Merry Christmas to all and to all ...

Yeah, yeah, I'm a bad blogger. No posts in almost two months.

What can I say?

End of academic year, paper deadlines, conference to organize, academic and social visitors, no poker, blah blah blah.

Anyhow, off to Brisbane tomorrow for a couple of weeks, and will reevaluate the future, or lack thereof, of this blog in the new year.

Meanwhile, have fun everyone.

Four too, two four, whatever ...

Following on from Kat, and Fuel, various fours for me. Partly to avoid an embarrassingly large overlap with the latter, I'll go the "low culture" route for the most part:

Four jobs I've held:

1. Lawn mowing
2. Undergrad research assistant
3. Maths lecturer
4. Computer science lecturer

(Sigh, not very exciting, I know.)

Four films I could watch over and over:

1. Brazil
2. A Knight's Tale
   
3. The Incredibles
   
4. O Brother, Where Art Thou

Four TV shows I watch:

1. Dr Who
   
2. Heroes
   
3. CSI X
   
4. Absolute Power (if it ever comes back)
   

Four places I've lived:

1. Penetanguishene Ont
   
2. Oxford UK
   
3. Pittsburgh PA
4. Dunedin NZ
   

Four favourite foods:

1. Coquilles St Jacques
   
2. Venison goulash
   
3. Almond croissant
   
4. Brötchen with butter and apricot jam
   

Four websites I visit daily: Too dull (not the topic, the answers.)

Four favourite colours: Mu

Four places I'd love to be right now:

1. Arran
   
2. Wanaka
   
3. Toronto
   
4. Actually, it's not too bad here
   

Four names I like but wouldn't name my children: that would be tempting fate in more ways than one.

Four favourite books:

1. The Big Sleep
   
2. The Moving Toyshop
   
3. A Hat Full of Sky
   
4. In the Skin of a Lion
   

Ok, so food and books stretched the definition of "low culture" a bit in places. Live with it.

Veeery scaaary stuff ...

23Skidoo of Compromising Anonymity left a comment on my "best pop songs ever" post, pointing me towards a performance of Radio Radio by Elvis Costello (and the Beastie Boys) on SNL.

Thanks to teh magik of teh interwebz it was only a matter of moments before I found it on YouTube:



And, the really scary thing is, it looks like Elvis is related to Mike Matusow.

Hmm ... just found



and now I get the joke at the beginning of the other one. Ah, wheels within wheels.

I wonder what he meant by that?

So, my last post on pop music having been such a raging success (cough), let's try another variation on that theme:

Your favourite lyrics that sound really impressive, but which you've never been quite sure of the actual meaning of.

And, to kill any possible suspense, I'll start with three of my own.

Number 3: The Invisible Man (Elvis Costello and the Attractions, Punch The Clock)

Crowds surround loudspeakers hanging from the lampposts
Listening to the murder mystery
Meanwhile someone's hiding in the classroom
Forging the books of history

I always thought that last line was "Polishing the books of history", which both scans better and is less obvious. And I've just listened to the song three times, and I'm still not sure. Costello can be like that, creating some really interesting double entendres by fudging on pronunciation in places (the best one I can think of is in Red Shoes, where in "chasing after vengeance" the "v"-word could be any one of: vengeance, visions, virgins. The latter works particularly well in conjunction with "punctured" in the next line.)

Number 2: The Call of the Wild (David Byrne, Rei Momo)

Albert Einstein wrote equations
God told Noah "Build an Ark"
Johnny Mathis sings Cole Porter
To bring light into the dark.

Slightly fish in a barrel as you could pick just about any verse of any given David Byrne song and use it.

And at number 1, from my favourite obscure Canadian band

Number 1: Wrong Kind of Right (Doug and the Slugs, Wrap It)

Tie it all up (tie it up, tie it up!)
With a piece of hemp from a hang man's memory
We'll attempt to redefine geometry

This time the official site no less claims that it's "Add it all up" and "the hang man's". But, my ears do not lie (at least not yet -- despite advancing years, they at least still seem to be working adequately.)

Probably no accident that two of my choices deal with mathematics in some way. What are yours?

Update on "best pop/rock song ever"

It's not too late to vote or make suggestions! See the original post, if you don't know what I'm talking about. (Remember the basic criterion: must have received significant commercial air time without dropping into the "I never want to hear that again" category.)

Fuel55 weighed in with an enormous list. But, his first suggestion (Bowie's Young Americans) is certainly right up there. I'd want to include some other Bowie classics from that general era as well: Changes, Suffragette City, Space Oddity.

