Texas Calculatem and Poker Office Blog

Did not manage to meet Juice or Rosie today. And Juice even failed to make our evening Poker session at Ladbrokes Poker, slagging off Texas Calculatem as we scheduled the game. Not a good success!

Am still banging my head against the wall with the website stuff. No one is posting on my community forum, and after making a few enquiries over at the DP Forums, it looks like the best way forward is to post content myself. I already have a half arsed trading blog and this blog. The trading blog doesn't get read too often, but my colleagues like looking at my outrageous lies when I bother. This blog is read by fellow Poker buddies. So I've decided to stop spamming my own Poker Blog everyday and will move my web development and commercial posts over to my Community Site.

Managed an hour at Laddies while I multi-tasked and watched more Alias...

Had AKo on the button. One guy, Ducati, limps to me. I raise 4BB. SB folds. BB calls. Limper calls.

Flop comes AKT. I know that I can't protect. I can deny odds with a FSB, but a fish will call. The villain was actually an aggressive player who'd stolen a few bets. I therefore did what Juice is always telling me never to do... I followed my strong pre-flop bet with a check. Villain senses weakness and bets 4BB. What can I do? I could re-raise to deny odds. But if I'd done that I would have denied D the odds to call. So he'd have forced me all in and hit me with the river. I therefore called.

Turn is a 4.

We'd both missed. I knew I had to show weakness again in order to induce a bet. So D made a bet (under half the pot I think) and I called.

The river was a J.

Not a good river. As it gave anyone with a Queen a straight. D checked. And I wasn't going to get sucked into a check-raise so I checked too. D shows two pair, with JKo in his pocket. The Edge picked up the pot with two pair aces over kings.

Lethal Limping Wins the day. The passive nature of Texas Calculatem will never fail me!

The chat window above can be used for chatting!

Found an interesting chat tool. click here to try it out.

Was reading through Wired Aces which is mentioned on Juice's blog. The author, Chris, loves his mottos. Here are a couple that made me wet my pants.

Motto of the week:
"I can outplay a player but I can't outluck a donkey." Source : The Win-Loss Cycle Of Mediocrity

New Motto:
"New motto: You never get sucked out on if you always get your money in with the worst hand." Source : 44:1

Was at the NL tables for some reason last night. The game was $0.15/$0.30 at Ladbrokes Poker, and I did what Juice would probably describe as poor play, limping away on the flop when I had nothing. The Acornman also graced us with his presence, and Rosie_m was somewhere in the background. I think she's in town at the moment so Juice and myself might meet up with her.

Anyway, the hand of the night was 88 dealt pre-flop, UTG.

Following that document the Acorn sent me a few months ago, I limped. The table limped, and we had 5 players on the flop.

The flop came A,8,3 rainbow. So the only hand that could beat me was a set of Aces. I didn't want to let anyone with 2 pair get lucky on me so I bet half the pot.

Only one guy called. Not good. Why can I get no action when I hit a hand? The turn provided me with the final 8. Great. Four of a kind. Virtually unbeatable unless someone else hit 4oak Aces. Not likely. So, not wanting to scare of the guy I checked the turn.

On the river I bet the pot and think the opponent called. Why couldn't he have re-raised me? How frustrating...

However, taking a step back, and analysing my session, I believe that I played a tighter game and called fewer marginal draws/calls.

For example, in one hand I had 23s on the button. The action was min-raised pre-flop and I was tempted to call. Fortunately I folded, or my flush would have been beaten by Juice's King high flush. Phew!

I now have two of the custom written stories that I mentioned.

The stories are:

- Lufthansa Airlines: Flying High after 80 Years
- American Airlines - a brief history

The Lufthansa piece cost $7.50 for 250 words. That's $0.03 per word.

The American Airlines piece cost $5 for 400 words. That's $0.0125 per word.

So the American Airlines article is a lot cheaper. However, what I need to assess is the quality of these stories. This quality is in terms of SEO and reader interest.

The American Airlines story is just a brief history and it feels as though English is not the author's first language.

The Lufthansa piece contains more information, and I like the way the author has mentioned other airlines, the STAR alliance, and customer service.

However, I feel that this difference was due to the briefs I gave the authors. I asked the American Airlines author for an article about American Airlines. No specific requirements were set. I asked the Lufthansa author for customer service information, and he delivered the goods.

