Apr 16 2011

And Now for the Latest Poker News

Category: Uncategorized — podrey @ 12:58 pm

“This domain name has been seized by the F.B.I. pursuant to an Arrest Warrant.” — www.pokerstars.com

Lance has been a full-time professional poker player for six years.  This has included some live play at local home games and a few casino trips, but 99% of his time has been spent playing poker online at PokerStars.com.  PokerStars is currently the largest online poker site, and Lance plays there because they have an excellent interface and top-notch customer service.

Yesterday around 2 pm, real-money games were suspended for U.S. players after news of an indictment from the Department of Justice of the top three online poker sites (PokerStars, FullTilt, UltimateBet).  The charges are bank fraud and money laundering.

The online poker community is rocked.  No one was expecting this.  The true legality of online poker has always been a little bit gray, but there has been pending legislation for the official legalization of online poker in last fall’s session of Congress (it was never voted on).  In recent weeks, the brick-and-mortar casinos began talks of lining up with the online poker sites.  All signs looked quite positive.  Until yesterday.

We’re a pro-poker household, obviously.  Poker is a game of skill, and that is how Lance is able to consistently make enough money to live on.   He has up days and down days but the long term provides a profit.  Much like investing in the stock market, the gains occur over the long-term.  Poker is a game of math and probabilistic edges.

We also have strongly libertarian leanings when it comes to personal freedoms.  Why would the government interfere in any activity where consenting adults willingly engage with each other?  Millions of people in the U.S. currently use online poker services.  Online poker is legal and regulated in many other countries.

What would regulation do for the industry?  Not to mention for the country.  Think of the tax revenues – one estimate said the online poker industry had revenues of $2.4 billion in 2005, and it has only grown in popularity since then.  Don’t we have a war to pay for?

Sometimes people ask “what about the moral issue of poker and gambling?”  To that i will reply, if it’s really a moral issue, then i expect to see the state lotteries and the horse race betting shut down.  I checked the lottery website, and it has not been seized by the government.  And that will never happen.  Despite the fact that the lottery and horse betting have no skill whatsoever, and poker is actually a skill game.  So i don’t really want to hear about the moral issue of gambling.

While some may applaud the government for taking action here, i wonder why the government was not more proactive with Wall Street during the financial meltdown.  Where was the hard line then, when the financial security of the entire nation was at risk?  Was that industry penalized at all for their elaborate heist of the American people’s money?  Was there even an investigation, or a single indictment handed down?  No.

The accusations of bank fraud and money laundering for the online poker sites are pretty bogus.  All the poker sites were trying as best they could to cooperate with existing laws.

PokerStars, FullTilt and UltimateBet are the three sites that have been indicted.  The inclusion of UltimateBet in the company of the other two is rather questionable and perhaps even sleazy.  UltimateBet is not popular, nor ever was particularly so, and is in fact avoided due to a cheating scandal that happened a few years ago.  An employee was feeding information about opponents’ hole cards to a 3rd party, and a lot of fraud was committed in this way before someone caught on.  Any online player who has been around for any length of time at all avoids UltimateBet.  However, the inclusion of UltimateBet will allow prosecutors to say “this group of sites is responsible for numerous cheating scandals and fraud” that will taint the image of the other two sites.  FullTilt and PokerStars both have excellent reputations within the poker community.

It is unclear whether legislation to officially legalize and regulate online poker will be able to be brought to the attention of Congress.  Certainly many in the poker community hope so, but there is also speculation that support will fly away from the movement in light of the indictments.

And so, it is a dark day here.  Imagine you had just been told your job did not exist.  Some people reading know exactly what the feels like.  Lance and i are trying to figure out what’s next.

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Nov 10 2010

Don’t Believe Everything You See

Category: Uncategorized — podrey @ 8:30 am

I love optical illusions (who doesn’t?), and i ran across three that i hadn’t seen before, so i wanted to share them.  I love these most of all because the illusion still exists, even after you know the “secret”.

In this image, believe it or not, the “blue” color and the “green” color are actually the same color.  Your eyes are playing tricks on you.  See a more extensive description here.
This one is just wonky.  Even though my brain knows that these tiny squares form perfect circles, i still can’t make my brain see it.  See a more thorough explanation here.
Lastly, my favorite one of all.  When i first looked at this image, i saw no circles.  I looked some more and still couldn’t see them.  Then i caught a glimpse of one, and four popped out at me.  Then i was able to force myself to see all of them.  However it is not what my brain wants to see by default, and i go back to being unable to see the circles if i don’t focus.  See more here (the correct answer is 16 circles).