Mr Subliminal was more restrained, putting up Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven (sorry, for me at least, it's in the too long and too overplayed categories), and the Stones Sympathy for the Devil (excellent, and of course there are plenty of other Stones candidates as well.)

I'd like to put some songs from The Who or Queen on the list, except I'm afraid that overexposure through CSI "insert city name here", and relentless playing of We are the Champions at sporting events (when it wasn't really much good to begin with), as well as the excessive length of Bohemian Rhapsody probably disqualify them. Well, perhaps except for My Generation, which for some of us at least is starting to acquire a nice ironic ring. I'm acquiring a collection of My Generation covers on my iPod -- would appreciate pointers to any new ones (so far I have the original, Green Day, and Patti Smith.)

Tangentially, does anyone remember The (remants of the) Who doing Won't get Fooled Again at one of the post 9/11 benefits (Madison Square Garden I think). Talk about irony.

Just so the pipes don't freeze.

Nominations for "the greatest pop/rock song ever" please. Main criterion is that it must have received significant commercial air time, but that when it comes up on your iPod your reaction isn't "I never want to hear that again sober" (e.g. Hotel California), but rather "maybe I'll hit skip/back when it's finished so that I can hear it again".

For me, there can't be any doubt, it's Sultans of Swing by Dire Straits. Various songs by Elvis Costello (Radio Radio and Chelsea to name two), and Talking Heads (Psycho Killer, Once in a Lifetime, Life During Wartime) come close; but there's just something about that upbeat drum/guitar intro that hooks me every time.

So, what say you?

Back from Hamilton

I just returned from a week at the 22nd national NZ Bridge congress, and am predictably tired. Trying to get to sleep day after day after three hours of intense concentration finishing about 11:30 pm is no easy task, so I usually didn't drop off until 2:00 am or so, and was often up by about 7:00 am (stupid body clock.)

My results weren't great, partly because I was playing in unfamiliar partnerships, having left my decision to play until the last minute. The other reason of course is that I haven't been taking bridge seriously for a number of years now, and am more than a little rusty. I did get a few articles published in the bulletin (see links at the site above) including a couple of rather dodgy poems. And they were kind enough to give me a couple of bottles of decent wine for my contributions. So, that was nice.

But what was even nicer was rediscovering the sheer joy that bridge can provide. A large part of that comes in the endless post mortems with your friends and peers, analyzing hands from the bidding through the play of each card and trying to learn and profit from that learning (profit of course, purely in the abstract sense -- we're not talking about real money here.) This is something that doesn't really happen much in poker, for a couple of reasons. The glaringly obvious one is that you don't play the same hands as others (though I see that an attempt has been made to introduce duplicate poker) so they can't offer fully informed comment on your play, nor do you necessarily want to share your thought processes and techniques.

And then there are purely sublime moments that occur at bridge, which I at least have never experienced the like of in poker. The closest I can come to it in poker is the feeling that comes after you've carefully misrepresented a monster and dragged someone into an all in pot, massively behind. Times when you profit not from the mistakes of your opponents (which is also in bridge where the large part of your profit must come from) but from your own skillful play. And in bridge it can be a matter of pure skill -- of spotting an opportunity because of the combination of the 26 cards you can see and the 26 that you can't and exploiting it. Or, of using the ideas and features of your own bidding system to arrive at a good contract that won't be found elsewhere.

On Saturday morning there were three such hands in a 26 board session. I'm still not entirely down from the high that they produced. That may be a juvenile and inappropriate reaction but it's taught me something: I'm a bridge player, not a poker player.

I'll probably keep playing a bit of poker. If nothing else it's a method of relaxing and enjoying ones self for an hour, with the possibility of a bit of profit on the side. When I do, I'll probably blog a bit about it here, but updates will be even more irregular than they have been until now.

I might start a bridge blog too ... or maybe not ...

The iPod meme

A.k.a running well, so I don't have many stories from the table. I'm not sure whether I'll do the full twenty first verses, as that seems a bit excessive and I do intend to cheat slightly by using shuffle play on "M's favourites" rather than the full library, but, with those provisos, here goes:

1. If you gave me a coin for every time we say goodbye
   Well I'd be rich beyond my dreams, I'm sorry for my weary life
   I know I'm not perfect but I can smile
   And I hope that you can see this heart behind my tired eyes


2. Well we know where we're going
   But we don't know where we've been
   And we know what we're knowing
   But we can't say what we've seen
   And we're not little children
   And we know what we want
   And the future is certain
   Give us time to work it out


3. Welcome to real life
   Welcome to real life
   I've come to realise it's no game
   No one is the same
   There's so much more to life
   Than meets the eye


4. You may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
   You may find yourself in another part of the world
   You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
   You may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife
   You may ask yourself; Well...How did I get here?


