Changing Paradigms

in

I've let this blog sit around a little more than I would've liked. I'm trying to figure out how I should manage my online identity -- I have too many accounts at too many sites, and I want to see if I can simplify my online existence a little bit. One of my biggest issues has been how to handle the photos I share with the world. Up to this point, I've been using my Flickr gallery as a photoblog - usually posting one photo a day. There's some good reasons to do that - I get to share the absolute best photos I take at a relatively leisurely rate. That, and people can view my stream of photos as I post them without having to spend a lot of time sifting through a giant pile of photos if I posted them all at once.

There are downsides though. Sometimes I want to share photos that I've just taken, but there's a large backlog of photos from other recent photo shoots. So either I break chronological order, or I post them in order and the new photo gets shared weeks or months after I originally took it. Or, sometimes I'd like to link to a photo to a blog post that I'm making, but I haven't posted it yet. So I can either post it somewhere else first and then fix the link later once I post it, or I just post it out of order. Not pretty.

What I've decided to do is to use my Flickr account in a more conventional way -- post photos I shoot en masse and not worrying quite as much about keeping the quality of the stream as top notch as I have been. From there I can select my favorite photos and publish them on my blog. This has the added advantage that I can post "into the future", which means I can do a batch of photoblog posts and people reading my feed will get a photo a day.

This also means I can refine how I post photos to minoragenda.com. Instead of relying on yet another service to post albums of photos I take, I can use the Slickr plugin to wordpress to show off Flickr photosets in a nice fashion. This solves a bunch of problems I was trying to solve in a pretty nice way.

I'm going to be spending the next couple of days back-posting all my flickr photos. If you're subscribed to my RSS feed, you might see some odd artifacts of this while I'm doing it. Sorry about that, I'm not too sure if there's a way to avoid this problem.

Heraldk

Transition complete

in

Just a couple of notes to update what I'm doing with the site. I have now removed the old layout and blog content for http://heraldk.ca/blog. That address is still valid, but it points to this blog. Wordpress does a pretty good job of acting as the main page for a website, so I see no reason to keep wordpress sequestered in a /blog directory. Very little for this webpage has changed. I hope to spend some time on the template to make it look prettier. Instead of doing it myself this time, I think I'll probably steal/use one of the free ones from the wordpress templates site and modify it using my own images. Hopefully I get around to that sooner rather than later.

Heraldk

Times are Busy

in

So... I launch a brand new blog, and then let both my blogs wallow in un-updatedness. Yeah, I'm good at this! As you might be able to tell, this site's layout is only half complete. It seems that everytime I get the chance to sit down to work on it, I get interrupted after only figuring out how to style one element at a time. At least now you can kind of see the direction I'm heading in. I hope you like it - I'm going for a fairly simple white background theme. It's fairly minimalist, but I think it'll do well. If the layout works out well, I'll probably adapt it for my personal blog as well.

Once the layout is done, I'll go back to trying to write some actual content for the blog. Hopefully that isn't too far away!

Heraldk

Back to Poker

in

I had an urge last night to play some poker for the first time in quite awhile. The last time I had played any poker at all was in August when I needed to clear some money at Party so I could cash out. So I logged into my trusty PSO account to check on the latest promotions and found 4 promos that I haven't done yet. I chose Carbon poker because I could get the highest amount ($120 worth) of PSO points. I went through the typical steps to start the promo and sat down for a couple hour session. There wasn't a lot of action at the $50 NL tables, so I stepped up to $100NL, a limit I haven't played since January or February. I just opened two tables, partially because it was a higher limit than I had played recently and partially to get used to the new interface. The first thing I noticed is that the software seemed very responsive and slick -- it's certainly better software than many sites have. The second thing I notice? There's an All-In button in a primary spot on the screen. This is a one-click-put-all-your-chips-in-the-pot button. Man do I ever hope I don't make a bad misclick with that button!

I got off to a fast start early on. Within a couple rotations at a six-max table, I get dealt pocket aces. I make a standard raise and get called. The board comes up 655 with 2 diamonds. I make a healthy bet, and the guy across from me pushes allin. I call and he shows JJ and I take down almost a full stack!

Another hand a little later, I flop 3 clubs holding the king of clubs. I make a bet and get raised a small amount so I call and turn a fourth club giving me the 2nd nut flush. My opponent promptly shoves and I call - he shows Q6 of clubs, and I win 3/4 of a stack there.

Later on, I'm up over two stacks and get to see a free flop with 64 and flop trips. Unfortunately, I run into a guy who had A6, so I lost a bunch in that hand. I probably lost more than I should have, although it was tough to fold to the guy's river bet.

