The 2nd best tool

I was already late by 20 minutes, with about a one and a half hour drive awaiting me. The weather was simply awful, with heavy rain melting the snow, forming a dense fog everywhere.

Obviously, that's when my stupid car decides to lock me outside while I clear the windows. The designers of my car really had security in mind, so my doors are always locking automatically with some combinations of park/drive and opening the doors. About once a month, it locks me out of my car. Really clever. I usually have my spare key in my wallet, so it's no big deal. But for some reason, I did not have it this time.

I don't know if you've ever locked yourself out of your car, but I think the worst part about it is how stupid you look. I've always wondered how people would be so dumb as to lock themselves out. Now I know.

I don't really care about looking stupid around here, fortunately. What bothered me more is that I'd lose about half an hour and 75$ to call a towing to come and use a clever device to unlock my car (the usual coathanger trick won't work with mine).

Fortunately, I was frustrated and did not have 75$ on me, so I decided to solve the problem on my own. A few curses later, and a prayer that the jerk who designed the lock mechanism on this car got fired, I was ready to smash my car window or break the lock to get in. No one gets the best of me!

I did not get that far, though. Poker has thought me that bad beats happen, and you can cope with them a lot better if you stay cool. And I'm cool like that. I realized that with some creativity, and a crowbar, you can solve pretty much everything.

Not only did I get into my car in only a few minutes, but it also did not leave a single scratch!

I'll upload a video of this incredible feat in a day or two, so you can all gaze in awe at the might of the tool second only to the shovel: the crowbar!

Daddy, what's a 'desktop'?

Sometime today, I was reading an article about the transition from 90nm to 65nm in CPUs. While there is a theoretical limit to how much they can shrink CPUs using this kind of technology, it's still pretty clear that soon enough, our big beige boxes will be a laughable artifact of the past. Just like we laugh at computers taking entire rooms a few decades ago, our children will laugh at our computer desks.

"What?! You actually had to save room for a box, a big keyboard and a mousepad?"
"Yes, son, and we even had to save some more for our dual-LCD setup".
"Wow, dad, it sucked to be you."
"Don't say that. At least we could breath outside."
"Big deal, why would I want to go outside anyway?"

That little brat. I'll teach him some manners.

But meanwhile, this got me thinking. And I think a lot. I got lost along the way, but I arrived at a place I liked anyway:
Ten years ago, there was no such thing as 'google'.

Let that one sink in, and imagine what it's gonna be like in ten more years. This really is an amazing time, and if we don't screw up too much, we might actually live to reap its benefits.

The Nash equilibirum of cleaning

Prepare for some heavy mental masturbation here. First, if you don't know what a Nash Equilibirum is, you might want to look it over at Wikipedia. Basically, it's a state "where no player has anything to gain by changing only his or her own strategy unilaterally". This means that trying to find a new way to do something can't possibly help you, so you might as well keep doing what you do. It was named after John Nash, the mathematician who first proved its existence in every finite games with any number of players.

His equilibrium can be used to explain many behaviors: which side of the road you drive on, which side you strafe to when you almost bump into a stranger, or why you should never trust someone lest they stab you in the back.

So, sometimes, being the dreamy geek I am, I just spot a situation and think to myself "Nash Equilibrium, right there."

Yeah...

Scary.

But anyway, such a situation happened again, and this time I decided to find out if I'm crazy or just deranged by posting it up here. I realized that most places I've lived in tended to be messy, while some places are absolutely clean. Am I just dirty?

Geez, that would be embarassing. That might be the case, but to alienate any shame I might otherwise feel, my mind convinced me that it was just another equilibrium I couldn't deviate from.

See, if you live alone, no one cares if your place is clean or messy. If you plan to invite someone over, you just clean up, otherwise it will be as messy as it needs to be. If two people live together, it will be clean only if both people were clean to begin with. If one person is messy, the other might as well be, because the result will be the same. This is explained by the general theory of space-consumption: you will use as much space as is available to you, unless it is actually more work in the short-term to use said space.