5. Come fly with me, let's fly, let's fly away
   If you can use some exotic booze
   There's a bar in far Bombay
   Come fly with me, let's fly, let's fly away


6. Stop this world, let me off
   There's just too many pigs in the same trough
   There's too many buzzards sitting on the fence
   Stop this world, it's not making sense


7. People try to put us down
   Just because we get around
   Things they do look awful cold
   I hope I die before I get old


8. We were at a party
   His ear lobe fell in the deep
   Someone reached in and grabbed it
   It was a rock lobster


9. Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine
   meltin' in a pot of thieves
   wild card up my sleeve
   thick heart of stone
   my sins my own
   they belong to me, me


10. I was tuning in the shine on the light night dial
    Doing anything my radio advised
    With every one of those late night stations
    Playing songs bringing tears to my eyes
    I was seriously thinking about hiding the receiver
    When the switch broke 'cause it's old
    They're saying things that I can hardly believe
    They really think we're getting out of control

And that's probably more than enough.

Online poker is not rigged

I can officially announce that it's time for everyone to put away the tin foil hats. I have definitive proof that online poker is not rigged. And the proof is that old mathematical favourite, a proof by contradiction.

For, it is clear that if online poker were rigged then certain things would follow. For instance, someone returning to a poker site after an absence of a month or so would be rewarded with a nice session or two. Nothing extravagant, but enough to make sure that the hook is once again well and deeply placed. Above all, such a person would be protected from precisely the sort of events that would lead a more susceptible personality to become convinced that online poker is rigged.

Well, it certainly hasn't happened that way, and therefore we can conclude beyond a shadow of a doubt that online poker is indeed not rigged.

QED

The transience of memory

Brought to you today with a full helping of digressions and a bonus serving of nostalgia.

Three p.m. yesterday found me in my office, searching for toothpicks to prop my eyelids open as I waited for a four p.m. examiners meeting. In my defense, I had been at work since before seven a.m., and was still suffering from the previously discussed "not really jet lag, but there's no better word for it". The prospect of an examiners meeting is hardly something to set the pulse racing either. Basically, these consist of discussions where we all agree that our colleagues have graded their exams correctly (based only on a list of marks) and they do likewise for us.

So, in search of diversion I fired up PokerStars and prepared to do a bit of kibitzing. Does one kibitz in poker? I suppose so, though I associate the term more closely with bridge. Pause to consult the interweb. Gosh, who knew -- here's a rather nice discussion of kibitz, which certainly indicates the wider sense, in fact the first example refers to poker. Anyhoo ...

I spotted Fuel at a short handed 5/10 table and dropped in to wish him luck at the WSOP Main Event as well as to watch the fireworks. And fireworks there certainly were. Chips were flying everywhere. Three way all ins seemed to be the norm. It got so crazy that at some point I felt compelled to remark: "Why am I thinking of Lewis Carroll: 'You don't have to be crazy to play here ...'".

And then that annoying little man in my head started clamouring for attention:

"Just what Lewis Carroll quote is that please?"

"Oh come on", I replied, "you know, the Cheshire cat says it to Alice before she goes off to the Mad Hatter's tea party."

"I think not. Would you care to have a little wager on it? If I'm right you have to blog this sordid little tale, if you're right I won't bother you for a week."

Those were certainly excellent pot odds, or so I thought. Thus, off to the interweb it was to prove that silly little fellow wrong. You'd think I'd know better by now. It pains me to admit it, but apparently the phrase "You don't have to be crazy to verb here, but it helps" is the sole province of stupid signs on desks and coffee mugs, and has nothing to do with Lewis Carroll. I did find one other similarly confused soul somewhere on a motorcycling discussion group (complete with the Cheshire cat reference) but the little fellow said that didn't count, and really I can't argue. It just seems to be a play it again Sam thing, though now I suppose that "quote" is more famous for being "not a quote" than otherwise.

For the record, the passage from Alice in Wonderland that I seemed to be thinking of comes from towards the end of Chapter 6:

Alice felt that this could not be denied, so she tried another question. `What sort of people live about here?'

