Random Thoughts

Even though Krispy Kreme's invasion of the UK is well underway with about 40 proper stores - and a number of Tesco supermarkets also stocking their products - it's all down South still.  There's just four stores North of Oxford.

So today we drove to Manchester to buy donuts.  Well, it is my birthday.

I know for a fact I didn't ask for the two chocolate ring donuts, I think we missed out on glazed lemon filled at the expense of those, but it doesn't really matter.  They're all good.

I've learned that the Krispy Kreme at Trafford Park is open as a drive thru until 2am some nights, and they bake fresh until 11pm every day.  This is the actual definition of temptation.

The question of whether a 90-mile round trip is far enough to put me off returning without any other reason for being in Manchester has yet to be answered.

A month ago, I started playing the drums.

OK, that's a bit of a romanticisation.  What I actually mean is I started playing the drum part on the video game Rock Band.

Still, they reckon that if you can master the songs on "expert" level, you could sit down at a real drum kit, make the same movements and you'd be actually playing that song.

I'm sure that if real drum kits only had four things to hit, all of them being the same shape and each one always making the right sound at the correct volume no matter where or how hard you hit it, and with a couple of them doubling up as tom-toms and cymbals, then this would be true.

However, for someone of my limited co-ordination - and having never picked up a pair of drumsticks in my life before - I consider it something of an achievement that I got my first 100% score on hard level today.

The photo is horrible, sorry - I only had my phone to hand.  It just about shows Claire getting 99% on guitar (apparently just one silly mistake away from perfection, she's done it 100% before) and my massive 100% with a 1016 note streak, both playing hard level on The Clash's "Should I Stay or Should I Go".  I will almost certainly make the effort to fetch a proper camera the first time we both nail it at the same time.

That has happened before, but only on medium difficulty (Pixies "Wave of Mutilation" is pretty straightforward for both parts) and we've already gained as many virtual fans in the "world tour" mode as we can without moving up to hard level.

I'm not unhappy at acing The Clash, but I actually wanted my first 100% song to be Weezer's "Buddy Holly" so I had an excuse to embed that video rather than just link to it.  Or Nine Inch Nails, because that sounds like it should be a lot harder than it actually is.  I've been very close on both.

Or for bonus cheese points, it could have been The B-52s "Roam".  I don't care what you think, it's great fun to play and I already had a 1600+ note streak and came within one brain fart of doing it perfectly!

So, for the next step in my drumming career, I need to decide which route to take.  Should I aspire to be as great as this guy, who owns every song on expert level, and has made many top quality videos to prove it?

Yes, he has socks strapped to the drum pads.  This is strangely appealing.  The only modification I have is a set of Hard Rock logo drumsticks painted with a flame pattern.

Or, should I paint my face blue and start hitting other things?  How would that be for a career change?

There's already an official "stage kit" with lights and a smoke machine due out this summer, but I haven't heard anything about a paint drumming kit yet.  It's inevitable though, I'm sure.

The Rt Hon Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber, spotted this evening on BBC television wearing a Party Poker shirt.

OK, it's actually a Leyton Orient football strip so it probably doesn't count.  But I did get a bit excited for a moment and think that maybe he'd bought it using his PartyPoints.

Here's a rarity - I saw a movie based on a book I'd actually read.

I think the only other time this has ever happened before was with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

There's no point trying to do an objective critique of the film because - let's be honest - it was going to have to be a real turkey for me not to love it.  Just look at the ingredients: Vegas, gambling and maths geeks.  It's already a winner on paper as far as I'm concerned.  Who needs exploding helicopters? 

Of course the little things bug me a bit.  Like how they walk into the Hard Rock and then they're seen playing at Red Rock (it says so on the tables and chips, but you can't really see it in YouTube-def) - even though those casinos are about 10 miles apart.  I guess having one word the same in the names is enough that we're not meant to notice.

Then suddenly they're inside Planet Hollywood in the same sequence (the interior is quite distinctive, even without the fake plastic jewels from the former Aladdin) and finally walk out of the Hard Rock into the morning sun (guitar-shaped door handles @ 1m59 in the trailer, if you're bothered).