With three people, if two are clean, they can gang on the other person and force him to be clean as well. With four people, two on two won't work, so it has to be three on one. As your group grows, the clean group needs to grow much faster than the messy group.

With this explained, it thus leads to an equilibrium in most cases: just be messy, as you gain nothing by being clean. Over time, you get used to what you do, so more people get used to being messy, and since the clean group needs to be larger, most places end up being messy.

That was some productive thinking. Now I actually have a reason for being lazy!

I wish I had more important issues to direct my energies toward, but important issues tend to make you feel useless, and I don't like feeling useless. At least, now girls might understand why I don't answer when they ask me 'What are you thinking about?'

Full Tilt - Part 4

Full Tilt:
"There have been 5 victims associated with this one scam."
" ...the IP address was different for all accounts, however the computer remained consistent. Which leads me to believe they faked their IP address, which makes finding this person near impossible."

What is weird is that, 5 hours after they took the money, someone requested to change the email address associated with my account. It doesn't make any sense. Why would you compromise your identity at that point?

Anyway, I have to wait until Monday to have more info from other sites now. Hopefully we'll find something, somewhere.

Full Tilt - Part 3

Things are moving on. Full Tilt contacted me again:
'We contacted NETeller immediately to attempt to have the withdrawals reversed, however they informed us that funds had already been moved on again, and mentioned Vietnam.'
It looks like the scam is getting bigger and bigger.

Another part of the e-mail:
'Another intriguing point with this case is that 2 of the victims did not even have a Full Tilt Poker account. The scammer created an account with their email address, matching details and proceeded to make a deposit and dump the funds.'

This confirms that I am absolutely not responsible for what happened to my money. Someone, somewhere, screwed up. We have a pretty good idea about who that might be, but we won't point more fingers just yet.

Our likely suspect who lives in Pennsylvania doesn't seem as likely either. Why would he move funds to Vietnam, when he recently moved to Pittsburg and looks like a good guy? A bit of a loser, but a good guy nonetheless.

I'm still waiting for an answer from Neteller and Gmail, but at this point, I don't think they can provide any useful information anymore.

Full Tilt - Part 2

I received a reply from Full Tilt which leaves me to believe that they are not responsible for the fraud. They do NOT keep our passwords, so the guy could have never hit my Gmail. I do not believe that I have a keylogger installed on my iBook either, which leaves us with a leak in a site that does not encrypt passwords.

Full Tilt told me that my money was chip dumped to a single player in 90 hands, but that he had already cashed out before they could catch him. This means that they have some information about him, since he used some method of cashing out. I have asked for that information, and I expect them to deliver, judging from how it went so far.

The play all happened on November 30th, around noon. Most of my money went to:
scoosh
thaomoon

They also mentionned that many people have been hit by this fraud. I have asked if we could have any legal recourse against someone, but I don't expect that we could. The best would still be to find people who live near him, and chat a little while with him, face to face. I'd expect him to pay back.

I'd like to get as much information as I can about this, so if you hear of any other victim, please let me know.

On a last note, here is at least something funny out of this. Runner-runner straight!

FullTiltPoker Game #1329466820: Table Lynette Chan  - $2/$4 - No Limit Hold'em - 2006/11/30 - 12:36:30 ET

RogueMonkey posts the big blind of $4
The button is in seat #2
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to MathP [6c Js]
scoosh folds
MathP raises to $8
new2cards calls $6
RogueMonkey folds
*** FLOP *** [4d 5c 9d]
new2cards checks
MathP bets $30
scoosh: been bluffing alot there Math??
new2cards raises to $110
MathP calls $62.55, and is all in
new2cards shows [Th 9h]
MathP shows [6c Js]
Uncalled bet of $17.45 returned to new2cards
*** TURN *** [4d 5c 9d] [8d]
*** RIVER *** [4d 5c 9d 8d] [7h]
new2cards shows a pair of Nines
MathP shows a straight, Nine high
MathP wins the pot ($203.10) with a straight, Nine high
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $205.10 | Rake $2
Board: [4d 5c 9d 8d 7h]
Seat 1: scoosh didn't bet (folded)
Seat 2: MathP (button) showed [6c Js] and won ($203.10) with a straight, Nine high
Seat 3: Lynette Chan is sitting out
Seat 4: new2cards (small blind) showed [Th 9h] and lost with a pair of Nines
Seat 5: tripower1 is sitting out
Seat 6: RogueMonkey (big blind) folded before the Flop

