Archive for July, 2004
Crikey indeed, I’m gonna be a daddy. In six more short months, I’ll be the proud parent of one (definitely only one - we’ve checked) little boy or girl mini-me 
How cool is that? Nervous? Yeah. Well, no. And excited. Yeah. Except when I’m nervous. Crikey.
Ideas for names in the comments please, if only in an effort to stop me from registering ‘namemybaby.com’, (”Daddy, why are you such a geek?”)
So anyway, that’s why I haven’t been blogging lately. It’s been top-secret up until this stage you see and frankly nothing else was worth blogging about in comparison. It’s very difficult to blog about the weather when all you really want to write is ‘holy fuck, I’m gonna be someone’s dad’.
So here’s a summary of the past wee while.
Sold the car, bought a much bigger one. We’ve gone from a VW Polo to a Citroen Picasso. I can recommend the Picasso, it’s a lovely thing.
We’ve finally decided to re-home the dog. This is very upsetting. The training is not going well, (Apparently the smart dogs are harder to train, and she’s a smart dog). In reaction to the new car with dog-cage in the back she chewed off one of the seatbelts when there was only fifty miles on the clock. This earned her no points.
A neurotic dog and a baby would not be a wise combination.
Hmm. I’m sure there was more backlog-blogging to do, but it’ll come to me later. For now… breakfast.
July 29th, 2004
Don’t worry. I am perfectly aware that I have a blog going to ruin here. I just thought I’d better blog to let you know that I won’t be blogging for another week or so, and then there will be much-o blogging and catching upping of posting.
On the pokerbot front, progress has come to a frustrating halt. The whole thing works, but unfortunately calculating accurate odds is a very difficult thing, and it pauses for anything up to a minute while it performs lots of horrific maths. It also consumes all of your computer’s memory (And I’ve run it on a very beefy computer) so it’s basically useless unless I can strip it down slightly.
On the dog training front (because I know you all want to know about how badly trained my dog is) things have come to a head.
She ended up biting a passing jogger the other day who was probably less surprised than us that she managed to draw blood. Serious discussions were had and we decided that, all things considered, we’d be better off getting rid of her to someone who can spend more time training her than we can.
I tell you what though - I’d miss that little dog no matter how much of the house she destroys and it was emotional trying to find somewhere that would find a good home for her.
Damned lucky then that we took her to the vet for a booster shot* and a nail-clipping. The vet gave us some very useful advice on how to get her under control using dog psychology.
Apparently, (and also according to the book he recommended us,) she’s ruling the house completely. We need to become the alpha dogs in the household. Once that is achieved, there will be no more barking (She will be absolved of the barking responsibility,) no more pulling on the lead, (We go first as the leaders of the pack,) and no more chewing of things thanks to lowered anxiety, (She won’t be worried that the lesser pack members have wandered off, because she’ll be the lesser pack member, not us.)
To do this, we need to act like alpha dogs. This is very very difficult. So far it’s involved ignoring her completely. When we come in from work, we have to ignore her jumping up on us and being all pleased to see us. We have to act as though she isn’t there. This means no eye contact, no use of her name and no petting. This should last from five minutes to an hour.
It’s harder than it sounds, but if it means we get to keep her, we need to stick at it until her little doggy brain accepts the new pecking order.
Progress reports will follow, when blogging resumes.
* I did write ‘booster jag’ but changed it to ‘booster shot’ after I remembered someone telling me that ‘jag’ was a scottish term and is rarely understood beyond the border. Is this true?
July 21st, 2004
Development of my poker-playing digital creation is coming on in surprising leaps and bounds. I reckon I’ll have a working pokerbot by the end of tomorrow.
It does however make me wonder wether I should unleash the thing. I’ll definitely unleash it on some online play-money tables to see how it does but to unleash it on a real-money table seems wrong for so many reasons.
- The terms and conditions forbid it.
- It feels like stealing (Or at least fraud)
- Would you let a computer program spend your money? Sounds like Terminator 4 to my stingy mind.
- The fact that I’ve bitched about someone stealing my website and mentioned my poker-playing, money-making robot within a post of each other seems strangely hypocritical, morally speaking.
I will of course finish the program anyway, and report back here.
July 6th, 2004
I take back what I said - the simple email approach worked after all.
Dear FreeWebs User,
The site has been deleted. Thank you for the information.
Best Regards,
FreeWebs
July 6th, 2004
What the hell is this?
It’s graffiti the web, stolen bare-facedly from my server. Bastards! They’ve even added links to the top like ‘Find a date’. Who the hell are these people?
I note that they didn’t manage to steal the actual graffiti scripts though, which are still running off my bandwidth. Any ideas on how to get revenge will be appreciated. I get a feeling that an email of complaint won’t do much.
July 5th, 2004
At last someone has used the random MSN messaging feature (Over there on the left) for something other than blank messages or childish nonsense. This just in…
“Mick randomly said: Online poker is an evil, evil game. Don’t let the wife catch you OR leave your credit card statements lying around.”
Sounds like the voice of bitter experience Mike. I’m happy to say that only one wife-approved payment was made three months ago and has since been up and down more than a bride’s knickers.
Mind you, breaking even all the time has only limited appeal - I believe I can do better. I have therefore started writing a poker-playing robot that will take over the tiresome task of betting for me. This has several advantages, namely…
- Robots don’t tilt.
- Robots don’t make silly mistakes.
- Time spent writing the robot is time spent not playing poker.
Unlike most of my crazy programming schemes, this one is actually looking close to being completed, so I’ll unleash it in a practice room soon and report back on how it fares.
If it fares well then no, you can’t have a copy and no, you can’t know the robot’s user id.
July 5th, 2004
Playing poker online is bad. Even if you do win.
In fact, especially if you do win.
Note ends.
July 3rd, 2004
I forced my wife to set up a blog. You’re not getting the URL though - not until she posts something anyway. I’ll keep on at her; her transformation into computer loving geek-chick has a long way to go but I believe it can be done.
Won’t be any time in the next week though coz she’s left me alone until Wednesday. I’ve decided to take the opportunity to eat badly and allow the house to deteriorate. Perhaps I’ll wander round in my pants. Perhaps I won’t. It has after all been cold lately.
July 1st, 2004
