work in progress

almost 3 days since a post, and it feels like a while!

having now run out of money and with lots of expensive things to fix (car, tooth, etc) it seems my desperation meters for getting a job are quite high so may even try temping. i only want to work for a month or so just to pay for a few things i need done imminently. how i pine for the days when i used to be good at poker. or had money in my poker accounts.

i have decided that if i could have any superpower it would be that of controlling time and space. i think mind reading would ruin the surprise, even though it would make better at poker than the love child of stu ungar and quincy capers.
far fetched as superpowers sound, a professor recently told me it's not at all far fetched. i am in the midst of writing a futurism post, and for a sneak preview, watch series 1 of heroes. (DO NOT WATCH SEASONS BEYOND THAT, for it turneth into excrement).

angry!

why does poker still make me angry??

i dropped down to shit levels to play shit players and losing to submental random button clickers is very frustrating! i don't care whether it's through bad beats or hilarious preflop calls such as cold calling 3bets pre with 63s and hitting a flush on the turn or 76 for 20% of your stack and flopping a magnificent 77x vs me.

i've seen this so many times and for so long so why does it still annoy me?!

i also get very annoyed by people disturbing me when playing - they see i'm concentrating on something else but just don't care and keep talking to me. worse still is they often have ample opportunity to talk to me when it's not late at night yet refrain from doing so. and when these effects combine there's a hulk-rage switch which goes off inside my head.

i know what i should be focussing on and how my mental approach should be but just don't seem to able to do it. maybe i should just quit entirely.
anyway, down to $100 now.

here's a picture from the beach today.



i couldn't be bothered to go down to the beach beach since it's sandy and sand is just annoying. plus it wasn't even warm. i have fond mammories of this beach. when i was a kid i saw a topless sunbather. probably my first pair of real life breasts. and they were magnificent. it kinda made every pair since a bit of a let down, i think only one pair i've seen since compares.

what to post?

i have a bunch of drafts which lie somewhere between idea stage and almost ready to post stage but i think i have already posted some of them. so why are they still saved as drafts? this annoys me as i dont like repeating posts.

as you can see, i have just learnt the beauty of asking questions when speaking. it quit engages the audience (you). we are now engaged. congratulations!

i started playing a bit of the poker almost daily again. i quite like it. winning helps. though today was my first losing day. i briefly reached just over $200 which is ok, after stating with 70(?) last week. and i've only been playing very short spells (<60mins) once per day. really need to work on my patience though.
i think i also found a poker blog to add the roll (i'm saving that for a friday post). post of the week which i'm also saving till friday seems to once again have been won by yakshi. that'll wait till friday mostly because there's two magnificent posts there and i can't decide which is best. so in j-j-jimmy style i'll reread them to see which has the most staying power.

seeing as it's summer i'm off to the beach tomorrow/today. fully kitted out in winter jacket, hat and possibly scarf. it is after all a british summer.

the best national anthems

musically speaking

1. russia
2. italy
3. france

of the worst both musically and wordly would be the uk. one year they'll probably enter it into eurovision. the national anthem is as far as i can tell just a prayer for the monarch to not die.

This weekend marked around 60 years of her sitting on the throne (too easy to make a drink more orange juice joke). i fail to see the logical years of anniversary. it's something like 25, 40, 50, 60, 75. marked by silver, ruby, gold, diamond, platinum. neither the ascending arithmetic series is logical, nor is the series of gemstones/metals associated with it.



I accidentally found myself in the middle of the celebrations. I was confused as to exactly why people were celebrating. But there were many.



This was then followed by a brazillian boats floating down the river. Anyone who hung around past 6pm will have seen many goinging back to where they started since that's where they reside. A somewhat strange exercise if you ask me. But no one did ask me.

Then, to celebrate in style, a single firework was let off. I literally blinked just beforehand and missed it. Though it did make for a nice photo of London's newest skyscraper with clouds of smoke across it.



You may have noticed that the weather was typically British and although by the end there weren't many people lining the walkway, for the many hours preceding that it was packed full of people getting drenched. at least it finally disproves this man's theory.

more fillums

less forms. job applications are so dull. they lure you in making you think it'll be a quick cover letter + CV thing, yet invariably they have a million questions and an unresponsive server.
also, they're very formulaic. films are much more interesting. well, good films are. I watched sunset boulevard. it's massively rated on imdb. i was hoping it would be good, but the high expectations just made it seem worse. without being too harsh i would give it maybe a 9/20. i liked the main guy in it at first but his character deteriorated as the film went on. it also didn't have the romantic style of other old films. how it gets rated higher than hitchcock stuff shocks me.

been playing a little poker again. i started with $5 on partypoker and about $80 on betfair and i'm gonna see if i can win a little over the next few weeks, playing 3/4 tables at a time for the next few weeks. a few hundred perhaps by end of june would be nice. my goal is £1k, but tis not an expectation, it's my target! (yeah, i know, money goals bad, volume goals good, blah blah blah, but i want money.)

things that scare me #2,361

strangely, going out is much scarier to me than doing strange things when already out, since i'm not entirely sure what normal is, probably since i don't go out that often.

just recently i went out for a burger. after finishing said burger, and it wasn't small, i was approximately as hungry as when i started. i waited 10 minutes to see if i started to register being filled up but no such luck. so i ordered another. the waitress seemed unperturbed by my behaviour so i asked if many people had ordered 2 burgers. she said a few had. obviously (to me) i then asked "how about 3?"
she looked at me, paused for a moment, and said no. i knew right then and there her pause was challenging me. she had a pretty face and i wondered if it would increase my chances to see the rest of her body if i succeeded in this challenge she had just laid down at my feet.

i rather comfortably finished the second burger but didn't feel like another. so i asked her about dessert. she seemed impressed. sadly, they didn't have my preferred dessert of soufflé or soufflé-esque cake so we paid and left.
i think i have a thing for waitresses, and there's an even hotter one at another restaurant nearby. i wonder if i could instead impress her with eating abilities.

i might first try and get some tips from the winner of this eating contest:

interrobang

shall we bring it back‽
yes. though we may need to improve the icon for it as it currently looks like a mess or perhaps a stain upon the screen.

i have started this here and now. this time next year, it will become a standard on keyboards on computers and smartphones across the globe!

one random thing i've recently learnt:
the power of questions when giving talks. i guess it's because it engages the listeners to think as well as listen?

sketchy

i don't remember if i've posted this before, but even if i have, watch it again. it's still possibly the best 25 minutes episode of sketch show ever made.
each sketch gets better and better. the last one with the dinner party and pub is my favourite. and stephen mangan is in it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=sVaj_3IgYAk

i tried to find stephen mangan's "i'm a porrrrrrtaaaaaah" scene in green wing but it doesn't seem to be online, other than on 4od, so if you're in the uk, watch it. if anyone knows how to copy video of tinternet let me know and i'll make a clip and put it on the youtube or something.

i think when i get a job i will celebrate by buying green wing dvd's.

pen knives

i don't know how they got their names. they're not pens. they're just many knives and things that aren't knives.

i got to use one this morning. they're fun. i always found them fun. i had one when i was younger and stabbed myself in the little finger. accidentally of course. this led to copious amounts of bleeding, but my primary concern was not to leave a blood trail so that my parents wouldn't find out and thus would avoid landing myself in trouble.

of course, parents are usually more concerned that you're ok rather than that you're an idiot/still learning. this then reminded my of a kid who crashed his car on my street one day. he swerved to avoid a cat (his story) and ended up flipping the car and landing on a hedge. the first things he said when he got out the car (he was fine!) was "my dad's gonna kill me"

smile like a similie

i wonder if there's a word for a simile that makes no sense? perhaps a 'fielding' would be apt.

it's friday and my cop out day for writing a blog post which can go to rounding up blogs that aren't on my list of blogs you should already be reading. once again best content was found on yakshi's blog. All you other bloggers need to up your game.

