LeRoi Moore Tribute Poster

Date: Sun, Aug 24, 2008

LJMSArt.com has a gorgeous tribute poster to LeRoi Moore available. Limited edition, 500 prints numbered and signed, with ALL profits going to the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation for the LeRoi Moore Memorial Fund (the official memorial fund as specified by davematthewsband.com).

$20 plus shipping. Go get one.

http://www.ljmsart.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2&products_id=119

(Note - there's music on the page, in case you're at work or something... adjust speakers as appropriate).

DMB love always...

Godspeed, LeRoi

Date: Tue, Aug 19, 2008

LEROI MOORE 1961-2008

08/19/2008

We are deeply saddened that LeRoi Moore, saxophonist and founding member of Dave Matthews Band, died unexpectedly Tuesday afternoon, August 19, 2008, at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in Los Angeles from sudden complications stemming from his June ATV accident on his farm near Charlottesville, Virginia. LeRoi had recently returned to his Los Angeles home to begin an intensive physical rehabilitation program.

http://www.davematthewsband.com/

eBay Store Open

Date: Tue, Aug 19, 2008

I've finally gotten around to opening my eBay store. You can now find Purple Penguins Studio fine art prints on eBay.

And now, I must sleep! :)

A taste of the good life

Date: Fri, Aug 15, 2008

DMB Alpine was absolutely fantastic. I've been on a DMB high all week (while chasing away the cold I caught), but oh my my, was it good!

I'm doing that limit thing again. I can't really explain it, but limit really is my game - though I've been doing strictly NL SnG's for what seems like forever now, and I do well at those - but I guess that's the thing. After all these years, it's NL tourneys and limit cash games. Yup, that's me. I'd love to make it out to check out the new Horseshoe poker room in Hammond one of these days...

I came across the most amazing looking recipe for chocolate peanut butter cake on the PLANET today. Seriously. It's like food porn. Go see: Smitten Kitchen - Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake. The pictures are ridiculous. Thanks to Kevin Rose for posting it. It is on my Must Make list.

One thing I did forget over time about these micro limit games: how many insane chasers there are. Yowza. I've hit 2 straights and flopped a set so far, and lost all 3! I know, I know... these are the people I WANT at my table... yada yada yada.

I still haven't changed to the penguin avatar. Thinking about it.

I spent a good chunk of time last night working in Photoshop on a logo header for what may become my ebay store. I sold photography prints on there for a couple months before I left on vacation, and am thinking of doing the whole store thing. I sell prints through Zenfolio as well, but I think eBay has much better exposure.

Ha I just flopped a straight, but with the wrong hole cards on the wrong table. LOL!

Is there any good reason to sit down at a .25/.50 limit game with $50? Oh right - to give it all to ME!

Or not. These are some butt ugly cards.

Not much else going on around here. I go back to work next week. Summer went by WAY too fast. I'm not ready to get back in the grind. I've got a busy schedule for fall, teaching 4 classes and taking 3 photography classes. It's all good - I'll just be a bit chicken-sans-head. But what else is new, right?!

Debating shutting this thing down to go eat a bowl of Lucky Charms and watch the Olympics...

Twitter Tools and a Little Bit of Photog

Date: Thu, Aug 14, 2008

I've got a couple new articles up on Suite101 -

Twitter Tools: TweetDeck - Organize and Search Twitter Tweets Quickly and Easily

and

Point n Shoot Digital Infrared Photography: Get Creative with Invisible Light

and

Inexpensive Macro Photography: Close-Up Lenses - Magnify the World Around You and Take Amazing Photos

So, what are you waiting for? Go read! :)

Brain Exercise

Date: Fri, Aug 8, 2008

I'm not sure what prompted me to play a little limit holdem the other day, but I did... Limit to me is kind of like auto-pilot poker. It's all math. It's not very situational. The rules are pretty much the rules, all the time. Kind of like doing brain teaser puzzles.

My brain likes limit. Multi-tabling limit is like brain exercise.

Limit really makes me want to go hit up the boats. The new Horseshoe poker room opened up in Hammond, and I hear it is MIGHTY nice...

I'm heading to Milwaukee tomorrow for DMB at Alpine Valley. It should be sick!! Can't wait!!

K4o, on the other hand, is not sick. Or it is, in the literal sense.

