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| For once in my life, I'm not putting off something critical until the very last minute. It's a miracle! I'm getting ready to print images for ErosFestNW. Tonight I got really friendly with Photoshop for a while, working on the images that are going up there, and printing proofs. When I thought I had everything right I wanted to see the image full-size, but it's hard to do a 24x24 image on a 13" wide printer. No problem! I have ingenuity. I'll just print it in chunks. This is a phonecam shot of the assembled image, so it looks pretty bad, but the real one looks pretty good. ( This image is, uhh, not safe for work. Duh! ) | ||||||
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Patti
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July 14th, 2009
July 9th, 2009
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| Last night I cut over to the new computer as my primary desktop machine. Leaving behind 10+ years of accumulated software, data, and other random stuff is challenging, but I'm slowly getting everything installed and working correctly. Holy crap is Photoshop fast on this thing! The deactivation/activation process for Photoshop sucks, though. I couldn't deactivate it on my old computer, and all it gave me was a numeric error message. Adobe's website didn't help. I finally spent half an hour on the phone with some dude in India to get it straightened out, and he didn't really fix it-- he just increased my activation limit. Bah. Tonight I dug up printer drivers for both of the printers. I then tried to find a driver for my flatbed scanner, and failed miserably-- it just doesn't exist. | ||||||
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July 5th, 2009
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Thanks to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} whitebird for pointing out that my snarky comment on SFGate.com made it to the front page. Here's the original article. | ||||||
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| ASCAP wants to collect public performance licensing fees for cell phone ringtones. | ||||||
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July 4th, 2009
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| I'm still not convinced that Vista is a net win, but it just scored some points with me. It has XMouse functionality built-in. I can't remember the last time I set up a new computer and didn't immediately download TweakUI. | ||||||
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July 3rd, 2009
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| Via BoingBoing, Compuserve Shuts Down. This makes me sad. CompuServe was my first online service-- I got a modem as a high school graduation present, and created account 75555,767 in June of 1983. It was a shiny new world to me, a world full of information and opportunity, and nearly unlimited nooks and crannies to be explored. I found their CB simulator (similar to IRC), and started hanging out there. Because I was naively using the handle *Patti*, every horndog and his brother would send me private messages. I quickly learned about cybersex, and nearly as quickly learned that I didn't enjoy it very much. After a while, I got wise and when I wasn't in the mood to put up with incessant private chat requests I used the handle *Fred*. One day I got a private message that said, "Hey there. I see that we're neighbors." I ignored it until I realized I was in my Fred persona, and then I tossed back a greeting. We started chatting, and I learned that he lived across the river from me in Illinois. We started chatting regularly, and eventually decided to get together for dinner. And that's how I met my ex-husband. We weren't the first online marriage, but we weren't too far off from it. | ||||||
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| By now, we've all heard that Sarah Palin is resigning. I'm not writing this to join the chorus of, "Hey, have you heard?" I watched her speech today. In fact, I've watched it three times. My first reaction was, "Holy crap. She's freaking out." I watched it again,, paying careful attention to her vocal patterns. She's definitely under a ton of stress. I went off and watched a few of her other speeches on YouTube, then came back and watched this one a third time. There is something huge hanging over her had, and resigning is her only way out. She runs through that speech at breakneck speed, like she can't wait to be done with it and run away. She's also jittery, but the biggest tell is in her voice. If you just want to watch one section, start at 3:10 and go to about 4:20. | ||||||