So moving forwards, before ordering more articles I should make a list of content requirements. These will probably include:

- comparison's with other airlines
- customer service
- comfort (e.g. chair width, in flight entertainment)
- special deals.

Some readers may feel that paying $5 for a few hundred words is expensive, especially when you can get a good novel for that price. However, I don't feel the price is too bad if the time taken to write these stories is taken into account. I think the authors are probably based somewhere like India where $5 can treat the family to a good curry.

Paypal balance is at $572. I'm thinking of buying a load of one way links as my Poker software sales have dropped. Have not even sold one copy of Texas Calculatem this month! And that means that Juicy Juice's orphan kids will not get fed.

Wow. Not only has Juice received feedback from that Green Book guy, but I've received feedback from Aaron Brown regards to the commercial post I made earlier this month.

Nice!

Went to B@1 and The Exhibit in Balham last night. Got back at 2am in the morning and managed to not sit straight down at the Poker tables.

My brother has started watching the Grand Prix downstairs so I can't finish watching The Return of the King, that I saw a bit of last night. While I understand that it's a movie set in a fantasy setting, there are quite a few ridiculous impracticalities. For example, when the riders of Rohan are going to meet their buddies in Gondor, why do they set up camp on that small but green shelf on the side of the mountain? Surely it must have been a lot of effort to climb up there.

Also, when Faramir leads his suicidal charge to retake Osgiliath, all he seems to be doing is riding into a pile of rubble. Even if the orcs weren't there shooting arrows (and we ignore the fact that their short bows probably wouldn't have done too much against Faramir's plate armour), all he could really have achieved with the gesture would have bee a few broken legs for the horses and maybe some broken bones for his riders as they got chucked off the horses.

Anyway, the guy on the TV just said something about Ayrton Senna, which reminds me of this bad joke:

Q: What is Ayrton Senna's favourite ice cream?

A: Walls.

Here's a picture of my knee that got battered during Wednesday's Thai Boxing session. As you can see, it's rather bruised.

My BR is finally above $300. Nice. I've just been grinding away at the $0.05/$0.10 NL with Rosie, PhillMill, Juice and the Acorn. Unfortunately I feel that I should be player a higher stakes game. But if you're shit then you shouldn't really up the stakes in my view.

Anyway, as I've said many times, Pacific Poker has very poor software. I was using their Java web client earlier and it crashed, causing me to lose the tourney. I sent a mail off to their live support, not expecting a positive reply, and didn't really expect a positive reply. However, to compensate myself, I'll just post their reply and stick adverts all over it:

Dear Edge,

Thank you for contacting us and taking the time out to inform us of the
technical difficulty you have been experiencing; it is a pleasure
assisting you with this matter.

Edge, let me take this opportunity to thank you for your continued
membership with us and always remember that your satisfaction is our top
priority here at Pacific Poker.

After carefully reviewing your game history Edge, I observed that you
indeed experienced some problems while playing the tournament (9811570).
I have checked with our Technical Department and they have advised me
that we were not experiencing any problems at that time; you were the
only player at the table who suffered disconnection so this may have
been a technical error from your end.

I know this may be frustrating Edge and I am sorry that you were in a
situation where you were inconvenienced. Unfortunately I am unable to
grant your request for a refund.

Please note Edge that disconnections may re-occur in the future and this
may be caused by more than one reason. Please be advised that this may
be caused by the settings on your PC; such as your Firewall or even a
slow internet connection. In order to connect to our servers efficiently
you will need to open ports 701, 4095, 4096, 7100, 7200, 7500, 8500 and
8520 in the firewall. Please contact your Internet Service Provider to
gain further assistance with opening these ports.

We hope that this has helped clarify the situation for you, but should
you require more information, please do not hesitate to contact us. It
is a pleasure to have you as a member and we look forward to assisting
you with all other queries.

I've started reinvesting more cash into my web enterprises. I have about $597 in Paypal. And that's after removing £500 for a TV and giving $500 to Juice for his $100NL challenge.

Writing good content is tough, and you need more than mere scripts to generate good traffic. I've therefore commissioned sebastianrs at the Digital Point forums to write a 400 word article about American Airlines for $5.

