been a different matter! The banter was great, and people generally stuck around after they went out to cheer the survivors on. Hopefully this will be a regular event, and I can make it again next week. You can find another write-up of the tournament here at The Cloud's blog.

It;'s All Over Now

Well, third interview out of the way, and I've just found out I didn't get the job. Got all the usual lines - it was a tough decision, you were very close, sure another opportunity will come up for you - but bottom line is, they didn't think I was as good as the other guy.

3rd Interview!!

I have now been invited for a 3rd interview. I am assured that this will be the last. One way or another, it will all be over next week.

Ubuntu Unleashed!

I have managed to convert my wife to using Linux, specifically, Ubuntu.

She didn't actually have a great deal of choice. We have a laptop which has developed a faulty disk controller. Sometimes it recognises the HD, most of the time it doesn't. Tried different HDs, same problem.

So, do we bin the laptop, or find a way of making it work without a hard disk?

The answer to my need was found at Pendrivelinux.com.

I now have a fully functioning installation of XUbuntu (the lightweight version of Ubuntu) working on the aptop. I've even got the integrated Broadcom wireless network card working without the need for Ndiswrapper. It includes OpenOffice, Firefox and Thunderbird, plus the Linux version of Solitaire -everything she could possibly need.

2nd Interview

Well, I either did really well or not quite well enough at the interview, because now I've got a second interview. This time it's only 20 minutes from home, rather than the 3 hour drive each way I had this week.

Interview Imminent

Interview is in two days. I've got a 3 hour drive to get there! I was expecting to be interviewed just down the road, so that was a bit of a shock.

Of Bad Beats and Hammers

I don't like to rant about people's donkey play, but when a guy calls my all in raise on the turn with ace high and a flush draw, and hits his flush on the river, I'm seriously pissed off. Fortunately I had him covered, and limped through another circuit before I was dealt the hammer. With only two big blinds left, I had to go all in. I got three callers, flopped a 7 and won with a pair. Back in the game again, I finished up 6th, with the guy who had won all my chips earlier going out before me.

What a Beautiful Day

I woke up this morning with the sun streaming through the curtains. This was a Good Thing, because I had a list of jobs to do in the garden.

The pampas grass at the bottom of our garden has started to be plucked by the birds, a sign that some of them are thinking about nesting. We used to have a huge beech hedge alongside our garden, but the neighbours ripped it out. The sparrows and tits used to nest in there, so we've put up some nesting boxes - two designed for tits, one for blackbirds.

As I ventured out into the garden there was a faint fog drifting across. Through the fog, the sun was a white disc, that you could mistake for the moon, giving the day a slightly eerie feel. On the lawn lay straw and grass in strange patterns, the remains of the kids doing an Art Attack style giant picture. Any sign of what it had been destroyed by our rabbit, who had been playing in it since it was finished.

Nesting boxes securely fastened to the shed, I moved onto the bird table. Might as well make use of the fence the neighbours have partially erected to replace the hedge. I placed a scattering of dried mealworms on it, in an effort to attract robins, blackbirds and other worm eaters to the garden. We have huge quantities of sparrows all year round, plus starlings and an occasional wren, with blue and great tits in the summer, but we're trying to increase the variety.

The fog thickened, mixing with the smoke from a fire further down the street. I hung woven nestboxes in the hedge at the end of the garden, maybe the wrens will like them. The rabbit followed me around like a dog, under my feet, wanting to be involved in whatever I was doing.

Next job was to clean out the rabbits hut, litter trays to wash, food box to refill from the big sack. This was not an easy task, as the rabbit attempted to jump into the bag of pellets as I scooped them out. Old hay, straw, sawdust and droppings go into the compost bin.

From the house comes the sound of my daughter practising the cornet - three weeks and she has passed the standard of the girl next door, who has been playing for a year. The music teacher has revised her estimate of when she will be ready to join the band, from a year down to three months! She soaks up music in the same way she soaks up facts she reads in books.

To the sound of "Twinkle Twinkle" I sweep the patio - more straw for the compost bin. Then the drain to unblock. Every time we put the washing machine on the patio floods. An easier job than I thought it would be - scoop out some mud and grit and problem solved.

So, after that, nothing to do but sit and watch the view; and watch all the birds ignore my new bird table!

The Job

My application has gone off, and I've had a an email acknowledgment, saying I will be contacted within 5 days. Closing date isn't for another two weeks though, so I assume no interview until late February.

Life with Tony G

I'm playing all my poker on TonyG at the moment (mainly because they gave a fabulous first deposit bonus). The traffic is fairly low, certainly at European playing times, so you tend to see the same people at the table. Generally its fairly friendly, though of course you get the odd idiot.

The main downside of the low traffic is the difficulty in getting a full table at the SNGs; however, today I managed to get into a $2 SNG. I know, I know, last of the big spenders, but, it was the only game in town. Actually I really enjoyed it, and I won, which always helps. When it came to the final two, I had 2500, my opponent had 11000. He tried to use his big stack to push me around, but I made the goods cards pay, and he made some loose calls. After about 20 hands the situation was completely reversed, and it was all over in my favour, and I'm $8 richer!

I spend most of my time in the micro limit cash games, where my fortunes vary, but unfortunately the trend is slowly downwards, though I am on a (at the moment) short term up-turn. Hopefully the traffic will increase, and I can play a few more SNGs.

Bible Quiz

I've just taken a quiz about the bible. Amazingly I scored 85%!

You know the Bible 85%!

Wow! You are awesome! You are a true Biblical scholar, not just a hearer but a personal reader! The books, the characters, the events, the verses - you know it all! You are fantastic!

Ultimate Bible Quiz
Create MySpace Quizzes

More Google Raving

I've been using Google Reader for nearly a week, and I love it. The latest thing I've discovered is the ability to "share" posts I'm interested in, and, more to the point, I can include them in this blog.

So, at the top left, is snippets of articles I've decided to share with you. At the moment there's just one, but given the number of blogs I read, I'm sure that will soon grow. You can set the number of posts you want to show - I'm leaving it at the default of 5 for now.

Google Reader

I've been using Newsgator for my blog reading for some time now. It does the job I want, but I've just been reading someone raving about Google Reader

It really takes blog aggregation to a whole new level. A beautiful clean user interface, combined with a fabulous little button to put on your toolbar, that allows you to step through the blogs you've subscribed to, actually visiting the sites with new posts. So, you get the full experience of the blog as the blogger intended, if the blog has a hit counter, then the blogger gets a more accurate picture of how many readers they have, and you can few the blogs with unread posts without having to visit them all to check. Everybody wins!

Seizing the Moment

It turns out the General Manager's vacancy does exist. Don't know what it pays, but I'm sure it will be more than I'm on now. I've told my line manager about it, and he's been really supportive. I've also spoke to one of our new bosses, and he's also encouraging me to apply. Just got to get my CV sorted out. When you've worked at the same place for 20 years its not something you often think about.

Dropping The Hammer

Magnus Petersson dropped the hammer in style, during the final table of the EPT event in Copenhagen. He went all in with 27o. To his horror he was called, with A9. A flop of 2-5-Q gave him a pair (just!) and a king and a jack following failed to help his opponent, doubling Petersson up and crippling his opponent.

Petersson went on to win the event.

A World of Opportunities?

Work has suddenly become very interesting. Not sure yet if it is in a good way or a bad way.

The company I work for has just been bought out by a PLC. We have gone from being a successful independent company to a small part of a large national company. The major shareholders have left, and the new owners are moving in.

We don't know how the management of our site will be organised. Apparently every other site is run by a General Manager. I've got my eye on that position. I think I'm the best person for the job. However, in the mean time, I have heard that there is a vacancy for a General Manager at another site, close enough to home that I won't have to relocate. It seems to me that, though I'd rather be General Manager where I am, this probably won't be decided for a while, and I have to grasp the opportunity at the other site. Even if I don't get the job, it raises my profile, and notifies our new lords and masters of my ambition.