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Oct 15 2009

Comparison: Wii My Fitness Coach vs Wii Fit

Category: Uncategorized — podrey @ 7:49 am

A few months ago, Lance and i purchased a new Wii game called My Fitness Coach.  We had each individually heard good things about it.  And the Wii Fit was just not cutting it, for me in particular, as an exercise tool.  At least not by itself.

What follows is my assessment.

The Fit has some fun balance games, but those are its best feature.  The other categories are “ok” and i’ll elaborate below.  The graphs provided for tracking your progress in the Fit are also great.  At one point i was researching if it was possible to download your weight loss graph because i wanted to put it on my blog.  Negatives – no matter what you’re trying to do, you have to go through too many screens to do it.  And switching profiles?  Very difficult.

My Fitness Coach has filled many of the gaps in the Wii Fit.  It far surpasses the Fit in a few crucial areas.  However, it is not a complete replacement for the Fit, as it is missing some of the Fit’s nice features.  But both together make a great overall physical fitness challenge.  Here are a few points of the major differences.

  • Initial profile.
    • The Fit imports some of your basic data from your Mii, and doesn’t ask for much else.  The first time you play, you must complete a body test.  We found this pretty annoying when we were in a party setting, where each person just wanted their own Mii to represent them in the balance games.  With so many screens, the profile definition and initial body test (along with the requisite commentary from the cartoon Balance Board) probably takes 10 minutes.
    • My Fitness Coach took us each through an extensive profile definition that took 15-20 minutes.  We used a tape measure to get circumferences of various parts of our bodies, as well as performed some basic fitness tests (how many push-ups can you do?).  You have the option to skip most of it, though.  Weight and measurements must be entered manually, as this game does not use the balance board.
  • Number of pages.
    • The Fit has too many “pages”.  The cartoon balance board tries to be cute every single time, when all i want to do is turn on the game and go play balance games.  I don’t want to hear your damn fitness tips.
    • After experiencing the Fit, it surprised me how easy it was to get to the “meat” of the game in My Fitness Coach.  You tell the trainer you want to workout, and she asks three questions – what type of workout (cardio, upper body, pilates, etc), how long do you want to workout, and what equipment you have available.  That’s it.  No superfluous cutesy tips or lectures.
  • Switching profiles
    • To switch profiles in Fit, the common scenario being your family or friends are gathered and are trying to beat each other in downhill skiing, you have to back-out through a dozen screens.  Getting back to the downhill skiing with the new person similar goes through another dozen or more screens.
    • In My Fitness Coach, you rarely need to switch profiles, because there is less of a “game” element.  You wouldn’t be playing this game in a party setting.  (It’s focus is truly working out.)  But, the profile switching is extremely easy, 2-4 screens only.
  • Multiple players
    • The Fit is 1-player only.  (With the one exception of the cardio-running where you can have a friend join you.)  I found this to be somewhat annoying when Lance and i were trying to workout together.  We would do the weight section together, for example, but only one person can get “credit” within the game.
    • My Fitness coach has a Group Workout mode.  You then select the names of those who will be joining in this workout, and everyone gets credit for the workout in the log.  It’s a nice feature.
  • The “meat” of the game
    • Fit – There are four categories, each containing a bunch of “mini-games”.  Much fanfare is made of being 1st place in each game.  This is appropriate in some cases but not in others.
      • Balance Games – Excellent.  All of the games are unique, fun and engaging.  Except the weird one with the candle.  These are great in a group, or just by yourself, while you try to beat your previous best score.
      • Aerobics – Not great.  There aren’t that many exercises, but they do get you moving.  You can increase the intensity to a good level with the running and the Rhythm Boxing, and the Hula-Hoop game is a very good ab workout.  But even the longest workout is only a few minutes.  I’d like to see a 30-minute string of these things, without the interruptions of having to go through a dozen screens in between each exercise.
      • Yoga – Pretty good.  Balance and core exercises are important and often neglected.  I wish there were more exercises – i believe they limited themselves by always trying to include the balance board and/or wii-mote in the exercise somehow.  This is fine for poses where balance is an issue, but there are many yoga poses that happen on the ground.  I also wish there were options to go through all poses at once instead of having to click through a dozen screens in between each pose.
      • Strength – Good.  The exercises that are there are solid.  Some are downright hard.  I won’t say that you won’t get a good workout, but when i think of strength training, i think of weights.  This is more like calisthenics.   Push-ups, lunges, twists, stand-up-lie-down, etc.  Definitely good for you, but it’s not a muscle-building exercise like pumping iron would be.  You could easily get to a point where you wanted a more intense workout.
  • The trainer
    • The trainers in both games are roughly equivalent, robot-types that offer encouraging words.  I find the Fit trainers to be more annoying because they talk too much at the beginning and end of each exercise (again, more screens to click through).
  • Tracking progress
    • Fit is superior in this category, providing several attractive graphs to track your weight loss, BMI, Wii Fit Age, and workouts.  You can also add time for workouts you did outside of Fit.
    • My Fitness Coach may provide a graph or something, but i actually haven’t found it yet.  You can enter workouts that were not performed in the game to get credit, but i haven’t seen where this is logged.

