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Facebook Widget for INQ1

Filed Under: Geekiness by Adam
Mar.16, 2009

Last week I absolutely butchered my phone. What started out as a small problem with the slider, ended in lots of bits and pieces after all attempts to fix it had failed quite miserably. Perhaps I subconsciously broke it on purpose because I had been eying up Three’s latest addition to the mobile market, the INQ1, for quite some time.

I was going to write a rather lengthy review of it. But put simply, there’s no need to write a review about a phone which has already picked up numerous awards and won over the hearts and souls of anyone who has been brave enough to take a leap of fate with a companies very first phone to the market! It really is that damn good!

Three have made a big deal out of the Facebook integration. It’s hard to fault it really, as it allows one touch access to all the functions of the fastest growing social network. There is one thing better than “one touch access” though and that’s “no touch access”! And through the INQs handy widget feature, this is possible.

As it stands, there’s no widgets available for download on the INQ. At least not in Ireland anyway. We can add up to 3 RSS feeds to be included on the Home screen though, and this is where we’re given the opportunity to add a Facebook related widget. Facebook might not advertise their RSS feeds very well, but they are there, at least in some sections of their site. By adding them, we can have up to the minute (well, up the hour) updates about our friends statuses and our own notifications. It all sounds good, doesn’t it? Now lets find those feeds.

First we’ll add find the “Notifications” feed. This feed lets you know of any changes to your profile, such as new friend requests, new profile comments and application related messages. To find it, go to the Notifications page. You won’t be able to access it unless you’re logged in, so make sure you are before clicking! Once we’re there, you’ll see a heading in one of the sidebars called “Subscribe to Notifications”. Right click the link that’s directly below this and copy the address and paste it somewhere where you can see it later (a Word or Notepad document for example)

Now we have to find the Status Updates feed. Click on the “Friends” link at the top of the page which will bring you to the Status Updates page. Look for the header “Subscribe” and once again right click the link that’s directly below this and copy the address and paste it to the same place as you did the first feed. You now have everything to need to start feeding this all this data onto your phone.

There are two ways you can proceed from here. You can either follow this guide which will show you how to set up two seperate widgets that will update every hour, or you can be inventive and use what’s known as a feed merging service such as Yahoo! Pipes. The advantage of using a feed mixer is that you’ll only have one feed for all notifications and status updates which will free up space on the screen. The disadvantage is that many of websites that provide these services go down often meaning you’ll be finding yourself constantly looking for alternatives. Yahoo! Pipes is probably the most reliable of them all, but it’s not the most user friendly piece of kit and would take twice the length of this guide to explain properly!

Anyway, we’ll carry on. Assuming you have the addresses of the two feeds pasted into a window somewhere, we can now add the feeds to the phone. Hit the “Menu” button of the phone and scroll to “Feeds”. Hit “options” and select “Add a feed”. In the screen that appears, manually enter in the Feed address, making sure you don’t make any mistakes. Once the feed is added, update it when prompted. Now we’ll set it to update every hour. Go into “Options” once again and select “Auto Update”. Select “Once an Hour” from the options. This ensures that the feed is kept as up to date as possible. To add the other feed, simply repeat the steps of creating a new feed and entering it’s address.

Once both feeds are added, go back into the main menu and select “Tools”. From here we select “manage widgets”. Mark the boxes “RSS Widget 1″ and “RSS Widget 2″ (if you intend on adding both feeds) and hit “Done”. Go back into the Home screen (this is the desktop of the phone) and select the newly added widgets that are prompting you to “Add a Feed”. Select one of the feeds from the list and click done. If you want to add the second feed, simply select the other widget and add the remaining feed to it.

If everything has worked properly, you’ll now find yourself with 2 widgets on the Home screen, both relating to Facebook. One of them lists your friends 10 most recent status changes (eg: Adam is tired), while the other one is solely for notifications (eg: Adam has wrote on your wall). They’ll both be set to update every hour which should be regularly enough to keep you informed of everything Facebook related – unless you’re completely addicted.

If you want a little bit more from them, then I’d recommend you check out Yahoo! Pipes to really have fun with the feeds! If you’re having any problems, leave me a comment and I’ll try help!

