Insomnia 2: Tha Max

If you ain't heard it already, this album is well worth a listen.....

Last night we had what was the smallest game of poker for as long as I can remember. 4 players. Colly and myself ended up dancing in the final.... I bottled an A8 and folded to Colly's all-in. He had 4's and we ghost played the hand...it turned out I would've won the game had I called.... The chips went back and forth for a while, but eventually Colly emerged to scoop the win. Inspired thinking by Des has introduced a system that will make all future games a lot faster....all I will say is "two decks".
After the poker, bed time, where the insomnia struck again. It seems to always kick in on Wednesdays for some weird reason. The guts of an hour's sleep is all I've had, not too bad now, but there will be a lot of sleep going down this afternoon.
...but not before I watch the final 2 eps of this season's Lost. The season started out as complete nonsense, but a few explanations were given and now it's come good. Gotta say though, the whole season tips it's hat to the Back To The Future films many times, and I would be shocked to learn the writer(s) is/are not huge BTTF fans.
I said I'd never do it, maybe I can put it down to the insomnia...lol. I've made a twitter account for myself. I certainly won't be updating it that often, and I registered using the (dark and evil) name of Prophecy (Prophecy666 to be exact). I'll only be using it to track / follow, not to post stuff myself. The current Prophecy update reads: "...preparing for Satan's return to earth...." and I can't really see myself adding anything else anytime soon....unless inspired. Nah, I'd rather be reading about what Joy Giovanni is gonna have for dinner....she had "chicken on the grill" last night.....nice, and how Mila Kunis is doing in World of Warcraft (wtf???).

a welcome change....

Ohai!!! The Lolcatz!!! - They never fail to bring a smile to my face.



The big(ish) game on Monday was unsuccessful. Just didn't get the cards, and when I did, I may as well never had. After a very tiring weekend I was running on fumes all day (and night) Monday. Soon after my exit from the game I retired to my room for some much needed sleep. A drunken Colly went on to beat Folk Hero in the main event, with Folk Hero dancing the victory dance in the HellKat that followed.

Had to work Paddy's Day which sucked, but it gives me a day to take whenever, so that's all good. The weather is seriously picking up over here and it is much better to enjoy some sunshine instead of the cold and the rain that seemed to be a permanent fixture since the "summer" of 2008.

Business as usual on the poker scene tonight, so once again the fingers are crossed.

This made me laugh also. It must be said that the article launched massive waves of anger throughout the GNR forums I visit, but I guess that's the hardcore "fans" for ya......

The credit crunch hits everything

I won the impromptu "Folk Hero Invitational" last Friday. I lost the bottle in Sunday's game though. Had a good feeling about the K 10 I was dealt, but with two players already all-in before me, I feared the arrival of an ace would seal my fate. It turned out I folded what would have been a full house, crushing all others. Finished 3rd so didn't lose anything but still annoyance over not going with my gut feeling about the K10. A shocking exit all the same, I'm BB and dealt 10c 5c. Flop drops 3 clubs. Suggo raises, I go all in. Darragh legs it, Suggo calls. King high flush on the flop for Suggo and I'm packin my bags. Another game tonight, another chance to dance.

2 Liverpool fans have a laugh, lovely lads.

Everything will be ok in the end. If it's not ok, it's not the end.....

Great game of poker tonight which saw everyone step into the spotlight at one point or another. I got pwned a few times but refused to die so ended up throwing a total of €25 (entry + 3 futile rebuys) into the pot to no avail. I managed to double Colly up twice which set him on the road to victory (and secured my place on the Skid Row Express). Tomorrow I return to BetDaq for this month's online crusade. Up for work in 3 hours.....dayumm.

Genius:

goddammit sony....

This pic is entitled "The Wickedly Wonderful World of Oz", by Anthony Clarkson. For this, and more awesome artwork inspired by cult films chiggidy check this page out.