We’ve made use of both games together when we get in stretches of times where we are wanting to workout more.  For me, i see the Fit as more of a “fun” game while My Fitness Coach is more of a “workout” game.  I’ve seen a few other workout games out there but haven’t tried any other ones yet.

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Nov 11 2008

World of Goo

Category: Uncategorized — podrey @ 10:19 am

What a neat game!

World of Goo was released last month for the Wii. You can dowload it through the WiiWare interface. It has apparently received some awards, and it is just about the neatest game ever.

Basically, it’s a physics game. You have a certain number of these goo balls, and you have to build towers, bridges or other structures in order to get some number of them into a pipe. Gravity and wind work against you, but you’re given many types of goo balls to work with. I’m hooked!

There are only five chapters, with half a dozen or so challenges within each chapter. For each challenge, you have a goal to get X number of goo balls to the pipe. But there’s also an OCD (Obsessive Completion Distinction) goal, which adds an additional level of difficulty. Also, any goo balls over the minimum X amount get sent to the World Goo Corporation and saved in a personal account for you. This is sort of a 6th chapter, and allows you to compete with people all over the world. You have your pool of additional goo balls, and your goal is to build the highest tower possible with your specific number of goo balls.

Pretty friggin’ cool.

It cost $15 worth of Wii points to get the game. In one evening, I’ve already gotten $15 worth of fun out of it, and i’m determined to conquer the game with a ton of extra goo balls left over, and i’m going to build the tallest tower ever!

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Sep 20 2008

Wii Fit Commentary

Category: Uncategorized — podrey @ 11:47 am

Since we got back from vacation, lance and i have been pretty rigorous with the Wii Fit training.  We get up early every day, walk the dog, and then do some sort of exercise.  Either Wii Fit games, or i’ll run, or maybe we take the dog on a really long walk.  I’ve lost 4 lbs in 2 weeks; lance has lost 5 lbs.  The game has really been a great motivational tool – just checking in every day, first thing in the morning, puts you in mind of your body from the start.

There are some things i love about the Fit, and then there are some things that could be improved.  Lance will recognize this as the “software tester” in me coming out.

