SkyHorse.Org

The Call of Cthulhu

Makes you think…

Related posts:

• Banksy: The Hacker of the Art world
• Google Trends – What the world is searching for: one year later
• Found: The Cube

Posted in Personal, Philosophy | No Comments »

Which OS are You?

Which OS are You?

Related posts:

• Watching TV
• Microsoft frowned at for smiley patent
• Programming (for women): The Datagrid Girl!

Posted in Computing, Personal | No Comments »

Qosmio G20

I never had a wishlist, but if I ever start one this litle beautiful girl will be on top:

Qosmio G20

Take a mix of Apple design, two SATA 100Gb disks with RAID0, the best in processing power available (including a GEForce 6600 PCIx16 with 128ram), the best TFT I have ever seen with in-built TV and DVD decoder which dont require the PC to be turned on and you end up with something to droll for. I know I have. Did I mention the looks? You have to see this one for yourself.

Related posts:

• Hi-Tech, Low-Work
• My first (real) game of Poker
• Reminiscence from Bologna (English really lacks the word…)

Posted in Personal, Programming | No Comments »

My first (real) game of Poker

I have been playing Poker for some time now, after falling in love with the game some years ago when long nights and unseen mornings was the bread and butter of any self-respecting teenager.
Bets were pennies (or beans, whichever was easier to get) and the thrill was to beat your peers, and if they were the best friends even better and impress the (pretty) ladies.

When you first play, the adrenalin of the betting gets to you, like a rush that makes you feel alive. You feel the blood coming up from your legs, your stomach, chest, neck, face, shoulders, arms, hands and fingers. Unlike sex (good sex at least), you cannot express externally all that vulcanicity going inside your body and mind. It is like trying to keep a lid on a pan of boiling water, without burning your hands (pun intended) in the process. Thinking about it, it sounds like S&M (well, more M than S) but the required discipline to be a Poker player is right up there, next to the Shaolin monks and Indian yogis, with the added difficulty of having to enjoy the whole experience at the same time. Yes, because if you don’t enjoy it, you’ll never be a real Poker player. Sounds mad? Read on…

I arrived at the Club at half past seven, with my friends from work who introduced me to the place. It is all very professional (members only and all) but very relaxed and casual at the same time (anyone can register to be a member). This is actually the kind of place I would go to for an afternoon coffee or meal and never thought there would be any gamming around (well, the 30 or so computer screens with people playing online poker kind of gives you a big tip).
After registered as a member (I look forward to the ‘private membership’ card) and a couple of calming-down drinks, I was seated in a table of funny looking people: two gambling-addicted looking Chinese guys, an extrovert open-handed Hawaiian shirt-dressed middle-aged English man, an eccentric French woman, an American-looking amateur, a beautiful and quiet Malaysian girl and an nice old poker-pro chap, who fortunately sat next to me and walked me through the etiquette of the game (*phew*) and gave me some good sound advice. I must say, I was a bit nervous. Not that it would show, but, just in case, I made sure everyone there knew I was a complete rookie. Perhaps that would fool them long enough to survive my way into the next table. And guess what? It did.

Sure thing, I lost my original 500 chips after 45 minutes but there’s the chance of a re-buy up to the first hour, so not all was lost. After the top-up (the last possible buy of a stack of 500 chips) I had around 1600, so only 400 down from my original 2000. I thought that was quite good until I started hearing people saying things like “I only have 2 or 3 thousand to go round, not the best night this week”. That made me more anxious than their silly Poker faces. After moving to my next table, and seeing some of my friends loose all their chips and heading home, the quality of the players was noticeably increasing. I knew I didn’t stand a chance of big bucks but I was only concentrating on surviving, which explains my 90% folding rate pre-flop and why I was able to bluff my way into a couple of hands to grab a few more chips. Time is now ten past eleven and the tube in London closes around 12 so I had two stark choices: either make my way into the last table and get enough money to get a cab back home (yeah, right) or leave soon and get a train while I could. They say lucky hands come in pairs and after winning a nice pot which doubled my chips from 500 to 1000, I got a pair of fives. Now, this is Holdem, which means two cards is what you get before 5 community cards are drawn on the table. That pair was probably the best starting hand I had the whole night, and I was seeing pots being won by high cards only, so I decided it was time to give it a go. I was all in.