I'd previously commissioned Juice to write content on various Z list celebs but he got fed up after the second story. So I was pleasantly surprised when I stumbled across the forum where people are offering to write content for low fees. I just hope that they have Juice's flair.

If any of you readers are interested in writing content for my enterprises please let me know and we'll try to work something out.

Did some NL at Laddies with Rosie.

Met PhillMill again. Haven't seen him in ages! The whole table were astounded that I used Texas Calculatem, but I put them in their place when I went all in with AKo against a loose aggressive player and hit three of a kind kings. Nice!

PM> seen Juice alst night on here
PM> na dtonight
PM> and tonight
Edge> Wow. I haven't seen him in a while. I think he's busy with his new job.
PM> did'nt mention it ...but I was not on long .. went for the freeroll
PM> he won some money.... the had reload a few times
PM> nothing changes
Edge> Wow. How long were you guys playing for?
PM> 1/2 hr or so
Edge> The freeroll lasted 1/2 hr?
PM> nar I left the cash game to go to the freeroll and left him palying
PM> whats in the bottle tonight Mau
Edge> Eh?
PM> beer tonight ormtop shelf
PM> or top shelf
Edge> I'm just killing time. On late shift tomorrow.
PM> right
Edge> What about yourself? Are you still teaching the ladies how to play in Cov?
PM> yer...lol lol
PM> they teach me a thing or 2 lol
Edge> You should start a webcam service. Juice would be well up for it.
(8©7¨6©5©4ª)
(7¨7©7§Q¨8©)
PM> no dobt
PM> I would have thought he would be snapped up by now ;]
Lil_Tycoon> Beginning to think Id have no luck tonight
MR F> pick myself up, dust myself down
MR F> and start right over again
PM> thats the sprit old pal
Lil_Tycoon> sorry m8. u had a good hand
PM> song there ;]
MR F> was gonna go all in sooner
MR F> should have
mupsy1> 5 NO GOOD
norfolkk> call
Edge> eh?
Edge> fold!
RRR_m> call!
Edge> thanks
norfolkk> just wanted to see what he had
Edge> I had pocket rockets
mupsy1> YER WELCOME
norfolkk> good fold
mupsy1> GH
Edge> gl
(K¨K©K§Aª6§)
PM> nh
RRR_m> vnh Edge
MR F> nice 1
Edge> ty. As phill said earlier. It's all luck.
PM> :]
(A¨Q©J¨8¨7©)
(K©QªJ©9©7ª)
(A©A§J©9©7ª)
RRR_m> vn, Mr F
MR F> thanks RRR
(2§2¨2ªAª8§)
(A©Q©J©7©5©)
(Q§QªQ¨J§9ª)
RRR_m> aaargghhfdkgvdfjgvea
mupsy1> UL
RRR_m> indeed
mupsy1> WAT U HAV RRR
RRR_m> lol
RRR_m> better than yours to the river
mupsy1> SRY CHICK
RRR_m> Ohhh, how sorry makes it better ;0)
MR F> chick, thats a bit over familiar
(A§K§8§6§2§)
mupsy1> DORK
PM> :]
RRR_m> who are you calling a dork, mupsy?
mupsy1> UH
RRR_m> uh?
(KªK§9©9¨Q¨)
(KªK§9©9ªQ¨)
mupsy1> THE *
Edge> nice!
GAN241> lmfao
ezeben> hey, mr.capslock. Behave
RRR_m> nope, that doesn't help
RRR_m> who?
ezeben> mr capital letters.. ;)
GAN241> come on guys we have a lady with us
mupsy1> TO MY RIGHT AND 2 2 YOUR LEFT
RRR_m> ohh, Mr F?
MR F> another fookin taffy, are they all w a n k ers
mupsy1> N. IRELAND
RRR_m> wrong Bangor, Mr F
MR F> head bowed in shame
PM> :]
RRR_m> Please don't be rude to Mr F
mupsy1> F### HEAD
(K©K¨6©6§Q©)
Edge> Now now. Keep it clean
MR F> i dunno what to say, dork and * head are way above my level of intelligence
RRR_m> hehehee
mupsy1> YOUR RIGHT
Edge> You don't need to be smart to play poker
Edge> just lucky
PM> lol
(KªK©J©9§6©)
MR F> u need to be smart to not be an a r se tho
mupsy1> BIG HITTER
MR F> ?
RRR_m> Mupsy, does us all a favour and shut up
Edge> There's no I in team.
mupsy1> LOST
Edge> But there is a "u" in c*nt
RRR_m> lol
MR F> do us a bigger favour and * off
mupsy1> NOT MY GRIPE
PM> I knew this was going to happen lol
Edge> Every time I sit down, the lads start puffing their chests in order to impress RRR.
PM> better than the tele
Edge> She really should stop leading them on...
PM> lol
MR F> I dont need to impress, it just happens
RRR_m> lol, thats very true, mr F
MR F> thanks
mupsy1> HAHAAAAAAAAAA
PM> never ceases to amase ;]
Edge> Hey, no need to make us jealous. Not everyone is born with your studly looks.
(Q§Q¨9ª9§K§)
MR F> hey Edge im not fallin out with u mate
PM> :]
mupsy1> GET A BRAIN *LICK
PM> lol
Edge> oops. wasn't picking a fight. Just trying to get some banter going.
RRR_m> you don't think theres enough "Banter", Edge?
Edge> If you want to see a ruck, go to Hampton Court station on a saturday night.
Edge> Pool cues, bottles, 12 year olds etc...
MR F> dont say things like get a brain
Edge> You can't pay for that sort of entertainment.
MR F> its plainly obvious tours is far inferior to mine
MR F> yours
MR F> take some evening cl*es
MR F> get rid of your gremlins
mupsy1> I TYPE THEM OUT THEIR
ezeben> cmon, lets poker
Edge> I need to go to bed now.
Edge> It's past my bedtime.
PM> lol
(QªQ¨A§J¨10©)
(A§A©QªJ¨10©)
PM> nite
Edge> RRR - could you copy a transcript of this and post it to me please? It's great?
mupsy1> LOL U #############
RRR_m> sure thing
MR F> yep im off cant sit next to a vegatable, thay dribble alot
PM> lol
mupsy1> BYE WEE *
RRR_m> lolol