`In that direction,' the Cat said, waving its right paw round, `lives a Hatter: and in that direction,' waving the other paw, `lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they're both mad.'

`But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.

`Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: `we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.'



Tenniel's illustration of that scene featured on a much derided math freshman T-shirt in my second year at Waterloo (with the caption "We're all mad here" as I recall.) My frosh shirt just had a big empty set symbol on it. The highly commended next frosh shirt (I wonder who had a hand in its design) featured π to several hundred digits.

Bonus geek points for spotting either possible reference in the title.

Wish me luck ...

40+ hour journey ahead.

St Andrews - Leuchars (Car)
Leuchars - Edinburgh Haymarket (Train)
Edinburgh Haymarket - Edinburgh Turnhouse Airport (Bus)
Edinburgh Turnhouse - Heathrow (757-200)
Heathrow - Bangkok (747-400)
Bangkok - Sydney (747-400)
Sydney - Christchurch (767-300)
Christchurch - Dunedin Airport (Aerospatiale)
Dunedin Airport - Dunedin City (Shuttle)
Bed ...

In the "small things are the most annoying" category comes the fact that the train actually passes through Edinburgh Turnhouse, but when that airport was being developed none of the clever people involved thought it might be a good idea to include a train station.

And, oh yes, this is what I have to look forward to when I get home.

Angels wept

I was lucky enough to be invited to dinner at High Table in Trinity College last night. The wines on the table were a sauvignon blanc from Touraine, a Loire appellation which I was not really familiar with; and a red (pinot noir of course) Chassagne-Montrachet. The latter was superb.

And why did the angels weep? At a guess about 1/4 of the wine on the table was drunk. I can only hope that the remainder was consumed in quiet appreciation by some of the staff.

Up, up and away

A few hours to go before the Brisbane-Heathrow flight. Over the last couple of weeks it's amused me occasionally to read bloggers (you know who you are) complaining about "long" flights within the continental USA. Well, let me tell you ... (Monty Python fans, feel free to imagine the "When I were a lad" sketch here).

There are three internationally recognized ways of measuring the length of a journey involving air travel(*). From shortest to longest these are: initial take off to final landing, door to door, time from waking up at start to going to sleep at destination. My trip "today" (which is actually relatively short by the Australasia-UK standards) comes in at: 25 hours, 29 hours (UK traffic willing), 48 hours (if I can manage to keep my eyes open until some sort of reasonable hour for going to bed).

So, don't come whining to me about your 6 hour flights. The "best" journey of this sort I ever had was a few years ago when I was traveling from Dunedin to Turku, Finland. Just before takeoff, I called my family who were about to start a day's skiing in Wanaka. From Copenhagen, with a 3 hour wait in the airport plus a short hop to Turku still to go I called them again as they were sitting down to dinner after skiing -- for the second time.

(*) I just made that up.

The doctor is in

For a record setting third post in a day. Fresh from some gratuitous pedantry on Fuel55's recent post, it's time to mount another one of my hobby-horses.

I've just been watching the final episode from the Aussie Millions on YouTube. So let's get this straight:

You all saw and heard Joe Hachem's cheering section at the WSOP. "Aussie" is pronounced as in "Ozzie and Harriet", not as in "osseous", or the middle two syllables of "velocity". Ok got it?

While we're at it, it's Brisbun and Melbun. You can get away with Sydney, though Sinney is more common -- I won't even try to explain Perth or Adelaide, the latter of which sounds like some rather nasty medical condition. The resort in North Queensland (Cairns) is pronounced as if it were the place where the film festival is held (Cannes) by someone who doesn't realize that the terminal S is silent in French.

The whole subject of "R-detection in Australian English" is probably worth a book of its own.

And finally, in Wagga Wagga, the second Wagga (or is it the first?) is silent.

A peculiar discovery

A couple of weeks ago, in the midst of a bad run, I consolidated my meager bankroll on PokerStars. I had played most of my cash games on UltimateBet, but decided to abandon them after changes to the bonus system, and also because their whole atmosphere was somehow going bad.

My bad run continued. I shan't bore you with the details because, unlike families according to Tolstoy in Anna Karenina, "unhappy poker players are all alike, every happy poker player is happy in his own way" (which presupposes the existence of a happy poker player, a point which is certainly open to debate).

Obviously, something needed to be done. So I sat down and concentrated, only two tabling, and without distractions. And it got worse.

