my last post was awful

i hope this one is less bad.

last few weeks i've been trying to improve my motivation to do stuff in general and not waste time. making small improvements and constantly keeping them up is apparently the tough stuff. so i'm doing one thing at a time till they become habits. firstly, i really need to tone up a bit. so one thing i have been doing is 30mins working out a day. the test will come when i really don't want to, but when it's tough is when you achieve something. like that last lift of a dumbbell. (dumbbell is a funny word, just look at it!)

also, i really need to hurry up and finish writing my thesis. i've taken far too long with it, and need to finish it so i can concentrate on other ventures, not least poker. i think i have to move out of my flat. they say location, location and location are the three most important things about where you live, but i think they forgot the most important which is not living with a wally. he's not a cunt, but he has many features which are the complete opposite of things i aspire to such as thinking of others, energy efficiency (ie not having every light in the flat on at once, and then going out without turning them off), and many other things.
the next thing after this will be learning languages where i'll make a commitment to learn something every day.

more onto poker now, and it seems that i am going to set a goal and stick it on the right hand side. it will be hand based and money based. so far this year i'm down about $6k and i want to turn it into +$5k by end of september when i go supernova. more accurately, i will retain supernova but going supernova sounds much better.

my first session of the month was yesterday and it didn't start too well.

well, the only way is up, one hand at a time....

time flies

when you're doing nothing too it would seem

i did go to wimbledon last week, if just to break up the monotony of looking at x-ray diffraction spectra i don't understand. it rained. i tried to get into court 3 (i think to take a pic). I went in the wrong entrance, and just asked an honorary steward if i could take a picture. he asked if i was press (presumably because i had a camera) and i said no. he still let me go in. even before that point i wasn't sure what an honorary steward is. as far as i could tell from those that i saw, it meant over 60.

i also found a comedy blog. it's funny.

finally, the poker front, i think i lost again this month. the only results i checked were ev adjusted. turns out i lost $300 and 4 buy ins below ev. so a pretty rubbish month though in the middle of it i had a 20buy in upswing!
working on my volume is one positive, and got to 22k hands which is the most i've done for a very long time. aim is to get to 30k per month by the end of the year.
first half of the year has been terrible. no where near where i wanted to be in any terms. need to readjust lots of things to correct this. i have started by regaining motivation for learning and playing

last nights dreams

had a dream i was sitting on a little wall, a few hundred yards from a hospital, got my phone out and called for an ambulance since i couldn't move my neck for the pain was immense.
i woke up and couldn't move my neck for the pain was immense. took me about 20 minutes to work out how to get up. fear not though reader, for i have some deep heat which cures all known ailments excluding eye and groin injuries.

sadly, not all my dreams came true, i'm pretty sure i was being serviced by a lady in my dreams, which did not happen when i woke up.

writing

i never used to enjoy writing.
they made me do it in school. i never thought i came up with anything creative or original and i hated having to be so expressive. why use 100 words when 10 will do?
more recently i've come to really appreciate writing. not just the importance of being able to communicate clearly - and writing is a great tool for this, people can't interrupt you, and people aren't just waiting for their turn to speak - also for the expression and clarification of my own thoughts.

this blog has changed that. whilst i write for myself and have an interest in looking back and reading about the many mistakes i thought weren't mistakes, i am mindful that other people will read what i write. and even if it's only one person, this ensures that i take better care, and proof read it afterwards.

i enjoy finding humour in social situations. i enjoy letting my mind flow to explore different avenues of thought. and i enjoy writing about them and looking back occasionally.

i recently noticed that i became quite 'old' in a lot of my thoughts (for want of a better word). by this i mean a lack of patience and inflexibility in thinking, and a reduced willingness to learn in many situations. i like that i have caught this and am trying to regain some of the traits i have lost, including humility to a degree.

anyway, that's enough nonsense for one day. here's an image of a bird. a very sad picture.

ps i might do one of them poker blog things soon where i set fanciful new targets like 40k by the end of the year and try to track it regularly. first i need to start winning! lets hope this month finishes well - i've stopped tracking money and now track ev adjusted totals. weird i know, but i like that i know it's not the real amount since it doesn't affect me positively or negatively as much, yet it still quenches my thirst for results.

the great outdoors

there's nothing great about it. the worst part of owning a little bit of the great outdoors is that you have to take care of it. and it doesn't give much back in return other than a place for foxes to take care of any business they have.
worse still is when your lawnmower appears to be from the 90s. the 1890s. and falls apart when you try to move it in a direction other than forward in a straight line. and you have to stop every minute because the grass clogs up the exiting channel from the blade, waiting for you to stick your hand in to remove it..
next time, i wont wait 6 months to cut the grass. the weeds were bigger than me. i was using shears to chop down weeds and stinging nettles. i was shouting timber as they fell but they still often fell on my head. how inconsiderate. i did feel quite manly doing it though, i can now see why people cut down the rainforest.