I read a betfair blog recently which was reminiscent of their new fangled twitter account. Betfair poker's twitter account consists of (4 writers writing) hilarious nonsense. worth a follow if you partake in the twitter. two accounts i found have copied their style successfully are waterstones oxford street, and arena flowers.

today was uneventful. i realised c++ bored me. there is no goal to aim for. so i'm gonna go straight to objective c from next week and try to build stuff on my iphone.

also, did 30 minutes of the poker today. i'm beginning to enjoy it again. winning helps obviously. winning slowly at the moment, but aiming to increase the hours a bit and i'll be happy with a few hundred dollars a month. i seem to have run out of money in real life. the job i applied for today was a job i applied for on wednesday but i had to rewrite my cv for it so it counts.

anyway, i dont think i'll be around this weekend, so will be back to daily blogging from monday/tuesday.
hopefully it'll give me time to come up with more things i'm afraid of that i'll actually do.

in the mean time i will leave you with a link to a comedy you probably haven't seen. it's part 1 of 3.

i almost forgot to blog

i didn't. the problem was i went outside for a walk, i wore a hat, but i was afraid to doff it to lady's whilst saying m'lady. so i was ashamed to blog.

i also went into a shop where a gorgeous lady works. i didn't want anything from the shop, but by that point felt compelled to buy something. it's a food place, so i waited for her till to be free so we could share a moment. i was obviously too scared to say anything to her. though i wouldn't even know what to say! "what time do you finish" seems too cliché. so instead i just stared as discreetly as possible. sometimes i hate myself.

a slow road back to poker

so for the second time in three days, and the second time in three months i played the poker. again, probably just under an hour. and only 3 tabling. still a healthy profit in terms of bb's. an unhealthy profit in $$'s. i quite enjoy playing fewer tables, and it's very stress free at lower levels. i also like the retards and their chat. i did one 4 bet bluff today and got shoved on. probably pretty stupid to 4bet bluff but meh, it felt okish at the time. anyway, someone who was half involved in the hand made some lmfaoroffle4betbluffidiotlol comment. i laughed. moreso cos he was that player. you know the mouthy one, who tells everyone else what they should be doing and it's almost like they can read you. till you realise they just sit there playing weak passive. he was the only one at the table limp calling and check folding flops.
i like the predictable nature of these players.
also helps that i'm playing on betfair where the standard of player is somewhere between terrible gambler and terribly addicted gambler.

managed to encourage myself to get out of bed today. 3 days in a row getting up in 10mins or less following alarm. i may have to keep this streak going. also completed all my goals again except writing. also was slack in c++'ing as i only did a bit of reading and not much coding. but i do find it boring. i should remind myself of why i do it.

one more thing i think i will add to the list to remind myself is to always talk like i'm giving a speech. i will do this for a week or two to see how it goes. so that means eye contact, good posture, speaking slowly, loudly and clearly. no umming or ahrring. all things i hate but should get used to.

did nothing that scared me today. well, i went to a mechanic. maybe that should count.

day 2

writing seems to be the thing slacking. and poker. but poker's only going to be a few times a week anyway.

did everything else about from c++ so will do a bit now. almost started earlier but got sidetracked by work.

today also included a visit to a toastmasters club. everyone who spoke was pretty good. the one's with prepared speeches were obviously very good in content and performance. the ones with improvised topics were hit and miss with content, but still very good with performance. in fact, the whole thing seemed like it was played out by actors. i think this is because i tend towards introvert and they all tend to extrovert on the introvert-extrovert scale. for me, it's not just a little practice for nerves or one or two other little things, for me, the most basic things are painful. it is very awkward for me to hold eye contact with anyone. even people i know. if i'm thinking of that in a room full of strangers, i'm going to have difficulty to think of speaking. let alone posture, pace of voice, enthusiasm, arm movements, and timing.

lots of people there had familiar faces. but the first guy that got up to speak had a french accent. everyone with a french accent sounds exactly the same when speaking english. and they all remind me of inspector clouseau.
here's clouseau trying to learn english:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLuc6rtWkrM&

there was also lots of evaluation. someone afterwards joked that we should evaluate every conversation. they laughed, i thought it was a good idea to imagine that all my conversations were going to be evaluated.

it also made me realise that every time henceforth that i wish to speak in public i will essentially be acting.

i was mildly perplexed that they laughed at the above comment, which i thought made sense, yet when one of them said "all dance instructions seem to do their best showing how good they are" i replied with, "yeah i had the same problem sparring with karate instructors" but no one laughed, or even smiled. it was worth at least a smile.

anyway, in general they were all very nice and friendly and i have taken lots of details which i'll practice in my head to improve my speaking.

so the whole idea of this doing things i'm afraid of was supposed to make me less afraid, but i'm still as fearful of public speaking. i may go again and ask to speak in front of everyone and see if that helps. i can't help but think i should just learn to not be afraid since it's probably only as scary as i imagine it to be. it's not like i'm surrounded by spiders or in other forms of danger.

day 1

nearing the end of day 1. today was good so far.
i have successfully got up with my alarm (before the first snooze alarm went, which is the bizarre 9 minute interval of the iPhone alarm. WHY NOT 10?!), read my mission statement, did exercise to the point of failure for 20 minutes, and have been doing a little c++, although mostly reading rather than writing.

i didn't apply for jobs but i got calls from 2 recruiters and sent my cv to a third so that'll count for today. tomorrow my plan for that is to go to town to find the office of a job i applied for a couple of weeks ago and speak to them to get them to give me the job.


sitcom writing will be done later today, as will playing some poker. actually, i might try that now for 30-60 minutes. i have free money in partypoker which i'm gonna try to spin up whilst playing a few tables of low steaks on betfairy.

hopefully after a massive break i'll be able to enjoy concentrating on playing well, and especially not making mistakes which i know are mistakes but i don't bother to stop myself from making them.

it was also sunny today - a great success! (though i won't take credit for that)

things to do every day

habits to get into. im gonna try to do all at once because i am a mental and fly in the face of accepted theory. that's right, i fly. i have also rated the probability of achieving these in the coming week.

get up when alarm goes off (1%)
read my life's mission statement when my alarm goes off, and before i go to sleep. (95%)
exercise (weights) for 20-30 minutes, to the point of failure. (95%)

do some c++ programming (30 minutes minimum) (tending to objective c asap) (85%)

write at least 200 words for sitcom. (50%)


i will complete all of these every day before i go to bed, NO MATTER WHAT. repeat ad nauseum.

also should aim to fit 1 hour of poker in each and every day. i need money till i get a job. which reminds me:
apply for one job a day till i get a job. (20%)

and for all of this when i say every day, i mean 6/7 days per week. i'll take one day a week off for each of these things (may be a different day for each goal)

i posted last Friday about a weekly 'my favourite blogpost' instead of a blog round up, i tried to find a few new blogs, but really, this competition was over just a few hours later when i read this

http://notnecessarilysomething.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/search-terms-in-google-images.html

i failed in my attempt to get up a tall building yesterday. what with 2 friends both cancelling i didn't really want to go and spend £13 to drink alone in a bar when what i really want is to be outside the tall building to scare myself. i thought about standing on the railings of a bridge but figured i was quite likely to fall off so that's not a good idea. maybe i'll just climb out the window of my house onto the roof.

not my words

I saw you walking past me just the other day
Another heartbeat, with thoughts of yesterday
You looked the same, years are only time
I still wonder why our hearts could never rhyme

You stood beside me, you didn't recognize me
Funny how some things never change

When you walked on by old memories surprised me
smoking cigarettes, your girlfriends by the pool
Your smell I could not forget
That's as close as i could get. you were so fucking cool

I'm no good, you're no better
Wouldn't we be perfect together?

All I wanted was a piece of your heart, you left me torn apart
Fuck the rest before me and their crimes
For your love I'll serve their time

I'm no good, you're no better
Wouldn't we be perfect together?

I'm no good, you're no better

movies make you feel stuff. on the inside.

sometimes i watch a film and come out the cinema with that feeling that you can take on the world. that no matter what, if you keep trying, you'll achieve what you truly want.

sometimes i watch a film and i don't know what to do with myself. my brain is in a state of shock that a film as terrible as that would ever get made. sometimes i accept it's not for me, but can see why others (read: women) would like it. but sometimes i feel ashamed to be a part of the human race that could make such a travesty. films that wouldn't even be appropriate in the tate modern, which is one of the worst art galleries i have ever graced.

sometimes, i just can't even find a single redeeming feature in a movie. the proposal is one such film. how it achieved a 7.1 rating from the now defunct as an authority imdb is a flagrant violation of the human rights act. not to mention the MPAA rating includes 'nudity'. I don't think a forearm, a leg or a non human object (especially if it is not even a representation of any part of a human) should count as nudity.

the people that wrote that film should be ashamed of themselves. they even missed the most obvious of jokes on more than one occasion, instead replacing it with nothing. i'd like to give it a 0/20 rating but feel that would be inappropriately high.

the irony is lead man ryan reynolds (who was great on top gear) is canadian and should be sent back there for at least a year as punishment.

today's fear was a bit of an anticlimax. i think thats a good thing.

i had two people to call to try to sell them an idea that they already sell themselves. that makes no sense. i will expand.