I much prefer full ring games to 6-handed, for the record.

I've been thinking about making a change. I'm usually the goldfish avatar on Full Tilt Poker, but they now have a penguin avatar - and I love penguins! I collect them, and I sponsor one at the local zoo. But, the goldfish is... sort of... part of me. Maybe I'll try the penguin on for size. But is that disrespecting the goldfish? I don't want to diss the fish.

I hate when I call someone down with second pair thinking they're weak as all hades, to see that they turned the straight.

Ahh well, lunch beckons me...

Creative Film Photography with Holga Cameras

Date: Tue, Aug 5, 2008

I've got a new article up on Suite101.com: Creative Film Photography with Holga Cameras.

Enjoy!

Haven't done this in a while

Date: Tue, Aug 5, 2008

I haven't played a MTT in a while... OK, so 2 tables isn't exactly breaking the "multi" bank, but hey. I want to get to sleep at some point tonight (cuz we all know THIS IS MY TIME! I'm gonna ROCK THIS THING!) ha!

I've got a 20" monitor and a 24" monitor, and I can't seem to get comfortable. Bah. Windows feel disorganized. My head is twisted the wrong way. Man, I've got problems!!!

iTunes is on shuffle...

We had some wicked storms roll through here tonight. The tornadoes missed me (that's always a good thing, and it was too dark to take pictures anyway, so I don't mind). I was hoping to get some cool lightning photos, but no such luck. It was all flashy, not streaky. I see some lightning on the horizon now - maybe I'll get lucky tonight.

Loose table so far... 4 or 5 to each flop. One guy out already. (It's the 4th hand).

I've been trying out the hand-coloring technique (photography) using these photo markers I got at the craft store. It was one of the techniques we covered in the experimental photography class I took this summer. I want to give it a fair shake before I write it off completely (no pun intended). I generally suck at coloring, but hand-coloring can be an imprecise, which bodes well for my suckage. I colored a photo tonight that I took in Boston. Not sure what I think of it. I colored it, scanned it, then applied the Holga simulator in Photoshop. (I'm in love with the Holga simulator. More to follow).



So this Holga thing... if you haven't heard of them, they're these cheap plastic cameras with plastic lenses. They have a bit of a cult following due to the unexpected results you can achieve with the crappy lens and the light leaks and whatnot. Yes, some people call this "art." I love what I've seen so far. There's a Photoshop action to simulate the misframing and weird vignetting and strange blur effects of a Holga (as seen above). I've just finished shooting my first roll of film with a Holga 120. It's 120 format black and white film. I haven't developed it yet. I'm not sure if I have a 120 reel for my film tank. I'll have to dig around in the box of stuff I inherited. I've got 2 things in mind to do with Holga stuff: 1) mod my Holga camera to take 35mm film, and 2) buy a Holga lens body cap for my Canon Digital Rebel XTi. I really love the look.

If you don't have Photoshop and would like to try out the Holga effect on a photo, there's a free online Holganizer!

One of my BIGGEST poker pet peeves: When someone's all in versus 2 opponents. Normally, the 2 opponents should check it down to increase the likelihood of knocking the 3rd person out. The exception is when one person actually has a hand and wants to try and make some money, or has a hand he/she would rather take on heads-up, but WHY would you min-bet the other person out of the pot when you have nothing but QUEEN HIGH?!?! I know why. BECAUSE YOU DON'T HAVE A CLUE WHAT YOU'RE DOING!

/end rant

I like to see cheap flops.

And now, it's attack of the clones who can't do anything but hit the "bet pot" button. Arg!!!

The donks are sucking me to a slow death.

But the iTunes is doing pretty well tonight with the shuffle. Soul Asylum on now. Nice.

What you beyotches don't know is, I'm going out on MY TERMS! Eat that, punks!

22 - here we go!

vs AJ

SET

BOAT

And I live to play another hand!

Reading on how to mod a Holga 120 into a 35mm Holga...

KK all in... one call... vs AK.... I win! Yay!

The mod doesn't look hard at all. I wonder if I have any foam pieces laying around somewhere. Looks like a non-permanent mod, too, in case I want to shoot medium format again. The thing is, I'd like to shoot color, and I don't have color processing equipment at home, so I'd have to rely on the local photo shops, and it's hard to get anything but 35mm processed around here anymore.