I made back a bunch of money with KJs when I flopped a flush draw and turned the nut flush to beat my opponent's trip aces. That got me back into the 2.5 stack profit range.

Late in my session, I flopped top pair of tens with TJo. I bet the flop and get called and then turn two pair. I bet again but get raised so I just call and the river is another J to give me a full house. I promptly push and get called by a guy who flopped trips on the flop. Whoops! Got lucky there.

All in all, I finished my session up $300, and a little less than 1/4 done my PSO promotion. Not too shabby for not playing in a couple months! Hopefully the rest of the session goes as well!

Heraldk

Camping Weekend

in ,

This weekend a group of us went out to Elk Island National Park to get some camping in before the summer came to a close. It was a rather enjoyable weekend that included a short excursion back to the city to attend a BBQ at my Uncle's place. We got in a quick hike on Saturday morning, but mostly we kind of sat around for awhile and relaxed in front of the campfire. We played some cards and some boggle, but other than that we mostly just enjoyed the wonderful outdoors. There was a bit of an adventure though with my car. You see, on Sunday morning, Marc discovered that my tire was looking a little flat. A couple of hours later, it was starting to sag down to the rim. Oops! Turns out I had run over a bit of metal, likely at one of the many construction sites that I passed through. Doh. Well, instead of fiddling with putting on the spare tire and limping back to Edmonton, Diane had a handy AMA membership that we used to get a tow back into Edmonton.

It was a rather full weekend! After getting back, I was super tired so I went to bed super early: like 9:30, and didn't get up this morning until eight in the morning. Yay uber sleep! All in all, a good weekend and a good chance to get into the outdoors again and enjoy some camping.

Heraldk

The New heraldk.ca

in

Welcome! I have decided that it is more than time to put some work into this website again. As part of this work, I'm re-introducing the root level heraldk.ca as a new blog-style format. In it, I'll be posting my rants and thoughts about things. At first, it'll probably be fairly sparse, but I will fill it in over time (hopefully fairly frequently) with my latest rants. I hope the quality will improve over time and that you find some use out of it.

One of the reasons for this is I want to make a distinction between my personal diary style blog entries and some of the more content heavy posts. As well, I want to keep this blog free of poker related content so that I can once again serve up some google ads. The reason they've been lacking is because the policy for google ads does not allow you to place ads on sites with gambling related content. By separating these, I can keep this content separate -- plus many of my random readers probably don't really care that I won $25 in my most recent session of poker.

So I hope you enjoy my new site, and the forthcoming new look for both heraldk.ca and my personal blog.

Heraldk

Match Aftermath

in

So the match is over, and I had a mere four and a half hours of sleep. Ouch. Still, it was a lot of fun. I got up and got some coffee and breakfast at Tim Hortons before heading up to the poker round table. I think people's tempers were short which meant that there was a bit of unhappiness amongst some of the team members. I hope things sorted themselves out, but it wasn't too pretty for awhile. Anyways, it was cool to meet up with some people who've started to gather and research computers playing poker. It should be cool to see what these guys come up with as they come up to speed. After the round table, I hung around to see the general games playing man-machine match. From what I'd heard, the generic game playing competition was poorly run this year, and it even ran with some controversy. The games that were selected for the playoffs were all very similar and were from a class of games that the best preliminary round player had trouble with. Ugh. Plus, the man-machine match they had was a little pathetic. The played a game that if the humans figured out how the rules work, it was trivial for them to win. So ... that's not a good thing to have in a "fair" match. Oh well. My friend Yngvi won the title, but that was partly due to an error by the other program. Yngvi himself knows the system for the games competition needs fixing, so hopefully changes are made soon.

After witnessing that, I worked on the man-machine web site for awhile as I spent my first session in a real AAAI talk. Heh - too much stuff for me to do. The man-machine web site needs a ton of work, but I'm gonna have to get to that slowly over the next few days. Lots of press articles to link to!

In the afternoon I got the video done that you see in the post before this. I felt that it needed to get done and uploaded since people needed to see what Ali and Phil said about the bots and the outcome of the match.

After that I hung around for awhile and ended up going to the poster session. That was really cool - there was a bunch of food, and I got to talk to a few people including Brett from the University of Minnesota who started working on poker. We talked for a long time about DIVAT and variance and vexbot, and ... how to calculate celcius from fahrenheit. Fun times.

After the poster session, we had found out that there was going to be a huge fireworks display in town. Apparently they do a fireworks contest and so Spain's turn was today and Canada's turn is Saturday. So we bustled down to river front and I borrowed Neil's tripod and I got a ton of photos. I hope some of them turned out! It was hard since people kept moving into my photo :P

So now I'm just waiting for my photos to finish copying and then I'm gonna crash for the night. G'nite all!