There are some free press release resources here:

http://www.searchengineforums.com/apps/searchengine.forums/action::thread/thread::1082030108/forum::online-marketing/

They could be useful when I have something to sell.

My good friend Elly got her law contract today and was very chuffed. She now knows that after her two years as a trainee she'll have a job to walk into. I think it's ironic that despite all these initiatives to prevent sex descrimination, and the numerous schemes to get women into work, amongst my age group it's the women who have all the best jobs. There have been a few studies that note that young males aren't performing as well as females but I think they're all a waste of time. When I'm 40, if I fail in my retirement plans and am still in the city, I'll be surrounded by a bevy of young beauties. So despite being a male, it's probably in my interest for fellow males to fail.

We went to Shanghai Blues in Holborn to celebrate. Food was OK. I think we upset the waitress when we put loads of candles onto the table to brighten things up. It was very dark in there.

Added a new gostats hit counter to this blog. The aim of the exercise is to get to the top of one of their top sites lists.

This blog is in the "Sports and Recreation" section and gets around 50 visitors a day. This should get it to atleast the top 10 pages (top 100 sites).




Free Hit Counter

I have a strange ridge shaped bruise on my knee. The older Thai Boxing instructor likes thumping his students with pads and insists that this makes us strong. It probably does in the long term, but over the shorter term it makes me a prime mugging target on the tube. Good thing I don't carry much cash with me.

Have been feeling very angry on tubes lately. It's not really the rudeness. I don't really care about people ignoring each other. What I take exception to is being pushed and shoved. I was walking up the steps at Bank station and some twat kept on pushing my bag to try to make me move faster. Such shit pisses me off so I stood in the middle of the steps and walked really slowly. I really wouldn't mind giving such people a kicking, but I need to get to work on time in order to make cash. The poor chap who sits next to me was late by two minutes and lost out on atleast EUR 5k of free cash on the European open.

Read on BBC News Interactive that Amazon.com has started to sell French Onion Soup. I'm not too sure of the import tariffs or whether or not Customs and Excise would approve, or I'd be well in there.

Am off to Thai Boxing again tonight. My bro is hosting a small tourney at our pad, and will undoubtedly be hiding Texas Calculatem and Poker Office on his laptop. However, I am determined to keep fit, and will be getting my shins bruised instead of making less than minimum wage at the poker table.