Just a little word of warning to finish this piece off. Unless you’re on a Data plan, you’ll probably be charged through the teeth for refreshing these feeds every hour. If ever there was a phone that needed a data package, this is it!

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aHHHHH It Burns!

Filed Under: Ramblings by Adam
Mar.15, 2009

The beginning of my night started in a not so pleasant manner. My appointment with the good old Dr. Jameson lasted longer than I had originally expected. Before I knew it, I had an empty bottle beside me and a phone that was buzzing like it was some kind of sex toy. Not an ideal situation when I was expected to be on my merry way up to the Forum whilst finding myself wearing nothing but a gown and still in dire need of a shower. I anticipated a quick dash into the shower and to be on the road within minutes. That was before I picked up the menthol shampoo!

In the mad rush that I was in, I managed to get the shampoo not only in my hair but also into every part of my eyes! Now had I been using a normal shampoo, it would have hurt somewhat, but when you introduce menthol shampoo into the equation, it changes the situation. To say the least. Menthol shampoo boasts the unique characteristic of leaving this warm and fuzzy feeling wherever it goes. It feels great and it leaves you feeling as if you’re full of energy. Until you get it in the eyes!

One second I was singing along to the brilliant Modest Mouse (I’ve included a song below), the next I was pretty much blind! Talk about being reminded about how fast things can change!! From absolute bliss, to absolute agony. Just like that! My natural reaction was to just turn the shower head towards me. Usually this would be fine, but I just happened to have it on full power and for a brief few seconds I felt as if I was trying to knock my eye socket back in time!

Am I being melodramatic? How about you get some mentol shampoo in your eyes and see how YOU react! “But I’m not that retarded” I hear you say.

True. I’m quite special!

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Some Workout Music

Filed Under: Film and Television by Adam
Mar.05, 2009

So I pretty much fell for that free gym trial hook, line and sinker. Within 5 minutes of entering the gym, I was in the office handing over my credit card making me possibly the only person in the world who goes in for a free trial and ends up not even getting the free trial but signing a year contract! At least I got a good deal anyway.

I’ve been out of the whole voluntary exercise spiel for quite some time and I knew that I’d take to it like a cat to a freezing pond. I brought my MP3 player with me to help get me through it but I soon learned that the type of music that I walk down the street with isn’t exactly ideal for a stint on the treadmill. I found myself just closing my eyes and running to the beats of the music… and almost being flung off the end of the treadmill. I now understood why gyms always play an endless bombardment of “UNTZ UNTZ UNTZ” over the stereo systems – insurance reasons. People would be flying off treadmills left, right and centre should they dare to play anything decent!

This poses a problem for me as I go to the gym to exercise and not to have blood slowly trickle from my ears thanks to being exposed to such drivel. So I’m on the look out for an alternative work out playlist which would ideally encompass some rock and electro and result in me not having to worry about being flung across the room. A quick Google revealed a few suggested playlists but they didn’t really appeal to me so I went trawling through my music collection to see if I could find anything that would be of interest.

A few months a go, I started to hear good things about an artist going by the name of “Girl Talk” whose made a name for himself for having a knack for fusing together the latest chart hits with timeless power ballads of yesteryear and topping them off with hip-hop beats. You can say what you want about people who “mashup” songs, but there’s no arguing that Girl Talk’s end product is extremely fun to listen to! It should see me through a few miles anyway.

Of course, once I figured that I was craving an eclectic mix of rock and electro, 2 Many DJ’s / Soulwax immediately sprung to mind. As well as consistently knocking out top-class remix after top-class remix of some of the best songs released on the alternative scene over the years, they’re also infamous for their “As Heard on Radio Soulwax” series which were sets of (usually) alternative songs that were transformed thanks to the magic Soulwax touch. With 2 Many DJ’s, you can expect great songs to somehow be made better and you’ll find yourself growing fond of songs that you weren’t too keen on to start with! Admittedly, some of their sets sound as if they don’t really have their shit together, but most of them sound as if they were hand-picked for me!