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| I recently posted two polls about this hand: Synopsis: you 3-bet red aces from the button in the limit holdem round of a HORSE tournament. Your opponent then goes limp, check-calling the flop and turn. On the river, the board is 7s Jh 9s 3h Td. It's checked to you. The thing that strikes me most about this hand is that my opponent capped the betting out-of-position before the flop, and then went limp-- he check-called to the river. I asked what hands he might do this with. The results of the poll: AA: 16% KK: 16% QQ: 26% JJ: 13% TT: 48% 99: 16% 88: 35% 77: 13% smaller pairs: 32% AK: 77% AQ: 61% AJ: 13% KQ: 32% some other hands: 29% Some of these answers just don't make sense to me. If I assume that my opponent is at least a little bit rational, he's going to put in a bet at some point with AA, KK, QQ, JJ, and AJ. To me, check-call mode means one of two things-- a decently strong but possibly beat hand, or a monster that you're trying to trap with. AA, KK, and QQ are certainly going to put in a bet or raise at some point. I think smaller pairs will scamper away by the turn. Given the way the hand played out, the candidate hands seem to be AK, AQ, TT, or maybe 88. He could also have flopped a set and is hoping to get me on the river, but slows down when the fourth straight card comes. Of those hand, the only ones I'm ahead of are AK and AQ. Do they pay me off? Sometimes, but far from always. What hands check raise me? TT and 88, and maybe a few other sets. I don't think I get check raised by anything that I'm ahead of. Basically, I think the hand comes down to hoping my opponent has AK or AQ. I might have considered a bet over the table, where I had body language to guide me, and I might have considered it in a cash game with linear-value chips. In this situation, it felt wrong to me. So my analysis comes down to this: I don't think AK and AQ pay me off often enough to make it worth stepping in a mine against the other hands. The only caveat I'll put on this analysis is that I haven't played much limit holdem in the last several years, so my limit analytical skills are rusty. And yes, I might be out of touch with what a typical limit player would do. By the way, I'm amused that only five of you thought that KK and QQ cap then go limp, but 14 of you include KK and QQ in "What hands play this way, then pay you off if you bet?" | ||||||
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July 1st, 2009
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| If you can't be bothered to spell the word you correctly, you shouldn't be writing. | ||||||
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| Last night, I posted a poll about a poker hand. Synopsis: you 3-bet red aces from the button in the limit holdem round of a HORSE tournament. Your opponent then goes limp, check-calling the flop and turn. On the river, the board is 7s Jh 9s 3h Td. It's checked to you. Poll #1423896 Poker part 2 Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: None What hands cap and then go limp on the flop? AA KK QQ JJ TT 99 88 77 smaller pairs AK AQ AJ KQ some other hands You're still not speaking English What hands play this way, then pay you off if you bet? KK QQ smaller pairs AK AQ AJ some other hands You're still not speaking English | ||||
| comments: 10 comments or Leave a comment |
5 (16.1%)
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| A friend and I are having a disagreement about a hand. It's a HORSE tournament, (limit) holdem round. Blinds are 50-100, your stack is about 5800, and your opponent's stack is about 2250. Most of the field is still in, so there are no bubble/money considerations. Your stack is about 1.5x average. You're dealt two red aces on the button. The cutoff raises. You three-bet. The small blind caps. The initial raiser wisely folds, and you call. The flop comes 7s Jh 9s. SB checks to you, you bet, he calls. The turn is a 3h. He checks to you, you bet, he calls. The river is a Td. The board is now 7s Jh 9s 3h Td. Assuming you have no intel on this player beyond what's in this description, what do you do? Poll #1423632 Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: None What do you do on the river? Check Bet Wish this was written in English Is your play different in a cash game? Yes No γεια σου | ||||||
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June 30th, 2009
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| Be careful... she's winding up for a rant. Last weekend I was in the grocery store, and unexpectedly found myself in an aisle I'm unfamiliar with-- the one that sells bottled water. I rarely have reason to be in this section of the supermarket, so I was shocked at what I found. The amount of shelf space dedicated to plain, generic bottled water, nearly an entire aisle, stunned me. I live in Alameda County, California. We get our water, pure mountain runoff, from Hetch Hetchy reservoir, which happens to be located smack dab in the middle of a crappy, polluted industrial wasteland that you might have heard of. It's called Yosemite National Park. Some dude named Ansel apparently spent some time out there with a camera and managed to sell a few photos of that hellhole. San Francisco water is so good that they basically can't find impurities in it. Not only is our tap water spectacular, but a glass of water costs a fraction of a cent. It's delivered to your kitchen through some newfangled