I've been trying my damnedest to fix my laptop but each road lands me 100 mph into a brick wall. Last Thursday I took my Vaio into "surgery" albeit, unsuccessfully. After removing the various screws in the back of it to access the hard drive I notice Sony seem to put a hidden screw right at the top of the casing, making it impossible to take the thing apart (cheers!). Trying to get at the hard drive is like trying to fight a war with an ice cream cone, not gonna happen. I threw my hat at it and went about reassembling the laptop only to discover I had 3 screws left over (wtf?). Anyway, the laptop "boots up" (or whatever it used to do before the surgery) so maybe these screws are meaningless....I hope. I'll be hitting up Last Chance Saloon tonight. I've obtained a "boot from cd" Linux o/s that will hopefully gain me access to the contents of the hard drive, giving me the chance to save my stuff off there before I am carted off to the laughing academy for once and for all.
We got the broadband firing on all cylinders at the weekend. The ridiculously slow speeds were a result of not having the modem connected into the main phone line in the gaff, we've remedied this and now the broadband is dancing like it should. I made my triumphant return to the online poker world too, winning €15 for coming 1st on a 2 table SNG. All good. Infuriating stuff in last night's house game. My demise played out like this:

Blinds are 80c / €1.60
I'm dealt A 3
Flop: 335

As always, when I am first to act and have a monster hand I calmly "check" in the hope that one of the bluffers will try to steal the hand, then crush the life from them.

Enter: Colly.
He drops €3.20, I go all in.

Spades everywhere give the "New Folk Hero" his damned flush.
Game over for me.

Another game tonight so I am hoping I don't get "Folked-up" or "Folked-over" in this one.

oh how he laughed

Ode to a Folk Hero

....and as he destroyed me, he laughed.
Thunderous laughter adorns ambiguous play.
...laughter that has planted the seeds of his peril.
I will pwn you Folk Hero. I will pwn you.


(Missed chances, the flavour of this week....goodbye.)

Downtime 3

Harvey 2Face keeping an eye on things....


Haven't posted here in a while mainly due to single handedly writing off my laptop around 2 weeks ago. One unsuspecting (drunk) night I decided to take a trip to a particular website.... 10 minutes later - my laptop was toast. Goes without saying, I won't be returning to that site anytime soon. Anyway my laptop is in a heap and I need to wipe it and put XP back onto it. That should (not) be fun as I have to track down the various XP drivers for every device on the laptop. (No) Kudos to Sony for only issuing the vista drivers on their site.... My main worry about this current state of affairs is the possibility that I've lost my music. Not the music I "bought", I can downlo...erm "buy" that again, it's all the guitar parts / song skeletons I've been recording for the last while...including the top secret "Project-P" work. I hope I can salvage these cos I can't remember most of them (usually recorded any time between 00:00 and 03:00). After that, I gotta get my programs back on there...all the ones that allow me to masquerade as a 21st century "artist": photoshop, ableton, solitaire, pac-man, fruity loops studio, pioneer DJS etc. etc. Without these, I am nothing.

Other happenings since last post... I lost €200 in a bet last Saturday as Liverpool destroyed Man U. Never ever drink and bet. After watching the second half of that travesty I nearly severed my allegience to Man U entirely...utterly hopeless. I guess the only positive I can take from all this is that it was only €200 I am down....it could have been a lot worse. [content removed to avoid possible future complications] Ah well... Due to the aforementioned laptop-nuke my online poker quest has been temporarily suspended. My live games have seen bad luck more than anything else sealing my fate.

Examples: I go all in on KQ only to run into Woo's AA, the cards are dealt. No King. No Queen. No chance.

Another unlucky night in the recent past saw me all in on 66, the flop drops - 6 10 10. Full house on the flop!!! Nothing can stop me now. Nothing except Darragh's 10 giving him the stronger full house....dayumm.

All the good tv shows are returning over the next few weeks. So far the new seasons of Entourage and Prison Break have lived up to expectation. Pity I can't say the same for True Blood. After watching the second episode I've 95% made up my mind - garbage! I will obtain ep3 and if that sucks I will make use of the delete key. Dexter will be back soon, caught the pre air of ep1 and as per usual it is the strongest contender for best show on tv at the moment.

Lots of pics taken recently too so the flickr will get a few more pics.

$125,000 worth of genius....

.....having sobered up considerably since the previous post I found this on ebay. A vintage 1957 Les Paul....awesome axe. Live poker games continue to kill me slowly, having a dreadful run of luck. Online attempts have been ok. I've lessened my online play a lot, normally going in for one SNG every couple of days. Came third in a €3 2-table sng last night bagging myself €10. The EGLP is getting closer...slowly. We now have a new housemate in the form of 2Face/Face Off the cat. She arrived on Sunday evening, and once she gets settled I'll throw up a few pics.

Rain, rain go away...

A (crappy) picture of how things looked from my bedroom window at around 7pm last Saturday evening.