There is absolutely tonnes of material from both of those artists available free online (as in legally). I’d advise you to seek them out if you’re growing tired of the music typically found in gyms! Hopefully I won’t have any carpet burn to report!

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Here’s Your Coffee… Goodbye!

Filed Under: Poker by Adam
Feb.28, 2009

Tonight saw one of the best value games being held in Blazin’ Aces in a long time which may have cost everyone €80 to play, but $50 is being reimbursed onto our Ladbrokes account. I haven’t checked the exchange rates in a while, but I’m pretty sure the dollar hasn’t jumped in value to make paying €80 for the $50 transfer worthwhile in itself, so the €3,000 prizepool in the tournament was also well worth playing for!

When the tournament started, I asked for a cup of coffee and took my seat. For about three orbits of the table, it’s like I have butter on my hands because I just can’t catch a card! I was just about to complain out loud when I find Queens in the small blind. The crying baby gets the bottle I think to myself as I see 4 players limp into my small blind. I make the obligatory raise and get just the one caller – the button. We see a flop of 5-6-9, with two clubs on board and I bet out 1500 which is around 2/3 the pot. I get minraised (and a bit) to 3500. I kind of freeze for a moment. Surely he’s raising his button with tens and better preflop so his range for raising the flop like this must be made up purely of sets and flush draws with the overs, but never something like AK or AQ which he probably would have raised with preflop. I really want to fold, but I call which is horrible, I know. The turn completes the flush draw AND the straight draw and I check-fold when he bets 3000… into a pot of almost 10k.

A few orbits later and I get my coffee. I take a sip and see two queens again. Alex raises under the gun to 550 with blinds at 100/200. He’s fond of the minraise and a bit in all kinds of positions at the table so I wouldn’t read too much into that. I’m a sat a few seats behind him, in early position, and make it 1800. It’s folded around to the small blind who calls. He’s just arrived at the table and I have never seen him in my life but I tend to assign new players to the table a pretty generic range of hands until I see evidence to prove otherwise. I think it’s quite prudent to do this at the table as it means you don’t get into any nasty spots with players whose tendencies you have no idea of! Anyway, I rarely think that a new player to the table is going to flat call a 3bet and then call a shove, so when Alex ships from under the gun when action gets back to me, it’s usually going to be followed by a fistpump. In this case it wasn’t. He had Aces.

I didn’t even have time to finish my coffee!

I eagerly await the $50 to arrive into my Ladbrokes account, but in the meantime I’ll have to try find something to keep me occupied and I think I’ve found something in the form of a gym membership. Running around like a Duracell bunny on Wednesday reminded me that I like to exercise so I looked into joining the local Kingfisher gym and have been offered a day pass to check out the place before committing. They offer some great Student deals so I look forward to trying out the place tomorrow! Even if the place isn’t to my liking, I at least get to kill a few hours before work!

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Red Lights Are Never Good

Filed Under: Geekiness, Ramblings by Adam
Feb.26, 2009

I’m not afraid to admit that I’ve been bitten by the Guitar Hero bug that’s caught hold of so many other people before me! While it’s mostly a party game to throw on when you have people around for beers and what not, some practice in your spare time doesn’t go astray! Let’s face it, none of us want to be that person who can’t even complete a song on Easy!

I was rocking out to Muse’s Knights of Cidonia, desperately trying to get my hand through what could well be considered a decent proposal for the “Finger Olympics”. All was going well, and I was really getting into it (banish all imagery of me alone and jumping up and down in my room from your minds please). All WAS going well until I experienced a sound that almost convinced me that I had just stood on the tails of a thousand cats!

I looked around… no cats. I looked back at the TV and the solo that I was well on my way to nailing had paused on my screen. And still there was the screeching! I assumed it was just one of your average system crashes so I put down the guitar for a moment and restarted the Xbox. Nothing. Nothing but a flashing beam of red light that is. I nearly didn’t want to have a closer look, afraid of what I was going to see. I suspect that I felt the same way a driver feels during those few seconds when they realise they’ve just hit a dog only my own experience was going to be far less gory to face – but just as painful!