Having worked here for 20 years, working my way up the greasy pole, it would be quite a wrench to leave; though, in some ways, it is probably easier to take on a position like that where you are not known, where you haven't been promoted over the heads of your colleagues. It has happened to me throughout my career. I am now over many people I used to work alongside, or who I even reported to. Most of them don't have a problem with it; a few always will.

Petition Against Software Patents

British citizens, sign up here on a petition to the Prime Minister to stop software patents.

Donkey

I've just blown 25$ buy-in over a period of 10 minutes. I played terribly. As an example, I knew the guy had caught a straight on the river, but I still called his big raise with my two pair! What was I doing? I just seemed to be in self-destruct mode.

Rebuys

I don't like rebuy tournaments.

Unfortunately this afternoon I wasn't paying attention and signed up for a $5 rebuy tournament on TonyG.

I hate the looseness of play that rebuys encourage, and the fact that you make a good call, bust someone out, and they buy straight back in again. As this was a guaranteed £150 prize pool with 12 entries, the rebuys did nothing for the final money, just dragged out the whole tournament.

Then comes the break, and the add-ons. You've really got to go for the add-on, because everybody else left in does. So you maintain the status quo.

However, despite my dislike of rebuys, I came second in this tournament, without having to rebuy myself. $34 prize, so a decent profit for an hours play. I might have won it, but I was running out of time towards the end, so I went all in with a marginal hand and lost most of my stack. I then doubled up 3 times, but finally busted out.

Which Superhero Are You?

Your results:
You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man 75% Superman 55% The Flash 55% Green Lantern 55% Robin 50% Hulk 50% Iron Man 50% Supergirl 43% Batman 40% Catwoman 40% Wonder Woman 23%

You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

You can't alway get what you want

Both the WPBT and Pokerworks have announced that they intend to run Blogger tournaments on Sunday evenings. Well, Sunday evening if you are in the States. Monday morning if you are in Europe. I'd love to play, but when you've got work on Monday, starting a poker tournament at 2:30am is a non-starter. I could just about deal with a 7:30 EST (12:30am GMT) start. I probably wouldn't be playing for long anyway!

My play continues to vary in quality. I am still making some stupid calls. I also seem to be going through a long period of being totally card dead. It's guaranteed at the moment that If I'm holding AQ suited I get a flop of K rag rainbow. But I shouldn't really blame the cards - I'm not making the most of what I get. Need to keep my concentration up.

Thud

Got "Thud", the latest Terry Pratchett paperback for Christmas. Finished it by the 30th. Actually read most of it by the end of Boxing Day. Its another book featuring the City Watch, which are far and away my favorite Discworld books.

Mr Vimes is now a family man, and without fail, must be home by 6pm to read to his son. In amongst this he has to deal with the aniversary of the Battle of Koom Valley, which is stirring up all the dwarfs and trolls in the city.

I won't spoil the story for anyone (if anyone is reading this!) but would just say - buy this book now. Its another fabulous Discworld story.

Round and Round

My poker play seems to be horribly cyclical - I play a particular format, I have some repeated success at it, and then I start to lose!

Trying to look at it dispassionately, I think I have put my finger on the problem - Confidence. As I gain confidence, my play seems to loosen up - the tight-aggressive play that brought me success in the first place goes out of the window - I see more flops. call more raises, get involved more. Of course receiving some fracking awful cards like I did last night never helps, and people calling my KK all-in (flop 752 rainbow), they show 8 10 off suit, and turn and rive bring 6 9! But enough of blaming the cards - When I'm playing well I can make something of crap cards, when I'm playing too loose, the best cards are useless, as I devalue them by playing too many marginal hands.

Sit 'N' Go Format

After mixed results at the single table SNGs, I have been playing two table six handed SNGs on CD Poker (part of the same network as Titan, amongst others), and have been rather pleased with the results - played 6, won 4, placed second in 1. Real shame about the second place, because there is a jackpot paid out for winning 4 in a row! The short handed games seem to suit me in tournaments, whilst in ring games I seem to do better with a full table. Because there are 12 entries, the prize money is worthwhile.

I have modified my SNG playing style, making use of tips in postings by Joanne and Gary. What I was particularly pleased with in these games was my heads up play. In the past, I've alternated between limping and all-in. In these games if I entered a hand it was with a raise, if I had nothing worth playing I folded my small blind. As Gary says in his post, eventually the opponents get frustrated and throw everything at you, and you snap them off. Of course if I'm running short of time then I'll push with any half decent hand and hope to get lucky - whilst winning is good, the money for second place makes it worth my while anyway.

More Ubuntu Success

I've installed the 64 bit version of Edgy on my laptop, and have got wireless networking going using the BCM43xx drivers, along with wifi-radar. The network is connecting during boot-up.

Books for Geeks

Wil has blogged about an article he has written entitled "Five Books Every Geek Should Read".

His 5 books are:

I Robot - Isaac Asimov
Neuromancer - William Gibson
Ringworld - Larry Niven
The Hacker Crackdown - Bruce Sterling
The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

I haven't read Neuromancer or The Hacker Crackdown, but the other three would certainly be in my top 5 books for Geeks. My other two must have books would be:

Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham (1951)

narrated in the first person, the book opens with Bill Masen waking up in hospital, his eyes covered after an operation, to find that a strange meteor shower has blinded the majority of the Earth's population. He emerges from the hospital to find society has disintegrated overnight, as people struggle to survive without site. This has left them prey to a recently discovered plant, the Triffid, which can walk and has a deadly sting. It had been cultivated for its oil, and by many people as a curiosity, with its sting regularly docked.

Apart from its references to the Soviet Union, suspected of genetically creating the triffids, this book still seems fresh, and could easily be taking place today.

This was one of the first science fiction books I read; it came in a compilation of sci-fi books, which also included I Robot and The Demolished Man.

Also by John Wyndham - The Midwich Cuckoos - all the women are impregnated with strange blond haired, golden eyed children, possessed of mental powers; The Chrysalids - a post apocalyptic world, where mutations are common, and are not tolerated. Those found with mutations are driven out, and the women are sterilized. A group of children find they have mental powers, and eventually, these abilities are discovered, and the children flee.

Dune - Frank Herbert (1965)

Set far in the future, on the desert world of Arrakis, the only place in the known universe where the spice melange can be found. Prized for its life prolonging properties, and also for giving starship navigators the gift of prescience, allowing them to safely guide their vast ships through the folds of space.

As part of an interplanetary feud, Duke Leto and his family are forced to move from their native home to Arrakis. Responsible for gathering the valuable spice, they must combat huge desert storms, giant sandworms, and the plots of their sworn enemies, House Harkonnen. The story follows Paul, son of the Duke, as his father is killed, and he is forced to seek refuge amongst the native Fremen. Brought into the vast story are politics, religion and planetary ecology, as Paul leads the Fremen against the Harkonnens, and eventually, the Emperor, ruler of the galaxy's feudal society.

Herbert wrote several sequels, but none of them match the huge scope of the original book.

Others

Other books on the shortlist - 2001 A Space Odyssey by Arthur C Clarke (once I'd read the book I could make sense of the film!), The Book of The New Sun by Gene Wolfe, and the Elric books by Michael Moorcock.

Back to Ubuntu

After the long wait for Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper) the release of 6.10 (Edgy) seems to have come round in no time, bringing raptures to the faithful. Eager to prove my worthiness, I rushed to the Ubuntu website within minutes of the release being announced (multiple times) on Planet Ubuntu.

A short one hour download later (isn't broadband great? I remember downloading Corel Linux over dial-up, it took a full day, good job we had a dedicated phone line at work ;-) ) I was clutching the blessed CD, and rushed to my desktop machine, ready to destroy the foul works of the evil one, and replace it with the Holy Ubuntu (actually I'm dual booting with Windows 2000, couldn't bring myself to delete it entirely, Party Poker doesn't seem to work with Wine).