Full Tilt Scam

I just got an email from Full Tilt, telling me that, contrary to what they reported first, my funds in my Full Tilt account are NOT safe. They claim that I have only 138$ left, and I had about 1280$ before the incident.

Apparently, I am not alone into this. DuggleBogey , a fellow PSOer also got hit by this. At the same time. On the same site.

I could admit that maybe I lost my password somewhere, to some keylogger. After all, I used this password on a few sites: my blog, 2-3 poker accounts, my gmail and neteller. But I find it weird that they only attacked Full Tilt, while they could have also hit Ultimate Bet, Party Poker, Titan, Neteller, and many others. I also find it weird that it happened after at least one month of inactivity on Full tilt on my part. Maybe I lost my password on my iBook. There are so many keyloggers and spywares for Mac OS X...

But that it would happen to another player, at the same time, on the same site, is a lot of coincidences. If you hear about any other victim, please let us know.

Right now, go cash out all your money from Full Tilt. Your money is definitely not safe there. Just cash out everytime you stop playing. They'll learn to enjoy the fees for their mistakes.

You might also want to join the bandwagon, like Riverrun and JL514, and post something to help get the message out.

Spending Spree

Everyone's asking me how I'm going to spend my Booya winnings. 'So, are you gonna buy a Wii?', 'Big Christmas gifts this year, eh?'. Well, hmmm... no. The thing is, I'm not going to spend my money. To spend it, it would mean that I'd have budgeted my bankroll, and that I could now afford more things than I previously thought. But we all know how lazy I am. Procrastinators do not swing that way. We just keep going, living it wild when there's money, tightening down when we're low on cash.

There is so much to be said about this. Know that I do not procrastinate by choice, for this would be a pretty bad choice anyway. I've tried fighting it for years, with tricks and methods, learned from the best and supposedly tried and true. Maybe they're tried and true for them, but not where I live. Where I come from, people don't change, no matter how hard they try. They can get to know themselves better, and adapt to their weaknesses, but the core will remain the same.

Realizing this is much more important than having good intentions of changing yourself. The problem with a saying like this is that it can never go mainstream. A lot of people would simply use it as an excuse to never improve and just be lazy. 'Ah, just the way I am, sorry!'. So, in order to fix this, everyone has to keep lying. These lies are everywhere. But let's be fair: there are things we all know, but for some reason, society seems to know better. After all:
- We count working hours by body presence, and not by hours of real work (i.e. being in the zone).
- Everyone is supposed to be happy about a 9 to 5 job, and the urge to take a nap in the afternoon just means you're bad.
- They force people to work in open floor with so much noise it would drive a deaf mad.
- We teach kids in large groups, effectively leveling the playing field down to the worst common denominator, and nullifying the mentor-student relation.
- If it exhausts you to be surrounded by people and to make new contacts, you're just anti-social and something is wrong with you. It couldn't be that you're simply more introverted.

I could go on. But you'd stop reading after a couple more anyway.

Gmail is back

Good news, everyone!

I have succesfully taken back control of my Gmail account. No money has been stolen from any of my account, although he did try to empty my Full Tilt Poker Account. Fortunately, they locked my account before he could do anything. As a bonus, he gave them his email address, and they kindly gave it to me!

With some quick googling, I have found the identity of the person who owns that email address. He has been using it for several years. He got his Electrical Engineer degree from the Penn State University, Capital College (Harrisburg, Pa) in December 2004, and has over 20k in student loans. I have photos of his family, and he looks like an r-tard.

Any suggestion on what to do about this guy? He should know better than to mess with a poker player...

BOOYA!