Hells yeah, Smoking Popes! I <3 my iTunes.

Final table... haha out of 18 :) Still on life support. But I have a whole orbit to pick a hand.

Fantastic! 66 vs KQ, doubled up!

So, I got Adobe Lightroom 2.0. I religiously used LR 1.0, and I'm already so impressed with version 2.0 that I wouldn't go back to version 1 if you paid me. (Well, MAYBE if you paid me). Thomas Hawk did a nice write-up on the 10 Best Things About the New Lightroom 2.0. It's good stuff.

Ahh, Billy Joel...

Sorry guys. I just folded a hammer. I feel like a hypocrite every time I do.

I'm just over 10xBB with 6 people left. 4 places pay.

1 more out, though I'm the bottom. Gotta double up and hope somebody else knocks out.

Faith No More is takin' me through!

I'm going to miss Pauly's blog-birthday game. I have no funds on PokerStars. Booo :(

There's my double up, against a scooby. People really surprise me. I'm 3rd of 5. Looks like somebody didn't click the "I'm Ready" button for break....

I tried out extension tubes for some macro photography yesterday. It's a nice way to get into macro cheaply, but there are some disadvantages to buying a dedicated macro lens. The cheapo tubes disable auto-focus and aperture control, though that didn't really bother me, as I probably shoot 30% of my work with manual focus anyway, and the depth of field is so tiny that aperture control doesn't help much. The most difficult thing was that with my 50mm lens, which has a short minimum focus distance of about 11 inches anyway, the minimum focus distance with the tubes was a couple inches, tops! I used my body to focus, moving forward and back as necessary to try and get sharp focus, but it was tough. I thought of getting out the tripod, but I was shooting a bee on a sunflower, and didn't want to miss the shot. Here's what I came up with:






Arg Full Tilt is throwing me all these juicy hands that I just can't play this short!!! And the short stack doubled up, booo. I'm still 3/5 but it's crowded here at the bottom.

U2... Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses

Yeah baby, ITM! Time for a comeback, eh?

Doubled again. DMB. Bring me home, Dave baby!

Jake here is a crazy blind stealer. It seems to work for him but he also calls way too many all-in's with inferior hands. Bad habit.

Can't do much with Q7o and T3o.

Before These Crowded Streets is my favorite Dave Matthews Band album of all times. I'm heading to Milwaukee to see them at Alpine Valley Music Theater this weekend. Can't wait! My summer revolves around DMB shows each year. Got a cheap hotel on Priceline - $55/night at a nice place in downtown Milwaukee. Noon Saturday can't come soon enough!

Top 3 baby...

Oh my, and now I'm chip leader. I love when the scoobies get cranky and tired and do stupid shit.

Boy, my cards are suckin' though! Folding lots.

Some new R.E.M. on the tune-age...

Passing chips around...

Heads UP!

And.... Green Day takes me into the Winner's Circle!

I should play these more often.

Blogger Apologizes for Spam-Blocking Blogs

Date: Mon, Aug 4, 2008

A few notable poker bloggers got blocked over the weekend by Blogger and locked out of their blogs. All seems to be operating normal today, but in case you missed it, Blogger has apologized for spam-blocking blogs.

We have now restored all accounts that were mistakenly marked as spam yesterday. (See: Spam Fridays)

We want to offer our sincerest apologies to affected bloggers and their readers. We’ve tracked down the problem to a bug in our data processing code that locked blogs even when our algorithms concluded they were not spam. We are adding additional monitoring and process checks to ensure that bugs of this magnitude are caught before they can affect your data.

Kudos to Blogger for admitting the problem and apparently working quickly to clear it up. In a similar vein, it looks like they are working on some import/export tools that should make it easier to back up your blog's posts (should something similar ever happen again).

Catching Up

Date: Thu, Jul 31, 2008

Catching up on Poker After Dark on the TiVo, and you know what that means... two days in a row of posts that, while maybe not poker related, at least had some poker going on during their creation. w00t for you! haha :) Firing up a SnG on FTP...

So I'm watching the Director's Cut of the "Nets vs Vets" week, and the players are all introducing themselves and whatnot. One thought I can't shake: these internet players are going on and on about how they've played just as many hands as Doyle has in his lifetime because they play 32 tables at a time. Yes, BUT... playing live has so many facets beyond the poker itself that these net players have NO experience with - and in a lot of cases, it shows and gives away a wealth of information. I'm just appalled that they can seriously feel justified in comparing themselves to the legends of poker. Hell, the one kid can't even figure out how to cut out his chips.