A very quick installation later (you installed Windows XP lately? What a drag!) I was looking at the new, improved Ubuntu Gnome login screen. Slight change of colours, otherwise, business as usual. Log on, and the usual orange and brown colour scheme, tweaked slightly from the last release, is there.

First order of business, the internet. I access the web via a wireless access point, using a Linksys USB adapter. This had worked easily with Ubuntu Breezy, but with Dapper they completely fumbled the ball on wireless, and to be honest, after a frustrating effort trying to get wireless working on Dapper, I gave up. Initially I thought I was going to have the same problems. Edgy decided to install Prism54 drivers for my wireless adapter. Technically it is correct, it is a Prism chipset, but there appears to be so much messing to make them work, and quite a low chance of success, that I wasn't prepared to persist with them. So, blacklist the modules relating to the Prism drivers, and get cracking with Ndiswrapper. After a bit of fiddling, the familiar wlan0 appears, but no joy in connecting to my wireless access point. Then I remembered that I had become a bit more paranoid, and was using WPA encryption on the wireless network.

Wireless security is a huge weakness of Ubuntu (and I suppose, most Linux distributions). With Windows XP, it just works. Everything you need for WPA is there when you install your network card. Not so with Ubuntu. You have, to my knowledge, 3 choices. All three depend upon WPA Supplicant. Option 1 is to fire up a terminal, and configure WPA Supplicant by hand, editing the appropriate configuration files etc. Sorry guys, this isn't for me. Whilst I am quite happy to use the command line, and frequently it is the most efficient way to do something, I want a nice GUI interface for my wireless settings. This leaves two options - the Gnome Network Manager or WiFi-Radar. Both of these are in the repositories, but neither of them are installed by default. Why not! Come on, with the huge uptake in wireless, there needs to be a decision taken at Ubuntu to have a standard wireless security tool and make it industrial strength, so it Just WorksTM

I tried the Network Manager first. Grabbed it from the repositories, and a little network icon appears on the bar at the top right. Right clicking on this gives me options for setting up the network, including WPA key. After entering all the required information, I am asked to create a password for my keyring, where the WPA key will be stored. Here's the main problem with Network Manager. It is part of Gnome. You have no network connection until you are logged into Gnome and have entered your keyring password. You screw your X Windows setup, you haven't got an internet connection to find help, or to download fixes.

Having decided I wasn't happy with this, I moved along to Wifi-Radar. Once again, installed it from the repositories; no icon on the toolbar this time, but the program was amongst the entries on the menu. Starting it up, I am presented with a number of options. Looks pretty straightforward - network name (ssid) mode (auto, managed, adhoc etc, I chose auto), channel (auto again), key (you'd think this was your WPA key wouldn't you? Well, its not. I assume this is for WEP), security (open or restricted, I chose restricted). Then you come to a line which says "No WPA." Clicking on this changes it to "WPA Options" and you are presented with one option - Driver. I entered ndiswrapper in here, but some googling told me this was wrong, I needed to enter "wext" in here, which apparently is "Generic Wireless Extensions." There are also options for DHCP and Connection commands. I left these alone.

Saving my settings, I was delighted to see my wireless network appearing in the main window. Click on connect however, and I get nowhere. By running Wifi-Radar from a terminal, I see that it is looking for a WPA supplicant configuration file. More googling. I come up with the following configuration file (/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf - use your favourite editor, I use Vi, but YMMV. You'll need to run the editor with sudu).

ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant

#group of users allowed to control the interface
ctrl_interface_group=admin

#network options
network={
ssid="your network name here"
scan_ssid=1
key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
psk="super secret password here"
}


Back to Wifi-Radar, click on connect, and after a short delay, I'm connected!

Now the main advantage of Wifi-Radar over Network Manager is, in theory that is starts at boot time as a daemon, so you don't have to enter passwords once X Windows starts, and you have a network connection independent of X Windows. I've yet to see this. After I've logged on, when I go into the Wifi-Radar gui, the connection hasn't been made; click on connect, and its there. It may be down to the Linksys adapter I am using. It is version 1, and often didn't connect first time under Windows 2000 either.

I'm going to persist with Wifi-Radar, but this issue of wireless networking, and in particular, wireless security, must be addressed if Ubuntu is going to tempt more people into defecting from Microsoft. The average user is not going to bother with all the messing about I've just described, when Windows Just Works!

Party Over?

Over at the Tao of Poker Pauly is lamenting the withdrawal of Party Poker from the US. As he says the fishing was great there.

But, being a privileged European, still welcome at Party (and thanks to them giving me some free money to play with, now playing there), the fishing has got even better. The standard of play in the US must be better than in the rest of the world, because there now are even more fish at every table. The withdrawal of our American brethren has just concentrated the Eurofish in one place for us. I can log on for half an hour, and, playing at the 0.10/0.25 NLHE tables (I know, I'm pathetic, but I am working up the limits!) I can be $20 up without very little effort. Of course, you are still vulnerable to the bad beats, idiots calling your set down to the river with King high and then they river a straight, but, overall, I'm winning.

I'm going to transfer my Mansion bankroll over to Pokerstars - I like the atmosphere and interface on 'stars, though the players are better than Mansion. I'm going to continue to dabble with PKR. Its got a fabulous looking, animated interface, with highly customizable avatars, and I think its great the way the view swings from player to player as they act, with appropriate gestures, selectable emotes and tricks with chips. I know its nothing to do with the actual playing of poker, but it looks great. Population is extremely low at the moment, but I'm sure as word gets around it will increase, and its the sort of site that will pull in the fish. You do need a decent PC to run it though; all that animation takes a lot of resources.

Adventures in Omaha

I tried playing Omaha on PKR last night (more on PKR later). Boy do I suck at Omaha. Due to the low population on PKR, I was playing heads-up, so of course I never got a break from the blinds. Within half an hour I had donked off nearly all of my massive $2.50 buy-in. I did manage to stem the bleeding, and fought my way back up to $1, to achieve a level of respectability. It is such a different game to Hold-em - A pair is just not good enough. I was regularly getting beaten with boats, flushes and straights.

Haloscan Comments and Trackback

I've got Haloscan comments working now, thanks to this blog posting.

I have also been able to apply the same principle to get Trackback working, by adding the following lines after the code given for the comments (replace XXX with your Haloscan username):



<script src='http://www.haloscan.com/load/XXX' type='text/javascript'> </script>
<a expr:href='"javascript:HaloScanTB(" + "\"" + data:post.id + "\"" + ");"' target='_self'>
<script type='text/javascript'>postCountTB('<data:post.id/>');</script>
</a>

Bankroll Building

16th August since last post. Really doesn't seem that long.

Anyway, been playing Poker on Mansion recently. I invested a massive $20 to start with, and, after dipping down to $10, I'm up to nearly $100. There seems to be plenty of fish around - all I have to do is wait for the premium hand, raise it up and some idiot calls. As an example, Holding a pair of Kings, I raised pre-flop, and got 4 callers, get a King on the flop, so I put in a pot sized raise, and get 2 callers. Board pairs on the turn, so now I've got a full house. Another pot sized raise, 1 caller. I go all in on the river, and once again he calls. Showdown - he's got the pair on the board plus an ace kicker! I take his entire stack, he rebuys and comes back for more.

Blogger Beta

I've just updated to the new Blogger beta. At first glance it seems to make customizing the blog much easier, with sections able to be dragged around to re-order them. However, I am having trouble with the comments section (not that I get many) as my Haloscan code has been wiped out by the new template, and at the moment HTML editing is not available, so I can't recreate it.

EDIT: Got the Blogger comments working, there is now a separate setting in the Posts section of the layout, as well as the global setting.

That little voice...

You ever play a hand, and that little voice in the back of your head is saying to you - "He's got the Ace, fold" but you ignore it, and call him down to the river, and he's got the ace? Well thats what I did today, and it cost me.