Sure enough, 3 flashing red lights greeted me when I turned around the Xbox to have a look. I wasn’t quite sure what the 3 red lights meant exactly beyond the fairly obvious fact that it was fucked! Luckily for me, 360s have a three year warranty to cover this very problem. Unluckily for me, or perhaps appropriate for me, I’m cheap and bought the 360 second hand and now I didn’t know where I stood with it. An afternoon of calling Microsoft and Gamestop didn’t really appeal to me but I knew that I had to, otherwise I’d just leave it on the long finger – a solution that I’ve grown far too fond of despite realising that it’s not really a solution at all!

That was two months a go.

In the two months that my 360 has been “resting” beside my TV gathering dust, I’ve learnt that GameStop won’t accept any responsibility because it’s past their own warranty. Not having a receipt doesn’t really help my case either and Microsoft refuse to even acknowledge that there’s a problem as the 360 is registered in someone elses name and for all they know, is stolen! They won’t do anything unless I can send them a picture of me, the xbox and the receipt – together, like one happy and broken family! Now I couldn’t even tell you where my Birth Cert is, let alone a receipt for something I bought nearly 2 years a go. I could check my bank statements to see when I bought it and then go into GameStop and ask for a copy of the receipt for be printed out but I need to enter in a code from my own secure code card to access my statements. A secure code card? Sounds important. Also sounds like something I’d lose as soon I get it!

So to bring you up to speed (and to remind myself of the hoops I have to jump through), I have to ring AIB to ask for a new Code Card. Fast forward a week and I’ll hopefully be able to check my statements online and discover when exactly I bought it. I can then get a receipt from GameStop and then send off all the documentation to Microsoft who’ll probably take a week to respond with something like “too blurry, send again”. When I finally get the all clear from Microsoft, I can ask them to send me out a box. When that arrives, I put my expensive brick into it and send it off to Germany where some technician is going to blow some air into it and declare it as being as good as new. Some weeks later, the courier will arrive at my door with the resurrected xbox and all order will be restored!

In reading back over that, it all sounds like an awful lot of effort to go through. I’ll even speculate that the prolonged exposure to red tape and bureaucracy could make me violently ill! It’s only a 360 for Christ’s sake. On the one hand, I shouldn’t be worrying about it too much, but on the other, I shouldn’t have to jump through more hoops than there are at Crufts just to get a replacement!

Fuck it, I’ll just get a new one.

Problem solved.

Now have a song.

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A Good Nights Sleep

Filed Under: Ramblings by Adam
Feb.26, 2009

As I’m sure anyone who’s ever accidentally stumbled online at 4am will know, I’m quite the nocturnal creature. I’m usually in bed by midnight, because to be honest I have nothing else better to be doing. I always find something to distract me though and the fact that I have my laptop beside me and more recently a Guitar Hero controller close to hand as well, only serves to ensure that I’m never asleep by anything that even resembles a civilised hour!

Over the weekend I found myself overcome with a brief bout of insomnia which saw me wander the streets of Waterford until 7am Sunday morning with nothing but the odd tumbleweed to keep me company. This was all after bringing a friend home who’d probably seen better days after leaving a club! You’d have thought that carrying dead weight for a mile would be enough to tire me out, but all it did was make me miss my beloved Apache Pizza and become so hungry that my stomach became a beatbox. Centra eventually opened at 7:15 and I fell into the trap of actually believing that they’d have the breakfast roll I was so desperately craving at the ready! Instead I settled on what was probably a three day old sandwich and set off on the trek home. If only I could sleep…

The walk home sure did make me tired. By time I got home, I felt as if my feet had not only worn through my socks but had also had a fair go at breaking down my shoes! I confess that at this stage, all I wanted to do was drop onto any surface that would support my weight and just hibernate until sometime around Christmas, it didn’t even have to be comfy – as long as I couldn’t roll off it or have it bite me, I was considering it! However, two things kept me from drifting off into slumber land. 1) I was due to work in a few hours and 2) I spent the last tenner I had in my wallet on that blasted gone off sandwich! So my choices were somewhat limited. I could either stop, drop and fall unconscious for about 14 hours and worry about having to live off the crumbs in between the cushions of my couch for the rest of the week when it came to it, or I could “play through the pain” and fire up the Xbox for a few hours before heading to work with a flask of coffee so strong that it would have the consistency and taste of tar! I chose the latter, albeit without the flask.