I played some more poker tonight, in a weekly league: Pokernight in Canada. As you can see from the standings, yours truly is sitting in first place with a comfortable lead! There is one more event to go, but I basically have a lock on this league now. I'll have some fun while the others struggle for 2nd to 5th :)

I did get lucky at some point. I won the event with the largest field, which was worth the most points. However, as you can see, I only missed one final table, and that's what pulled me so far ahead. A lot of people are playing for first, but in this league, I was playing for third. The way the points work, each place you go up is worth the same. Basically, this means that there is no bubble, and that you will likely throw away slightly +EV situations. Calling an all-in when the other guy has you covered is usually a mistake, as all you care about is that others bust before you do.

In a regular tournament, first could be worth easily thrice as much as third. In this one, first is worth only a few points more. With this kind of payouts, playing for first is not optimal. I'd like to think that this strategy is what helped me to get first, but obviously, I can't deny the luck factor. I only got one tough beat while I had my whole stack on the line, and it led to my 11th place finish.

First place is worth two thousand real american dollars, which makes this my biggest one-shot poker winning. BOOOOYAAA!

Of course, it spanned over 8 events, which would make it worth only $250 per event, but that is still a solid gain. I also won about $100 with regular payouts, so I am more than happy with this result. No chokage here!

I only have to sign-up next week to win the whole thing. However, 2nd to 5th should be a really nice battle. There is only 11 points separating 2nd from 5th, so these spots are anyone's game. Obviously, I'm rooting for Ash It (actyper) and riverrun (you might remember him from the Niagara trip). Good luck guys!

Bad Monday, Bad!

Monday was a pretty bad day. You can safely ignore this post if you're not interested in email address and computer problems.

First, I still did not get my gmail account back. Apparently, it needs to be idle for 5 days before you can get further assistance. Obviously, if someone gained access to it, that's not gonna happen. Moreover, if GTalk or Adium tries to log onto it, it counts as activity. Meanwhile, I'm in contact with the GMail team, and they finally answered last night. They send me an email with an URL to reset my password. There's only one small problem: The URL expires after one hour, and obviously I wasn't checking my mail that often, so I missed it.

Next, my Neteller account was locked. That was actually a relief. This means that no one could get inside it. This morning, I called them, and talked to a guy named Chris. He was a pretty nice guy, and after asking me a couple questions, he sent me a new secure ID. They locked my account because I asked to change the email address linked to my account. I'm glad they're paranoid for those of us who aren't nearly enough... I then logged in just fine, and found all my money still in there. It's a good thing I removed most of my sensitive data from Gmail about three weeks ago.

My Full Tilt account was also suspended, and I emailed support. Hopefully they locked it in time and I won't be missing a few hundred bucks from there either.

Last night, I also decided to reboot my iBook. Apparently, that is a big mistake. I got the usual chime, then, instead of a nice little Apple logo and a loading screen, I got an Illegal Instruction and the Open Firmware. I wasted half an hour to actually find my Mac OS X disk. Then, I realized that a classical music CD was already inside my laptop, and iBooks don't have an eject button. Usually, loading while holding the trackpad button would do the trick, but that didn't work. The 'eject' command didn't seem to work either. After a few more poking around, I realized that the command was actually 'eject cd'. Good, now I can put the install disk in and everything will be fine...

Well, except for the fact that it refused to boot from the CD. You can usually enforce it by holding 'c' while you turn power on, but all of these shortcuts seemed ineffective. I tried poking around the Firmware a bit more, to no avail. The Firmware works like a mix of Fortran and Lisp, so anything past basic commands was simply impossible. I also tried to access my local HD, which always gave me an error. That probably meant that my HD was dead. I knew that dropping my laptop on asphalt was a bad idea.

I started writing my post to the Apple Support. I wanted to type the exact error message I was getting, so I turned my iBook on. Chime. Some noise.. then... Wham, it booted just fine. Wew, apparently these things really can endure a lot of pain.

Just like a dying old man with one last thing to confess, my laptop had one last breath to allow me to backup everything I had on it, including, but not limited to, my playlists, my contacts, msn logs, irc logs, my porn collection, lots of family pictures, and my bookmarks.