Heraldk

Poker Bankroll Updated

in

I haven't been playing nearly as much as I used to, but I have played a couple of PSO promos since the neteller fiasco. Just before neteller closed its doors to Canadians for online gambling transactions, I cashed out all of my money from online poker rooms. Since that time, I've done the new PSO promotions for Pokerstars and Gnuf poker, each worth a $120 bonus from PSO. The Pokerstars one was okay, I lost about $40 at the tables, but since the Pokerstars deposit bonus was $50, I ended up ahead at the site so the PSO bonus was pure profit on top of that. Gnuf poker was pretty interesting. I deposited $500 to max out the deposit bonus only to discover that points are extremely hard to accumulate. It took me almost a month and a half to get through the PSO required 400 points, and the $500 bonus required more than 3000 more points. Screw that. But I did very well at the tables scoring more than $600. Add that to my PSO bonus of $120 and I was quite happy with that outcome. There's been a little bit of nervousness on my part as I tried to get my money out. They finally added another cashout option that looks like it'll work for me, so hopefully everything will all be sorted out soon.

My poker bankroll page has been updated to reflect my latest winnings.

So I'm pretty happy with the last couple of months. I might get into poker a little more once the man-machine match is over and done with. Until then, I think I'll be pretty busy!

Heraldk

Facebook

in ,

Wow, I can't believe I've found a social networking site I actually don't hate. I can't stand myspace -- most pages are garish and poorly presented. Orkut became meaningless when people lost interest with it in the first couple months. So I never really considered joining facebook since I assumed it would be another waste of time. Eventually though, I heard enough people talking about it that I decided I needed to give it a try. Boy was a surprised. The first thing that struck me is that the site is well-organized and easy to browse. It is very much a web2.0 style done right. Just enough AJAX (I'm assuming) to make the elements of the page interactive to the right degree. Everything feels very easy, but the lack of full customization means that viewing other people's profiles is actually pleasant (unlike myspace ... *shudder*). So all in all it is an impressive piece of software.

The other big thing that struck me right away is just how many of my former schoolmates were on facebook already. I suppose mileage might vary depending on whether facebook has hit critical mass for the people you know. Definitely, however, a large number of people I went to high school, junior high, and even elementary school with are already on facebook. What that meant was within a few days of creating a facebook account, I already had more than 50 people on my friends list. Insane.

The last thing that I think facebook does amazingly well, is it gives you a big reason to login on a regular basis. When you login, you get a list of 'news items' for the people on your friends list. This means that whenever you login you are notified whenever someone adds a new person to their friends list, or when they update their profile, or ... all kinds of stuff. This means you can see what's going on with other people's friends networks and update your own if you see someone you know get added to someone else's list.

So, I have now fallen to facebook and it appears to be another good time waster. Just what I needed.

Heraldk

Poker Bankroll Building - Casinos!

in

So for the final catchup post in my poker bankroll building line of posts, this post will summarize my winnings for all my non-poker related bonuses. These numbers are going to look fairly impressive ... and they are, but remember that you can only do deposit bonuses at site once and then that promo is over. Very few of these have reload bonuses as good as their deposit bonuses. I started my casino bonuses at starluck casino, and busted the $100 deposit. That turned me away from online casinos for a while even though I knew they were +EV. Finally, I did the golden palace promo and made a decent amount there. Here's the list of the sites and my various profits:

Starluck casino: deposit $100, withdraw $0 Golden Palace casino: deposit $100, withdraw $290 Planetluck casino: deposit $100, withdraw $200 Intercasino (deposit bonus): deposit $100, withdraw $250 Bet 365 casino: deposit $100, withdraw $306 Victor Chandler casino: deposit $100, withdraw $0 Red Lounge: deposit $94.80, withdraw $274.48 Littlewoods casino: deposit $47.55, withdraw $0 SIA casino: deposit $100, withdraw $0 32 Vegas: deposit $200, withdraw $207 Casino on net: deposit $200, withdraw $655 Intercasino (monthly reload): deposit $100, withdraw $425 21.com: deposit $200, withdraw $200 Intercasino (monthly reload): deposit $100, withdraw $150 Party Gammon bonus: deposit $500, withdraw $600 Best poker casino: deposit $130.38, withdraw $127.57 Mansion sportsbook free bet: deposit $1100, withdraw $2100 Intercasino (monthly reload): deposit $100, withdraw $0 Intercasino (monthly reload): deposit $100, withdraw $275

All told, my profits are: $2387.42 USD

So if I add that to my current poker profits, I'm looking at over $8500 USD worth of profits and prizes plus a couple tournament buyins, one of which I won $3490 CDN!