Now the first few hours weren’t actually that bad. In fact, I even text one of my friends who I knew was lumbered with an early shift, boasting that I had it easy, doing nothing but sitting down on MSN while every now and again signing someone up to Ladbrokes. I couldn’t help but laugh when they text back saying that they were running around with trays of drinks and food with the sweat pouring out of them! God almighty must have been watching though, because seconds later my boss came over and sent me in to deal on a table! Oh Christ! At this stage I could barely even remember my name, let alone how to deal cards! In fact, on the very first hand I sat in, I collected the antes from the table before dealing out a flop. “We’re all playing the board so?” I heard one player say, somewhat inquisitively as it dawned on me that I hadn’t even dealt cards to the players! Now usually these situations go from bad to worse but this was rock bottom and I figured that things could only get better. They just had to!

How I struggled through the next few hours is beyond me! I was just cruising through the night on autopilot, in desperate yet rapidly waining hope that someone would spot that I looked to be aging at a rate of 10 years for every hour I sat in that dealer chair robotically calling out the words “Pass”, “Fold” and “Raise” over and over again. What I had at one stage would have been at most a 5 hour shift was fast approaching 14 hours! It was at this stage that I really started to regret boasting about my “easy shift” earlier on. It was only then that I decided that I should ask to go home. 10 minutes later and I was home and taking off my clothes with my trusty bed just inches away, inviting me in. I’m sure you’re aware of the old cliche of falling asleep as soon as your head hit the pillow, well here’s a new one for you; My head didn’t even have to hit to pillow to fall asleep! I know it doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue but the very fact that I still had one sock on the next morning means I’m not making it up!

I managed to squeeze every bit of sleep out of this occasion as I possibly could and I finally woke up 15 hours later, which was probably the total combined amount of sleep I had got the week before! My only complaint (oh here he goes again) was that I had these really vivid dreams that were about Saturday night which in itself isn’t too bad, as long as I can remember that they were dreams, but roll on a few days and I completely forget which had led to a few “Did I?” moments complete with temporary paralysis that lasts a few seconds when I look back at the night! The trick is to not think about that night though and I’m near certain that the copious amounts of tequila that I intend to throw back (but hopefully not up) this Saturday will see to it that last weekend (and the vivid, freaky memories) becomes a thing of the past!

After waking up and looking at the time, I quickly realised that college that day was a non-runner, especially given that it was 6pm. I was still quite tired so I just took it easy for what was left of the day and I managed to fall asleep for midnight Surely a record for me! And then, something strange happened to me when I woke this morning after getting another good nights sleep. I felt oddly energetic, enthusiastic and dare I say it, happy! Perhaps 4 hours a night isn’t enough after all! Making college in time for my first lecture will probably go down as one of my milestones of the year. It wasn’t the rush in at the last minute type of punctual either as I even had time to get breakfast – another first!

This evening I played in my regular 5-a-side game and for the first time since the games inception, I wasn’t begging to go on goal after 5 minutes of play. It was as if I had a giant Duracell stuck to my back and I even jogged home because I fancied the work out. Can I really put all this down to getting sleep? Well, it’s either that or I’m drinking some funny water!

I’m going to conclude this post with something new to this blog – a song. A song that I fully believe will be both a chart topper AND an Indie floor filler this Summer. They’re a band called Phoenix, who seem to have a knack for releasing fantastically playable Summer soundtracks. This song is from their forthcoming album “Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix” and it’s called 1901. Enjoy!

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A Drunken Mistake Rights Itself.

Filed Under: Poker by Adam
Jan.16, 2009

We’re all vulnerable to temptation when we’re drunk. Whether it’s chasing women around a night club or developing a bizarre attraction to traffic cones, we all have that moment of sheer madness where we’re 100% convinced that asking for that girls number for the umpteenth time is perfectly fine and blocking that road with cones is in the interest of public safety. Usually it’s all innocent fun though, we eventually realise that our drunken slurs aren’t going to get us laid and we back off and then we get bored of dragging cones into the middle of the road and decide to just put one on our head and go home. However, those of us who have an affinity to gamble usually don’t get off so lightly.