I think it's official, the Irish summer is a thing of the past. Come to think of it, the differentials between the various seasons are becoming increasingly slight. It just rains. All the time. The odd spell of sunshine occurs for exactly the amount of time it takes you to think "I'll actually get a wash done now and get to hang the clothes out to dry...." (wash clothes) (hang out on line) (rain). It's a vicious circle, because of the rain I find myself washing the same set of clothes twice, maybe three times....using 2x / 3x electricity/energy/blah etc. Carbon footprint increases. Climate change. More rain. Wash clothes again. Start from top. Dammit.

Drunkeness at the weekend cost me big in my online poker mishaps. Without going into too much detail, metaphoricaly speaking, I've gone from affording 1 pickup & a set of strings from the EGLP to prolly being able to buy one string off it now...(There's a Photoshop idea - Picture of the EGLP and remove the various parts I can now "afford" using my online poker a/c. Kind of a "countdown to". Each week a new EGLP pic posted to show progress or lack there of... Meh...sounds better in my mind, especially as I think of how tedious it could get - farting around with Photoshop for hours on end just to express what? - How I screwed up in poker? Nah...)

The weekly Sunday game started off good, very good. Nice hands, a few solid wins, but eventually it all backfired. Woo hit me up with a suckerpunch and Cob demolished what remained. I won the following Hellkat which was nice (made money back from big game), but I'm still chasing a few consecutive big wins.

Song of the game/night: "Ed Solo & Skool of Thought feat. Darrison & JFB - We Play The Music "

....that no one likes.

Bet Da "Q"!!!!

Props to El Patojo for this great pic entitled "Disclosure". Amazing colour tones, and it really reminds me of something you'd find in a NIN inlay card. Genius.


I've made the switch to a new poker site, Bet Da Q. Not quite sure what da "Q" they refer to actually stands for or means (queen perhaps??), who knows??? (lol) What I like about this site is 1. all transactions are in €uros which makes things easier on my tiny mind...also I've found the place seems to be full of n00bs (a standout victory at the weekend saw 2 hopefuls see my all-in on pocket kings with their 8/4 off and 9-2 suited (W.T.F.??????). Surprisingly, no luck for the hopefuls as I tripled up. The former SNG quest has wrecked my head for the last time. At the weekend I 5x my account balance in 30 mins at the cash tables, so from now on I'm mixing it up between cash tables and low buy-in tournaments. My new aim is to make €100 this month. I'm starting low in the hope that in time I will be able to pay my rent through poker....time will tell.

We ended up in an awesome bar on Friday night. (no name), located near the dubious Hogan's is a welcome relief from the 10-a-penny-cascada-playing shiteholes that infest this city. Shrouded in mystery, this seems to be a popular spot nonetheless. TBH, I haven't a clue how long this bar has been going, I must give props to Woo for discovering it. The interior is like a massive apartment, with different rooms but one bar (never overcrowding at the bar - nice). The vibe off the place is more house party than central city bar. Some of the views are quite awesome too, recalling a certain window... A return will be made to this place, and next time the camera's coming with me.

Caught The Dark Knight at the weekend, did not fail to disappoint at all (minor annoyance at Christian Bale's "Bat-Voice"). Gonna take a risk here and say something that you prolly won't hear anyone else saying at all (j/k), but Heath Ledger stole the show. Oscars and the rest....that performance deserves it all.

Some new pics on Flickr - getting reacquainted with Photoshop.

Welcome to skid row

Poker has crushed me on all levels. The curse has not yet been lifted, and now it also infects my online play. The lol's are becoming few and far between....and the once thunderous roar of the roflcoptor has been reduced to a silence. Tomorrow's live game will decide my immediate fate.

kaboom!

The above picture describes the current state of my poker career better than any words I can offer at the moment.

Awesome poker tournament being run by "friend of a friend", Carfax.
A very interesting idea put to me by Des..... Have a big house game and the winner gets their entry into the tourno paid for (or cash out....). This will be discussed....

With YouTube quickly turning into a disaster area, here's a pretty cool site to kill a few hours on. Video Jug: Life explained. On film.

WTF!?!? Fred Durst has lost the plot.

New Ladytron album, Velocifero doesn't fail to impress.

Chub on!

victory?

I have cast out the poker demons and did some pwning of my own last night. Abiding by my online play policy, I scooped the win in the Main Event. All this while enjoying a few scoops. The HellKats that followed (more than one....I think?) were a shambles but I didnt care cos I'd had a big win. The madness didn't finish up till after 3 am so this morning was interesting to say the least. Winnings : €100

The Hawaiian creation myth suggests that the octopus is the only survivor from a former alien universe.

Like Dr Who, the octopus has three hearts.

Octopus eats Shark.

More genius at work.

VNH.....