poker? i don't want to talk about it. at least i broke even last month. lost 4 buy ins of ev in first 400 hands this month, never ending run of misery please end soon! i have even taken to studying properly and fixing leaks. i think i have many more to repair.

advertisements

does anyone else feel cheated when bad products have great adverts?
carlsberg and the orange cinema ads to name just two

sometimes i feel very hungry. then i remember tarrare and realise i'll never be that hungry. i'm not sure how his story isn't more known. maybe someday someone will make a film about it. then again, thinking about the content, probably not.

and one last pic for now...

the great carbon emission lie

there are lots of clever people in the world. many of them make a difference for the better. some even have positions to influence governments. and some make policies for governments. however, it would seem that most decisions are based purely on politics, rather than what is correct, and sometimes their decisions lead to the exact opposite of what they're supposed to be doing, yet everyone seems happy.

an example:
LED lighting. the new energy efficient lighting that will save the world from carbon emissions caused from wasteful tungsten filament bulbs! or are they?
well, they do run on a tiny amount of the power of bulbs. and they are much more efficient with much less heat wastage. and they last longer! but how are they made? well, they are made at around 100 times the cost of bulbs. that is real $ cost. which comes from the energy cost. which means over the course of the lifetime, from creation of product to when it is no longer working, they generate more carbon emissions globally. but because they are made outside of europe, european governments are generating less carbon emissions. for themselves. which is all they really want to do.

this is not a unique situation. if you know anyone who has a prius, don't tell them to find out what's in the battery of their car. so many rare earth elements, the mining cost of which no doubt exceeds the carbon emissions saved by using the battery.

answer: real clean fuels (and other energy sources) need to be researched. but whilst government policy only cares about their own country emissions, and researches need government funding, nothing will change.

politics. to paraphrase groucho marx, anyone who wants to be a politician should not be allowed to be a politician.

competition

natalie portman finally has some

go here for more

battered

so i played a game of football at watford. to say i got taken out by their striker would be an understatement. it was quite early in the game and it wasn't till i woke up on monday that i realised my body wasn't happy. muscles i didn't know i had were making any movement difficult. i tried to ice my muscles using tubs of ice cream but that didn't work because i just ate all the ice cream.

sitting in my chair to work became slightly more pained so i found a youtube video showing 4 stretches for tendons to help for carpal tunnel.
though i still think i need to buy a chair - any recommendations? might go to sit on a steelcase one in town. they're supposed to be pretty good.

McDonalds' Burger King

you've no doubt heard about the man who's eaten 25000 burgers from mcdonalds. A bit of a weirdo who records how many he buys, it appears he is romarioesque in that we only have his word to take for it.
The best part of the story is of course, the last line added by a special at the bbc (or perhaps a comedian?) "Doctors have said they do not recommend Mr Gorske's diet."
Did they actually go and ask more than one doctor whether it was a recommended diet?

Speaking of doctors i went to see a physio the other day for a troublesome ankle. trying to locate the pain by applying pressure and asking if it hurt wasn't going that well. i thought she was gonna give up cos nothing hurt. eventually though, she found the spot. i was impressed. especially after the GP i saw acted as though i was faking it. turns out a tendon is rubbish. i'll be playing football this weekend anyway, in a proper football stadium and after that will have to wait and see how long it takes to strengthen my ankle. hopefully not more than a few months....

well, google stole my comments

unreal. my last post garnered approximately 21 comments (error margin of +/- 20)
and then google destroys them. as everyone knows, all (most) bloggers say they write for themselves. (except of course i really do just write for myself). but comments are nice. they're the massage equivalent of a happy ending for my brain. and google stole them. i can't blame google, everyone likes a happy ending. except for the guy that wrote the book which the film the mist is based on.

anyways, i bought the mental game of poker. i heard some rave reviews. not believing anyone else i found some excerpts of the book online. read about 20 pages and there were 2/3 really great thoughts written there. i was worried about the style of the book. by that i mean, it's all very well having some great points but i wanted to know if there were exercises in the book so that you could teach yourself to put into practice the things you'd learned. i needn't have worried. it's hard work to set things up, and no doubt will be to maintain them too. examples of this are things like a warm up and cool down around sessions. it sounds ridiculous but it really improves your frame of mind away from the tables.
the book is one of those things that pays for itself almost instantly. i can't recommend it highly enough.
today i played 4 sessions. i don't think i've ever done that before. i didn't let earlier sessions affect later ones. one thing that helped was i stopped looking at money in hem after sessions. i now look just at ev adjusted results. this gives me the results i crave for, but it shows how i played better than actual results do. i also have completely lost the urge to look at results during a session. i finally understand that being able to perform your best is affected when you are worried about results and those two ideas should be kept separate by your brain.