It's a new age, I guess.

I enjoy playing online - don't get me wrong. But I play online because I can't get to the casino as often as I'd like, or because I don't at this moment have an actual bankroll. The authentic poker experience, to me, occurs in the poker rooms of the world, and not on living room couches. I'm sure some of these zillion-multi-tablers would disagree.

How many computer monitors does it take to run 32 friggin tables simultaneously??

Is anybody watching HGTV's Design Star? I want Jennifer to win so bad!!! :)

Nothing doing in this SnG. I need some cards and soon, or else I will be making an early exit.

Did this guy just say, "Doyle is a tight player..." The net kids must define "tight" differently than I do.

Shocker, he went out first.

True multitasking: watching PAD while playing a SnG while giving myself a manicure.

Now up: the Poker After Dark heads-up challenge. I like this show, but I really miss High Stakes Poker.

At some point today, I actually have to get out of my PJ's and go to work...

Just got knocked out. I'm mildly irritated at the range of hands people will call an all-in re-raise with for 1/3 of their stack. K3 suited? Really?

Let's roll this one more time...

Ahhh, nice little double up on the first hand with the nut straight. 3rd pair bet it all the way and called my river all-in reraise. Okie dokie!

It's amazing how Chris Ferguson can look so friendly yet so menacing, all at the same time. I'd have a messy chair to deal with if I ever had to stare him down heads-up.

Yowza. Made my straight J9 with a 10-8-10-Q-4 board. Was up against 8-10. Ouch.

Still 2nd in chips but the chip lead felt much more comfortable.

Well, that did not go well. 10-10 and out, knocked out by a caller who chased me down with K-10 and hit a K on the river. A pair draw? Really?

Scoobies 3, Me 0

Poker!

Date: Wed, Jul 30, 2008

Yes, ladies and gents, it's a quickie sit n go, starring ME!

Got back from vacation in Boston a couple days ago. Love that city. I'd move there in a heartbeat if the winds of fate shifted so. We hit all of the usual tourist haunts - the Duck tours, Prudential Center, Newbury Street, Faneuil Hall, Quincy Marketplace, Cheers (both the real and replicas), the Boston Common and Public Garden with the swan boats and the Make Way for Ducklings statues, various cemeteries, Fenway Park, the Boston Garden, Hard Rock Cafe Boston, the New England Aquarium Whale Watching cruise, Harvard (including Mr. Bentley's Burgers - highly recommended). That's all I can remember! Oh, and we checked out Salem, which after 2 visits I now feel comfortable saying it's overrated and rather lame (this coming from a girl who used to dabble in some of the esoteric arts). Boston, though, is an awesome city. I've been there twice now and absolutely love it. The subway ("T") is clean and user-friendly, and the people are great. There's so much history there.

Nothing doing so far in the SnG. Folded orbit #1.

For the photography geeks amongst you - has anybody used Costco's private label brand ("Kirkland") Professional Glossy Inkjet Photo Paper (8.5x11")? It was rumored that originally, this paper was a private label of Ilford's Gallerie Smooth paper, but that was when the packaging indicated that it was Made in Switzerland, where Ilford produces paper. Now, it is Made in the USA, and I've read once in passing that it is made by Mitsubishi and is not as good. Others claim it's a re-branded Epson paper.

I'm curious, because it's extremely reasonably priced, and has the same weight specs as some good papers (69 lb, 255g, 10.4mil). I'd love to know the source, mostly for estimating its permanence and archival qualities with pigment based inks.

Bummer. Just folded 67c to an all in preflop raise for 6xbb out of position with no previous callers... he had AA and against one caller, I'd have turned the straight.

Redemption, with a twinge of sadness: I just knocked out the donkey of the table. At these $20 tables, I find that there are on average maybe 5 decently solid players, 1 or 2 really good players, and a couple scoobies. It's kind of sad to see the donkeys go. Makes the game just a little bit tougher.

The Experimental Techniques photography class that I'm taking ends tonight. Overall, I'm pleased with the work I created for this class. We did some interesting techniques - hand coloring, solarization and the Sabbatier effect, infrared photography, paper negatives, and Polaroid image and emulsion transfers. I particularly liked the emulsion transfers and the infrared stuff.