Good comments:
  • I love the Body Test and the Balance Tests.  I think that is a great idea, and it’s implemented really well.
  • The graphs of weight, BMI, Wii fit age and activities are AWESOME.  They are pretty and colorful, and are a pretty good motivator for me personally, because i see envision the line trending downward.  Sometimes i’ll spend five minutes just looking at the graphs.  The graphs dramatize every little change, which is encouraging.
  • I like that the default display is BMI instead of weight.  That way, if you are sensitive about your weight and there is someone you aren’t comfortable sharing that information with, you don’t have to show them.
  • I really like the fact that you can add additional activities to your Activity Log.  It allows you to log time that wasn’t done on the Fit.  So i can add my running or my yoga classes at work.  And then my activity graph doesn’t have holes in it if i happen to exercise in a way that doesn’t use the Fit.
  • I also like the initial graph from the Wii Fit Plaza that shows everyone’s graph overlaid.
  • The balance games are awesome.  We spent a good amount of time at first playing just the balance games, earning a lot of Fit Credits in the process.  It was enough credits to unlock most of the Yoga and Strength exercises, so when we finally decided to start focusing more on those areas, we didn’t have a bunch of exercises to unlock (see unlocking below).  And we’re pretty competitive about them.  We’re always trying to beat each other’s high scores.
Bad comments:
  • I wish you could log activities done in the past, with a limit of just a few days, even.  If i go out of town, i might exercise, but i’m not able to record it on the Fit when i get home.  Yesterday i forgot to enter the time from the Yoga class i went to – but i’m out of luck.  It’s not a huge deal, but if this is a one-stop shop for fitness, why not allow that?
  • The Activity Log allows you to record additional activities, but gives you the options “Easy, Normal, Hard”.  You enter your time.  It then calculates Easy=.5*(your time), Normal=1*(your time), and Hard=2*(your time).  And then they all show up on your graph as the same shade of gray.  I don’t like that.  I’d rather it have 3 different shades of gray and the actual times for each recorded.
  • Rhythm boxing is pretty annoying the way the instructor occasionally steals the spotlight in order to show you new moves.  I realize it’s necessary when the pattern changes, but sometimes he just shows you the same pattern again!  I wish there was a way to minimize those interruptions.
  • There are WAY TOO MANY confirmation screens.  When i select downhill skiing, i choose my level of difficulty and then press Start.  Why doesn’t it start now?  Instead, i have to go through 3 more confirmation screens before you actually start.  And at the end of every Strength or Yoga exercise, the instructor runs her mouth, saying the same things over and over, instead of just letting me move on to the next exercise.
  • There is a little too much ceremony after you finish a game.  Just show me my time/score and let’s move along.
  • I’d like there to be a way to show the winning scores for a mini-game without having to play it first.  Do i hold the record for Downhill Skiing?   It’s only a couple of minutes to play the mini-game and find out, but it would be a nice feature.
  • The Yoga and Strength training games leave a lot to be desired.  The Strength exercises pretty much completely leave out the arms, shoulders and upper back.  What perplexes me about that is why?  They already have some exercises that are difficult to measure and you get 4 stars every time (Jackknife).  And there is one exercise which isn’t scored at all – tricep extension.  Why not have more exercises that are not scored?  The instructor could still lead you through it and demo the exercise for you.  They could blow whistles at you, and trust you to do it on your own.  I guess i don’t understand why they have a couple exercises like this, and don’t follow through with a complete set of exercises for a workout.  Same for Yoga.  Although i think all of the Yoga poses i have tried are scored, by the same principle, they could include some that are not, and just guide you through it.
  • Possibility of building training routines.  I’d like to see some way to pick your list of exercises/poses to perform, and just have your trainer go through them.  There doesn’t even need to be a custom aspect to it – just say “Play All” and go through all of them.  There are only a dozen or so.  It would certainly eliminate all of the pressing A, which really does get annoying.
  • Unlocking: it seems silly to require users to unlock things in this game.  I am annoyed by this in general about all games.  But here, it seems particularly dumb.  Why should i have to unlock strength training exercises?  None of the exercises are particularly difficult, so it can’t be from a “you’re not ready for it” standpoint.  Why artificially create obstacles to prevent people from doing some of the exercises if your goal is fitness?
  • We don’t understand the Lotus Focus balance game.  Lance can’t get past 28 seconds.  I did awesome one time and got almost to two minutes, and still only got two (of four) stars and was labeled an Amateur.  What does it take?
So, those are my impressions.  I didn’t mention the Aerobics games – i’m fairly neutral on those.  Overall i love the game and the idea of the game.  It certainly seems to be working for me.

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Aug 24 2008

New Wii Games

Category: Uncategorized — podrey @ 3:26 pm

Two promised presents, that have until recently been unobtainable, have recently been acquired. Mario Kart and Wii Fit.

Mario Kart is extremely fun. We even have the optional steering wheel accessories (it makes it better, don’t ask me why!). So far we’ve just played the Vs. setting. We need to play the Solo game, in order to unlock more tracks. I predict lots of Mario Kart at the beach next week.