i made an iphone app that helps you help yourself. i found some people who run workshops for this very idea. i sent them emails with my app a few weeks ago but they didn't respond. so today i called them.
the first guy didn't answer. it went to voicemail and i was completely unprepared. my speech was for people who would talk and listen and respond and converse. i briefly panicked before the beep. i left a message. i'm still not sure what i said. he hasn't called back yet and it's almost bedtime. i guess i'll call him tomorrow.

the next lady i rang was a very happy sounding lady on the phone. this made it easier. i decided not to go for a hard sell of making her promote me, but just started by getting her to check it out and see if she likes it and can give feedback since this is her area of expertise. i hope she does like it and then tells everyone she knows.

i say it's my app but that's not strictly true. nonetheless, if you want to motivate yourself to do stuff, and find that to-do lists are a bit shit for reasons you can't work out, let me know in the comments and i'll try to send you a copy (i only have limited free ones to give out); obviously, you'll need an iphone!

i have arranged a public speaking exercise for next week.

i think i'm gonna do a poker online tomorrow. i've been a bit fearful of it recently but am gonna use this as a way to try to get back into it as i could do with a bit of money.

on thursday i think im gonna try to go and get a drink in a bar on top the top floor of a building in london town.

todays fear

i played 5 a side football today. usually i play in goal. not because i am terrible at kicking the ball, but because im good in goal. and because im terrible at kicking the ball.

but today i forced my self to play not in goal. alas, i had eaten too close to kick off so every time i ran i felt like i was about to throw up out my face or arse. i also scratched the shit out of my knees since i was wearing shorts and not long trousers like i usually do.

fear factor rating: 3/10
happiness at completing this task: 8/10

i also enjoyed the fitness aspect. i used to be naturally fit. now i am old and can still barely breathe, a mere 3 hours after finishing playing.

tomorrow, i plan to do a salesman act. impending fear factor, 8/10.

that's gold jerrry!

GOLD!

i like to check my referrals page on google analytics. almost always i head straight to the search engine section to see what terms people used to find me. forget seo, i'm only interested in comedy.
it's been a while since anything as good as "eclipse moon cloak coins" but just last week i noticed someone somehow found me via "faces of spiders"
i don't think of spider faces anymore. in fact, david thorne ruined spider faces for me with this picture/diatribe.

i'd like to work spiders into one of my 18 events to undertake this month but can't quite work out how. a vet friend once let me touch a snake (appropriately), but i don't think he has access to spiders.

i found a toastmaster club where i can go talk at strangers for a few minutes. i'm struggling for other things though.

so far i would have:
public speaking
talk to a hot women i like the look of
go to the top of a tall building (outside. being inside isn't really scary. it's the fear of dropping things over the edge that worries me)

i will have to think on my feet. but tomorrow it will be call someone i don't know to try to sell something over the phone. talking on the phone to a stranger in the guise of a salesman should count as three, but meh, it's at least one every day. plus that's only one event.

i may have to resort to including waking up early, playing the poker and posting to this blog on days i can't be bothered, as 'events' if i really struggle to think of things - cue comments with outlandish ideas of things to do. maybe one day i will become a yes man and yes to all questions asked of me! (it was a good book)
in general, i will try to make more outside doing things events as that is more entertaining.

Friday!

and i can see the sunshine! a perfect day for a stroll to the letter box.

as for a blog roundup, well, i have added one to the right hand side. a poker blog. i almost sat down to play poker last night but couldn't be bothered.

i looked for a post of the week but fear that this competition would be heavily weighted towards yakshi's definitelysomething blog, with that link an example. in the spirit of head to head competitions i then wondered what would happen if that blog went up against pics from alex's. I am afraid to think what i would choose as award winner; maybe if she was finnish, eh?

a month of scary thoughts

i wonder if it's possible to do one thing each day that scares me?
it'll be like a goal setting thing, but every single one will push me out of my comfort zone.
the first thing stopping me is the fear of doing it. sadly, that can't be one of the things, as it is only corrected by doing something else.

they don't need to be big things. lots of little things scare me too.
a brief list includes:
heights
dead spiders
women (more specifically talking to attractive ones)
public speaking
sometimes private speaking, eg someone i know but not that well
talking on the telly phone. i'm not a fan.
going outside (not that scary, but i try to avoid it)

thats a good list to start with. if i could come up with a few more things, then this would definitely help me blog each day, as each blog would begin with how long between alarm going and getting up (1 hour this morning! lazy shit), and then continue with my tale of how my fears are ridiculous and nothing to be afraid of. and perhaps a funny story on the way.


"Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway" - John Wayne.

wednesday

definitely wednesday now

following on from 'yesterday's' post, i sent an email to a lady i've been avoiding sending for weeks. i don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing but it as at least something and not nothing. that's a good thing.

feelings aren't something i like thinking about, let alone discussing in words written down. so i shan't be doing that here. (i like the word shan't.)

having said that..
the one thing i like doing is not feeling sorry for myself or getting annoyed. i've been doing better at the not getting annoyed. one of the things i'm most happy about learning from poker, was how to deal with real life things. poker is an interesting microcosm in that it's all in your head. your reactions, your decisions, but i would get unduly affected by things that are nothing more than chance. i've always been competitive and as with all competitions it means more when there's money on it, even if it's just a little. 1c/2c plays completely differently to play money!

anyway, some of the things i've learned from poker to transfer into real life are relaxation and lack of anger. i am told give off an aura of relaxation but i know that i am less relaxed on the inside. i became more aware of this from playing poker and notice it especially when driving! the other thing that i have learnt i need to improve is to lack anger. anger is literally never good. feigning anger is sometimes necessary, but actually being angry is pointless. all it does is cloud your mind, something you don't want happening, especially when playing poker. of course, all this is easier said than done. my only recommendation is to buy the mental game of poker. it'll teach you techniques to resolve anger issues, which are easily transferable to real life.

easily transferable but still hard work and will take time and effort to achieve resolution!

it's still Tuesday!

honest.
so i'm still blogging 6 times a week. today was a dull day. not much happened. getting up went better than usual. not as good as last week when the fire alarm went off. that was very alarming though.

tomorrow i get to send an s-mail to the council. they decided to take me off the voting register for the mayoral election. they did this to a few of my neighbours too. all of us were going to be voting for Boris as Ken is a despicable human being. i think all this was also part of Ken's plan to get back into office. thankfully it didn't work.

i'd like to prove it but am still working on my captcha theory.

while pretending to job hunt i have decided to watch more films. change up wasn't highly rated on imdb but is rather funny. and has 13 from house, and the hot girl from knocked up in (not the main lady, her sister. (knocked up lady sister gets her tits out too which are great!)

i've also had time to reevaluate my favourite tv shows and can condense to it 5.
curb
arrested development
house
green wing
anything with karl pilkington

of course there are many very close to the top like Seinfeld, early entourage, dexter, the wire and extras. but those are my choices. deal with it.

i also think i'm going to be more brave and get a volunteer job that interests me. and contact the first lady i ever loved to get my heart broken again. what could go wrong?

more mental physics

the other cool thing that makes no sense to me whatsoever is so called 'action at a distance' which sort of combines relativity with quantum ideas in an experiment. nothing can travel faster than the speed of light (more accurately nothing will have a speed greater than the speed of light in a vacuum). this limits how quickly you can pass information around. ie if something is 1 light year away (the distance light travels in a year) it will take one year to send or receive a message from them. the key concept is things don't happen instantly.

what some clever people did, is they created two particles (electrons or photons), a particle where one of the properties can only have one of two forms. so a photon would be polarised either one way or another, or electrons would be created with either spin 'up' or 'down'. when they created these particles, the property is taken completely at random. conservation laws means that one particle takes one form, the second particle takes the other (eg one is spin up, t'other is spin down.)
when you create them though, you don't know them straight away which is which until you measure it, which you don't do straight away. you send the first in one direction, and the other in the opposite direction. you set up measurement equipment very far away, and arrange to measure one first, and shortly after, the second. the second will always be opposite to the first. you measure them so close together in time, that there is no way for information to be passed from the first to the second. so how does the second know which property it's supposed to have?

it takes time for the news of the other measurement to reach you, but how did the particles already know?

some clever people thought that perhaps they have another 'hidden' property when they're made, so that they both know which to take? that was disproven by an Englishman called Bell, googleable by searching Bell Theorem.

