The (temporary) Death of Online Poker

April 15th, 2011 is now being known throughout poker circles as 'Black Friday' as the Department of Justice goes after some of the top executives of Full Tilt, Pokerstars and UltimateBet. If you are playing on any of these sites, you will not be able to play real money poker online if you reside within the United States.

This will be tough for a lot of players who depend on online poker for their living. Despite this setback, I firmly believe that a compromise can be reached between the DOJ and the proprietors of online poker sites within the next couple of years. There is just too much money out there for the government not to be regulating and taxing online gaming. We'll just have to wait and see. Meanwhile, underground live poker will probably spread like wildfire. Watch out!

Finally

It's about fracking time.

The Greatest Song Ever Made

Breathtaking violins, beautifully crafted lyrics and a true ensemble of sounds help make Bittersweet Symphony by The Verve the greatest song ever made.

Getting Back Into Tennis

It's been difficult, but quite satisfying trying to get back into tennis these last few months. I still have things to tweak and fix, like my serve and ground strokes, but all in all I'm playing so much better than I could ever remember playing in high school. For my own inspiration, here are some slow-mo videos of Federer and Nalbandian. Enjoy.

Interesting Words

Words from the ancient Indian Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, which I believe, to my limited knowledge, is a part of Hindu scripture.


"From delusion lead me to truth
From darkness lead me to light
From death lead me to immortality."

The Obama Doctrine

I discovered a fascinating article about Obama's radically different approach to foreign policy and the members of the think tank that are behind it. Can this be the solution to the currently flawed American foreign policy? Let's see.

My NCAA Tournament Prediction

I'm not a huge college basketball fan, nor will I ever expect to be one. But like so many others, I'm fascinated by the craziness that is March Madness. Even non-fans have come to appreciate the maddening task of trying to predict the NCAA tournament bracket. Although I'm not a college hoops fan, I am a fan of games. So one night I had an idea to come up with a program that would randomly pick the winners in the bracket.

Using no other information other than the bracket seedings, I assigned values to each of the teams. #1 seeds had values of 16, #2 seeds had values of 15 and so forth. I then added a random number ranging from 0 to 16 to each team's value. Using these values, I pitted each of the teams against each other. To reduce my deviations (too many upsets), I ran each of the simulated games three times (adding a new random number each time), which would give higher seeded teams an edge if the simulation ran infinitely, but was still random enough to allow for upsets. Whichever team won the most simulations out of the three runs was considered the winner and moved on to the next round. Applying this formula for every game and every round, I finally came to a tournament winner. And so the 2008 NCAA Champions will be..........

the Memphis Tigers.

Let's see if my crap shoot will pay off. Here's a picture of my complete bracket. Tell me what you think.

Rediscovering the Smashing Pumpkins

Unless Billy and Jimmy can wow me with their new stuff, Siamese Dream is the best Smashing Pumpkins album, ever. Listen for yourself.

A Funny Conversation

A recent AIM conversation I had with my brother recently.

(1:52:27 AM) Johnny: hey.. have you solved anything with your vista productivity lately?
(1:52:44 AM) mk73183: what do you mean my 'vista productivity'?
(1:53:04 AM) Johnny: i dopn't know.. the random slow ups.. problems with programs saying thier missing files.. etc
(1:53:49 AM) mk73183: i actually one night decided to install a virus scanner, and did a scan
(1:53:55 AM) mk73183: holy crap i had like 490 infections
(1:54:17 AM) mk73183: most of them on exe files, i don't know if that was the root problem, but i hope that's the end of it
(1:54:27 AM) Johnny: what about the random slow ups?
(1:54:58 AM) mk73183: not so much, although only when media center encoder helper opens up, which isn't much
(1:57:10 AM) Johnny: maybe i should do a virus scan
(1:57:19 AM) Johnny: although my computer is sly as a fox
(1:57:28 AM) mk73183: i used the latest avg
(1:57:45 AM) mk73183: get the f out of here with that.....
(1:57:49 AM) Johnny: i think viruses see my rig.. and get scared
(1:58:32 AM) Johnny: yo.. my computer is too good for viruses.. what am i thinking
(1:59:02 AM) mk73183: yo that's vanity
(1:59:09 AM) Johnny: that's respect
(2:00:07 AM) mk73183: if your computer has its butthole exposed, a virus isn't gonna care how good of rig you have, it's gonna rip it apart......
(2:00:22 AM) mk73183: you can't stop what's coming to you....
(2:00:23 AM) Johnny: well my computer ain't gay so its no problem
(2:00:41 AM) Johnny: you make socially awkward computer analogies
(2:01:15 AM) mk73183: i'm just saying you never know when you'll be caught with your pants down, that's all
(2:02:32 AM) Johnny: haha in understand..
(2:02:39 AM) Johnny: you're a funny guy
(2:08:22 AM) Johnny: haha i gotta go to bed..
(2:08:31 AM) mk73183: later

Maybe next time I should stay away from the homosexual innuendo.