The lady next to me, who came to our table looking like a scared puppy with a meagre stack of 500 chips, was now with 5000. She had won a nice couple of hands not long ago without even having to show her cards. Bluffing, everyone seemed to presume but wasn’t brave enough to put their money where their thoughts were. She raised me. “What the hell is she doing?” I thought to myself. Everyone else folds except this extra-pro looking guy, shades included, who called her 3000 raise and goes all in as well. So, there we are, two all ins and this puppy-looking lady. Since no more bets were gona be made, we all showed our cards before the flop. The pro had an Ace over Jacks (why do they always seem to rely on this card combination?). I proudly showed my pair of fives. The puppy had a pair of Aces. Damn, she’s good, but with the other guy having an Ace, probability of a five coming on community cards is a lot higher than another Ace. I can now hear some of my old friends screaming “probab- what? Stop rationalizing the game, its all about luck!”. And there it is, the second card of the flop, the freaking Ace. Not a five in sight. And that is probably what they mean with the lucky hands comming one after the other..Oh well, maybe next time…

And that was about the right time, because I got the last tube home! Gutshot, I shall see you in a couple of weeks time, I want my thirty quid back!!!

Related posts:

• Legalise Poker!
• Advance in AI may bring ‘bluffer’ type bots to online poker
• Google Trends: what the world is searching for

Posted in Personal | 2 Comments »

Hi-Tech, Low-Work

1 Laptop
1 PDA with GSM, GPRS, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi (HTC BlueAngel)
1 GSM Phone with Bluetooth (SonyEricson T610)
Wi-Fi internet access

Result?

I can’t send a *#”$% FAX!

There I am, ready to fax my resignation letter to my manager, all neat and stuff, and as I was preparing myself to do “Print -> Fax” I discover I don’t have the Fax service installed on my Windows XP.
Ok, fine, I though maybe I’ll just use the fax application on my PDA, which by the way I never thought I would ever use. So I transfer the word document. Well, not really, it doesn’t transfer for some reason (apparently the conversion fails). After some messing around, I get it to convert and bang I open it in the PDA. Everything is ok there, Uf!
Opening the document with KSE TrueFax to send it shows that my signature (an image in the document) just disappeared. Oh great! as I try to click on the space where the signature should be, I discover I can actually write in the document!!! ok, fantastic, I just fiddle my signature in that space, even if it looks a bit pixelized…
So there I go! Fax – Send…wait…phone turns off…error no carrier detected. Funny… I don’t remember seeing this in the instructions manual. So I try again and the same problem occurs. Right, n’enough of this new hi-tech solution, lemme just try to use the PDA as a fax/modem.
What should be an easy task of adding a phone as a modem, turns out to be a quest for missing drivers that don’t work and the discovery that the “Fax service” is not available on the phone, only the “modem” bit… and even the modem seems to be very ‘nice’: it replies OK to every single AT command… go figure!
Ok, back to step 1: getting the Fax installed in Windows. Maybe I’ll just fax it through the normal land line. There I go, Add/Remove programs -> components -> fax… I tick and I say next… and it says it needs Windows XP SP2 cd-rom, which I actually have. So I insert it and it says it cannot find the bloody file it needs… I check manually and it’s right there!!! what do you mean you cant see it? I can see it! go get it!!!! … Oh well, I’ll just do it manually…
Some ‘expands’ later I have all fx* files under windows\system32. I try to do “Setup Fax” in the printers folder and it inserts the fax… but takes it off straight away!
I’m beginning to wonder if this is all a big conspiracy against my resignation from the company…
Only 3 hours later, after messing around with the security database (apparently this is what happens when the security database in windows gets messed up), I get the Fax component to install. Great I think! Now I can use the normal modem to Fax it!
So I do… and the land line seems to be making funny noises to the point that fax doesn’t get through… AAAARGGGH
I am not going to try any other solution, so I just kept trying and after like 5 attempts (how much noise can a line have?! I’m only sending one page!!!) I get the fax through… Was it worth it? Maybe I shouldn’t be quitting my job…

Related posts:

• Qosmio G20
• jEdit – Programmers Text Editor
• DirectAdmin to cPanel : a partial BASH solution

Posted in Personal, Programming | No Comments »