here's my plagiarised thought of the day (brought to you via Prof Sadoway)
graphite is the stable form of carbon. diamond is the metastable form. So which should be the symbol of eternal love?

girls don't like boys, girls like cars and money

boys will laugh at girls when they're not funny.

apologies for quoting bad charlotte although i think there is merit to this second line. i have found in my brief existence that there aren't many funny girls. and last week i had the displeasure of meeting a girl, who not only thought she was funny, and seemed to think she was a stand up comedienne, she was also spectacularly unfunny. beyond the realms of what i thought capable. bruce once lamented that laughing at people who aren't funny so they don't feel bad is in fact the worst thing you can do for them since they continue to attempt humour. ever since then i have oft tried to avoid the nervous laughter that breaks the awkwardness. these days, i try to embrace the awkwardness or increase it through vacant stares. luckily, on this occasion there were a few of us subjected to some words lacking humour. it is a well known fact that when in company you laugh more than when alone. researches suggest it's due to bonding or to prove you understand the humour or something. either way, none of us even contemplated laughter.

this post really is just a public service announcement to let you know that i have hopefully stopped such a humourless career, thus saving you all from being afflicted with words i probably would wish upon my worst enemy.

after all that doom and gloom here's a treat:

2 leaks i have found so far

one is a long standing problem where i never fold when i get raised. this, i know, is a hallmark of a the fish.
two, when i don't know what to do in a hand, i often just click call. need to beat this one out of me.
3, i hate losing to fish and it drives me crazy when i keep losing over and over to people playing 75% of hands and more.
4, my attempts to do basic mental arithmetic are flawed through laziness more than a lack of ability.

swingathon

i still get caught up in short term and medium term variance too much.
it's tough not too when swings like this happen. but i need to not let it affect me!
at the two troughs of the graph i was over1k down for each session and almost stopped.

the second was brutal with consecutive hands against a tard getting tt vs jj and then jj vs qq whilst inbetween those hands, on another table against the same tard losing kk vs tt!

overall this whole year has been just terrible. need to fix it. this begins with 30mins study per day of my hands before playing any new ones. no study, no play.

summertime

i guess the hairdresser was right about no rain on the royal wedding day. i believe his sound arguments were appreciated by the weather.

of course, i don't really believe that. i would think that a more likely scenario is that he has a swiss heritage (and not the apparent greek one he shows off) and kept up to date with the happenings of Böögg, the explosive snowman, which as everyone knows, predicted a good summer this summer.
Furthermore, "Researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology found that...it is a good indicator of global climate change."

a pine in the mouth

if i cared about google rankings i would have called this post pine mouth.
a few weeks back i started getting a funny aftertaste in my mouth. i couldn't really describe it very well. food would be delicious followed by an horrible after taste. a little metallic, but i don't usually eat metals so was hard to be sure. at first i thought the chocolate bar i ate was off. but i then noticed it with everything. so in this time of medical need i turned to the only viable source, google.
a brief search, lasting a mere 0.00223 seconds, brought up many words of information. a brief perusal of the first 2 pages (i used to do 3 but am getting more efficient) narrowed my condition down to two possible causes.
1)bloody mouth
i did not see any blood when brushing my teeth, nor was there any other signs of blood or possible causes such as fisticuffs or rugby (nor did i use fake blood)
thus, i ruled this cause unlikely
2)pine mouth
it would seem that some chinese pine nuts can cause a metallic aftertaste in some people. it occurs two days after ingestion (possibly due to EHR according to wiki) and many googlers said it could last up to two weeks! and two days ago i had eaten some pine nuts - from china!

eating became more of a chore than usual. furthermore, i kept forgetting i had this condition so would eat things like cheese sand witches and think they were very off, throw it away, and then remember it was just my tasting inabilities.

someone mentioned to me today that kanu still plays football. it reminded me of my second original joke, which my brain made up subconsciously, the day after he missed a penalty for arsenal

roses are red
violets are blue
i can score a penalty
kanu?

off to play some pokers now. realise i hadn't done an update for ages. thats how bad it was going. i'm beginning to turn a corner and then last friday all the american sea creatures (fishes and sharkes) got caught in a net of bureaucracy. it's a pretty stupid situation and like all things political, getting stupid things reversed takes a stupidly long amount of time.

hopefully i can suck all the money out the sea before they return (don't worry, that's a joke, the ice caps are melting so we'll all just end up drowning)

how people find my blog

a yahoo user found me by typing "pma positive mental attitude kriss akabusi advert"
i was quite pleased i was found using those terms till i got to the last three words.
but they have nothing on a google user who found me by typing "is everyone on omegle wanking"
i understand this is a tough question to answer because omegle only lets you type and not see your opponent (unlike chat roulette i am told)
however, i can confirm, should they be interested, that the answer is yes.