Artist Of The Moment

Marjorie Fair
Album: Self Help Serenade

To be honest, I've only heard one song from these guys, called Waves. It's a great song and it's stuck in my head. One hit wonder? I guess we'll see.

Artist of the moment

Eleni Mandell
Album: Miracle of Five

If you're in the mood for some rhythmic, sleepy folk music, give her a try.

He will judge between the nations
and will settle disputes for many peoples.
They will beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
nor will they train for war anymore.

Isaiah 2:4

The Conversation

I came upon this video that showed the behind-the-scenes of this classic moment in Heat. Makes you wonder how these guys make such quality acting look so effortless. Watch as these two powerhouse bad asses of cinema go at it.

Gang Starr

For those of you who've never heard of Gang Starr, you should definitely check them out. An influential rap group from the late 80's and 90's that mixed some nice tracks using jazz and traditional rap beats. There's a nice track called "Royalty" that's stuck in my head right now.

Macgyver

For some odd reason, I have the Macgyver theme song stuck in my head. And suprisingly, there's a bunch of versions of it on YouTube. Here's one on the piano that I enjoy.

High Stakes Poker

Of all the poker television shows that have flooded into the market over the past couple of years, I have found one that I believe tops them all. High Stakes Poker on the Game Show Network features some of the top pros and amateurs coming together to play a $300/$600 no limit Texas hold'em cash game. What's the difference between this show and other poker shows you see on television? Well, for starters the cash and chips that you see on the table are the players' actual money, not tournament chips. So when you see someone making a $50,000 raise on this show, that's actually $50,000 he's dropping in the middle of the table. Needless to say, pots can get pretty huge and you do see some big hands go down. If a player loses all of his/her money, they can just reload on the spot and buy additional chips. One of the things I appreciate about this show is the laid back atmosphere that's created around the game despite the large amounts of money at stake. Players drink, play and chat with each other casually. Plus, if one player leaves, another one comes and takes the former player's spot, giving the show a little variety. It's nice to see a lot of these pros come together in a casual environment playing some pretty competitive poker while getting a glimpse into some of their personalities outside of tournament play. And just to show you how big the pots can be, here's a clip of the biggest pot shown thus far.

Nobuo Uematsu

I never realized the grace and beauty of the works of Nobuo Uematsu until recently. It just doesn't sound as good when you're hearing this music blasting from a 32-bit gaming system using a MIDI sound engine. Ugh. Here's a link to enjoy some of this man's fine work.

Phil Hellmuth

Say what you will about the guy. He may be a loud-mouth cry baby who always seems to either tout himself as the greatest hold'em player or bad-mouth other players and the way they play. But I have to admit, the man knows what he's doing at the poker table.

Check out this lay down.

Hardcore Scrabblers

I love Scrabble as much as the next guy, but this game amazed me. Just shows how hardcore these tournament players are. The combined score in this game was well over 1000.

Get Well Soon Windows

Let's face it. Windows XP is insecure. If you are facing problems such as spyware, viruses or just plain bloat, you may want to read on. I don't consider myself an expert on any of these problems, but I do find that the things I've implemented here work for me to keep my computer free of the crap that is on the web.

To relieve yourself of most spyware, using an internet browser other than Internet Explorer will help quite a bit. In my opinion, Internet Explorer is too tightly integrated to the operating system and it does things without your permission (mainly due to ActiveX controls). My suggestion, use either Mozilla Firefox or Opera Web Browser. They're both free and pretty stable browsers. Also, get anti-spyware software. These programs will hopefully detect and eliminate spyware from your system, although you must remember to update your spyware definitions consistently. Microsoft Anti-Spyware and Spybot are probably the two most popular and overall best solutions for the normal user.

For viruses, I go the cheap route and mainly use AVG Anti Virus. It's free and I run it maybe every month or so just in case something I downloaded unto my system is infected. Remember to update your virus definitions as well!

There are also services that run in the background that you really don't need in my opinion. To see what services you are running, go to Start > Run. In the command line type "services.msc" and hit OK. Chances are you have a multitude of services that are running in Windows that are hogging up precious resources on your system. There are web sites that can help you address this problem. I myself have used two:

The Elder Geek

and

Black Viper

Both are pretty thorough in identifying which services you need or don't need. I've seen so much bloat running on so many people's computers it makes me want to vomit. Here is what is running on my system, just to give you an idea. This is only to give you an idea. Please be careful when adjusting certain services as you can potentially turn off a vital system service.







One last thing, if you are running Windows XP, be sure to have a router connected in between your cable/dsl modem and your main computer so worms and other nastiness don't creep in.

So in conclusion, to really secure yourself and have a decent running system:

- Use an internet browser other than Internet Explorer
- Run some sort of anti virus software on a regular basis
- Turn off unnecessary fluff (services, visuals, etc.)
- Protect from Spyware and adware using two programs and run them regularly:

1) Microsoft Anti-Spyware
2) Spybot - Search & Destroy

- Use a firewall or router of some kind