The best part is I still enjoy doing it, though at the moment my play time has been cut due to playing WoW. Still, its fun and that's where I mean to leave it - in the fun section of my day.

Heraldk

Poker Bankroll Building Part 3

in

This post is going to be quite a bit more choppy than the previous ones since this is when I stopped getting physical documents and really started utilizing Neteller for maximum bonus clearing power. This is going to be a complete rundown of my bankroll building up to the present day, so it might be a little long. After this, I plan on giving an update every couple of months so that I don't fall behind like this again! So this update will be a little different than the last. I will be talking about just my poker bankroll building leaving the casino bonuses to the next post. I'm going to separate each session based on poker room rather than by dates because otherwise this will be supremely confusing to follow!

Noble Poker

PSO launched an exciting new room with a gigantic bonus (at the time) of 100% match of $500. This room was called Noble poker, and I just happened to have close to that amount in my neteller account so I deposited in April 2005. I would play there over the course of several months. I did very well very early and was able to cash out my initial desposit on June 14, and continue playing there until I had cleared my entire bonus. In the end, I made $897 plus my $60 in PSO points.

Net: $897 + $60 PSO points

Paradise Poker

During my time at Noble I also started the paradise poker promo through PSO. From my $200 deposit, I made another $80 cashing out only a week later. In addition, PSO paid me $60 in PSO points. I rather liked my experience at Paradise, so much later I would attempt a reload bonus there in November 2005. This time, however I would lose $195 ... perhaps because I had grown accustomed to having poker tracker stats of players!

Net: -$115 + $60 PSO points

Party Poker

Party Poker figures into a lot of short play segments partially because they had one of the fastest cashouts available. As a result, I would deposit there for a bonus and then withdraw via cheque to actually aquire my funds. Since then, I have been using neteller cheque withdraws since they are fast and only cost $2. This way, all my cashouts happen from the same place and are logged. The early times caused some confusion in recreating my play history!

Anyways, I played several sessions at party poker having mixed results: June 23/05: $87 profit Oct 6/05: $4 profit Apr 12/06: $150 profit (Party gave free money and I went on a nice run) Jul 13/06: $8 profit (Received a gc for a casino bonus, this was the poker play part)

Net: $249 profit

Poker Rewards

Another PSO promo with a healthy deposit bonus, I deposited $400 in Jun 2005, and cashed out $654 just a couple weeks later with yet another $60 in PSO points. Much later, I would deposit for another deposit bonus in April 2006 to qualify for a PSO freeroll. I didn't do too well on that deposit losing my bonus and $21.72 on top of that. Thankfully, the freeroll was both underpopulated and I finished in the top 20 which paid my $200.

Net: $832.28 + $60 PSO points

Ultimate Bet

This is my rakeback room, so I would play here many times, but not for very long segments since I jumped around to do new PSO promotions as they popped up. This is a very confusing thing to track as well because I deposited several times in order to rack up deposit bonuses that don't expire. I still have a lot of bonus money to clear there! I made deposits in Jun/05, Dec/05, Feb/06, and Apr/06, and to this day still have money in that account. I did not play well there though, and frustratingly saw net losses at several points. Thankfully, that seems to have turned around the last time I was there plus all the rakeback I've received.

June/05: -$32.90 losses Dec/05-Feb/06: -$67.76 losses Apr/06-present: $130 profit PSO Rakeback: $147 in PSO points

Net: $29.34 + $147 in PSO points + 1 poker book from player points

Aztec Poker

This is another rakeback room that I started because I was I wanted some variety for my rakeback rooms. I didn't play there much because I ended up not liking the room very much, and ended with slight losses Net: -$16.05 losses + neglible PSO points

Full Tilt Poker

Probably one of my favourite online poker rooms so far, I have played for many months at Full Tilt enjoying fairly decent success. It is the room where I moved up to 2/4 limit eventually and started winning regularly there. I probably still make many errors, but between the deposit bonuses and my small winning rate I turned a neat profit. I'm disappointed that I don't have rakeback there, or I would play there more often. Even now, I still like to go back there. I played there enough that I saved enough player points for a very snazzy micro-suede full tilt jacket.

Jul/05-Nov/05: $607 profit + $60 in PSO points Jan/06-Feb/06: $201 profit Apr/06-Jun/06: $250.35 profit Jun/06-Aug/06: $425.45 profit

Net: $1483.80 profit + $60 PSO points + 1 micro-suede jacket

Titan Poker

After my success with Noble Poker, I was enthused about having another shot at it when it was rebranded Titan poker and re-available as a PSO promotion in Sep/05. This time, however, I did not enjoy the same success and ended up losing $72 on the deal. Fortunately, the PSO bonus was $90 in PSO points, so I barely gained on the promo.