a week of mentals

the past week has seen the meetings of new mentals and conclusion of old mentals.

the story begins many months ago when i was driving. i wasn't moving at the time, but stationary in my car, waiting at a junction, looking to the right to avoid driving into other cars. alas, other drivers on the road do not share my idealistic driving philosophies and one of these creatures used my car to stop their own. i hit my head on the window but luckily no lasting damage was done to me. (maybe there was but it would be probably be hard to tell)
i got out my car to survey the destruction to find that her car was fine and mine had it's bodywork damaged. the lady who hit me said nothing. literally nothing. no sorry, no are you ok, no comments about any damage, no accepting responsibility. having avoided these driving philistines all my life i wasn't aware how exactly to deal with the situation. i only took her details. in future, i will always be writing a statement of accepting responsibility and getting them to sign it.
i asked her to pay for the damage, telling her to give me £250 in cash to cover the respraying, assuming there is no further damage after visiting the garage. she didn't say much back. surprisingly. it's not like she had a shocked expression on her face either. i got the impression that this was a common occurrence for her.
i went to my mechanic and he said there was no further damage to the car. i called her to inform her of her luck. and this is where the fun started. she wanted quotes and receipts and confirmations and to pay the garage directly and all sorts of nonsense. it was as though i was doing her a favour by getting cash from her and avoiding the insurance company. i had enough and told her, no - you have your quote, you pay me, not the garage, no receipts or they'll charge more. she agreed. if she didn't i was just going to go through insurance.
this happened months ago and she finally paid last week. my favourite moment was when she sent an email confirming she would pay the quote. she started it by saying "without prejudice"
i'm no lawyer but that is generally reserved for litigation correspondence when someone is making an offer by mail that later can't be brought as evidence before a judge. i don't think many insurance claims for under £400 have ever made it to a judge.
she was mental.

yesterday i met two more mentals.
1) i felt sorry for this one. she was old, and old people like to talk. she talked about all the buses lined up in a row. "i've never seen so many. and i've been coming here for years!" i pretty much got her family history after that. it's quite difficult to leave these people. though i shouldn't feel so bad when i do abruptly leave, they probably don't notice.
2) the mental it's ok to laugh at. hairdresser. it started sensibly, commenting that it's impossible to predict the weather more than a couple of days ahead. and definitely not forecasts for the summer. i was about to agree with his point but couldn't get a word in. he continued:
of course, it's the royal wedding coming up. it will be sunny on that day. the weathermen make sure they get it right. the royals always choose good weather for their weddings and funerals. imagine all those people outside in the pouring rain.

i was gobsmacked. not only are weatherman in fact able to get long range forecasts accurate 'when it's important' eg events such as royal weddings, they don't apparently try for anything else. furthermore, for funerals, the royal family also consult weathermen about when the best time to die is. they wouldn't want their subjects getting wet whilst mourning their beloved rulers.

*i realise i wrote weatherman and not weatherperson. i don't even know if thats a term. also weatherman is quicker to type and weatherperson sounds odd. no one complains when one writes mankind do they? if they did, i think it says more about the complainee than anything else.

story of the day

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-12968538

shocker! politician lies!
calls in radio station to support himself pretending to not be himself after calling as himself and being told he couldn't take part since he was a politician.
like someone making 4 forum identities all vouching for the op. ha.

my favourite two things about this story are when the person who appears to be his boss backs him in public by saying
"I think it was a genuine mistake, I don't think it was deceit and lies."

erm, it definitely was lies and deceit. it may also have been a mistake but to say it's not a lie/deceit is like saying i don't think his picture on that website makes him look at all like a ladyboy. which was my other favourite part of the story. i honestly thought he was in fancy dress when i saw that picture.

twitter

i still don't get it. i use it primarily for ease of getting thoughts down. for on my phone i have 'dragon dictation' which means i can talk to my phone and it will make the words in written form. and usually correctly! it says it understands names in my phonebook but i haven't yet found that to be true. though i was using a nickname based on a non existent word. however, that's what i thought it means, surely real names like, Steve or Leopold, are already understood.

Anyway, as i was saying, i can talk to my phone then push two buttons and it posts to twitter. this is the kind of laziness that i like. i call it efficiency.

it helps me get down fleeting thoughts which otherwise would be lost to the ether. i don't really like repeating myself but thoughts include:
how the northern lights were explained before science cos they look mental in pictures
how i don't mind the neighbours playing piano. well, i wouldn't mind if they weren't so terrible
and whilst waiting in the gp that patients need patience. and what would the people who have problems spelling those words the right way round do if they had that same thought?

this post in other words: i am soul destroying;y awful at pokers. i lost lots. worst. month. ever. busto account. deposit money. start all over again.