Check out this pic I took of Cob's amazing hand in last night's game. The pic speaks for itself. Last night was Cob's night, seeing the man win both the Main Event and the HellKat.

The house game last night did not go in my favour at all. I was chip leader for a good while and caused some damage at the table. However, it wasn't too long before the webs I spun entrapped myself. Before I knew it, my chipstack was a joke and I was at "all-in" territory. The avalanche of destruction headed straight towards me and nothing I could do would stop it. I was out. The accompanying game of HellKat was also a disaster that saw me going all-in on AJ only to be pwned by Cob's 56 off suit.

Agh, sometimes I wonder about this damned game......

Don't waste your time seeing 5 superhero movies this year, just see this instead!

an epic battle....

(props to francesg29 for the pic of Hodad's, Ocean Beach, San Diego. The home of the world's greatest burgers.)


Last night's house game had all the thrills and spills of a great poker encounter. Just when I thought I was outta there, my rash "all-in" blasts worked and my chipstack recovered nicely. The final saw Cob and myself battle it out one more time. At around 01.30 with the blinds at a record breaking €5 /€10 I was running on auto pilot (I think we both were), so it lead to my all in falling foul to Cob's flush. I didn't win, but it was a good game so how bad...
There'll be another game tonight so fingers crossed for that one.

Genius at work

....and again

finally....

So last night saw my first win in a long time of a big house game. To add icing to the cake, I also won the traditional game of HellKat that followed the big game. And even after repaying my "skin debt" to Buck I was still left with a decent sum of cash. At one point I went all-in, and as per the norm, Cob saw my raise. But for once I ended up pwning Cob's hand on the all-in. Cob was annoyed at the defeat, as ya would be, but (if Cob is reading this I ain't gloating) it was nice for me to be on the other side of the fence for once and defeating his all in. Let's hope this current form continues for a while. My SNG quest was also decent yesterday. Won a $1 SNG boosting my account by an awesome $4. A few more of these and the account will be in good shape again.

Old news, but Dr.Pepper throws down the gauntlet to Axl Rose.

Firefox v.3 released.


Got to check out the pilot episode of HBO's new vampire series, True Blood. This has good potential and will be worth checking out when it airs in a few months time. Also took a look at Fringe, the latest offering from JJ Abrams. I will also be tuning in to this one when it airs later in the year.

The aftermath....

(Props to Guwashi999 for this amazing HDR of Shibuya.)


Survived the perils of Friday the 13th and a session in Kavo's. Some highlights of the night can be found here.

New Coldplay album, Viva la Vida, is worth a listen. The title track, along with Yes! (+hidden track) stood out initially, will give it a few more spins anyway. Also listening to: A Place To Bury Strangers, and Deerhunter. On a shoegazing vibe today....

No news is good news....or is it?

The SNG quest has been a disaster today, I've lost four $1 sngs so far. Going to play one more shortly, and if I get pwned again I'm throwing my hat at it for today.
Finished 3rd in that one, so gonna hit up another $1.
Des' unlucky hand.

Friday the 13th!!!

Friday the 13th.....oooooh. I'll be spending my day dancing under ladders while smashing a few mirrors....good times.

Well, the tools from NTL made a mess of it again... Return back to the gaff to find an NTL card left stating they called but "could not gain access". Thing is, they were meant to call me prior to their arrival to give around an hour's notice...no call. So, thanks for the roach. Jerks. One of the Eircom piggybacks has popped up this morning. Fingers crossed it will still be up when I return so I can get my SNG on!

In poker news, my fortunes have taken a turn for the better. I got to the final of the last big house game (but got pwned by Buck), and have won 2 live HellKats also. The big win is coming....
















Random Spam:

Giraffe milk has just been pronounced as kosher.

I've just launched my Flickr Photostream. It will be an ongoing "work in progress".

6.6.08

Well not too much to report on the poker front, only one live house game this week....which, big surprise, I did not win. Having a very bad poker time these days, my game hasn't gone to shit it's just unlucky calls and being dealt garbage cards all the time. Hopefully it will pass before I bankrupt myself. The online SNG quest has been scuppered too, due to the internet connection(s) in the house going to pot. Even my Eircom piggybacks have abandoned me.....

Here's a handy device for smuggling gargle:

http://www.thebeerbelly.com/

00:30 am

A film that appears to have everything!



In poker news, I am getting owned in live house games and my sit n go snakes n ladders have landed me back to the $1 sng's. Still up though so how bad.... Up for work in 4 hours, shag it, one more $1 sng to accompany the good night green.....