It’s just gone 1am and I’m stumbling around a nightclub looking for my friend. I haven’t been this drunk in all of four days and it takes me a good 20 minutes to actually stop and ask someone in our group where he is. Turns out he’s already gone home meaning I’ve been pacing around for no reason other than wearing down my shoes! My other friends are having one of those drunken heart-to-hearts down in the smoking area that you just know they’ll probably have no recollection of come morning so I figure there’s nothing really keeping me there so decide to leave. And then it grabs hold of me.

The urge to get some hours in at the poker table suddenly envelops me. Our local club runs a cash league which rewards players who spend over 50 hours at the tables over the duration of the league. I’ve been creeping ever closer to the magic 50 mark over past number of weeks but the deadline is looming and I’m still a bit shy of the target so I opt to head up to the club where I’ve been informed there is lively game in progress. I’m fully aware that everyone is going to be licking their lips when they see me fall through the door, so I devise a plan to buy in for only €50 and play tighter than a ducks arse underwater and let them pay me off. Sounded easy in my head anyway!

I sit in and ask for some coffee before taking out my wallet and hand over €100, instead of €50! Not a complete disaster, as I can still play tight and now I stand to win more should I hit a big hand! Unfortunately, if you stand to win more, you stand to lose more and I soon realise that my plan has unravelled when I go all-in on an A-4-5 board that has two hearts after it’s checked to me. It would be an acceptable play if I had something like two pair or even the Ace, but I was playing with 7-8 offsuit! So much for playing tight! I haven’t even finished counting my chips when I see someone else shovel all theirs in! I hit an eight on the turn meaning this anal pounding I’m getting has eased slightly. A ten falls on the river and I’m told that I’m ahead as they missed their flush! I excitedly turn over my eight only for him to flash a ten! The table looks a bit shocked when they see my cards turn over and they all collectively lick their lips when I reach into my wallet once more!

I reach into my wallet once more in the whole hour that I’m there. I finally throw in the towel when I don’t feel confident that my Queen-Jack is good any more after I check-raise on an Ace high board only to find myself getting two callers. Needless to say, it wasn’t! I’m down €240 which translates to pretty much the entire contents of my wallet and at this stage the coffee is starting to sober me up. I really wish it didn’t though, because now I’m kicking myself for shoving with a gutshot and basically throwing money away. This especially hurts because I know I’ll remember exactly how I lost the money in the morning whereas had I not knocked back cup after cup of coffee, I’d wake up not having the slightest idea!

Indeed, waking up is a painful experience! As well as having the obligatory woodpecker going at my head, I have this subconscious voice shouting all kinds of abuse into my ear! I try my best to take no notice and start thinking about tonights game, a €35 freezeout with €1k Guaranteed. It’s a small game when you compare the size of the games in Dublin, but it attracts a nice crowd of players with “colourful” styles so there’s certainly some value to be found. This, I decided, was going to be my make or break night with regards qualifying for the league finals. If I didn’t pick up a result here, I was going to struggle to be able to play in tournaments or sit into cash games for the next week or so. With my fingers and toes crossed, I bought in and found myself sitting down at a great starting table!

Within the first few levels, I manage to build my stack up to 12k from the starting stack of 9k. I manage to flop a house with 8-3 from the blinds and check all streets before check-raising the river and getting paid! I then manage to double up off the then chipleader when I pick up AA for the first time in 3 weeks! It’s raised under the gun to 600 which is called in one spot. I re-raise to 2k from the blinds and get two willing callers. Flop is Q-Q-6 and I check-raise allin after the original raiser bets out 3k. He calls with KK and I hold. My next big hand comes some time later when I raise with King-Jack suited under the gun(!). I find a caller in the big blind who says he feels lucky. The flop comes 8-9-3 and gives me the flush draw. He checks and I make a continuation bet and he immediately announces all-in. I snap call and he curses me and tells me he has nothing. “‘Nothing’ is probably ahead of me right now”, I say to him. He turns over KQ which I really didn’t want to see, but I hit my flush on the turn and all is well in the world once more!

