Like countless other blogs, here will be posted random musing on life, the universe and everything...well as long as the everything includes Films, Books, Motorcycles, Poker, Linux, Python and Dorset.




Computer Poker

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Well with our internet connection currently being down, any ideas of playing online Poker have also been curtailed for the moment. The bug got so bad over the weekend, I eventually had to go into our local computer game emporium and buy World Championship Poker for the PS2.
Okay I know that computers are not comparable to real people (unless you are a stonking supercomputer and are playing Chess) but needs must and all that.
I bought the same game for the Nintendo Gameboy last year and spent some time playing it whilst I worked away. I soon completed it though and found the variations it offered limited. So I was glad to see that the PS2 version offered TWELVE Poker variations to play....unfortunately after purchasing the game, I found most of these to be rare Texas Hold'em variations. I would have thought that Omaha HL, Stud HL and Razz should have been included in this list.
Still the game only cost £7.99 and has proven to be quite good fun and pretty addictive. I also quite like Pineapple and won the $22 MTT in the game last night. I am actually tempted to introduce that variant into our family game (Tracy is resisting any Omaha or Stud variants at the moment).


Arrrgggghhhhh!!!!!!

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We came home on Saturday afternoon, after going out to test drive our new car, to find our broadband connection was not working. Occasionally we get a glitch with the units that control the satellite broadband connection, so I went into the garage to reset them. After a number of tries, with still no connection being established, I decided I better let eHotspot (my broadband supplier) know. On ringing them, I was met with a recorded message telling me that the company that provide the satellite connection to eHotspot (Aramiska) has suddenly and with very little warning gone into receivership and had pulled the plug on all of their customer's connections.
eHotspot are now running around trying to get a new supplier setup - good luck lads and lasses. eHotspot are providing a valuable service to a large number of rural communities with their wireless broadband service, so I can only hope they are successful in the near future for all of our sakes.
This does remind me of a recentish comic strip from the well known (in Amiga circles anyway) Creature Anthropomorphic artist Eric Schwartz. This cartoon is one of his monthly published strips featuring Sabrina the Skunk:
Oh SOOOOO true!!!


Ring Gaming

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I have pretty busy at work recently, so have not been able to post much here.
Some time ago, I was doing a reasonable amount of bonus chasing on Poker sites. The grind of ring gaming to get these bonuses started to wear me down and was making Poker a chore, rather than a fun activity. In the end I pulled back from ring gaming completely and concentrated on playing SnG tournaments.
Perhaps 'absence does make the heart grow fonder' as I recently have been getting the itch to do some ring gaming again. I started on some low buy-in NL Hold'em tables and was doing okay but I could see it quickly becoming a grind again. Perhaps too many people play Hold'em now and it is starting to lose it's appeal for me.....i'm not sure. I still like it for Tourneys but for ring gaming, i'm no longer sure.
So I started to look at alternatives. Now I have been playing a bit of Omaha and Omaha Hi/Lo recently in tourneys and I quite like the games, especially Omaha HL. It is not the more looser feel the game has, due to the large number of people seeing the flop, turn and river. If anything, I play Omaha HL just as tight as I do Texas. I just enjoy the feeling of knowing when you have the nut low and the generally higher winning high hands (I do like hitting Full Houses). Anyway I played some 0.50/1 Limit Omaha HL on Titan and Pokerstars last night and enjoyed myself immensely. I did not win much money but it felt much more enjoyable to play, so from now on I will be hunting out sites with a good number of people at Omaha tables.
I am also thinking about playing some Stud but I am not as experienced at that game, so I am still playing around on play money tables for that.


Birthday Party

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It was Cara's Birthday Party yesterday. We had it at a place near Sturminster Newton called Coolplay. Basically it is one of these padded adventure playground places where the kids can go nuts and the adults can sit around, eat and drink without worrying about their safety and well being (too much).
The party comprised of an hour of kids going nuts, half an hour of a hot meal and the birthday cake candle blowing and then another half an hour of going nuts concluded with party bags, balloons and lollies.
I cannot recommend the place enough.

UPDATE - 8th June 2006

Ironically I was looking through my blog at the large number of spam comments that seem to have appeared, but that bizarrely look pointless, and I found this post.
Unfortunately I feel I have to withdrawl my earlier recommendation, as the quality of service at this establishment has nose-dived. Tracy went there with some friends and the kids and quite frankly the staff were very rude and unfriendly (which quite frankly is a huge change since this post was originally written). After this latest experience, Tracy has not returned and has no intention of ever doing so again. We also have not booked Aimée's birthday party there, which was thoroughly our intention after Cara's. Which just goes to show - bad staff can lose you a lot of money.