Climbing the Slippery Slope

After a modicum of success playing short handed on Pokerstars, I have decided to move up, to the dizzy heights of 0.05/0.10 NL Hold'em! I'm back to playing full tables again, and have , in the last 3 days, managed to turn $20 into $50, and had some really enjoyable games at the same time. My recent record in SNGs now sits at 1st, 17, 1st, 16th. To be honest, my heart wasn't really in the last one, but it got me the one FPP I needed to get my bonus.

I've been giving Pokertracker a try this week, and it's been quite useful. It has shown that my BB wins per hundred hands is still the same at the higher level as it was at the lower ones, so I don't appear to be out of my depth yet.

Turbo Charged

Maybe I do like Turbo after all. Played 3, won 2 (busted out 17 out of 18 in the other, making a stupid call). I seemed to find the right tight-aggressive balance, gained some fold credit, stole some blinds and went all in with the right cards (and of course got the luck at the right time).

Here's the last hand - 3 of us left, blinds 400/800, I'm on the button with 15000, SB has 10000, short stack sitting out and put all in by posting big blind. I'm dealt Ac 8h, and go all in, SB calls, and shows Ad 7h. Then a flop that puts me in the lead, but puts SB on a straight draw, 5c 4c 8s. Turn increases my lead, 8d. Prayed that there was no 6 on the river; no, its Kh, so a set for me, and I take the game.

I think the fewer players there are, the weaker my game is, so I'm pleased to have won these two. Maybe I should play some short handed tables to improve in that area.

Vive la France??

Just got back from a family holiday in France, and I have slightly revised my opinion of the French. It seems they are not all totally arrogant. Most of them that I have met have been polite, helpful, and tolerant of my meagre French (perhaps because their English is equally meagre!). Most notably, we got on very well with the family camping on the next pitch, each of us getting by with a mixture of English and French, and I think all of us improving their understanding of the others' language as we went along. This Entente Cordiale culminated in a game of Boules on the final night, which the French obviously take very seriously.

What really astonished me was the price of wine. I could buy a perfectly reasonable Corbierre for just over €1. I've brought 20 bottles of various wines back with me, at a total cost of around £20!.

Office 2007 Beta

I’m writing this post using Word 2007, part of Microsoft’s flagship office suite. This is the second Beta release, and it’s my first look at the software.

The first thing I have to say is that Microsoft are taking a big gamble. They have totally overhauled the user interface. Gone are the familiar menus at the top of the screen – File, Edit etc. These are replaced by 8 tabs:

• Home, which brings up a selection of buttons relating to basic text editing, such as fonts, emphasis, alignment, styles and search/replace.
  
• Insert, where you will find the shapes that used to be on the drawing toolbar, tables, objects, page breaks etc. Here you will also find headers and footers, Word Art, and the equation editor.
  
• Page Layout, which is fairly self explanatory, and contains all the options which used to be in the Page Setup dialog box, and the paragraph formatting.
  
• References – Here are table of contents, footnotes, citations, captions and indexes.
  
• Mailings covers mailing labels, envelope printing and mail merge.
  
• The Review tab is all about tracking changes, adding comments and proofing.
  
• View has the controls for different page views, options for showing rulers, the zoom level and window arrangement.
  
• The last tab is Add-Ins, which is where, remarkably enough, you control any add-ins.
  

Notice that nowhere have I mentioned opening files. It took me 2 minutes to find the open file dialogue. It is cunningly hidden in a dropdown menu that is opened by clicking on the Office logo at the top left!

Looking at this completely new interface, the first thing that occurred to me was that Microsoft have removed a major barrier to switching to OpenOffice.org. People are afraid of change. Replace Office 2003 with OpenOffice.org and you will get complaints about not being able to find things. You’ll get far more complaints with Office 2007. OpenOffice.org bears far more resemblance to past versions of Microsoft Office than this does.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying there is anything wrong with the new interface, just that it is so radically different that your average user will take some considerable time to get used to it. In an SME, you may find the IT support staff find it simpler to give everyone OpenOffice.org than deal with the fall-out from this upgrade.

So, what else has changed? Well for a start, the default font is now Calibri, a nice, clean looking sans-serif font, replacing the horribly old fashioned Times New Roman. Also, it wouldn’t be an office upgrade without a new file format. The default now bears the extension .docx, and is Microsoft’s OpenXML format. You can still use the Office 2003 file structure though.

A new option is to create a PDF (OOo got there first), but this is no great shakes as there were plenty of free tools to do this already, it just makes it slightly more convenient. Also, creating blog posts, such as this. Word will link to a variety of blog sites, enabling easy uploading of posts. I’ll find out shortly how well that works!

What really prompted me to download this Beta was the news that Microsoft are working on Open Document compatibility. Prompted by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts plan to move document storage across to Open Document format, Microsoft has been forced to embrace the competing standard. There is a plugin available to download from Sourceforge, which is fully open source. At the moment it only seems to support importing, rather than exporting. The option is there now, but not selectable.

So far I’ve only looked briefly at Word. I don’t use Powerpoint much, but I will be looking more closely at Excel and Access in the future.

Poker Sites Compared.

I've now played on three different sites, Pokerstars, Titan Poker and Party Poker. The difference between the three is very pronounced.

The first one I joined was Pokerstars. Until this weeks update, the interface was very basic, but, I like that - No annoying avatars, no distractions. Even after the update, the interface is still very clean, you just get some skins to customize the table and the cards. You can now resize the window. Theres a quite a lot of chat between players, most of it good natured, and I find the standard of play is pretty good. Buy-ins for SNGs and tournaments start at $1, and in the cash games start at £0.01/0.02, so you can get going fairly cheaply.

Over at Party Poker, you've got chairs and avatars (though you can switch the avatars off). The window isn't resizable. The lowest buy-in is a huge $6, and cash games start at $0.10/$0.25, so it can get expensive. There's very little chat that I've seen. The best thing about Party is the standard of play seems significantly lower than 'Stars.

The last site I joined was Titan, and that was simply because I had a code for $50. I've played a bit loosely here, as I'm playing for free, so to speak. More chairs and avatars. There is a single button to click to go all in, which can be dangerous, but this can be switched off. The standard of player here seems to vary much more widely. The thing I really don't like about this site is it seems underpopulated - I have sometimes waited half an hour for a 20 player SNG to fill up. On 'Stars or Party, this would take no more than 5 minutes. Buy-ins and limits start low like Pokerstars.

So, where do I prefer to play? Probably Pokerstars - it seems more friendly than either of the others, there is more choice of games than Party Poker, and a better population than Titan. I'll just have to keep improving my game.

A dog's best friend

They say a dog is man's best friend, but here is somebody who gives back just as much.

Pokerstars Re-sizes

At last, the promised upgrade to Pokerstars client software is here, with re-sizable windows! No longer is the table stuck filling just half of that lovely 19" TFT, or, if you are multi-tabling, you can now tile your windows, so you can see all of both tables at once.
Also, you can now download new themes, from a nice basic "Hyper-Simple" theme with different coloured card backgrounds for each suit, to the "Renaissance theme", having your card table stood on a tesselated floor, with engraved name plates for each player.

When I really should have folded...

For a change of scenery, I've opened an account on Party Poker. Iggy should get some commission. Played two single table SNGs, placed second both times. I did get particularly lucky on one hand, and I really upset the guy on the other end of the bad beat, but, when your name is Call Me Please, what do you expect?

I was dealt JKd in late position, blinds were 40/80, Seat 4 is in big blind, UTG folds, seat 7 calls, seat 8 folds, 9 raises to 85, 10 folds, then I raise to 130. Seats 2 & 3 calls, 7 folds, 9 calls.