Finally, a key piece of wisdom from my days of acing multiple choice tests made itself heard -- "never trust your second thoughts". And even more to the point: "never give yourself a chance to have second thoughts". So, back to four tabling with random sports on TV. And it's all good. Well, so far anyway. Stay tuned.

The scourging

It is time brothers and sisters. Yes, it is the time once again for the great scourging. I know that even I have been weak and allowed troubles to multiply. But no more. And so I beseech you all to join with me, lest you fall into greater peril.

Take yourselves into your kitchens, and open up the drawer wherein are kept a multitude of plastic containers, be they Tupperware, Rubbermaid, or of any other tribe. And take from there all those that are lidless, and cast them away into the darkness.

The Great Deceiver will tempt you. He will whisper in your ear: "Could you not use that other lid? It almost fits." Or perhaps "A piece of plastic wrap will do just as well." But I tell you these are lies and deceptions. For is it not written: "Whosoever shall fall into the error of plastic wrap, he shall soon be cleaning pumpkin soup from the shelf and the floor"?

Some among you may well find lids that have no containers. These too should be scourged. However, the council of Pittsburgh did agree in 1995 that, provided there is resident in the house a child of less than six full years, or a dog still young enough to fetch, these may be kept for they serve well as playthings, but must be segregated from the lidded and pure.

Kats have birthdays too?

In the words of the great bard “bee there or bee a rectangular thynge.”

Note to self: Remember to buy vermouth.

The sweet 16 has nothing on this ...

Police hunt Woolmer's murderer

The risks of coaching a cricket team knocked out in the first round of the World Cup by Ireland (as Garth said “To put this in perspective, this is like a Div II College basketball team beating, say, Kentucky.”)

But this story really has everything, including a link to match fixing allegations.

And at the risk of plumbing even greater depths of tastelessness, what's the over/under before we see this as a storyline on CSI? Not about cricket obviously ... college basketball/football coach found dead in casino hotel ...

Reasons to like NZ

Aside from the obvious ones ...

Part of the process of buying a new house is getting a title and permit search done through the local city council. I was a bit worried when there was a big sign in the office reading “Expedited searches not available at present due to demand”. So, I had to settle for the “standard” search which might take up to two business days (still plenty of time, as I had a week to confirm the contract). Less than six business hours later, the council ring to tell me that the material is available (oh yeah, the cost for this service --- a whopping NZ$40).

Likewise, arranging my mortgage, a grand total of two phone calls consuming about 30 minutes of my time, in spite of the fact that there were some complications requiring changes to bank account details etc. (oh yeah, “By the way, we'll waive the processing fees, and pay your solicitor's costs for the settlement”). The other thing about this aspect of the deal is that after 20 minutes of research I knew that, however much shopping around I did it would make at most a difference of one tenth of one percent on the interest rate. So, I was happy to deal directly with a bank with whom our customer relationship has been excellent, without any worry that I might be costing myself significantly.

And I know that when the time comes to change the insurance cover that will be a 10 minute job too.

It's just nice to live somewhere where you can confidently assume when dealing with “service” industries that: a) no one is trying to rip you off; b) no one will assume that you are trying to rip them off; and c) there's a pretty good chance that the person you're dealing with will actually “think” and come up with a suggestion to your mutual benefit.

There endeth the sermon ...

What a difference a day makes

They're installing some new fibre optic cabling in our building (of course, we've finally been given new space to move to later this year, and now they're getting around to upgrading our network, but I digress), and one of the junction boxes is in my office, as a result of which there was much moving of desks, drilling of holes etc.

I took this as a sign that I could leave work early. It was a beautiful, crisp, early autumn day, so I went for a run through St. Kilda and St. Clair. Tide was high, and I couldn't run on the beach.

After I showered, I put together a French style stew for dinner (I'd call it boeuf en daube, but that would be pretentious), and left it cooking as I sat down to two tables of 25NL. Got up again a total of 100 hands later, $30 to the good.

Had stopped in at the university library earlier in the day, so I did some reading on Zen, Edmund Wilson's autobiography, and a bit of Evelyn Waugh, while in the background Delia Smith chattered away about traditional British puddings.

Folded my way into third place in a SNG. Knocked out in a bad beat, but was severely short stacked in any case. Even with a double up I would have been the short stack.

Put on the potatoes to cook, and donked it up a bit at low stakes triple draw, where I ran into somebody slumming.

Enjoyed my dinner. Read some more.

Oh yeah, there was still a bit of bad television.