this is all quite weird. more weird stuff about light can be found in a 4 part series of lectures by feynman given in new zea land. there's a great bit in the first lecture where he tells people that "don't understand" what he's about to say, not confuse not understanding what he says, with not wanting to believe what he says. lots of things are difficult to believe but are explained perfectly by theory, such as the probabilistic nature in reflection of light. eg if you fire 100 photons at a surface, how does the surface know what % to reflect back?!

this is probably why no one will hire me

Online application question (usual describe a situation where you did the following):

"You will be able to influence and challenge policy colleagues constructively while maintaining good relations with them"

My answer:

I dislike the way it has been phrased here (although that may be my understanding of the sentence). Rather than try to influence others to agree with me, I feel that understanding what their goals are, and then seeing which ones I have in common with them will lead to genuine constructive cooperation in the areas that I can control.

friday blogs i like

well, it's not just on friday i like them, but other times they update too

my previous attempt at returning dead blogs to the land of the living went 0/2 after an initial 100% success rate, so i'll be boring this week and just mention some blogs i like.

alexwentpro. and not just because she's hot (ok, mostly because she's hot, and posts the pics too).

rubbish (as above, but replace he for she)

i've just realised it's a bit of a weird thing to do (since the list on the right hand side is for that very function) so will in future either mention blogs i don't already have listed down the right hands side, mention specific posts that were magnificent or highlight new additions to the bogroll.

todays post is under a cloud of discontent as my attempts to get up as my alarm rings was thwarted by waiting close to an hour before getting up. in my defence i did go out last night and play the pokers. it was pretty dull and i almost fell asleep at the table. luckily the air conditioning was on in full force so that kept me awake. it also made me shiver so that every time i played a hand my hands would shake and i think they thought i had the nuts. needless to say that didnt stop them calling me with shit!

good morning/afternoon/evening

not that i don't know the time of day but i only know it for me, not you (either now or when you'll read this).

"the time of day" is a funny phrase. i associate it with the derogatory comments "i wouldn't give him the time of day" and "i have no time for you"

two old school insults. the middle east has some great ones. I think my favourite is (i think) an egyptian one which is along the lines of "i hope all your teeth fall for except for one, and that one gives you toothache"
i might try that at the poker tables one day.

looking back down memory lane at my favourite posts, i found that i was quite terrible at responding to comments. i think i was a bit unsure what to say, or something. i thought of it similar to heckling in comedy clubs, something i reckon that i would have been quite bad at dealing with, unlike real comedians who are usually quite good. the best i saw was when jimmy carr made an unscheduled appearance at a comedy club i was at. two people right at the front right were talking the whole time, and after a couple of minutes he turns to them and says "you know, it's not like when you watch it on telly, i can hear you when you talk"

everyone laughed at their expense but amazingly even that didn't shame them enough into being silent for the remaining minutes of his brief interlude!

edit: yesterday, 25 minutes znoozing
today: -15 minutes (woke up early due to smoke alarm going off). bizarrely, feel less tired this morning.

fillum

i like how northeners pronounce the word film.

i've had more time of late to watch films. i never used to like old films. anything before the 80s i mostly just dismissed. and then a few months back i saw one flew over the cuckoos nest (19/20). sadly, it was after seeing the house version (episode 1+2 of season 6 iirc), but that didn't detract from it at all. with hindsight, i think house did a great job of copying but not copying it.

even having seen the house one first, it didn't detract at all from the movie. a movie which is fantastic. it even had the c word in it! i didn't know they did that in the 70s. since then i've watched a bunch of older films. the good, the bad and the ugly (the film, not my description of them in general) was one of the best (18/20). some of the alfred hithcock films were great too. the first one i saw of his a few years ago was birds (or 'the birds'?) and it was terrible. i watched the maltese falcon (17/20) and north by northwest (16/20) but my favourite so far was vertigo (17/20). ive seen a few other 'classics' such as casablanca (14/20). I also made sure to seem some which i had amazingly never before seen were star wars. so i watched all 3. in fact, watching them all in under a week was probably bad since i didn't think much of them. for example, if he's a jedi who can essentially fly and control things through telekinesis, why doesn't he do those things all the time!! ridiculous. i think they're above average films, but only worth a generous 14/20.

two films that were really great were alien and aliens. solid 19/20s. atmosphere, story, twists and great characters.

James Stewart, who is in a bunch of hitchcock movies, including rear window (17/20) reminds me very much of that annoying useless president in 24, charles logan, played by Gregory Itzin. He seems to have copied all the mannerisms and speech of President logan, 50 years before logan appeared on screen!

as for my rating system, 10/20 is, by definition, average, and should be the mean score. 10/20 is not a bad score in my system, no matter what imdb tells you about films rated 5/10! why i use 20 and not 10, is because ratings out of 20 are perfect. /10 is not enough, as you find yourself sometimes wanting to use halves. and obviously 100 is too much, i can't tell the difference between 64% and 63%.
if you are still in any doubt over this rating system, may i just remind you that championship manager (now renamed football manager), the greatest simulation game of all time, has been using ratings out of 20 since it's inception. i assume it still does? the last one i saw was 2009.

two corrections i need to make

my last but one post was seemingly 80% bullshit. check the comments in it for confirmation. Thanks to the commentors for pointing it out!

the other correction i need to make is a two part one.

a while back i committed to working out every day for 30 days (actually only 6 days a week, i take one morning on the weekend off). it went remarkably well and i've kept it going. i've tweaked my work out to ensure i am exercising as properly as possible, but i like that it's almost a habit now.

there were two other things i tried and didn't quite manage. one was waking early, the second was blogging everyday, although i was less committed to the second at the outset. however, the great yak said he likes to read a blogs which post each and every day, and knowing that at least one person will read these musings, it has encouraged me to blog every day. luckily it's the first of the month so i won't forget when i started.
i have made a schoolboy mistake by posting twice today (in future, as the yakshi said, extra posts in one day can and will be saved for another), but am quite excited by the prospect. i think it means i'll also need to go out more often since otherwise i'll run out of material in my tiny mind. a mind preoccupied recently by the fact that photons travel at the speed of light and therefore do not experience time. yet relativity tells us that they see other photons travelling at the speed of light too. it all becomes a bit mad when you start to think of how things happen at the same time in their frame of reference. (ie everything happens at the same time, just in different places since they don't travel through time, yet other photons still overtake them to get to places before them?! no more physics talk this month of things i don't understand, unless by request)

the other target was getting up when my alarm went off. i have regressed back to 30+ minute snoozes. i will perhaps post each day an inclusion of length of time in bed before getting up, hopefully into shaming me to becoming more prompt.

all other exciting work and going out plans will now be saved for another post, and not because i haven't yet come up with any.

the mind of a child

i think the best thing about kids is that their minds are open. keeping an open mind is a really tough thing for me to do as get older.

kids constantly question everything, and sadly adults think this is a bad thing! The amazing Richard Feynman said he used to question everything as a kid, encouraged by his dad who would always try to answer.

something i used to do as a kid, was when someone asked me if i could do something, was i would often reply, yes i can. and not do anything about it. sometimes i would expand to reply "i can, but will i?"

this used to annoy other people which made me do this for far longer than i should.

i've been doing a lot of reading recently, (while pretending to job hunt) and one of my favourite concepts i've come across is the idea not too dissimilar to the annoying phrase i used to say. it's a simple concept, and it's the idea that when you do things, you should not think that you're doing them because you have to, but because you want to.

i like it, because it's simple, you don't need to do anything different, you just need to think slightly differently. so, for example, instead of thinking, i have to go to the shops for someone else, think I want to (and then question why I want to do that!).
instead of thinking, i have to go to work, start thinking, i choose to go to work (even, i want to go to work!) and think about the reasons why you want to. and if the reasons aren't good enough for you, do something else.

soon, you start to realise that you're happy with what you're doing because they are choices you are making, and you are aware of this!
so, if you aren't happy with what you're doing, do something else!

something i want to do more of is take pictures. so here's another pic of mine (i don't think i've posted it before) which failed to win any prizes (so far). it's one of the busiest people crossing intersections in the world (probably) and is in japan. oxford circus in london was redesigned to be based on this. i didn't notice when i took it but the contrast between light and dark is quite something.

i am sure that I sometimes fail in guessing the words of captchas, but the computer still says yes. sometimes i think they know that robots don't even try, so it's a case of 'the taking part that counts'. I will endeavour to test this more rigorously in future and post pics with evidence.

something else i was musing about whilst eating a chocolate brownie for breakfast was that it seems only in sports that people know how to count. allow me to explain:

when someone scores a goal in the first minute of a game, the time given is 1'.* Correct! The time on the clock will read between 1 second, and 60 seconds. so if someone scores when the clock reads 21"41, the goal time is 22.

when you are 39 and a half, you think to yourself that you are 39 years old. except you are in your 40th year of existence, not 39th. ironically, you celebrate your 40th birthday, not on the first day of your 40th year, but on the very last!

in the uk, you get a free travel pass when you reach 65. i wonder if anyone has tried saying they legally should get one when reaching 64years and 1 day old?

another famous example is the people celebrating the 'new millennium' in the year 2000 were ironically celebrating the last year of the existing millennium.

speaking of pics as i was earlier, and in my last but one post**, here's what was my favourite entry into the google prize i failed in winning.