Net: -$72 losses + $90 PSO points

Sun Poker

Another PSO promo I attempted in Oct/05, this one I eeked out a profit on even though I didn't like the site due to the lack of tables to play at. It did however get me my very first and so far only royal flush!

Net: $24 + $60 PSO points

Absolute Poker

I returned to Absolute to play in the PSO league that happened earlier this year. I did well in the first league event, but after that played rather poorly and stopped playing after it became clear I wasn't going to be able to compete for the big prizes. In ring game play I also did rather poorly, so I cashed out with a $70 loss.

Net: -$70 losses

Pokerroom

Pokerroom was the very first room I got a start with way back when, but I never deposited any money there. I learned from PSO that if I had them close my account, I could open a new one through PSO 6 months later and take advantage of the PSO bonus. In Apr/06 this period had passed so I deposited and made a decent $198 profit plus my PSO bonus

Net: $198 + $90 PSO points

Pokershare

Pokershare was the newest PSO promo in Jun/06 and it is by far the worst I've done on any promo. Unfortunately, there was almost no limit action there so I was either forced to play 2/4 shorthanded or no limit both of which were not comfortable games for me at the time (and still at the moment). I managed to get through the promo losing $138 which was countered with the $90 PSO bonus.

Net: -$138 losses + $90 PSO bonus

Dream Poker

Dream poker is currently the newest PSO bonus room, and I finally took advantage of this promo in Aug/06. I deposited for the full deposit bonus, but today I cashed out having only received 1/4 of it. Being a prima poker room, I didn't like the lack of games in the evenings (since the majority of the players who play there are european). However, I made a decent profit playing 1/2 shorthanded and cashed out $124 profit plus my PSO bonus.

Net: $124 + $60 PSO bonus

PSO Referrals and Other points

My referrals kept rolling in at a regular but slow pace and I made a startling $250 in referrals since the last post. In addition, there was a forum contest that netted me another $25 in PSO points.

Net: $275 in PSO points

Totals!

Net this post: $3496.37 profit + $1052 PSO points + 1 small poker book + 1 microsueded jacket

Net Poker Winnings to date: $4582.37 USD + $3490 CAD + $1442.50 PSO points + 1000 chips + 1 poker book + 1 microsuede jacket

It isn't enough to make a living off of, but I think I've proven that I can make money at poker online. I've had some rocky patches, but that's how it goes! Thanks to WoW, I haven't been playing much online poker lately, but I intend on returning to it and learning how to play no limit well.

There will be one more post in this series that summarizes my online casino bonus gathering. I've been pretty successful at that too, so I look forward to showing how profitable that can be!

Heraldk

Server move complete!

in

Well it's done and everything seems to have moved fairly smoothly. If you notice any issues, please let me know because they aren't immediately obvious to me. This move signals the first time I pay for web hosting for my blog/website. This is made possible via a really cool webhosting company called nearlyfreespeech that lets you run your website for what seems like really really cheap. Their hole philosophy is very agreeable and if you are looking for a place to host a site, I recommend checking them out!

As a result of starting to pay for webhosting, you may see the return of google ads in more prominent spaces. I'm not certain that I'll do that just yet, but be forwarned. If they do return, I'd appreciate a few clicks since a regular google ad income should *easily* pay for the hosting fees.

And that's all from me for now. Back to my thesis!

Heraldk

Poker Bankroll Building Part 2

in

I left off my poker bankroll building at the end of January 2005. I had capped off a very successful initial 3 months at playing poker considering that most players who win don't start winning right away. Apart from a short spurt at Party when I had no clue what I was doing, I quickly learned the ropes to make myself at worst a break even player at the low limits. Part of learning the ropes, I forgot to mention that I took some of my intial PSO points to order an amazon gift card which I used to purchase 4 poker books to ramp up my learning of the game. These books, in particular "Small Stakes Hold'em" would be my biggest learning tools over the start of my poker career.

Early in February, my first PSO referral points came in worth $65 - apparently one can make a decent amount with some simple referrals!

At this point, PSO launched the PokerNow rake rebate plan. At the time, PokerNow was a skin of Party Poker (it has since been absorbed, and I'm not too sure if it even exists anymore). This was a great deal since I was now serious about online poker and could use a regular paying PSO points influx which were just about as good as cash. I deposited $100, worked through my deposit bonus and by the time the rake rebate plan collapsed due to Party Poker's insistence, I cashed out $273 and had earned another $60 in PSO points for rakeback.