After a few unsuccessful attempts, I decided to use a windows desktop to simply fetch the files on the network. One hour in the process, it found a read-only file, and decided to cancel the transfer and delete everything it had already copied. Nice job. I was already sleeping by then, so the night was wasted.

So, I woke up and certainly did not have a glass of orange juice. I decided that the good ol' Unix terminal would save me. A few 'man tar' later, and some more help from my bro, and I got the 'sudo tar --ignore-failed-read -cvf patate.tar /' line just right. I'm only reading from my local drive, and sending everything on the network, so it's going pretty fast. It's already been two hours and should be done in one more. Not bad for 40GB.

After this one last effort, my laptop will go through some rigorous hardware tests, and then I'll get it fixed. Hang on, little guy, I'm not gonna let you die just yet!

Wii Gun - Why not?

I was out to watch Borat recently, and we had some time to kill before the movie started. The theater we were at had a few arcades: a prime target for our purpose. There was an air hockey table, and the usual Soul Calibur arcade --- a good choice when there is any kind of decent competition. In a corner there was the DDR machine with two girls showing off their skills. I was pretty confident I could beat them, and if they weren't jailbait, I would have probably asked for a song. We all know how much girls dig guys better than them at that game, so I could have entertained you with quite a nice story.

Alas, that wasn't the case. With great deceit, I had to turn my attention to other classics: House of the Dead 4, Ghost Squad, Time Crisis 2... These games are always a blast. Sure, they're on rails, but you have a gun in your hands, and you just get to shoot the crap out of almost everything that moves. Pure fun, unaltered by the console wars and the brilliant ideas of today's producers.

Unfortunately, there is no way to bring back these games at home. Apparently, no one realized that people go to arcades solely for these games (along with Hydro Thunder or Wave Race --- but that's another topic entirely).

The thing is... on November 19th, Nintendo released a new fun little toy. They called it the Wii, and you probably heard about it already. You know about the new controller (the wiimote), and the way it works as both a positioning and a pointing device. You all heard about games like Red Steel or Metroid Prime Corruption, where the wiimote is actually used like a gun.

Alright. So here we have it. A gun at home. We're all set, let's go buy House of the Dead 1 through 5, and get ready for a week-end of non-stop zombie-blasting blood-spilling action. This simple concept could make many gamers wet themselves --- if it wasn't for one small problem: for some reason I cannot fathom, these games are not released on the Wii yet.

Wow. Who screwed up like that? Seriously... just bear with me for a little while. There is such a thing as extensions on the wiimote. The default one is called a Nunchuck, and it is used in almost every single-player game. There is also a retro controller, and many more on the way apparently. With this knowledge, one could easily expect the following to happen:
That plastic gun model would probably cost about $5 to manufacture and ship, so I'd expect it to sell for $25. You wouldn't technically need it to play, but it would make aiming much easier, and, the games, much more immersive. A pump-action shotgun would be my weapon of choice, of course, but most arcade games use semi or fully automatic weapons, so the MP5 will do. All you have to do is plug the wiimote in it, then you can use the gun trigger to shoot, while you retain access to all the other buttons.

Some say that you can't actually aim the wiimote like a gun and expect it to be accurate, but from what I understand, that could be solved by a few quick hacks and proper calibration. You wouldn't really be able to move closer or farther from your screen and still expect it to be completly accurate, but I imagine people using it while sitting on a couch or standing up, not diving around Max Payne-style.

So, now, you have a kick-ass add-on for your wiimote. Pretty cheap, yet slick and immersive. All you need now are solid games that use it. These games already exist. All you have to do is port them, adjust to the hardware of the Wii, and release them for a fair price.

There's no challenge involved, and it sounds like pure profit. My question is: why did I even have to write this? This is so obvious that it should have been ready at launch, or at least announced for an early 2007 release.

Is there anything I'm forgetting? Am I too optimist? Is the wiimote a simple hack that can't achieve this kind of precision?

Someone with money should be doing this already...