*i literally have no idea what the correct symbols to use are for second and minute so i just made it up.

**also, i think there should be single a word for 'last but one'. So i could talk about my previous post, and my penprevious post.

***i use stars to not distract from the flow of the post, but realise that you're probably reading them as and when they appear, which just means a work out for your mouse instead of making things easier.

a blog round up?

i'm so old I remember when these were fashionable. when the once great gatsby used to do a monthly awards. i even remember owning a green monitor for a computer. i don't pine for those days, but i do enjoy a blog round up by someone with good taste. and who has better taste than me? (well, lots of people, but not being the best hasn't stopped anyone before)

first and foremost, if you haven't checked out the latest addition to my bog roll, go do it now. seriously, it'll be better than this here post.

other than that, i don't think i have found any new blogs. i think this is maybe why blog round ups stopped?

i could mention the betfair articles, written from a mix of people in which i usually enjoy the words or learn something (sometimes both).

instead, what I'd like to do is try to bring blogs back from the dead. So if you reading this, and obviously you are, could the great highstacks and jethro horowitz please return to the land of writing your thoughts out, so that we may bask in your musings.

halftime hallo

Google had a photography competition which finished recently, one which I entered. I didn't expect to win, but submitted some cool pictures. Then i saw some of the judges shortlist photos (of 10 i think) and about half were terrible. Now I was disappointed I hadn't won!

They can be found here. Honestly, a wire on a carpet? In the category sound/silence?

Almost as ridiculous, is the bbc headline of Student wins Google Photography Prize. As though out of all the entrants it was a pleasant surprise a student won.

However, the rules clearly state it's only open to students!

I'd rather be a failed photographer than a reporter knowing you have to make up bullshit headlines to sell copies/get hits. Popular science journalism really reaches the bottom of the barrel with examples eloquently provided by Ben Goldacre.

google has done a britta

i know my last post said i made things that i thought turned out pretty shit, and well, you could be forgiven for thinking i worked at google (even i thought that for a moment when i started writing this post)

since making gmail a bit shit they've done the same to blogspot. what is it with removing words for labels and replacing them with abstract diagrams?

nobody likes change (even if everyone gets used to it pretty quick, eg facebook) but it's not the new look that's the worst part, but the stupid buttons. any person above 50 who has gmail is now perpetually confused!

anyway, i just took a shower - my place of greatest thinking. and i was thinking of the song call me ishmael by get cape wear cape fly. it has these lyrics:

You are not your job, and you are not the clothes you wear,
you are the words that leave your mouth

the last part always annoyed me. i don't think you are the words that leave your mouth. i think you are the actions you take. i need to start doing more each and every day. time to stop waiting for things to happen to/for me and take control!

heck, i might even start playing a bit of poker again...

this is my favourite get cape song. starts off chilled and then picks up a wee bit 1/3 of the way in...



ps line spaces i put in the post don't appear when i publish it so sorry for the wall of text and if anyone knows how to fix it please let me know! (edit: fixed it. why they make you use < br> instead of just using 'enter' as the default is anyone's guess.)

everything i make looks terrible

is it just me?
when i see what other people have done, I am often amazed.

when i make something myself, maybe because i've seen all the steps along the way it looks shit. or maybe it looks that way because it is shit. i honestly can't tell.

i don't think there's anything i've made which i am truly proud of.

in a not unrelated thought, when i've written something, rereading it is mind-numbingly painful. of course, made worse because i always think it's shit.

we've had it banged into our heads to not let other people judge us. but i can no longer see how that's true. i think you need help from others to see what you're doing is right or wrong. i think what must be meant is that you should not let it affect you negatively, but instead choose how you respond. (and to know the separation between criticism of your work, and of you.)

maybe this is normal. maybe this is why critics send artists mental, because they need all others to admire them and their work. or maybe it's just me, and i'm not very good at anything i've done yet. i need to find something that i can do and be the best at.

smartphones

never again do i need to read the labels on toothpastes whilst sitting on the throne (over and over). During lunch, I can always find something to read. Sitting on a train, there's always something to listen to, or to play.

but all this comes at a price. when i wake up in the morning, the alarm is on my phone. and when i turn it off, i think, i'll just do a quick check of the internet. 45 minutes later, i'm still in bed.
so my only hope of no snoozing, means i need to combine it with no phone play till i'm out of bed.
will have to restart my challenge. i think i'll aim to get to the end of the month getting up at alarm time. one day/step/cliché at a time.

minicab cuntrags

i have spoken before about the mentally incapacitated minicab drivers who use the 'transport for london' sticker to alert you to their mental incapacities.

the submental in charge has today announced that they are taking their driving reign of terror one step further by allowing themselves to drive in bus lanes!

for those of you unfamiliar with this concept, bus lanes are for buses, coaches, black cabs, bicycles, and motorbikes. as a minicab firm, whose drivers i don't believe even own driving licences, they have taken it upon themselves to say it's unfair and they're gonna start using them.

As you may have noticed, I despise the driving disabilities of these people and hope they all get kicked off the road permanently.

blogs i miss

yakshi in all his forms, including of course quincy capers. with a shared massive attraction to natalie portman i am worried about her while he is missing from the internet.

highstacks. a truly hilarious man. i once went to coventry but alas never got to meet him as a hot bird wanted a drink with me. i then went to the casino and won lots of money so that made up for it. (for me anyway.)

there's a few others but those two were probabally my favourites of the missing. while i don't have a job maybe i should go find them and instruct them to start writing again.

anyway, enough procrastinating, i need to find the thermal conductivity of some metal combinations and google doesn't seem to have the answer so i may have to measure them.

4 weeks is up

it was 4 weeks ago that i decided to start doing things for 30 days at a time.

4 weeks means that it's only 29 days so far, and tomorrow will be 30.
as i intended, i've taken one day off each week and spent 30 minutes all other days doing some weights. i'm not sure it's made me much fatter but it's been a pretty easy habit to get in to. i've had to increase the weights and concentrate on doing less different exercises each (down from 6 to 4) to spend more time on each to reach the point of failure.

my next challenge will be much harder, as i attempt to wake up every morning as and when my alarm goes off. i guess it will be between 8am and 9am every day (hopefully closer to 9) but no snoozing is going to be a tricky one. i'll be impressed if i can keep it going for a week. we shall see.

in other news, i think i might get back to playing some low level poker games. i'd like to see if i could stop losing perhaps, and should probably set modest targets of 10 hours a week and maybe £200 in the first month except i might get a job instead. i only want to do something temporarily so i have free money to invest in better ideas but no one wants that truth in an interview even though i'd be brilliant for most jobs. been offered jobs in 2 different countries in universities except if i take those jobs it will make it very hard to find real jobs not in universities at any point in the future (other than consulting perhaps, which would obviously be quite cool).

lots to mull over. the freedom of making money via poker is quite magnificent and something i think i'm looking for in any other job.
maybe i'll just go straight to consultancy.

a view from the skies

i need a better way to record the ideas and funny memories i think of during the day.

one that i wrote down was:
should rhetorical questions have question marks. clearly, i think not.

sometimes you need to be more selfish

a therapist i know once told me that, except he didn't say sometimes. selfishness can get a bad reputation, but i'd like to give one example to show that it can be used as a force for good.

if you've ever let a driver out in front of you and not received a thank you wave, you'll probably have boiled with rage at the indecency of their behaviour. (they're no ken livingston but...)
However, if you thought of the whole interaction from a selfish point of view, then the reason you let them out isn't for them, nor is it to receive gratitude for your actions; if you take the reason for you actions to be for you, to make you a better person, or even just to feel good about what you have done, then their response is irrelevant.

who is the greatest tv character of all time?

someone mentioned a terrible one to me the other day. must have been from some awful sitcom like big bang show. in my defence, so many names popped up into my head i couldn't think of the best since there were so many better ones.
i think i have to rule out sopranos because robert de niro in godfather II blows even that italian guy that come over in the sopranos out of the water.
there are some classics like blackadder, and basil fawlty but i don't think those characters are the greatest ever (even though those shows are amongst the best sitcoms ever made).

my non definitive list of around top 20 includes omar little (the wire) homer (the simpson) and ari (entourage).

honourable mentions go to larry david/george, house, malcolm tucker, señor chang, abed and randy marsh.
though i have this feeling i have forgotten someone.
as for cool characters and lives you'd like to live, i reckon vinny chase and hank moody would do quite well.