Five Today!!!

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Today is the fifth anniversary of the birth of my eldest daughter Cara. Strictly speaking the anniversary started at 12:20am because that is when she first graced my Wife's and my presence with the joy of her arrival into this world. This arrival was certainly eventful (not in any bad way thankfully) in many ways....
On the night of the 10th January 2001 we went to bed at a relatively late time, somewhere around 11pm. The 10th was a pretty cold winters night with a thick layer of ice on the roads, this is important to what happens later. We spent the next 40 minutes or so talking, as we sometimes do and were just starting to settle down to sleep when Tracy informed me 'I think my waters have broken'. Now this was my first child, Tracy already has two sons, so this statement was like a whack round the face with a large haddock. Trying to hide this feeling of shock/horror/fear from the Wife, I asked the obvious question 'Are you sure?' Now in hindsight, and after the birth of another Daughter, this seemed a damn stupid question to ask. Of course she was sure, she'd had two babies already and the bed was rather damp. 'Yes I think so darling', was her delightfully restrained answer to her idiot husband.
Now we were planning on a home birth, so all of the required kit was ready in the house. I rung up the Maternity unit at Dorchester Hospital to let them know that things were off of the starting blocks. They informed me that the Midwives would be informed and would arrive shortly. As Tracy's contractions were not hitting too hard yet, we decided we better get her downstairs. I got the previously purchased plastic sheet down on the sofa and Tracy sat down for a little while. Now this sheet turned out to be useless, as it was actually for covering plants and therefore had small perforations in it. The sofa still has the stains from that night on the cushions, thank goodness the covers were washable.Over the next 20 minutes, the contractions steadily got more painful and shorter in intervals. I then received THE phonecall.

'Hi is that Mr Vincent?'

'Yes, what is up?'

'Our midwives are stuggling to get to you, due to the bad road conditions. Therefore we have scrambled an Ambulance to attend as well, just in case.'

'Uh, okay.'

Now what did I do, this was Tracy's first home birth and my first birth of any sort.

SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT!!!

There was only one thing I could do, boldly and blatently lie my face off!

'Was that the Hospital darling?'

'Yes, the Midwives are on the way. They shouldn't be long.'

'Good because these contractions are getting stronger.'

SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT!!!!

About 10 minutes later, I get another phone call.

'Hi is that Mr Vincent?'

'Uh, yes.'

'This is the Ambulance crew, which Hampton are you in?'

'The one between Grimstone and Winterbourne Abbas. We are one of the cottages just before or after, depending on the way you are coming, the dairy farm. We are just off of the road but the lights are blazing.'

'Oh okay, we will get there shortly.'

SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT!!!!!

'Who was that darling?'

'The hospital, they are sending an ambulance as well.'

'Oh...okay. These contractions are getting really strong now, can you get that TENS machine on me?'

'Of course darling.'

SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT!!!!!!

We moved into the bathroom and she sat down whilst I attached all of the various pads of the TENS machine to different parts of her body....and then it happened. Now I cannot remember too much about the next few seconds, I cannot remember if Tracy said anything (but she must have done), I didn't even manage to think or say another SHIT. All I remember was Tracy standing, something letting me know that the baby was on the way (almost certainly Tracy), me throwing the TENS machine into the bath and then the catch that would have impressed any fielder during the Ashes (it is probably lucky I play Cricket). Yes I was the midwife at the birth of my daughter, although perhaps silly mid-on would have been a better term.
I looked down at this white grease covered purple little person more with shock than realisation that it was my daughter. After a few moments I handed her over to Tracy (it was probably not best to push my luck too far, that catch had probably pushed my luck quota for several years).I looked down at the black Cotton Traders T-shirt I was wearing, which was now covered in a reasonable amount of the before-mentioned white grease. That T-shirt, because I still have it and wear it often, will always be the 'Cara Arrival' T-shirt.
We moved into the front room and Tracy sat down on the sofa with Cara. Shortly afterwards the Ambulance arrived and I let the Paramedics in - too late for the birth but in time for tea (I didn't care now, my Daughter was here and my wife appeared to be fine).
Again a little later the Midwives finally arrived. They had come from Lyme Regis which is some way down the coast from us, so it was not entirely suprising it had taken a while to arrive. Everybody had been caught out by Tracy's rather rapid delivery time - 40 minutes from waters breaking to birth if you have not been keeping count. The midwives set to work and with the exception of a little concern about the delivery of the placenta, both Tracy and Cara were both eventually deemed to be all healthy.
Around now the boys made a brief appearance to see their new sister, hardly suprising considering the time this was a brief 'Wotz going on? Wot baby? Oh yeah! I'm goin back to bed.' A short time later, with Cara in her cot (which I had luckily made with Richard's help only a couple of days before) asleep, the various members of the medical profession left us to continue our life with the new addition.
Actually this is not entirely the end of the story because at that time Cara was not actually Cara yet. We had a number of names possible but had not settled on one yet. The favourite was Talia but on seeing Cara, we decided she was not a Talia. The next day, it was decided that she was a Cara...Cara Nicola Vincent. The Nicola is from Tracy's late-sister, who unfortunately I never had the chance to meet but it is nice to think her memory continues within the name of our daughter.Five years later, Cara has now been at School since September and along with her sister and my wife are the loves of my life and my main reason for being.