Wii Fit is something we’re both hoping will help motivate us to be more active. There are four categories of exercises: aerobic, strength, yoga and balance. So far, i find the balance games to be the most fun, but the others are good too. My only complaint so far is that each mini-game, or exercise, is only 1-3 minutes in length. Maybe the more difficult settings do it for longer periods, i’m not sure yet. But for many games, the overhead of clicking OK, OK, and listening to the trainer, takes as long as (or longer than) the actual exercise.

Both games are way fun, though (-:

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Jun 26 2008

Rock On

Category: Uncategorized — podrey @ 3:45 pm

Everyone knows the Wii is hard to get.  The game Rock Band was just released for the Wii this weekend.  It was a very difficult game to find before Christmas for the XBox 360 (i know, b/c my whole family was on the hunt on behalf of my aunt & uncle as a gift for my cousins).  They managed to find it, and we all had a fun time with it.  So i knew we’d want to get Rock Band for Wii if we could.

On eBay, the Rock Band package (game + guitar + drums + microphone) was selling for $10-50 above retail.  So, not an extreme premium.  But they still seemed in high demand.

So i was extremely surprised to walk by the electronics area at Target to see a half dozen Rock Band boxes on the shelves.  I don’t know if i just got lucky, or if it simply isn’t in as much demand as it was for XBox 360.  

But yay.  We’re having fun with it. 

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Dec 30 2007

Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii !!

Category: Uncategorized — podrey @ 6:20 pm

I was the only one of the three kids that was able to open presents with the family on Christmas morning. So Mom & Dad drove to Raleigh for the weekend so wii could do a Christmas celebration with my two brothers and their better halves. That was last night.

And wow, somehow my parents pulled it off and managed to get Wii’s for both me & Lance and my brother and his wife. (The other brother got his Wii last Christmas.) Amazing.

It was totally a surprise, too, because i thought wii’d already gotten our “big” gift (a grill) on Christmas Day in Asheville. But they had saved the biggest surprise for last. Another reason i didn’t suspect: the boxes were two different sizes. It wasn’t until Mom said “okay, Audrey & Lance open this one, Nathan & Heather open this one,” that i suddenly realized “SERIOUSLY?!?” Lance had on his “No Way” face. My brother and his wife were super excited, too.

Since it was our house, wii got to go ahead and set ours up and play some last night. Today i think wii’ll go out and get the Mario & Zelda games.

Woohoo!

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Dec 27 2007

Rock Band

Category: Uncategorized — podrey @ 6:25 pm

My 11-year old cousins received an X-box 360 and a few games for Christmas. By far the most popular game was Rock Band.

That shit is FUN!

As soon as Christmas dinner was over, the kids begged their dad to set up the game system. Their older brother arrived right then (after spending Christmas morning with his mom), and they started setting up their profiles. And then the rockin’ began.

There are 4 parts – bass, guitar, drums, & lead singer. The songs are popular, with a mix of songs you know and songs you don’t. Your band performs gigs at various locations, and you gain and lose fans based on how well you do. Almost everyone in my family was taking turns at the various instruments. Parents, aunts, uncles, but especially all the younger generations. We played that game from 2-6, then there was an evening activity for a few hours. Then when it was over, they all came to our house around 11, and we played it for several MORE hours. Addictive.

I understand a little now why people like karaoke. There’s a sort of bond that occurs when everyone is cheering you on, even though you suck. At least, that’s how it felt when i was singing. It was my family, and i’m comfortable around them, and it doesn’t bother me so much when they laugh at me. Because the next person to sing sounds just as bad. But there is a sort of comraderie that occurs when you have the guts to open your mouth and let people judge you. I’m still not volunteering to actually do karaoke, but being the lead singer in Rock Band was a pretty fun experience.

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Dec 07 2007

a-hunting wii will go

Category: Uncategorized — podrey @ 9:24 am

Were we the only ones who didn’t know that Wii’s are still hard to find??  We were totally surprised when we went out to buy one the other night that no one had them.  A friendly rep finally filled us in that while the hype is not quite as drastic as when they first came out, they have still never had a Wii spend the night at the store – they are always sold out within hours of a shipment.

So now Lance has looked up the How to Buy a Wii tip sheet and has alerts on the shipments at various stores, and has joined the ranks of the wii-hungry.  Maybe we’ll be able to get a hold of one.

Wii has the chance to be the most popular Christmas gift for the second year in a row, which i bet had never happened before.

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