Despite telling the world (or atleast my blogger buddies) about funding Juice's quest at Party Poker, and sending him the link, Party Poker did not track the referral. I'm not happy about this and will never open an account there. If Juice hadn't already quit I'd have insisted on him leaving that site. This is what they sent me:

Dear Affiliate,

Thank you for contacting the Affiliate Support Team.

We have checked the mailer tool and can confirm that it works correctly. However, it seems that the player did not download the partypoker software directly from the message and therefore was never tracked to you. It seems that he went to our site directly.

Once the real money account is created we cannot re-track it to a different tracker.

If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Regards,

Affiliate Accounts Team
PartyPoker.com
affiliates@partypoker.com
Toll Free from US/Canada Only: +1-877-867-6537

Amazon.co.uk have just informed me that "The Poker Face of Wall Street" is only £14.44 - 34% off the recommended retail price.

However, Amazon.com are selling it for only $13.74. That's under half the UK price. It's nice to know that the UK consumer is continuing to get a good deal.

Hmmm... This is supposed to be a commercial post and I suppose I should be trying to sell the book. SMT SMT.

Sponsored Results

A site with articles, news and shops

This thread is old but is worth a read if you're a webmaster.

So far I'm in the Co-op. Have not done the submissions as my sites are too crap to qualify.

Have backlinks from places like the coop, pyramind linking, forums etc...

RSS feeds are part of my site.

The mailing list idea is something that lots of people mention. However, I don't know what sort of mailing list I can offer. It's all well and good asking people if they want me to spam them with Amazon links every week, but I don't think I'll be very popular from it.

I like the "viral marketing" idea but have yet to give something away for free. My current Random Pages module has received no responses so it looks like no one likes it.

.
.
.

I'm such a fool... Was two tabling $0.50/$1.00 at Royal Vegas and Noble Poker.

The RV was a fairly loose/passive table and I was chipping away as one would expect. I was about to end the session when I was dealt 72o. This was not any ordinary 72o. It was 72o with two colours! I proceeded to bet/raise all the way to the river, catching an expected 2 on the turn. However, the loose caller beat me with his higher mid pair. Argghhh!!! I feel that I get looser and care less about my chips if I feel that they're winnings. This is a very bad way to think about poker. Poker Office 2 even told me I had a 50% SF and was the 2nd loosest person on the table. Not good!

The Noble Poker table was a 6 max. I'm taking inspiration from the Acorn, though sticking to the safer waters of limit Poker. I think there were a few steals against me, and all my steals failed. However I managed to breakeven on the session.

The BR stands at $283.21. Not good, but atleast I've stopped bleeding.

Almost forgot, it turns out that Juice and Butroz are big fans of Billie Piper. In order to pay homage to their lust I put that picture up there for them.

I've been making cheeky use of old blog posts this morning.

In order to get a few more campaigns going at Pyramid Linking I posted all the links on old blog posts that have managed to acquire reasonable page rank. To make the process even faster, I just posted the links as comments. Such behaviour from other users would probably constitute spam. But as the owner of these pages I feel I can do what I like.

For example, I posted a load of links on this page and set the PyramidLinking campaign to point to one of my shopping stores.

Showed my websites to my friend becs yesterday. She thought it was funny. And so did my accountant mate. In fact, he pissed himself laughing when he saw where my cat sponsorship funds were coming along. I find it interesting that hardened web geeks detest my commercialisation of the internet, while other people view it either with bemusement or hilarity.

Anyway, moving forwards, I need to:

- Add a proper front page to the Blapper Community Site. I feel that visitors who stumble upon it might not understand its purpose.

- Write a useful Drupal module that I can distribute to the community. The module would obviously have to be useful to me in order to provide inspiration. And not be a mass content script as I'd want to keep that sort of stuff for myself. It would also need to be damn simple to make supporting it straightforward. I was thinking of making a random page module, but am not too sure if those already exist.

- Add more content....

Read an interesting post at DP about getting more backlinks here.

e.g. Blapper.com search results from metacrawler

Basically the idea is to query your site from other sites, and boosting the PR of those pages to get the backlink.

N.B. I shall use the WEB prefix for future posts about my web enterprises.

It has been a bad few days. My top page used to be at the top of one of the search engines, but has now dropped into obscurity. Most of the income was from this single page so I'm not very happy about it.