Flop is Ad 4s 9h. I test the water with a raise of 150, and get two callers. Turn is Qd. It's checked to me. Pause. I need 10d for a royal flush, any diamond for a flush, any 10 for a straight. Do I go on? I raise 200. One folds, then a raise of over 600. I put him on a pair of aces. All I've got is ace high with king kicker. I should fold. What the hell, I've never had a royal flush, so go for it. The river is..... Ts. No royal flush, but an ace high straight isn't too bad at this point. I'm sure I've got the best hand. I go all in. The other guy can't believe I've called his last raise with just a draw, and so probably puts me on a pair. He calls. And shows Q9c, for two pair, I show my straight, and he starts to rant. I double up, he's left with a stack of 40, and goes out two hands later. Not a happy guy.

So, after two SNGs, two second places, and I'm 40% up on my initial deposit. It can't possibly last. And why second? Why didn't I go on to win? Because I'm impatient. I can't be doing with all the fencing involved in heads-up play. In the first match, I ended up all in with a pair of jacks and a flop of 2 3 K, and lost to a pair of kings, second match I really ran out of patience, went all in with A6 and ran into pocket aces. Maybe when I've got more time, I'll hold out for the win.

Bursting the Bubble

I was the bubble boy in a 5 table SNG yesterday. I'd played solid throughout, was 4th in chips on the final table, and was dealt AKs. I went all in, the other guy turned over AQo, and the flop was 2h Ah Qd. Shit! but still a chance of the flush or a King. Everything crossed. Turn is 3c, oh well, there goes the flush; river is Jh, So my pair of aces goes down to Aces and Queens. Out in 8th place. I should have been more patient, and waited for someone else to bust out first, so at least I would get my money back, but couldn't resist Big Slick!

?*&£$ Ace King again!

Played a freeroll Limit Hold'em tournament on Pokerstars. Twice I had KQo, twice I flopped a set of kings, twice I lost to AK.

Croatia see yellow, not red

Looks like English referee Graham Poll will be heading home early. He's obviously a cricket fan, who feels Australia need extra handicaps. It seems his rules are that its two yellow cards for a sending off for Australia, but it takes three yellows for sending off if you're playing against them!

Actually I'm quite pleased to see Australia get through to the next round. I thought they played really well against Brazil, and were definitely the better team in the first half. Brazil, on the other hand, have been disapointing throughout. Whilst they beat Japan by a margin yesterday, they once again played poorly, and really don't deserve to win the World Cup on present form. Mind you, neither do England. Both teams need to buck their ideas up for ther knockout stage.

Ubuntu Dapper Wireless Network

I have recently upgraded my home PC from Ubuntu Breezy to Dapper. To make sure everything went smoothly, I did a completely clean install - reformatted the hard disk and started from scratch. Since then I have had a nightmare with my wireless network card. Its a Linksys 54g usb card. It worked perfectly under Breezy using Ndiswrapper. Dapper is a different story.

First of all, the networking utility told me I had a wireless card on eth1, but nothing was working. Looked in the device manager, and checked the loaded modules, and found it was trying to use a prism54 driver. Quick check on the forums (on a different computer obviously) and found I needed to remove this, and then use ndiswrapper. Ok, rmmodded the appropriate drivers, set up ndiswrapper and ........ nothing. Unplugged usb cable, plugged in again, card detected. Used Network Manager to set up WPA, and working. Until next time I rebooted. Went through whole rigmarole again, working connection again. Used the blacklist file to stop the wrong drivers working. Everything ok until next reboot, no network again, and this time, I cannot get it to install. The network utility says wlan0 is there and active, but network manager says there is no network!

If I don't find a solution soon, I will just go back to Breezy.

World Blogger Championship, Part the Second

Well, its now the morning after, and i can reflect on last nights tournament. Overall, I'm fairly pleased with my performance. I finished ahead of 95% of the field, and the players behind me included Joanne Lutynec, Wil Wheaton and the Blogfather.

I did feel sorry for Wil. The bounty on him was a fleece, a shirt and a hat, and everyone (including me) wanted to get their hands on it. This resulted in players really going after him, and it looked like he had to play it very tight as a consequence. He went out placed 342.

I was trying to play fairly tight myself. I've had a habit recently of making some bad calls, and playing hands I should have folded straight away. Overall I saw the flop on 19% of hands, and I won 97% of the showdowns I faced. In the early stages I must have earned some fold credit, because I went though a series of hands where ePublishverytime I raised, everybody folded on me. Stealing the blinds is all very well, but this got a bit frustrating, so I limped in on a few hands for a change, and had some success that way.

I think there were two hands that lead to my downfall. The first I think I played correctly, the second, not so good.

I had over 26000 in chips, and was UTG+1, blinds 1600. I was dealt 9s 9h. UTG raises 9346 and is all in. I call. Everyone else folds. UTG has 2s 2d. Looking good. Flop comes 47Q rainbow. Still in the driving seat. Here comes the turn. 2c! Damn! River is a 3, and I'm down nearly 10000.

On the second occasion I had worked my way back up to 22000, blinds still 1600.and was dealt QTd in late position. It checks round, and I test the water with a raise of 1600. BB (who has 48000) raises 8000, and like a fool I call. Flop is 4c 2d 2h, and BB raises 11200. Too rich for me , and I fold, having again lost nearly 10000.

Back down to 12000, and it was all downhill from then on. Blinds went up, I didn't get any decent hands, and the blinds and antes eroded my stack. Down to 8000, I went all in with a pair of 2s. Got one caller, who showed AQ. There was a queen on the flop, and nothing for me. Out in 112th place.


So, after three and a half hours play, I'm finished, with nothing to show for it. Actually, thats not really true. I had three and a half hours of fun poker, where I was generally happy with the way I played, and finished in the top 5% . If I could have resisted that call with QT, maybe I could have won and Ipod, but who knows, the next hand I could have gone all in with AA, and been busted by trips. I just need to try and carry on in the same vein, and hopefully success will follow.

World Blogger Championship

Its after midnight, and I just finished in 112th place, all in with pocket 2's, caller had AQ, and the flop came 3 8 Q, no sign of a 2, so I was out.

I don't suppose 112th out of over 2000 is too bad, but its frustrating to get within 60 places of the prizes.

Money, its a gas

Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash.

I've switched away from SNG's and am playing cash games, in an effort to gradually rebuild my bankroll. My tournament game has gone to to the dogs recently. I just can't seem to get started. Not good with the Pokerstars Bloggers Championship this Saturday. At least its not costing me anything to enter that.

With the cash games I can just dip in and out, if its not going for me on a particular table, I take my money and move on. If I'm having a bad day with a SNG, well, thats my entry money gone.

Turbo or Not Turbo, that is the question

I usually play in 9 or 18 player turbo sit'n'go, because I don't often have time for a long game. However, in those games a bad break or a bad call early on can leave you with no time to recover. You soon find the blinds wiping out your stack. Tonight I played a standard 45 player SNG. I really enjoyed it - I had time to suss out the other players, had a couple of bad breaks, but recovered to finish 6th, so, I was in pocket on the game - not by a lot, but at the moment I'm grateful for whatever I get!

Diminishing Returns

My Pokerstars bankroll is shrinking. Over the last week I've only managed to make the money in about 20% of the games I've played. And finishing third or fourth isn't good enough at that level of success.

I've been trying to analyse where I'm going wrong, and I think it simply comes to chasing hands too much. I generally have a great record at showdowns, but every so often I let someone suck me in with a series of fairly small raises, which add up to a significant part of my stack, and that straight or flush never materialises. I convince myself that the hand is worth playing cos hey, I've got a pair already. Yeh, a pair of 8's. Not much good when the other guy has pocket kings!

I need to curb this tendency, or my bankroll is going to continue to diminish.

Back

Got back from France this afternoon. It was too short a trip for the driving involved. On the trip there I got two hours sleep over a 36 hour period. Slightly better on the way back, but not much better. I had barely recovered from the trip there when it was time to return home. We're probably going again for a fortnight at the end of July, so that will be more bearable.