I started my next promotion at Golden Palace poker on March 2, 2005 once again depositing $100 and getting started. I dabbled a little with no limit play, but for the most part, I stuck to my limit game and went through the raked hand requirements at golden palace. At the end, I cashed out $303 to my brand new neteller account which I had finally decided to start up since I didn't want to have to deposit anymore money through my credit card. Plus I received yet another $60 worth of PSO points for the promo!

From here, my poker exploits no longer simply followed the PSO promos around. There was some harder to complete promos to do, but I was also interested in building my bankroll, so I would jump around a little bit. Before I created my neteller account, I started a frequent flopper rakeback plan with Ultimate Bet through PSO. This would be a recurring site for me because when I didn't have a current bonus to work on, I would return to UB to do generic bonus and PSO points. From here on, I will probably need to go month by month ... so I'm going to wrap up my Feb-April months in a table here and be back with part three of this series in the next little while!

PokerNow rake rebate: +173 + $61 PSO points Golden Palace Poker: +$203, $60 PSO points Referral Points: $85 PSO points Absolute Poker (2 deposits): +$129 Ultimate Bet: +$80 + $22 PSO points (rake rebate) Total Winnings: $585 USD + $228 PSO Points

Sum of total winnings to this point: $1086 USD + $3490 CAD + $390.50 PSO points + 1000 chips

Stay tuned for the next three months or so!

Heraldk

Poker Bankroll Building

in

Well it has been awhile since I last wrote about my poker experience. In this post I'm gonna start going through my history of my online poker transactions to build a picture of how profitable it has been in the past 2 years (well, its been since November of 2004). All of my poker experience has been through Poker Source Online which offers huge incentives to get started in online poker. In November of 2004 I started up with PSO and did their Party Poker promotion for a chipset. At the time, I only really wanted the chipset, which seemed like a fairly low risk venture. The promo at the time was to get a 500 chip set for playing 250 raked hands at Party Poker at .5/1 limits. I deposited $100 on my credit card and lost $30 there over the raked hand requirements (considering I knew nothing at the time this was not a big deal). I received my chips a few weeks later and I started thinking about learning how to play poker so I could take advantage of the rest of the PSO promotions.

In December 2004, I deposited $100 at The Gaming Club that at the time were offering an amazingly sweet promotion. $300 of bonus money was available for my deposit, I simply had to play enough raked hands to release it. As I recall it was something like 200 raked hands for $20 released at a time, but I'm not too sure if that is accurate and the promotion has long since gotten worse. I had aquired a copy of Lee Jone's low limit poker book and was using its starting hand requirements to my benefit and was almost immediately breaking even. Over the time at the gaming club (a little over a month), I played break even poker and cashed out a cheque in early January of 2005 worth $405. In addition, I received $70 worth of PSO points to spend at their store. My online poker life had begun.

Next on my list of places to be hit was Pacific Poker where I once again deposited $100. This site was full of fish-like players and I found it much easier to win there than at the gaming club. Between the experience of playing at the gaming club and party poker, and the weak players, I made a healthy profit for playing .5/1. Not long after, I had already completed the short PSO requirements and cashed out a cheque worth $184 plus my PSO prize of another 500 chipset.

A week later, I started the Absolute Poker promotion where I once again deposited $100 and worked through the PSO raked hand requirements while clearing the deposit bonus money. This promo was a little harder to complete at .5/1. In the end I made my first jump to playing 1/2 and hit a lucky streak of cards that ensured a profit when I cashed out. At the end of January 2005, I received my $60 PSO points prize with another cheque worth $189.

Sometime in January there, Party poker gave me some free money to play with which I turned into $53 more money. Hooray!

Another big event happened that January. On the PSO forums, the site organizers had arranged to come to Edmonton for one of the first Canadian Poker Tour events! With such short notice, they made a general post asking if people in Edmonton were able to make it to the $500 buyin poker tournament. I signed up almost immediately and got several others who had let me know about PSO sign up as well. We had a group of 5 people play, and it was me - the 2 month poker experience player who placed well into the money. In fact, I placed 6th for a prize of $3490!! Talk about a bonus for my bankroll! Alot of the reasons for my success was due to the tutelage of Darse Billings: currently a PHD student about to graduate after working on AI in poker for a number of years. He used to play professionally and made a pretty good living doing so, so his experience helped me out considerably. A great part of being a member of PSO is getting a chance to hit some free prizes just for being a member. Over these 3 months of being a member I received $32.50 of PSO points just for participating in the forums, and my great experience with the site would soon get me some referral points (in the next month). That gets me through my first couple months of bonuses. I'll update again in the next week or so with the next segment in my online poker experiences. Here's what I had received from November 2004 - January 2005:

Party Poker: -$30, 500 piece chipset Gaming Club: +$305, $70 PSO points Party Poker: +$53 from free money Pacific Poker: +$84, 500 piece chipset Absolute Poker: +$89, $60 PSO points $500+50 CPT Poker event: $+3490 (canadian dollars) PSO freebies: $62.50 PSO Points Total Winnings: $501 USD + $3490 CAD + $162.50 PSO Points + 1000 chips

Heraldk

Note: select segments were reworded and added to since the first posting to fill in some details I forgot in my rush to post. I've started work on the next few months of PSO experience and that will be up in the coming days!

Welcome to my new Home!

in

Hello! This site still needs some work, but I couldn't delay this any longer. Welcome to my new blog! I know it doesn't look a whole lot different, but it sure feels like it to me! This is wordpress based (I'll soon get a button that says so, please bear with me) rather than blogger which is slowly aging. Plus, because it's on my own server I have a little more control of what I can do with the site.

Besides this update, I've been doing a bunch of work on my thesis as well as checking out the local summer attractions including the Fringe! If you're in Edmonton and haven't checked out the Fringe, you totally should!

Anyways, enjoy the new site. If you see any problems, please let me know!

Heraldk

Marathon Day in New York

in ,

Okay, today was a heck of a day! We got up on our own accord around 8:30am ... after which we got ready and started out on our big day. Our plan was to try and hit some of the major tourist attractions that are "must-see" New York. We could've done this by transit for most of the way, but decided to instead do most of it on foot so we could also get a feel for the atmosphere of the city and see stuff we'd miss if we went on the train.

So after a short breakfast in a little bakery/deli, we started walking down Broadway with our first stop being Carnegie Hall. There wasn't much to see inside since the tour had just left and there wasn't exactly public access to the building. But we got some pictures of the outside of the building.

Next, we stopped at a ticket booth near Times square looking for tickets for a broadway show (we're aiming to see Spamelot, a Monty Python themed broadway show). The booth wasn't open until 3pm, so we checked a show schedule just to see if there was any shows for that night. Unfortunately, there wasn't any so we were forced to put that off until tomorrow. The advantage of this particular ticket booth is they offer discount tickets the day of the show - which we are a big fan of! So that's on the agenda for tomorrow and hopefully tomorrow evening as well.

The next stop was the Empire State building - but the wait there was over an hour so we decided to put that off until later on as well. So far, not a huge success rate on the things we wanted to do!

Tired, and out of gas, we stopped at a Mcdonalds (yeah, I know ... terrible). We were in a district that seemed to have a lack of snack/deli type food places that we could stop for a quick bite, a glass of water and get our wits back from the busy streets of Manhattan. By the time we found the Mcdonalds, I really really needed to sit down and take a breather. So that I guess is the reason for our stop there. From there, we caught a subway (being really tired and not willing to walk the rest of the way) to a stop near the NY stock exchange - which was yet another place we just stopped to take some pictures of the outside of and left.

Our next destination was a ferry to take us to the Statue of Liberty. Fortunately for our tired feet, this was really close by so we went there and got tickets for the next ferry. It is really a pretty cool sight, even if it really doesn't have a lot of meaning for us Canadians. We wandered around the island and took lots of photos. Unforunately, we couldn't go inside - apparently tickets for that are difficult to get and require more planning ahead than we were able to do. Oh wells.

After catching the ferry back, we walked through Battery Park on route to the World Trade Center site. This was a sobering place to go since it was obvious there was a gaping hole in the landscape. The area is under heavy watch, and construction has started on whatever they plan on putting there ... we didn't stay long, but it was kind of depressing just being there so I was glad to move on.

We had one more stop on our list ... Brooklyn bridge which was not too far away. But first, we needed to grab some food so we stopped at a little place next to the bridge for some pretty good Italian food. It wasn't Turin food, but who am I to complain? I got another chance to sample some juicy fresh shrimp. While not many of them, I was quite happy to have some! I totally have a new appreciation for shrimp!

Finally done, we wandered around trying to find a pedestrian entrance to the bridge. It took awhile, but finally we got on the bridge itself - it is a pretty magnificent structure and well worth the time to go see. We decided not to walk the full length of the bridge, partly because of our tired feet!

Catching a subway back to Times Square, we attempted to find a comedy show to go see (since that's apparently something to do in New York). Unfortunately, the only one we could find was half way into the show, the tickets were still a full $20 and there was a two drink minimum. Ugh - not too attractive. So we wandered a bit and found a Toys-R-Us that was pretty ridiculous. It was three stories tall, and had a FERRIS WHEEL in the middle of the store! That's right ... a ferris wheel. Pure, over the top, ridiculousness! Then again, I'm starting to really expect that here, particularly in the Times Square area.