In order to make my pages less vulnerable to search engine updates I need to make them more interesting, get regular visitors, and get some sort of user interactivity. However, I have no good ideas worth implementing at the moment.

So in the mean time, I'm working on link building and writing content about assorted topics. For link building I've been using:

- The DP Coop Ad Network - this distributes links via a script and can be very good if you have high PR sites with lots of pages.

- Pyramidlinking.com - This is a link exchange program. From their home page they say: "Pyramid linking is a revolutionary new approach to link building. We generate a list of links for you to add to your website and give you double the number of static, one way, backlinks from similar sites in return.". Pyramidlinking is new and I think it has lots of promise. However, it currently has a few bugs and a lack of active users.

I've been using the above two products for a number of months. In order to try and get a few more links I've signed up to http://www.infowizards.com/. It seems like a standard link exchange directory with a spider to check links. I'm not too convinced about it, but used a disposable email address for the signup so my risk for this venture is low.

POKER:

An Aussie blogger http://humanaut.blogspot.com left a comment on my blog the other day. Huma - thanks for popping by. I do not play at InterPoker. That's where Juice and the Acornman play occasionally. Juice uses Poker Tracker there as well, I'm not too sure what software Acorn uses. If you'd like to meet up for a few hands let us know what other rooms you play at. I usually play at Ladbrokes, Noble Poker, Pacific Poker or Royal Vegas.

Regarding your username, are you a fan of the dragonlance series? I read The Legend of Huma a few years ago.

Rant

I feel let down by the police. A good friend had her mobile snatched from her at Balham Station a few days ago. She called the police and was told she had to go to a station to report it. After trekking all the way to the station in the middle of the night, she was told that she couldn't report the crime unless she had some number from the back of her phone. Who the fuck keeps track of numbers on the back of the phone? This sort of thing is a disgrace. The woman had no intention of helping my distressed friend or even logging the crime. If such things go unrecorded there could be a crimewave happening and no one would know a thing about it.

Poker Bit:

Playing at Laddies with Acorn, Rosie and Juice now. Was up $30. Then ran into a hand against my protege. How depressing. But it's nice to sit down with them all again. I haven't played with them for ages due to my departure.

Rant Bit

Have noticed that my time management is appaling. This week I've wasted a lot of time doing things like reading webmaster forums and checking my web stats. Instead I should be developing more content and/or improving the site. I'll try to start documenting the stuff I do here. Am too lazy to bother starting a blog about being a webmaster.

Today I added a few adverts to the magazine section of my site. Noticed that the paging function seems to have failed, will have to fix it tomorrow.

Went to Thai Boxing again. I'm so useless. We did some sparring and I couldn't physically move after two minutes due to a lack of fitness. Not good. If someone tries to mug me I can hardly stop defending myself after 2 minutes. On top of that, my technique lacks the explosiveness that's needed to generate power. This is another symptom of my physical state. I'm 26 and ready for the graveyard!

Juice's Poker Challenge is suffering as well. His deposit at Party Poker is down. And to add insult to injury, Party Poker have not honoured the referal, claiming that he did not use my link. I know that he used my linking, and after funding his deposit I feel severely conned at this point. I've sent an email to Party Poker and if they do not act reasonably I may have to insist that Juice moves to another site. For those of you who think this is petty, I've already recouped about a third of my $500 investment through the rake back and bonus that Juice got from InterPoker. This Party Poker will probably recoup atleast 10% of that as well. But all clouds have a silver lining, and this has come to Juice in the form of his first Texas Calculatem sale. I feel really proud as he always seem to have negative views with regards to profiting from his blog. Hopefully he'll get a few more sales under his belt in the future. I only sold 2 copies last month as I spent too much time ranting and raving instead of keeping this blog on topic.

Regarding my web enterprises, things are tough. The pretentious twats at Wiki banned my blapping page as it was not good enough. How insulting! However, I don't really have time to fight them or write scripts to keep it there, so I'm just going to have to go elsewhere to share the way of the blap. Was thinking of "giving something back" to the Drupal community and posting my "myArticle.module" add on for the Drupal CMS system. However, the code is so embedded into my installation that it'll take a few weeks to carve out a release level version of the code. On top of that I wouldn't want to give away the whole lot as it's got a few top secret bits that help me pay for my lap dancing sessions. For those of you who think I've gone mad with all this charitable stuff, the benefits to me of giving away the module will be that I'll be able to stick it into the drupal page on wiki. That will boost my page in the rankings, but I need to decide whether or not it's worth the time investment, or the risk of other sites competing against me with my custom technology.