I did buy 8 bottles of wine while I was there, paying no more than €3 a bottle!

Bon Voyage

Off to France this evening. Well, actually, we are sailing at 4am tomorrow morning, but we've got a 6 hour drive to Dover first, then a two hour ferry crossing, then a 5 hour drive across France. I must be mad! Just me and the kids, visiting friends who have just moved there.

The children have had extra-curricular french lessons at school, so I'll get the chance to see if it was money well spent. We've got a shopping list that I'm going to try to get the kids to buy in the local shops. Well, its 20 years since I last studied French, and they did it only last week - they've got to be better at it than me, right?

Infrequent Play II

My previous comment about my success declining with lack of play has been proved true. Having played several SNG's in a row, I finished on a run of 3 third places and a second, making it a profitable night. I need to try and find time to keep playing, as success seems to breed success.

Pokerstars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker

I have registered to play in the

PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

This Online Poker Tournament is a No Limit Texas Holdem

event exclusive to Bloggers.

Registration code: 7330476

Well, I've registered, lets hope I get in. Posting has been a little infrequent here whilst my daughter has been ill. It'll be great to play in a big tournament like this.

Joys of Parenthood II

Back in March I wrote about the problems we were having with my daughter - irrational behaviour not sleeping etc.

Since then we never seem to be away from the hospital, with several appointments with the consultant paediatrician. We've had two EEGs and an MRI scan, and are none the wiser. On a positive note, the irrational behaviour has greatly reduced. We still have problems with getting her to sleep, but the situation is much better.

I'm taking the kids to France this week with a 10 hour drive, so I hope the improvement continues!

Infrequent Play

I've been playing Hold'em less frequently than usual. And my performance as suffered as a result. When I was playing every night, I was certain to get to the last 3 of sit'n'go's at least once a night, and usually two or three times. At the moment I've been playing once a week, and I keep making stupid calls. I think I'm too keen to be involved in the action. When I'm playing all the time I find it much easier to fold. I need to get back to playing more, and start rebuilding my bankroll.

Lady Luck is smiling...

and that is very dangerous. If I'm not careful I'll convince myself I'm a good poker player. I've won three sit'n'go tournaments in a row. Tonight I got called lucky when, holding QTs, the flop came QTx, I went all in, and someone called me with AQ. No aces for him, so I take the pot.

First Victory

I just won my first poker tournament - it was a $1.75 sit'n'go on Pokerstars. Not exactly the WSOP, but I've never done better than second before, and usually end up 4th or 5th. I just can't seem to work through to the last two. I was helped by some very nice cards though - a run of JJ, QQ, QQ busted three oponents one after another, to get me to the last four. At that point I had more chips than the other three put together.

Once we got down to heads-up, it got quite cagey, lots of pre-flop folding, with the chips generally around 20,000 to me, 6000 to him. The decisive hand finally came - I had QhTc, not fantastic cards, but quite playable at this point. He went all in, and I thought, what the hell, if he's got a middle pair I've got a good chance, I can afford to lose, and its 11:30pm and I could do with wrapping this up.

I call; the cards are shown - he didn't have a middle pair, just Ac 5h. but, if neither of us improved. he'd win the pot.

The flop comes 9s Jc 8s. I do a double take, and my opponent says gg. I'd flopped a straight, and there was no way he could come back from that.

Ubuntu saves the day

I have just spent the entire weekend fixing my brother-in-law's laptop. I don't know what he did to it, but he managed to get Windows XP in a state where it was impossible to run any programs, access the control panel or set up a network connection (actually, I have an idea what he has done, judging by some the the videos I found, but that's another story). Not a problem I hear you say (well, I don't hear you, because no ones reading this), just reach for the restore disk, and start again.

However, he had lots of work related data on the laptop, not backed up, that he didn't want to lose. So, here's this laptop, can't burn anything to CD, can't copy anything across a network, and disk probably full of virii.

That's my cue to reach for an Ubuntu live CD. 15 minutes later I have Ubuntu running on the laptop, with a wireless network connection, the offending Windows drive mounted and shared using NFS, and the data flowing across the network onto my Ubuntu machine. Moving 20Gb of data across a wireless network with NFS wouldn't be my first choice of how to do a backup, but beggars can't be choosers.

Having backed up the data, I wiped the hard-disk and re-installed XP (sorry, but he insisted), but I also set aside some space for Ubuntu, so the next time he screws it up (and there will be a next time), I just boot into Linux and get on with it.


Technorati Tags: ubuntu, linux live CD

The Dapper Drake

Lured by the promise of Xgl I have uprgraded my Ubuntu distribution to Dapper, which is still in testing. I got Xgl to work, and it looks great. Unfortunately my computer started crashing regularly, usually when I access the internet. At first I blamed Xgl, and went back to vanilla X, but the crashes still happened - a full system freeze, only sorted by a hard reboot.

I have now pinned the problem down to my wireless network card (which worked perfectly with Breezy). If I unplug it, no crash. Unfortunately a PC without an internet connection isn't a lot of use to me.

The network card is a Linksys USB card, installed via Ndiswrapper. It looks like I'll have to download the latest version ndiswrapper, and compile it from source. However, downloading may be difficult if my network card keeps crashing the PC!

The Joys of Parenthood

We're having an absolute nightmare with my daughter. I came in on Wednesday night and found her climbing the walls. She appeared to be scared of a packet of sweets, she jumped at the slightest touch, was convinced we were cross with her, and were going to smack her (she's never been smacked in her life). We were ready to head off to the hospital, but she went off with her twin brother and he seemed to calm her down.

We've now got an appointment with the consultant paediatrician. I really hope he can diagnose the problem. The GP says there is a form of epilepsy which can cause hysteria, and she certainly was hysterical.

We've been told to keep to the normal routine, but after another bad night last night, she's too tired for school this morning. Hopefully she'll be fit to go at lunchtime.

World Series of Poker

Well, as the 2006 WSOP is coming round, I thought I'd give a satellite a go. I started well, doubled up on my third hand, and got over-confident - 10 hands later a busted out, went all in with QQ, a queen came along on the river but unfortunately it gave the other guy a straight!

Epilepsy

It is looking more and more likely that my daughter has epilepsy. After appearing under the weather, we decided to give her the day off school. Having returned from taking our son into school, my wife found her slumped in the passenger seat, apparently unconscious. She roused quickly, with no memory of anything unusual happening, but was slightly confused.

My wife took her to the GP, and was fortunate enough to see a Neurologist on secondment. He was fairly confident that she had suffered a Grand Mal.

We have an upcoming appointment with a consultant paediatrician, along with an EEG, so at the moment we have to just wait for them.

It is all incredibly worrying and frustrating, whilst she isn't suffering greatly, it is wearing her down at the moment, she lacks energy and concentration, which for a normally bright and lively child, is getting her down.

Perfomancing for Firefox

I decided I might get round to blogging more if it was simpler to do. So, I set about looking for a blogging client. I started because of this post by Wil.



In it he talks about using a WYSIWYG editor like ecto, or something as yet undiscovered for Linux. So, thinks I, just because Wil hasn't discovered it, doesn't mean its not out there. What is Google for, after all? The debate about Moveable Type or Typepad is not something I'm getting into - I'll stick with Blogger now I've started.


Well, I discovered the blogging client for me - its called Performancing and it seems to met the requirements - it works in both Windows and Linux, enables me to blog whenever I've got Firefox open, works with Blogger (and Typepad, Wordpress, Moveable Type...), and supports TrackBack, so, this post is written using it. With a bit of luck this post is readable, and has sent a trackback to Wil's blog. So, here goes nothing ....click!

Meanwhile, back at Pokerstars...

I gave Coral Poker a try - its got pretty pictures, and a lower cost of entry than Pokerstars. Well, I burnt through my initial buy-in, and now I'm back at Pokerstars. No one talks to each other at Coral. The chat box is completely empty. At Pokerstars when things are going bad you can have a laugh with the people you're playing against.