I'm beginning to think that one 20-30 minute work out each day isn't going to help me get big and tough and macho so i think i might need two.

aiming to reset body clock tomorrow morning by rising at 830. this will be tricky after going to sleep at 5am last night. and i'm not at all tired now. i might try reading something like the game manual for civilisation IV.

i missed a day already!

no post yesterday and none tomorrow either. some days are just devoid of interest. i read that some people tick off each day just before they go to sleep to remind them they'll never get it back and they should have used it most wisely. well, today i have done some work, continued with my daily work out plan and been incredibly tired all day. i even fell asleep on my floor for half an hour (in my defence the carpet is remarkably comfortable).

i think the main reason i get tired is through not eating enough. i like to make some pancake mix at the start of the week to last all week but i got through it pretty quickly this week. even though i used too many eggs and the first one tasted of omelette. so i added more flour and the next tasted of flowery omelette. so i added some milk and then it was the wrong consistency and tasted of flowery omelette. i don't know how that was possible as using those three ingredients it's not mathematically possible to have all three amounts incorrect. or so i thought.

i think i'm gonna try to eat half a tub of ice cream now. good luck me. (not to be confused with Goodluck Jonathan, president of nigeria.)

i set my alarm for 830. got up at 9 and did a 30min work out. ate some food, left my house and got to the office at 1045. in my mind i had wanted to be there by 830 and get all my printing done before lunch. but clearly that was never gonna happen. never mind. i still feel lazy in the morning but i hope these steps of getting up and working out regularly are going to pay off in just under 4 weeks time. hopefully will not be snoozing for 30 mins by then!

my easy jet story.
back in january i took a flight to return to the england. i left my friends house with time aplenty. when i got to train station i was told platform 3 to the airport. so i got on the train at platform 3 and it was a while till i noticed it should have already been at the airport. i called my friend to find i was on the wrong train. i got off at the next available stop and was probably close to 50miles away. oops. also, it wasn't a town where i alighted. it was a car park.
i still had 35 minutes before check in. i ran out of credit on my phone but the hot ticket office ladies i was talking to called me a cab from the nearest town. and i borrowed a phone to call a friend on the same flight as me. there was a 15 minutes delay so check in would be a bit later. hot ticket office lady number 2 told me no train for a while and its a 1 hour journey by car. i had 45 minutes.

the cab arrived about 15 mins later and we agreed a fee (all the money i had left on me, in a variety of currencies, equalling about £70!) i felt i had to try to get to the airport and maybe the delay would be a wee bit longer.

we left at about 35minutes to check in closing and after about 8 minutes, lady taxi driver with 7 year old kid in back, starts to pull over asking me if i can hear that. hear what?! she thinks it sounds like a flat.
we get out, i check my side, she hers. and drivers side front tire is flat. and she being a lady doesn't know how to change a tyre. so after eventually finding the wheel nut cap remover i change the tire. this doesn't help the race to the airport.

when we finally arrive, it's 20 minutes after check in was supposed to close, and after some pleading information finally agree to let me call through to the boarding people. they refuse to send someone back to check me in even though boarding hasn't started. the litany of excuses included the check in desks being the wrong ones and weren't connected. i pointed out the computers are obviously connected. he says again they won't send someone back to check me in. after doing less than nothing to help i hang up. i find the easy jet office number and use skype to call them and am told i can rebook at the airport desk for the next flight for £50. ok, so i walk round the airport with him on the phone but they have no ticket desk. even though his computer said they do. so i ask for the £50 booking done over the phone. i'm told they don't have the authority. i ask why all the big bosses with authority work in the airport and not their offices. he replies i should have been there 3 hours before take off. brilliant.

to cut a long and boring part of the story short, instead of rebooking for £235 on the phone, he'll offer me £215. i tell him i call him back. i get a friend to check online and see if there's anything cheaper but there is nothing. so i head back to my friends house to book on the phone. new lady on phone refuses to give me the discount the first guy said he wrote in my notes because i dont have his name. i give her his extension number, she puts me on hold and when she comes back says "i couldn't speak to him but i'll give you the discount anyway"
that made no sense.

and now, my card doesnt work. she wont take payment across two cards, wont book it and allow me to pay at the airport tomorrow, wont even allow me to reserve with a deposit. i ask why everyone at easy jet has been unhelpful today. she says "i've been nothing but helpful and i'm going to hang up now". she hangs up.

i get a friend to book online for me. cost, £225. £10 more than their generous discount offer.

the worst part is, after returning, i found out that the flight didn't start boarding till 850. more than 2 hours after i spoke to the self proclaimed manager working at the gate.

this was not on. i wrote to the ceo of easyjet upon my return, saying they should not treat customers who miss flights when abroad in such a horrific manner. i accept responsibility for missing the flight but can only accept paying £50, not £225. plus i want compensation. a week passes and no response. i see a story in the press of stelios complaining about the board and how they may not get their £800k bonus. so i write another email. i express my concern at the worry they must be faced with losing half their expected salary. at the same time i wonder that maybe the fact that they don't even get their pa's to respond to complaints plays a role in this. 20 minutes later i get a reply. this reply eventually leads to a refund of the flight plus a small voucher off my next flight with easyjet.

i was quite surprised at the outcome and was quite pleased with how they eventually dealt with it. as much as i disliked their customer service at the time of this event, in general their air stewards and stewardess are great, and unlike ryanair they fly to the actual city they advertise. and, of course, they are cheap!

moral: next time i'm gonna try to not miss my flight.

blogging every day

day 1 (\end big brother voiceover voice)

blogging every day? i don't think i can do it. i don't know how people keep diaries. i find my own (non humorous) thoughts usually to be dull since i am quite familiar with them. so writing a diary of things you thought which almost always turn out to be not as dramatic or interesting when you look back. meh.

i managed both a 30 mins work out this morning and about 15 mins of russian study. pretty pleasing. however, tomorrow (today now) i have to be getting up early (for me) and going out but wanna at least do the work out before i leave. so i reckon this is going to be the most mentally challenging work out of the week. that is hopefully the motivation i need. off to sleep shortly...

edit: forgot about writing that story i mentioned yesterday. will do a non last minute post tomorrow with all the words!

carpe diem (winger)

as i prepare to go to bed i try to have my final thought of the day to be simply that i can never get this day back. so i should be happy with what i've done. and am i?

well, i won at tennis for the first time in what feels like 6 months.
and i had one hilarious moment on the road today which culminated in a woman hooting at a parked car because it wouldn't go when the lights were green!
i also managed to do a bit of work in trying to learn C++. i'm not great at computer programming but if 12 year olds can do it, surely i can?
and i spent a bit of time planning the important things for my week ahead.

following on from teh previous post, i want to spend the next 30 days getting into some daily habits. i want to spend 20 mins per day working out, and 20 mins studying russian. i kinda got lazy with the russian study about 2 months ago and have never consistently done the working out daily.

so each and every day i will have a trip report confirming i have completed these 2 things. i'll also try to spruce it up with an adventure or a picture.

and as for carpe diem? i think every time i try to live in the moment, it seems to revolve around doing things in the moment but which revolve around reliving the past. such as trying to win a women back. i'm not sure that counts for carpe diem.

so, tomorrows adventure story will involve wrong trains, hot wimmen, punctures and stelios. in that order. (no more spoilers. you'll have to come back for more)

introverts!