Watched the video here and was not too impressed. The earnings they suggest may seem high, but if I sold my soul and worked 12 hours a day I could probably earn as much being someone's bitch as a spreadsheet jockey in an investment bank or hedge fund. However, such work would make me suicidal, and Rosie is always telling me to stop thinking about cash. I'm a trader! What else am I supposed to do?

On more positive fronts, I've got a few users for my blapper community site. Hopefully things will work out. It could be a real success if I manage to promote it well.

My sales of random stuff are also up. So far this month I've sold £944.43 worth of computer games, DIY products and physio supplies. It's just a shame that my commission is such a small percentage of that.

It's a very quiet day. So I added an entry to Wikipedia on the subject of blapper. Readers can see it here.

Finally got this blog working again after moving it from Redfoxhosting to a new provider. I was bleeding cash at Redfox everytime their servers fell down, but I think I lost $50 on the webhosting move due to a DNS error when I repointed the servers. Anyway, I hope that all will be well now.

Weekend was quiet. Went out for a few quick drinks on Friday evening and found a new game called the "Titty Kitty". Rosie was appalled when I told her so I'll say no more.

Saturday night I visted the blap man's new pad. He's sharing with 4 others and the pad is a flat above a video shop in Balham. We watched kickboxer and the blap man got so drunk he couldn't come out. Fool.

Later on we went to The Swan in Stockwell again. I don't like it at all, but didn't really have anything else to do. A strange Irishman started talking at me. I was very perturbed. Why don't nice Irish chicks come and talk to me? Anyway, my buddy's friend Michelle had to pull him off me while I legged it.

Sunday is a day of rest. So I bought some face cream for my drying face and ate a nice curry that my mother cooked.

In terms of Poker I managed to play a couple of hours while catching up with Smalleville. I did a $2+$0.20 NL SNG at Noble Poker. 20 players started. I came 5th. And won $1. Big win! Poker Office 2 told me that the table was very tight. I think the average SF% was only 30%. Also did some limit Poker at Royal Vegas, as the Noble Poker tables were too full. This had a SF% of 20%!!!!!! So rather than follow Texas Calculatem's tight/passive advice I tried to pile on the pressure and play aggressively. I made $0.25 for 1 hours work. I'm not even at minimum wage with this. What a waste of time.

Juice's $500 challenge is struggling as well. He's down to about $450 and is planning on stopping if he drops to $250. But it isn't too bad as he's sent me £50 in dividends and I got £30 for referring him to InterPoker. As a wise man once said... "You've got to speculate to accumulate". It's just a shame that this bet isn't working out too well at the moment.

I set up a new community site in the evening. Users can post content or write their own blogs on the site. In return for the content their Adsense Publisher ID's will be used in the Adsense adverts that will appear on their pages. There are already a few sites that offer this so I'll need to think of a way to make my site stand out. Not sure how to do that, and I'll need to be very careful of who I let in due to the risk of click fraud. At present I've dumped someone else's Adsense Publisher ID on the site and am giving users 100% of page views. Most other sites will display the owners' ID 50% of the time, and the authors' ID 50% of the time. The URL of my new project is:

http://forum.blapper.com/

This is just a test to see if my site has moved to the new host successfully. PLease ignore

For some reason, Rosie told me that she and Juice look up to me. Just to put things straight, I've posted my BR chart. I've been playing Poker for over a year. Started off well with Texas Calculatem. Expanded to use Poker Office. Did OK using the strategies from Small Stakes Hold'Em. Then Juice sucked me into NL and I've been losing ever since. Atleast this game is free entertainment. But considering the frustrations of being a losing Poker player, I'm not too sure how entertaining this all is.

Not sure if this post should be classed as a RANT, COM or something else. It's not really a rant. It's just a plea for help!

Basically, the upstairs toilet in my flat is having issues. When flushed, water comes into the bowl OK. However, during the flushing action the bowl slowly fills with water, and takes about a minute to drain back to the normal level. Even worse, solids do not appear to be getting through the system and keep on returning.