process called gravity that doesn't pollute, doesn't waste natural resources, and is incredibly cheap to operate. I honestly can't remember the last time I had to pay the gravity bill. I just turn a knob and it's there. I don't have to go out and buy it, schlep it home, store it, or get rid of the containers. All this and it's practically free. On the other hand, we have bottled water. It's hundreds of times as expensive as tap water. It's not safer-- in fact, it's less well-regulated than tap water. Often, bottled water is nothing more than tap water from some other city. It comes wrapped in petroleum, and it's trucked to your local store using petroleum, after which you almost certainly use petroleum to get it to your home. When you're done with it, you have a nearly-useless bottle to deal with, and it either winds up being recycled into something less useful or it spends many many years in a landfill. It lines the pockets of great big corporations with great big marketing budgets. "But tap water tastes bad." Bullshit, I say. Bullshit. I've traveled all over the US, and I drink the tap water wherever I go. You know the worst water I've ever had? Dasani. If your tap water tastes bad to you, an inexpensive carbon filter can take care of that. Admittedly, bottled water has some good uses. I have a stash of it in my home for emergency purposes-- I live in earthquake country, after all. A bottle can be a convenient serving container when you're on the go, at a picnic, in a casino, or wherever. As an everyday drink, though, it's ludicrously extravagant. Bottled water is really nothing more than the triumph of marketing over common sense. | ||||||
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June 28th, 2009
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bellaballanda twittered a link to this story about the wife of South Carolina governor Mark Sanford. In reading it, I was particularly struck by this quote:"You would think that a father who didn't have contact with his children, if he wanted those children, he would toe the line a little bit," she said.My first reading of this was that she was saying that if he wanted to see his children he was going to have to toe the line. On rereading it I'm less certain of my interpretation, but the insinuation is certainly there. For the sake of this discussion, I'm going with my initial interpretation. My reaction was, "How dare she?" The underlying implication are that they're her kids rather than their kids, and that she should have some ultimate authority as to what involvement he has in their life. To me it seems almost equally valid for him to say, "If you want to see the kids again, you have to let me have this affair." The world would explode if he did that, though, while her statement goes by with little notice. | ||||||
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June 26th, 2009
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| (Yes, this is cryptic) They toast well in a pan. When toasted, they make good bread crumbs. A sliver of parmesan melts nicely onto them. I want to do a cracker thing with one on top. Sweetened cream cheese and a kumquat slice. Buttered? Hrmmm. Yep, toasted in butter works. | ||||||
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June 23rd, 2009
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| While I was searching for something for sabyl tonight, I found this gem. It's a demo of La Vie Boeheme performed by Jonathan Larson, the creator of Rent. For those who don't know, he died hours before the off-Broadway premiere of the show, and a few months before it opened on Broadway. | ||||||
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| For my sysadmin-type friends... My company has a lot of scheduled jobs that do a variety of things-- move logs around, ingest and digest them, and all sorts of other things. Some of it happens hourly, some daily, and there are lots of dependencies between various tasks. We manage it all with an operational workflow tool is mostly adequate in theory, but often falls on its face in practice. We're sort of looking for something less sucky than what we have. It seems like this should be a fairly well solved problem, and that there should be at least two good open source solutions. Free would be great, inexpensive is OK, and expensive is not an option. cron is not an option. Anyone have a recommendation? | ||||||
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June 21st, 2009
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| S&M Communion Bread | ||||||
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June 19th, 2009
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That was fast. The picture doesn't show it, but holy crap are they bright! | ||||||
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June 18th, 2009
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| I'm horrified by them, but I think I may need these shoes. | ||||||
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Patti
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