I reach the final table 3rd in chips, but I have the two chipleaders sitting directly to my left which is far from ideal. The player directly to my left has a massive chip lead, with about 30% of all chips in play but amazingly he managed to limp/fold his stack away which by all accounts was an impressive feat. I knock him out when I limp into his Big Blind in the hope that he’ll check his option but I haven’t noticed that he’s now shortstacked and he duly shoves. It’s not much more to me and I’m certain of a coin flip so I make the call and hit my King to topple his Ace high. I pick my spots for the rest of the final table and get into the money.

It’s not all plain-sailing though as I then lose a race with King-Jack suited which puts me down to 5 Big Blinds which really hammers home the fact that anything can happen when we’re playing with average stacks of 10 Big blinds! The chipleader soon finds this out the hard way when he goes from dominating the table to sitting out in his car within 3 hands! This gives me some leeway, as all the players remaining are relatively solid. I get a few pushes through and then I knock a player out when he shoves from the Small Blind and I call with Ace-Ten that holds.

We’re now three-handed and play for a while but it seems as if we’re just passing chips around to one another so I suggest we chop it three ways for €290 each. I feel as if I did have the edge when we were three handed as I certainly had the momentum with me, but I had this mental goal of winning more than I lost the previous night and really didn’t like the idea of finishing third. No-one opposes the deal and we play one hand for the tournament points which I win when I slowroll the bottom pair :) .

So, I shoot myself in the foot one day, but make a full recovery the next! I’m also now presented with a dilemma. I need another 11 hours to qualify for the cash league final which takes place Monday week but this tournament win means I’m now 50th in the tournament leader board, with the top 45 qualifying for the final! It would be agonising to miss both by such a small margin so I think I’ll focus on one of them for the time being. Trouble is, I don’t have a clue which one to commit to!

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Rinse and Repeat.

Filed Under: Poker by Adam
Jan.12, 2009

I’ve failed to prove my doubters wrong! They all said I couldn’t do it and as the days, weeks and then months passed by, I slowly but surely cemented the fact that relationships and me should never be used in the same sentence! It seems as if I’m exactly where I was at the beginning of last year. Last year I was single and struggling with college yet obsessed with poker and now I find myself in an almost identical situation.

To say I’m confident with my exams would be bare-faced lie – apathetic would be far more suitable word to describe my feelings toward college in general. I just wish I knew that the results of this years exams will be what my potential work experience employers will be what they’ll be using to evaluate us. I can just imagine it now, my classmates jetting back and forth between London, Toronto and Paris and me being sent out to the industrial estate to work in a call-centre!

This time last year, I thought that me being in a successful relationship was a laughable concept, fast-forward to today and I’m thinking the exact same thing. I did manage to break through the 3 month barrier and in fact, I can always say that this was a relationship that spanned across two years but ultimately I’m all to aware that I can’t commit to something to save my life and the idea of sacrifice for the greater good still seems too pagan-esque for me to subscribe to. It will probably take a small matter of Divine Intervention for me to believe in relationships in the near future and even then I’d probably be under too much stress to notice God himself pointing me in a particular direction!

What will I be busy doing? Well, undoubtedly Poker will be one of those things. I’ve been playing for 3 years now and it’s still as big a challenge as it was when I first started. The game itself keeps evolving, whereas in 2006 you needed only know the hand rankings to be able to make money, in 2009 you need to be a competent mathematician as well as a fearless aggressor. There’s no such thing as easy money any more and perhaps it’s the challenge of trying to remain a so-called “winning player” that’s keeping me hooked. Or I’m a compulsive gambler.

You could say that I have a clean slate. Or you could argue that I’m like an old record stuck on repeat.

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God Is An Astronaut Owe Me A Pint!

Filed Under: Film and Television by Adam
Nov.15, 2008

I got that giddy feeling again. I hadn’t felt it since I went to see Tool in the Point in 2006. God is an astronaut were coming to town! I’ll admit that I’ve only recently grown attached to the whole Post-rock genre but in the time I’ve been listening to it, God is An Astronaut are a band that constantly stuck out. Accessible, yet intricate.