Afterwards we decided to return to the hostel, perhaps with a stop for a snack and a drink. We stopped at a neat little deli where we got dessert and a beverage ... and there was a kind old man who gave us cookies as well! Yay cookies!

Finally, we're back at our hotel after a very long and full day. Typing this up even makes me a little tired ... and mildly impressed that we actually got through all of this. Amazing-ness!

But I need to go crash. We're sleeping in a bit tomorrow, and then we're going to check out fifth avenue which is reportedly the locale of the new Apple store here in New York. We really have to check that out, as well as some of the other shopping along the avenue. Perhaps I will be able to find gifts for some people even!

Take care! I'm going to go sleep for as long as I can!

Heraldk

New York, New York!

in ,

Well it was a long day today! Mike and I got into New York late last night, dropped our bags off at the hostel and went out in search of food since we were hungry. We bumped into Nolan and Mike on their way back from their dinner so they lead us to a fast food/sit down hybrid restaurant where we had some pretty good wraps.

After a quick bite to eat we returned back to the hostel and got ready for bed with a quick stop to use the internet to check our email.

The next morning we got up early at 8:00 to head for the Museum of Natural History here in NY city. We were meeting up with a couple of people we know from CS who were also in NY, so we needed to be there pronto when then museum opened. The museum is *huge*! When we quickly realized just how big it was after spending an hour in the first corner of the museum, we split up and agreed to meet up at 1pm for lunch so that we could all move just a little faster in small groups. Mike S and I wandered around from the top floor down while Nolan and the other Mike worked their way up from the bottom (this wasn't really planned, it just sorta happened that way). There was some really cool exhibits including many many rooms full of animal displays, information overload and interactive booths.

Our break for lunch was at a small place a few blocks away that was pretty tasty, though I think I'm getting a little tired of spending so much money eating out every day. It'll be nice to get home where the food is cheaper!

Ken and company had to leave after lunch so they did, but we wandered back to the museum to finish looking at the parts of the museum we had missed for about an hour and a half. There sure was some pretty cool things to see (though I don't really have time to look into it)!

After meeting up again, we decided to head over to the Intrepid which is an old aircraft carrier which has been converted into a museum. We were pretty late in their operating hours, but we had about an hour to explore which was actually about right for me. If I had to spend much more time there, I would probably be a little more annoyed at the military propaganda that was everywhere in the carrier. It was still pretty neat to look at everything, and some of the views of the carrier both into the bay and into Manhattan were pretty nice!

When the museum closed, we decided to walk down to Times Square to take a look at this famous area. Crazy! The place was packed with people and this was only a random Sunday evening. What really struck me was the garish-ness of the ads placed *everywhere*. I realize that the area is prime ad-space for companies, but the combination of all the ads with scrolling lights, video, movies added with all the people left me a little dazed at the whole scene. It helped that I had my camera to take a picture once in awhile so I could zone into just parts of the scene so that I didn't have to take it all in at once. Ugh.

We wandered down and saw the outside of Madison Square Garden, which was not all that exciting, but we can say we did it. From there we caught a subway over to Little India to go have some Indian food. Yay for good Indian food! After eating some really good food we returned back to our Hostel. Now its after midnight and I need to get to bed so that I can be up tomorrow morning at 8 again. We're gonna push to try and hit several big things to see including the statue of liberty, the WTC site, and several other things over on that side of Manhattan ... should be fun!

Heraldk

Improvements Keep Coming

in

Hahaha. Instead of actually coming up with some more content, I decided to improve the "read more" links that I had on my site. Thanks to these scripts I was able to make the posts an automatic shrink/expand functionality possible. I really like it this way. Now I don't have to write my posts in a way that will split into two parts. This script will automatically make sure that each entry is the same length unless you want to expand the post to read the rest of it! This removes the problem I was having before where if I wanted a short post with no expansion, I didn't have a "Read more" link with nothing more to read there! (how disappointing if you wanted to read more!).

There's some ideas for actual content posts swimming in my head. I just need to find time to make them a reality. Sorry for the lack of updates ... I have been extremely busy with the hex project and getting ready for Italy. That plus everything else that's going on in my life is making this a crazy busy time which leaves little time for interesting blogging (not that this blog has every consistently had interesting content ... but I digress).

Hope everyone is doing well! I promise there *will* be more content coming, plus when I get a chance I'll continue working towards that photoblog I was talking about!

Heraldk