TED is awesome. you probably already know this. of course, there is a lot of nonsense on there, but there is some gold too. loads of the talks are just a few minutes long. The two ones that i think are really useful are one on introverts. describing how society views extrovertion as the ideal and why that is not right. (introvertion is also not the ideal, the ideal is to allow people to choose, obviously)




The other one i found that's great is a 3 minute talk by some dude on doing new things, which leads to new habits. that one is embedded here.



as regular readers of this blog will know getting up in the morning is a massive inconsideration for me. partly because when you work for yourself you don't have an urgency to be up. the thing i've found most helpful is to set goals to complete in the morning but even with that motivation it's easy to put off. what's great is starting something, knowing it's only for a finite time. after 30 days, you have tried it and can just congratulate yourself and go back to how you were.

answering the phone because it's ringing

i got sent to scotland a couple of years ago to take a course in [bullshitbingo].
one of the things we had forced into our faces was the importance/urgency matrix

they tell you to prioritise things so that you do the top right box first, then the top left or bottom right, and then bottom left (if at all).

what nonsense. if you think about it, any activity which you place in the bottom row of 'not important' should be ignored entirely.

other things i learnt include that people will shamelessly (as in, while standing next to you) take credit for your work and thoughts. even if you are stuck in a hotel where your next thoughts should be of how soon you can leave, they are still concerned with showing off their sub-mental prowess to the people that run the bingo program of common sense.

happily, there was another normal on this course with who i escaped every day to the delightful city of edinburgh.

neglect

i have been neglecting this blog very much so.

in the past two months, i have played almost no poker. i went out to play one in london town, but i am reminded by how soul destroying live poker is.
i also played a little online but with my dreams of millions and freedom seemingly crushed i currently have little motivation to play.

so i have been spending substantial time (looking back it's amazing how much time i have spent on poker, reading and playing!) doing other things such as working on my company, beginning to write a sitcom, rewatching community, starting to learn C++ (and applying for j*bs). i may need to get a job for a wee bit till everything else takes off, but more revenue streams can't hurt. only in one job that I applied for have i got anywhere. i have had 2 other job offers in research thrust upon me, but i don't really want them. Good as they would be, I think it would be a last resort of sorts.

i've also written many posts and not published them because frankly, they bored me to tears. I often think that of my own thoughts though. in general i find myself quite boring mainly due to the fundamental lack of ability to surprise myself. i already know what i'm gonna do and what i think. and i tend to only accept boredom in exchange for money (ie jobs). or breasts (obviously).

PMA

That's positive mental attitude, for people who don't remember kriss akabusi.

It seems that all my life people have been saying (or at least implying) that thinking positively causes good things to happen. At least, that's how I always understood it.

It turns out that I've been misunderstanding it all along. Only recently have I become aware of what pma actually means and I hope it'll help at least one (of the few) that read this post.

In essence, the idea is that external events occur, which are viewed by you, and you should be viewing them in a positive light. Easier said than done, especially in some cases, but always possible. I guess people often laugh at the person that views the silver lining in everything, but happiness is a choice and the silver lining person is one who has made that choice.

When I can't see a silver lining I am left with the attitude (or knowledge?) that in one hour, day, week or decade, I will be able to look back and view the things that occurred in a positive light. Or perhaps take action so that I derive something good from it.

I just can't believe it took me so long to work out and that no one told me sooner!

This ties in a bit to not playing poker. I'm beginning to think that I would never have reached obscene riches from it. However, I think that is unnecessary. With the lifestyle benefits of working when you want to work, holidaying when you want to holiday and being able to obsess of something that you enjoy, I feel that I don't need obscene winnings, but enough to live off with some to invest so that I won't need to ever do anything again.

so yeah, one more shot?

eeeeeeeeeeeeego

when i play live i want to win but want it to be enjoyable for everyone.

when i play online i want to win and destroy the very fibre of my opponents being. i want to crush their hopes and dreams and leave them a trembling mess when they turn their computer off.

i never used to be like this when i played online. whether it was more fun when it was new, or if i wasn't such a cock a few years back i'll never know.

right now, i haven't played at all this year. having once again almost busted my roll after withdrawal i'm considering whether it's worth playing at all any more. the reason i play is to make enough money to live and invest. sure it's fun, it comes with freedom and many other benefits. but the bottom line is the ability to make enough money to set me on a path to financial freedom. originally, i aimed for the freedom to come through poker itself but right now that seems impossible. to be honest, right now even a simple goal like money to live and invest from poker seems an impossible goal.

i want to give myself another chance because i think
1) i can do it
2) the extra benefits of making ~£25k (tax free) from poker mean it is a very attractive proposition. not just the freedom of time, but the whole idea of working for yourself is very attractive to me.
the only thing is that poker is not going to be a stream of passive income, but that's what the money from poker for me to invest in will hopefully create.

the real question is whether i get a job and use that money to create such income, or use poker to do so. i'm tempted to give poker one more chance since it will be easier to go from poker to job if i fail whilst that is not true t'other way round.

now, i have to go eat. i'm pretty bored of eating. even chocolate doesn't hold my interest in food any more. except maybe twirls. their consistency is remarkable. my congratulations to the developers.

the importance of choosing words carefully

i was always a big fan of the thesaurus. even though i still pronounced it like it was a type of dinosaur until i reached about 15. it helps choose the right word when your close, but haven't quite found what your looking for. I imagine that anyone who uses words a lot uses them, except for journalists.

i don't mean to generalise so i'll just say most journalists are lazy. take this hilarious story of a crocodile attacking a lawnmower.

you will note that the story is mostly about a crocodile who attacked a lawnmower. the excuses for this act of insanity are given as he's territorial and he likes meat. which doesn't really cut it for me. but the funniest part of the story is buried and only briefly mentioned. in fact, it's only funny because of the ridiculous choice of words by the author of this article (who didn't source his comment):

"At the crocodile farm he was first brought to after being caught, he ate two of his girlfriends."

GIRLFRIENDS!?

i'm not sure that any animal of the opposite sex qualifies as girlfriend. i'm also pretty sure that girlfriend is not a term that has ever been used by david attenborough when narrating his nature programs. "penguins, choose their girlfriends carefully, as they will marry and stick with their husbands/wives till death does them part"

it seems the croc agrees with me and didn't see them as "girlfriends" either.

anger, pressure and replay retards

on saturday i lost about 6 buy ins. this annoyed me immensely. i didn't think i did much wrong and that was beginning to worry. constantly thinking i am not making that many mistakes yet constantly losing. so i checked my play for the last few months and saw i'm down 40+ buy ins, 80% from ev. essentially, losing 30+ buyins due to ev is no excuse for the overall figure. and at this point i realised that the pressure i've put myself under to succeed at this game, and succeed fast has spiralled out of control.

just like working for other people, you have to take pride in your work, without caring too much. knowing the grand scheme of things usually helps.
and so on sunday i woke up and when i sat down to play, had a feeling that i didn't really care. win or lose, i had to not invest any time caring about whether i won or lost. i'm pretty sure i won, but i had no desire to check my results, even after the event. i think a lot of the groundwork for this has come about from working hard every day to try to be orientated by my play and not my results, and largely the methods for doing this are from the mental game of poker. i don't wish to plug it too hard because, well, i don't really want anyone else to know the gold dust that lives on those pages.

enough of my rambling thoughts on that for today. my snoozing (or lack thereof) is going pretty well now, and am getting up within 5 minutes of alarm going off. I think i need to cut tv out just before bed as the blue light within, and brain state are conducive to sleep. might start reading (not via the media of computer) instead.

and finally, i would like to touch upon the replay retard. if anyone hasn't played fifa, look away now. if you have, you'll more than be aware of those people, who when playing online, will watch every replay of every goal they score. this is unsportsmanlike conduct. i played one of these creatures who went 2-0 up against me in the first 20 mins, watching as many replays as allowed of his weak goals. so when i scored my first, second and third goals to go 3-2 up i watched all my replays to send him a message. usually, i imagine they are hysterical when this happens, though in real life, they probably don't care. i still feel like i'm doing some good in trying to show them what a tool they are. when he equalised in the 85th minute - he didn't watch his replay! success! maybe he learnt?
anyway, this story does have a happy ending. i won with a last minute goal. i didn't watch the replay of that one.

the times, they are a-changing

a wise man once told me that when you're asleep you have no concept of time. i believe him because he knows, and you can prove it to yourself. if you have a nap in the afternoon, or sleep with blinds firmly closed, you will have no idea at all for how long you've been asleep. it's quite an interesting fact.
i also read in new scientist that dreams are in fact made up of snapshots, and your brain fills in the bits in between to get the movie you think you saw/were in.

i am reminded of this because on this morning, i had one of those dreams that felt like it was happening right now. I dreamt i had been snoozing for just under 30 minutes in a half awake state, and then in real life my alarm went off. i shot out of bed to turn it off and get up. i then realised, that it wasn't my alarm, but just an email notification. and my alarm had not once gone off yet. the excitement of achieving a no snooze day was offset by the shock of being awake and cold.

i think this snoozing epidemic is only relevant to people that live in cold countries. the main reason people don't want to leave the bed is the knowledge of the cold air that awaits when they pull back the duvet. when it's hot you don't have this problem. i wonder how the people in the arctic get up. i spent a night in the ice hotel, and while it never gets below -5 indoors (lol there are no doors), IT IS -5! they offer a compulsory alarm service (which is literally someone walking into your room to wake you up!) but i think this is mostly to check you didn't freeze to death overnight.