For infrared, we shot with Ilford SFX 200 red-sensitive film (not true infrared - more of a "special effects" film). I shot my first roll with a Red 25 filter, and while the result was interesting, it wasn't quite infrared. I've since picked up an R72 filter but haven't had a chance to shoot another roll of film with it yet - though I did shoot some digital with the Canon PowerShot G9 and the R72 filter, and it definitely appears infrared. I only had a monopod in Boston and not a tripod, so nothing really came out as crisp as I'd like. A tripod is a definite must with that R72 filter. My camera was able to meter through it, but even in sunlight, the exposure was 1 second.

Flopped an OESD. Fingers crossed. Great. On the turn, a guy pushed all in for 1900 with 400 in the pot, and another guy called for his 1500. Was an open ender with one card to come worth my tourney life, even though I had top pair 7's? There was a 4-card lower gutshot onboard. I figured one of the two had it. I folded. The caller had the lower straight, and I'd have rivered the higher straight.

I should stop folding, eh? If only I were psychic.

Woohoo, FedEx just brought me my tickets to Dave Matthews Band at Alpine Valley (near Milwaukee, Wisconsin) next weekend. Sweet!

I'm short stacked at 6xBB right now, 4th of 6 remaining in chips.

And now I'm out, AJ vs AA. Whoops. Or not - had a few chips left and just doubled up to 3xBB! Life support!

Doubled again! Back to 3rd in chips with 8xBB. LOL!

Chip and a chair, buddy... chip and a chair.

I've got about an hour and a half to kill before I leave for class (and for a tasty Subway sandwich). Storm clouds are gathering. I didn't expect rain in the forecast today, but the skies look menacing.

If you caught any of my tweets last week, you may have read about my Blackberry mishap. I've got the Pearl 8130, the 2nd generation Pearl. I've been loving it since December. In Salem, we got caught in the rain, and though I took the phone off of my hip as soon as it started pouring (and put it into a plastic bag with my camera gear), the phone's screen shorted out from liquid damage. Strangely, though, it did not even get wet enough to trip the liquid sensors inside the phone. Just my bad luck, I guess. I had insurance on it and Sprint replaced it with no problems, but as I dug around on the internet, I found many reports of similar damage. The repair guy at the Sprint store told me that he has even seen sweat from people carrying the phone in their pockets cause this damage on this model. It seems to be overly fragile. I'm not hard on my phones. I had my last Blackberry for 5 years, and retired it only because it was so friggin old. Spare a couple of dings on the corners, and the thing was a tank.

With the Pearl, I managed to scratch it on the very first day I had it, by bumping up against the side of my car. I mean, really? Since December, it has earned more dings in its plastic case than my original BB ever had, and the silver plate around the trackball has chipped and lost most of its silver. I only had a skin on it for protection, so I've learned my lesson. I ordered the OtterBox Defender case for my new Pearl. It's water resistant and much more durable.

By the way, I'm heads up in that SnG.

And... out! Ha! From the gutter to the penthouse, baby - or, just beneath the penthouse. Second place. That's a win to me!

And with that, I will go get ready to head to school...

Bricked!

Date: Tue, Jul 15, 2008

What if the iPhone "brick" tragedy extended to other parts of our lives? Brought to you by Revision3.

Go, Iggy!

Date: Thu, Jul 10, 2008

Go, Iggy! Cheers and good luck from Chitown!

Falstaff Explained It Best

Date: Mon, Jul 7, 2008

On PageRank, nofollows, ads, and SEO - Falstaff said it best:

PageRank is based on the quality of incoming links. By putting a nofollow into the link, the site that is linked doesn't get the PageRank boost, but your site doesn't get considered a linkspammer and your PageRank doesn't get hurt. It seems like Google has decided that some of my advertisers are buying links to manipulate the system, and need to be punished for that. Since I'm providing the link without a nofollow, I'm getting punished as well, because I am part of manipulating the system.

I'll be keeping an eye on that post over at PokerStage. I'm curious to see fellow bloggers' responses.

I'm a bit disturbed that Google can effectively decide who is allowed to buy and sell ads on the internet via this "policy." It's a little too Big Brother for my taste.