I've started playing Sit'N'Go, rather than cash games. It just seems to suit my style of play more, though for some reason I cannot get into the money in the Turbo games, so, I'll stick to the normal games, and see if I can keep regularly hitting places 4-7. At that, I make a little each game. My best place is second, I just can't seem to get it right heads-up.

Taking a risk

I was playing poker against a guy with the user name of CalQl8tedrisk. I went all in after the flop, needing an ace for a straight, and a high pair if I missed the straight. He called, I caught the ace on the river, and then he said I was damned lucky. With a name like his, you think that sort of bet would be right up his river.

Sony Warranty

As I was growing up, I always wanted to buy Sony equipment. It looked cool, that smooth casing with SONY written across the middle, it oozed quality, I always felt that buying Sony meant you were buying the best. Of course, I had to settle for Amstrad, Saisho, Matsui - my budget would never stretch to Sony. I still linger longingly in the electrical stores as I pass the latest Sony widescreen TV, but I am still buying the cheap stuff.

Over at Nickerblog, Shane Nickerson is someone who could afford to buy Sony, but is now having serious difficulty in getting them to cough up for replacing a damaged screen on a camera under warranty. Apparently it is physical damage, which isn't covered by the warranty. I had a similar problem with a Siemens mobile phone in the past, picked it up one day, screen was cracked. It hadn't been dropped, sat on or abused in any way, but I had no luck in getting it fixed. These companies just don't seem to get that a screen can break because of a fault that was there all the time, a small crack, imperfections in construction etc. I hope Shane gets somewhere with this one.

Land of Hope and Glory

What a weekend of sport - I can't remember so much success in the space of two days - England beat Australia at rugby union, Great Britain beat New Zealand at rugby league, England beat Argentina at Football, and Pakistan have thrown away a strong position in the first cricket test. Finally, Nigel Mansell wins the inaugaral Masters Grand Prix in South Africa!

Change of Style

I've been finding the low stakes Hold'em cash games really frustrating. Because of the low values involved, people don't seem to play sensibly. They're seeing the flop with 29o, raising and calling with nothing. It's incredibly difficult to read what they've got. So now I'm only playing the best hands, KK, AA, AK I'll raise preflop, and hit them hard after the flop. 77, 88, 99 etc I'll limp in, likewise with suited connectors. Anything else I fold. Its already paying dividends. I trippled my starting moneylast night, and doubled it today. I've just got to resist the temptation to play more hands when I've built up some money.

Eights

I just had a dream poker hand.

Nothing special to start of with - 78 suited. I limp in from seat 5, along with 4 others.

The flop comes 8 8 8. Oh my God, I've got 4 of a kind. What do I do now? If I raise, everyone else will fold. Then the incredible happens, UTG raises. Only half the pot, but its a start. I assume he's got a full house. I smooth call, SB and BB both call. Guy to my left folds.

The turn is a queen, SB make a pot sized raise. Great! I assume thats another full house. I go over the top, BB folds, SB calls.

River is 2s, SB bets again, nearly half his stack. Enough messing around, I put him all-in. He calls! I show my 4 eights, he mucks.

The last time I had 4 of a kind, all I got was the blinds. Not that I did anything clever this time, I was just helped by someone else raising for me. The luck didn't hold though, I got cocky and ran a set into a full house, losing just under half my stack. Oh well, that will teach me some restraint (I hope).

A refreshing holiday

Aren't kids exhausting? We've just come back from a week in sunny Grange-Over-Sands, staying in a beautiful bungalow, looking out of the lounge window at a fabulous view, and I'm knackered.

On holiday the kids seem to live at a fever pitch. Everything is at full volume, everything has to be done NOW!. The weather wasn't too great so they spent most of the time inside. Not to be recommended. Two 6 year olds in a confined space for a week is not good.

We did manage to get out on Friday. Visited Grasmere with some friends. two families, both with kids under two years old. However, it started pouring down when we were there, so were forced to take refuge in a coffee shop. A very nice coffee shop I must say (Sara's Cafe/Bistro, number 32 on this map), but again, a confined space, now with 4 children.

One latte later, we departed, and set off down the side of Lake Windermere to the National Park Visitors Centre at Brockhole. It has an adventure playground, so it is an ideal place to let my two let off some steam.

Saturday morning started out wet, but by 10 it had brightened up, so I dragged the children out for a walk. We went up Hampsfell setting out from grid reference SD411785. You can see all of the route on this map. We walked up from the road to the viewpoint on the top, along to Fell End, and back down into Grange. I'll try and stick some photos on later. The view of the Lyth Valley and the Morecambe Bay is great.

OpenOffice.org 2.0 released.

The new version of OpenOffice.org has been released today. If you're one of those people with a dodgy copy of Microsoft Office 2000, then get rid of it, and download this. Its available for Windows, Linux and OSX. Its open source, and its free. It can import most MS Office files, save in MS Office formats, and uses the latest open file format, Open Document. Open Document has been specified by the State of Massachussetts as one of their approved file formats for public documents, and this will be roled out by early 2007. Critically, Microsofts own, semi-open document format, based on XML, like Open Document, has not been approved. This is a huge boost for the adoption of open standards. Have you ever been in the situation where you need to open a document created by an old version of Word, or, even worse, and old version of Microsoft Works. These formats aren't published, so can't be replicated. Open Document is also supported by the following:

Abiword 2.4
KOffice
Star Office

It is also expected that it will be supported by the Lotus and Corel office suites in the near future.

Thanks to the decision in Massachussetts, Microsoft is now under pressure to provide Open Document support. If it does not, it could find its user base slipping away. On the other hand, if they free users from the tie to MS Office, then they also free many of them from the ties to Windows. What a decision for them to make.

Slugs and Snails and Puppy Dogs Tails

It was parents evening at school this week.

Having twins always makes for an interesting evening. Two children in the same class, same teacher; comparisons are inevitable. Never before though, have we had such a difference between them.

Our daughter is top of the class, ahead of her age in all areas, writing beautiful poetry (well pretty good for a 6 year old anyway). Our son, the teachers feel, is just as bright as his sister. However, he doesn't concentrate, works far too slowly, and plays with other children when he should be working.

We arranged with the teacher that any work he doesn't finish gets sent home with him, so if he's slow at school it eats into his evening. He didn't like that idea. We also told him that if he got into trouble at school again this week he wouldn't go to his grandparents as arranged. The very next day he was in trouble! So, no trip to grandparents for him, and no night out for us!

Busted

Thats the inaugural WilWheaton.Net tournament over, and I..., well I didn't do so well, though, for someone who's only been playing a month, and in their first tournament, I suppose 77th out of 96 isn't too bad.

I tried not to play too many bad hands - I saw the flop 60% of the time, and tried to push things occasionally, which was the thing that saw my demise; that, and my innability to spot the potential for a flush!

Things started well though -on the first hand I was dealt Js 9s; 5 of us limped in, 100 in the pot, and the flop was 8s Ks 4c. The others all checked, but with 4 spades I decided to push things along a bit and made a pot-sized bet. Three of them folded, one called. On the turn 5s showed up, and I had to decide how much to bet. In the small stakes games I had been playing, any big raise seemed to prompt everyone to fold, and I wanted to get off to a good start in the tournament. Unless the other guy was holding the Ace of spade, I had this hand won. He hadn't raised me on the flop, so I guessed he either had a pair of jacks, or maybe two pairs. I made another pot sized raise (300) in the hope of getting him to at least call, then I could try and raise him again, but he folded. Still, winning the first hand was a good confidence booster for me. Things got even better on the next hand - I was dealt As Jc, there were two raises of 80, I called, and there were two aces on the flop! I bet 300, but every body folded on me.