a 2 snooze day

that sounds like a cool metaphorical title but it's not. it was just the number of times i snoozed before getting up. i guess this won't be the easiest habit to change but i really need to fix it asap. 0 snooze days here i come!

meanwhile, today i discovered the main reason of losing moneys at poker this year especially over the past few months. aside from massive overconfidence, i have a decent thought process which will often start something like, i'm raising here and if i get reraised i'll fold. I get reraised and i think, well, i planned to fold, and i really should fold, but yeah, i like calling and then i click call.
this is insanely retarded. it was beyond my comprehension and i really chose to ignore it like it wasn't happening. so many times i thought, i should fold here, click call and obviously lose.

anyway, since the weekend, i've actually been able to avoid these retarded things (on almost every occasion anyway!) and am beginning to get happier with my play. today, i think i managed the most hands i've ever played. it's about time i delved as deep as i can into this game to see how i can do if i try my best. these days, i'd rather know i wasn't good enough then not try my hardest so i can have an excuse if i fail.

on thursday morning i gotta take a train to a drinking establishment. in preparation for this tube journey, i will now take my last shower so i smell appropriately.

a new beginning

each and every day this week my plan will be to wake up exactly when my alarm clock goes off. I will go to bed when i am tired, not before (and hopefully not long after) i.e. no lying in bed awake wondering when i'll fall asleep.

this morning, alarm went off and after hitting snooze i made the mistake of considering something. next alarm, 9 minutes later (why the iphone chose 9 minutes as a snooze period continually annoys me. what's wrong with 10?!) and I get up straight away.
no messing around with phone in bed reading the internet, no thinking, almost like a reaction i got up.

already been out today to the post officec (EXCITING TIMES!) and now to do some study, breakfast and more study. before recording a music video tonight. don't worry, i'm not playing anything, i'm literally doing the recording.

(oxy)morons

i was once asked "would you prefer to be hatefully remembered or lovingly forgotten?"
I replied by saying you can't be lovingly forgotten. How would that work?
-Do you remember what's his name, i really loved him.
-who?
-no idea

a lady i once lived with only asked me that only once. sadly, she kept asking lots of other questions. to make her stop i told her for every question, she would have to take off an item of clothing. more sadly, this did not deter her. in fact, it went so far, she even sucked the life out of me. and that, is the best euphemism i have ever thought of.

[though i presume someone has thought of it before, it seems pretty obvious]

i almost got up when my alarm went off this morning

i really hate being woken by alarm. even worse, is when it's cold and I have to get up. Of course, I don't have to get up but i choose to do so. i'm pretty tired of spending an hour in bed after my alarm goes off. today it was about 20 minutes. All of next week my plan is to get up at 930am every day. mere seconds after my alarm goes off. most people with jobs will probably look at me with disdain (for many reasons) and they'd be right to do so. still, baby steps and all.

speaking of which, since i got the mental game of poker, whilst i agree wholeheartedly with everything in it, and i've been doing the suggested exercises i haven't found much improvement. I think sometime last year i learnt bad habits coupled with a worsening ego. one thing that i found useful was detailing the errors in my game and labelling them as b-game, c-game etc.
yesterday, was the first time since starting this months ago that i have played my a game in consecutive sessions. i think it's coincided with not being horrifically underolled thanks to an fpp bonus. i did want to take out a bunch of money as i need to pay for a hotel and a tooth but now i want to keep some money in there. hopefully i can play well for the rest of the month and if i'm lucky withdraw come january. anyway, getting a head of my self, one baby step at a time. starting with a 930am wake up tomorrow...

[i thought about blogging at the time i wake up for motivation, records of success and failure. i might even think of something to say each day. i will also try to resort writing in caps to elucidate my grumpiness at early rising.
for example, i could start by saying why did parenthesis replace brackets? i'm bringing the bracket back.]

erm

was just looking through hands i butchered over the past few days. found one where i bet called the river with a straight vs a fish when the board paired. this was after i raised the turn when i hit my straight on a flush card.
worse than all of that is the fact that i had a 4 card straight. and i didn't even realise till now.
*head firmly in hands*

also checked my all in ev for last month. pre flop, i ran 19 buy ins below ev in 25k hands! can you imagine running 19 buy ins up? i try to imagine running level! well, i used to. now i try to imagine playing the same no matter how i run.

the thing i hate most about poker

it's not the ups and downs, nor the batterings that i take from variance. it is the way that it affects me outside of poker. in a sense i'm choosing to be affected by it for many reasons, and i need to learn how to stop.

right now, i've been thinking of trying to see if i can do this for a year or two (do this, refers to making enough money in that time to get a house). I don't want to play much longer but i think it's also a good way for me to fund all my other ventures. Even to date, i've been spending poker money on other businesses to try to make money, but in a useful way.

All this beings me back to my point which comes about due to the amount of pressure i put myself under to win lots and quickly. sure, to some degree i expect to win, even without trying. i know it's wrong, but these thoughts are borne out of the past. from school, to poker, i never really had to try my hardest. a part of me didn't want to so i could have an excuse if i failed. and things kept on falling into my lap to provide me with a path to take. even just now, the day after i had these thoughts, i got offered a job, without even applying!

hmm, another tangent.

I need to stop putting myself under so much pressure to win so much so soon. when all my plans relied on doing well at poker, going through a sustained bad run of bad play also makes it difficult for me to cope when outside of poker. i guess it's because i'm not comfortable enough with where i am in poker. and part of me thinks the only way to change that is to win lots and have lots of upwards trending graphs. though the other part that thinks just quit and do other things has been getting louder recently. alas, what all these other things are exactly, it doesn't know.

this year, even after bonuses i'll be down around 2k i reckon but it's the lack of options in the future that bugs me most and causes my grumpy nature.
a part of my hopes that writing this down for myself will help my state of mind away from the tables.
one thought that i keep repeating to myself was said by the 'moron' in the tv show 'monk' (randy discher, if any of you watch it), and that is
"happiness is a choice"

and he's right.

I don't gerrit

this month, after 15k hands, i'm losing 1 big blind every ten hands. this is an unbelievably fast rate to lose money. this is 10bb/100 hands. i just don't understand how this is possible.

once again, it looks like i'm going to have to deposit an amount greater than or equal to the bonus i'm about to reach. i've never experienced anything like this in close to a million hands of play.
my last 12 sessions, i've played better than at any point this year. i've won in 7 (once $500, once $100, and every other time about $3.50). losing sessions, only one was less than a $200 loss.
if i can't beat the complete retards at 100nl who make glaring mistakes repeatedly, then how bad must i be. it's at times like this i usually ask pokerstars to send me a lifetime deposit/withdrawal statement for my account so i don't feel like shit. i'm not even sure that would help this time.

i won!

just once, but i'd literally forgotten what it looked/felt/sounded like. i'm not sure anyone thinks about what it sounds like. to me, it sounded like this.



in other news, i've eaten far too much chocolate today. i also had a dream about a girl i once knew. this girl opened my mind and blew it away and helped make me what i am today. till it went pear shaped. i'm not sure what made me think about her.
i did then think about telling her about the effect she has had on me. it wouldn't achieve much though. maybe make me feel better for how things ended but that's not a good enough reason to do it.

i had just started typing "anyway, enough of this emo sh.." when i realised that emotions aren't the problem. they're the messengers. use them to learn about your problems and solve the problems instead of just shooting the messenger. thanks to jared for that awareness in my mind.

i like the anonymity here. almost as much as the piece of music embedded above. which i discovered here:

rock bottom

i've busto'd my account, deposited a few hundred more bucks and busted that as well.
i'm less than 9k vpps from supernova and a 3k bonus (4k if i play a bit more, also making me extra $250 in the process).
problem is, i don't wanna deposit 1k to have at least a bit of a roll to play though i can't see how i have any choice if i want to play. bigger problem is i can't seem to win for love nor money. i think i've had two winning sessions in my last 20. even if i was a monkey clicking buttons i should be doing better than that.
i don't even know if it's worth going for a 3/4k bonus. last time i tried that i lost more than the bonus was worth. moreover, i don't even know if i should play again at all. i really want to be good, and want to do this full time for one year to bank a bit of money but money trend has been to the wrong direction for the past ~12 months. which is bizarre when i look at the statements of how much i've cashed out over the 2/3 years prior to that.

and if this doesn't work i'll have to get a j*b.