Amazon.co.uk

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Okay, I have been mentioning a problem we had with Amazon.co.uk before Xmas and here it is. This weeks edition of IT Week (9th January 2006) has printed my email which I sent to IT Sneak, the publication's resident IT industry muck-raker. Below is what was printed:


Not all Amazon customers miss out on fun and games, of course. Take reader Ian Vincent and spouse: "I ordered Christmas presents from Amazon and a few days later, whilst attempting to use the same card, was surprised to find it over it's limit. As two of the Amazon orders had been refused, we shifted them to my wife's card - only to be advised hours later that this was now over the limit too. After many hours of phone calls we learned that Amazon had been starting multiple transactions against the cards but not completing them. We had to wait a week for the transactions to time out. Great timing, a couple of weeks before Christmas with presents, food and petrol to buy!"

This is a pretty well edited (to fit the magazine column) extract from my original email that I sent to them. Okay I will accept that this would seem to be a minor irritation to most people, although it must be a worrying concern on the robustness of Amazon's underlying technology, but this was a very stressful experience. It would have been bad enough at any time of the year but at least then we would have had some funds available in our bank account. However because we knew we were going to be doing a lot of online shopping at Xmas, we decided to move pretty much all of our available cash onto my Credit Card, so we could take advantage of the securities these cards give you. In an instant Amazon essentially took all of this money away from us and this is just not money for presents for my kids (which is bad enough, it is probably the most important time of the year in their eyes) but it was also money to pay for petrol to get the kids to school (we live in a rural area without public transport to school for Cara) and even more important to pay for the essentials in life i.e. food, and four kids eat a lot. Luckily I had expanded my bankroll playing Poker this year and was able to take out some money from that to help. Also thankfully, the cards became clear JUST in time for Xmas to be covered.
All of this has been caused by a complete failure of Amazon's systems, a failure that my finances are currently still recovering from. I have been a customer of Amazon for a very very long time, I first purchased JMS's Book on Scriptwriting from them in around 1994. I have recently been a customer of their DVD rental scheme. All of this is no longer the case, Play are now my preferred source for Audio/Book/Video and I am looking at signing up with Screenselect for my DVD rental. Amazon....never more.


Another year older

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I should have written this yesterday really, for that was when my birthday actually arised. Still other things kept me from doing this post then, mainly constructing a flat-pack bedside table for the girls bedroom (to take their new Little Bratz TV/DVD combo) and just generally relaxing. The need for relaxing was generally due to recovering from the overstuffing of the large (and very very tasty) dinner that my wife had cooked for me the previous night.
I can certainly recommend the Lemons Stuffed With Mozzerella featured in Jamie Oliver's latest book (and indeed TV series) Jamie's Italy (notice not an Amazon reference, never may that company darken this blog ever again).


Back to normality

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Well the kids (with the exception of Aimée) went back to school today. This is Cara's first full day at school, as she has been attending until lunchtime until now. We thought today was going to be a big shock to her system but at the moment, it looks like she has taken it in her stride. Aimée does not return to nursery school until next week, so she is champing at the bit even more than normal (Mummy's boring...until she needs help with a Playstation game).

Onwards with 2006.


Another year begins

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Well another year is here, as 2006 is a few days old.

I'm not entirely sure what this year is going to provide but I suppose that is generally the way.

All I can add is, I hope a Happy and Prosperous New Year to any readers.


About me

  • I'm Ian Vincent (DorsetBlue)
  • From Dorchester, Dorset, United Kingdom
  • I am married to Tracy and live with our kids (stepsons Paul and Richard and daughters Cara and Aimée) just outside the town of Dorchester in England.
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