So I'd won the first two hands, obviously I was going to win the tournament :)

Things didn't carry on is this way unfortunately :(

The next few hands I folded on small pots, then along came something worth playing. I had 4d Ah, everyone folds pre flop bar one guy; he raises 80 and I call. The flop is Ts Ad 6s, I check to see what the other guy is up to, he raises 520, and I call. 9s comes along on the turn, he goes all in, and I realise I'm staring down the barrel of a flush. I fold, and lose 600 on the hand!

That leaves me with the short stack on the table. I play it tight, waiting for the good cards to come along. A few hands later a I get a flush on the turn, and everyone folds on me, but I pick up a couple of hundred.

Over the next few hands my chips dribbled away, blinds were up to 25/50, I made a few small preflop raises, and then folded as the flop gave me nothing. Then I thought my luck had changed, I picked up Jd Ac, there was a raise of 50, I called. Flop was Jh 6h Ah. Great, 2 pair, aces and jacks. Theres a bet of 50 across the table, I raise to 100, 1 fold, 2 calls. Turn was 9h, there was a bet of 200, I call. River is Kd, small bet of 50, I go all in. You spotted what I missed? There were three hearts on the table after the turn weren't there? I run straight into an Ace high flush, game over!

You can reads Wil's (far more eloquent) words about the tournament here.

First Poker Tournament

I've just signed up for my first online poker tournament. Wil has set up a tournament for readers of his blog:

What: WWdN Where's My Burrito? Invitational
Where: PokerStars.
When: Friday, October 14th. 4:00 PM EST
Password: monkey
Tournament number: 13722477
Buy-in: $10+1

I was the fourth name on the list - there are advantages to being 5 hours ahead of the US.


Its 9pm BST, should have got dinner out of the way and kids in bed by then, just got to get permission from my wife!

I expect to be either busted out fairly early on, or find myself folding everything and never seeing the flop :)

The only reason I got into poker in the first place was reading WWdN, so I really should take part in his tournament. I've been experiencing wildly fluctuating fortunes in play money games, with luck varying from having 4 aces, to going all in with kings full of aces, and running into aces full of kings! However, I have started to generally increase my pot of play money, and am learnning which hands I shouldn't play.

Sales Success

I've just won my first major contract. Quite by accident really. I don't do sales, I do operations and strategy, but, as the Sales Manager was away when the enquiry came in, I dealt with it, so, that's a 12 month contract worth about £2000 a week, £104,000 a year. Shame I don't get commission isn't it?

New Ports

Well I've splashed out on a PCI card with 3 USB 2.0 ports, and my network adapter is now working perfectly. I still don't know what the problem was with the built-in ports, but who cares? Its working now.

I've also significantly increased performance by installing the latest Nvidia drivers. The OpenGL based screensavers, which were crawling, are now running at full speed. Also, basic things like moving or resizing a window now happen just as quickly as they would with Windows. Installation was straight forward, using the Package Manager, but I did have to venture to the command line to run an activation command. Whilst this was fairly simple, I would have thought the package could have been configured to do this automatically, or at least ask if you want to do it, and then run the command for you.

Freeze

Well, my optimism in the previous post has turned out to be completely unfounded. I got home from work and found the system locked solid.

Checking the system logs, I discovered that the USB devices disconnected 75 minutes after the computer booted up. There was nothing in the logs after that until the hard reboot I did when I came in.

I suppose the next thing to try is to get the latest version of NDIS wrapper, see if that stops the freezing at least. Another option is a PCI USB card.

Power prevents problem product

I've introduced a powered usb hub into my system, to hopefully stop the problems I've been having with my usb mouse and network adapter. Under Windows, the mouse frequently needs unplugging and reconnecting, and the network adapter disconnects and has to be told to reconnect to the wireless network. Under Linux, this seems to cause an even more severe problem, with the entire system freezing.

I put the powered hub on last night, and had no problems. I've left the computer on all day today, so if when I get home it is still working, the problem is probably solved.

Poker Playing Bloggers

Over at Pokerstars, they've announced at tournament just for bloggers. Unfortunately your blog has got to have been running for two months, so I miss qualifying by quite a long way.

I've got quite into poker recently (not for real money though) playing on Pokerstars, and this would have been a great way to get into a tournament. Maybe they'll do another one next year.

Well that about wraps it up...

Thanks to the magic of Ndiswrapper, which has enabled me to install the Windows driver for my wireless network adapter under Linux, I am making this post from Firefox running on Ubuntu Linux. Apart from the network, this has been the simplest OS installation I have perfomed since MSDOS 6.0!

I do appear to have some sort of problem with my USB ports. Both my USB mouse and network adapter both have a tendency to disconnect themselves briefly every so often. With Windows, the network adapter is fairly simple to reconnect, with Linux, the only way of sorting it seems to be a reboot. I am going to try a powered USB hub, to see if that helps.

Every day I love you less and less

I have become increasingly disillusioned and frustrated with Microsoft products, and so once more am boldly setting forth into the world of open source software. Its about 5 years since I last spent any time in the company of Linux, but this evening I installed Ubuntu on my home PC.

I've always had a preference for Debian type distributions. I've tried Redhat and Mandrake, but was introduced to Debian's package management by Storm and Corel, and find it so much more user friendly than RPM (pause for flames from RPM fans).

Anyway, Ubuntu now resides on the second partition of my hard drive, and is completely isolated from the outside world, due to its refusal to recognise my Linksys USB wireless network adapter. I am girding my loins and preparing to enter battle with Ndiswrapper. I think the reason I abandoned Linux last time was problems with USB device support. Hopefully things will have moved on since then.

I am also playing with OpenOffice. I thought I'd give it another try following the State of Massachussetts decision to adopt an open format for its documents. It makes perfect sense - how many times have you tried to read an old MS Office file, to find that the format is no longer supported. Despite Microsoft's protests that it's own XML format is open, the Open Document standard has won through.

Free for All

At a time when members of the music industry are protesting that Itunes isn't charging enough, its great to see a band prepared to give away their music for nothing, as this post on WWdN reveals. I've not heard of the band, but following Wil's previous recomendation of Aeon Spoke I'm going to give it a listen. You can also preorder the CD (along with various other goodies) here. There's also a report at Boing Boing.

The music industry seems to have an amazing ability to shoot itself in the foot. After Itunes success in converting people from illegal to legal downloads, the industry now seems determined to kill the golden goose.

Singing a new tune at the Opera (.com)

Opera has finally bitten the bullet and taken the ads out of their free web browser.

I first tried Opera about 5 years ago, but was frustrated by the space taken up by the adverts, and went back to Internet Explorer. I dabled with Netscape/Mozilla, but was never entirely happy with them, and they had trouble with many IE only websites.

Once Firefox hit version 0.7, I switched over, and generally have been really happy with it. No spyware, fast rendering of sites, small download, tabbed browser windows and a secure alternative to IE. I also use Thunderbird as my email client. However, there are still some frustrations with it - some sites (particularly financial ones) insist on using IE for "security reasons!" and some just don't work - Renault.co.uk being one I have come across recently, forcing me back to IE.

With the new ad-free Opera now available, I thought I'd give it another try, and generally I'm impressed. It seems just as fast as Firefox, has tabbed browsing (with a slightly better layout in my opinion, with the close button on the tab, rather than at the top right of the window) and the Renault website works with it. I must admit to have not taken my compatibility tests any further than this.

However, I think I am going to stick with Firefox. I like the availability of plugins, though as Jon von Tetzchner, CEO of Opera says they could potentially be a security risk. I also like to support the open source development community.

If you haven't tried Opera, or Firefox for that matter, then give them a try, you won't be disappointed.

Just one more thing, if you do use Opera, go into the quick preferences on the tools menu, and set it to identify itself as Opera, rather than the default of IE. You can always switch it back if some websites object, but it will enable the usage of Opera to be properly reported - at the moment most Opera users will be contributing to the IE usage figures!