Electric Avenue, Waterford was the venue – and it was packed!. However, to put things into perspective, God is an Astronaut have been selling out large venues all across Europe all Summer long,yet I describe Electric Avenue as being packed whenever there’s more than twenty people spread out around the place! It’s as intimate as it gets, and even though I only arrived to see the supporting act, Library Tapes, finish up, I was still able to get a table right at the front!

Even though I’ve been listening to them practically non-stop for the past month in anticipation of this gig, I can’t recall their set list! I can only say that it was absolutely mind-blowing! There was something old and something new with each and every one of their songs leading up to epic climaxes. This was the type of gig that you didn’t jump around to, or mosh to, but simply stood there in awe, desperately trying to take in not only the statutory rape of your ears, but the assault of your eyes through the form of a synchronised visual display!

In hindsight, that was my problem – I paid too much attention to the music instead of my drink! I made the “newbie” mistake of leaving my drink on the edge of the table I fought so hard to get. On the very first song, once the sound of the guitars and drums married each other for the infamous “wall of sound” effect of post-rock, my pint slid off the table! I heard the glass fall, but assumed it was one of the skangers behind us who must have taken a wrong turn and ended up in this place! Anyway, I turn around and go to take a drink – an invisible drink! Not to worry, I only have to buy another. If it was any other band I probably would have complained though!

The rest of the show was epic to say the very least. When it was over, I went up to the band to congratulate them on their show because it’s always nice to see bands put so much energy into a small show like this. I bought their intriguingly self-titled latest album and a t-shirt and asked the entire band to sign it. I also talked to Thorsten, their “frontman” so to speak, about how their gear was stolen earlier this year. I have a lot of respect for a group of people who can bounce back from a set back such as that and continue on. A lot of people would have had their souls destroyed there.

Afterwards, and I suppose this leads up to this present moment, I wonder if they felt weird signing an album. To most people, Torsten Kinsella, Niels Kinsella and Lloyd Hanney aren’t household names yet to me, I hold them in the same regard as I do my all-time favourite band; Tool! I wasn’t able to get the John Hancock of Maynard and co when they came to Dublin two years a go, but I’ll happily accept the signatures of God is An Astronaut on my newly bought album!

Despite being together for eight years or so, I don’t think the time has come and gone for God is an astronaut. Their new album is fantastic and they deserve to be playing all the biggest venues worldwide and to adoring fans of all ages. I admit I have a hidden agenda though. When they “make it”, I might just ask them to buy me that pint they owe me!

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Can I leave a cash table with Money? Please.

Filed Under: Poker by Adam
Nov.08, 2008

“It’s my last orbit”, I announce to the table. I’ve been at the table since 11pm and my stack has yoyo’ed back and forth but at least I’ve made money. Or so I thought.

I look down at pocket eights and am facing an early position raise of €7 which has been called in one spot already. I flat call, playing a stack of around €90, and the big and small blinds also come along for the ride! And what a ride it was.

My stack is now exactly €80, so I say to myself “No set, No bet” because I hate cashing out for odd amounts. However, any possibility of my hand hitting the muck vanishes when the flop comes down J-8-5, two spades. I don’t want to bore you with the details, but there’s a bet of €21 which is then called by the original raiser. I push for €80 and would have been happy to take it down there because I figure I’m going to be dodging spades if I’m called. The thought of someone taking down a pot on the flop is frowned upon though and I find a begrudging caller.

I try and decipher what exactly I have to dodge on the turn and river but I’m not appeased. I announce my hand and am told only that I’m slightly ahead. The turn comes a red six. It only completes a gutshot, but in a game like this, it should be viewed as a scare card. My opponent doesn’t look like someone who’s just sucked out and as it transpired, he had not yet hit his straight. The river is a red nine.

He triumphantly throws up J7! I swear, had I ate any food at the break during the tournament, I would have got sick all over the table. I don’t get angry or shout abuse. I just put on my coat and walk away, silently wishing that I could be that lucky in an important pot. Even if it’s just the once!

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