Has anyone ever had this problem before? If so, do you know how to fix it?

Times are good. The commercial web stuff that I've been working on (while Juice has been hitting the tables) lately has finally started to pay off.

Not only have I had a record day with my PPC adverts, but I also had my first DIY sale, flogging over £250 worth of plumbing goods via one of my sites. I just need to hope that the sale goes through and I get paid. Sometimes customers cancel the orders. I missed out on a £500 loan commision once because the customer decided to take out the loan with the cheaper provider. Doh. To top it all off I even managed to sell this wierd hip hop DVD.

In order to show what a good son I am, I took the family our for a good meal at Chez Bruce. It was an OK meal, but for some reason I'm not overwhelmed. Maybe I just wasn't in the mood. But it is nice to have good restaurants 5 minutes walk from home. I wrote about the food on my lunch munch blog here : Chez Bruce Dining Experience

Hey Kronsdat,

In answer to your query, I find the traffic at Noble Poker to be fine. When I log on there are normally 3 or 4 full tables at $0.25/$0.50 or $0.50/$1.00 limit. Waiting time is usually under 10 minutes. There are normally many more tables at Pacific Poker, but the software is so poor that waiting times are longer.

I took a screenshot of the lobby for you to have a look at:



If you join Noble Poker, it'll be great to sit down at a table with you again. It's been too long since we've had a game.

The Edge.

I was feeling anti-social last night. So instead of heading off to Stockwell I sat in front of my computer and played a few hours of Limit Poker at Noble Poker and NL at Ladbrokes with Rosie.

At the same time I also caught up with Smallville. It's such a tragic life for the young Clark Kent. Either the love of his life dies, or his dad dies. In the end his dad died, though I'm pretty sure his dad's in the Lois & Clark TV series that had Teri Hatcher in it.

Looks like I'm drifting from the point again. Need to stick to the Poker!

The game at Noble Poker was $0.50/$1.00 limit. I bought in with $20. Took that up to $48. And then this drifted down to $30. A good start followed by a poor end. This seems to be the opposite of Juice's habit of losing at the start and winning it all back. I really should cut down on my losing streaks but it's hard. For example, if you have AKo, raise pre-flop. Bet the flop when you miss. Bet the turn when you miss again... What do you then do when you're raised on the turn? I ended up calling the guy down, but would it have been cheaper if I'd stopped bluffing on the turn? It's very hard to say and I guess this is why I'm not the world's best Poker player. Just for the record, the software I used was Poker Office 2. Texas Calculatem was off for the evening. I was implementing my interpretation of the tight-aggressive style from Small Stakes Holdem. Poker Office would have helped me identify the fish, but to be honest I was too busy watching Smallville and chatting to Rosie on MSN and Laddies...

The Laddies game was quite crazy. The game was $10 NL, nothing much to talk about. But there was so much abuse flying around. A guy with a name sounding like --A-K--- was throwing out all the abuse. Poor Rosie took the brunt of it and I think . Nasty! However, he was a terrible Poker player and Poker Office told me that he saw something like 75% of flops. Nice! It's a pity I didn't get any action when I hit my hands. There was also a doorman at the table. I think his alias was 001Dan, or something similar. Rosie was flirting as usual and will probably know his correct name. Anyway, Dan was into an interesting sounding martial art called Keysi. I'd never heard of it before but had a look at the video of it here. Apparently it's an offshoot of Bruce Lee's JKD style. From the confusing video it looks like they like to hold their hands against their heads lots (presumably for protection) and to then thump their opponents with their elbows. Surprisingly, it actually looks like the drunken boxing fighting method that I worked on a few years ago. I tried selling it to Paladin Press (a notorious publisher that publishes books on numerous martial arts topics and more gruesome stuff such as Interrogation Techniques but got nowhere with it. Those fools in American dramas who go on about not being a quitter would probably have submitted the book to loads of publishers until someone gave them a deal. I thought fuck it and got a job in London.

I'm having a Poker event at my Balham pad today. Will not be able to take Texas Calculatem or Poker Office with me. So instead I'll take my trusty Texas Instruments Graphical Calculator for intimidation value.

# posted by The Edge @ 11:08 AM 3 comments   
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