In one scene, the team have a discussion about whether you should split pairs of 8s and 10s, with some saying "yes, always" and others saying it's a "sucker play" against a dealer's ace.

This is a team apparently comprised of very clever individuals who have figured out how to make money by working the mathematics of the game to their advantage.  There's just no room for debate on topics like this - the numbers do the talking.

Blackjack is a game played to a fixed set of rules with a finite number of possibilities (you can't keep hitting for ever) so there can only be one right answer.  These guys would know the correct play for every situation or they wouldn't be betting thousands of dollars of Kevin Spacey's money on a hand.

In fact, you should always split 8s - even against an ace as long as the dealer checks for Blackjack first, otherwise you surrender if possible and hit if not.  You never split a pair of tens or face cards.  Unless you're card counting, when a very high count can flip the strategy on its head.  Or unless you "have a feeling", of course.

Of course, we see the big player splitting tens in the movie - and winning big because the deck is rich in tens.  You see whenever the count is high, players invariably get 20 and the dealer invariably busts.  That's just the way it works.

Perhaps including this uncertainty and - to some extent - misinformation about the game was payment in kind to the casinos where filming took place.  Or perhaps I'm a little too cynical.

Anyhow, I still enjoyed the movie and it's always good to know I'm not as picky as some.  Several reviews have plenty to say about just how bad this movie must be because it's not 100% true to life as every Hollywood movie obviously should be.  They're taking it much too seriously, and they're all wrong.

John Chang, the real Micky Rosa
http://mickeyrosa.com/?p=13

MIT team member and poker pro, Andy Bloch:
http://www.pokerroad.com/_/pokerazzi/4-1-08

Blackjack author, Don Schlesinger:
http://www.advantageplayer.com/blackjack/forums/bj-main/webbbs.cgi?read=25030

Internet legend, the Wizard of Odds:
http://wizardofodds.com/blackjack/21movie.html

Some dude called "Bootlegger" on Stanford Wong's BJ21.com forum:
http://www.bj21.com/boards/free/free_board/index.cgi?noframes;read=156592

The pictures in the spam got all screwed up, but the offer is still a good one...

Been a while since I had one of these.  Thanks, Al.  Keep your head on...

Play it right and it's a completely risk free £50 bet.  You just have to pick a bet based on a fairly even matchup, with a limited downside and as few different possible outcomes as possible.  That way you don't need a freak result to win big on a no-risk spread bet.

The Win Index on a football game is usually a good candidate, and I've picked the glamour fixture Drogheda United vs Shamrock Rovers for this bet.  I don't know anything about football these days, so an Irish game is as good as any.  With three apparently strong favourites (Man Utd, Liverpool, Chelsea) playing in the English televised games this weekend, the market on this game is a better fit for this bet than any other.

The Win Index awards 25 points fora a win, 10 for a draw and nothing for a loss.  By selling Drogheda at 15 for £5 per point, I lose exactly £50 (maximum value from this promotion) if they win the game.  A draw wins me £25 (£5 x 5 points) and if Shamrock come out on top I win £75 (£5 x 15 points).

It's all settled after one game, even with a draw, as both winning outcomes are good returns on a £50 free bet.

I had to check to be sure, but yes - Shamrock Rovers do play in green.

EDIT: Seventy five quid, tyvm.  Shamrock Rovers won 1-0, thanks to an early goal from a dude named Murphy.

This junk email just in, with a little inspriation for Mother's Day.

I can honestly say I would have never thought of this.

Hey Mum, where do you want to go?  Stansted is meant to be nice this time of year, but I heard they have a fantastic multi-story at Leeds-Bradford.

It's certainly not the first time that my cleaners have put things back in the wrong place.  Often you can't blame them for not knowing where a colander should live, or which cupboard the wok actually fits in.

Perhaps I'm just too picky, but I thought this was spectacular:

In his show The System, which aired on Channel 4 on Friday night, Derren Brown showed that winning (or, by implication, losing) ten coinflips in a row is quite a normal occurrence and really nothing to get excited about. 

If you haven't seen it and don't want me to spoil the surprise, go watch the full thing on YouTube.

The show centered on a system for winning at horse racing, except in fact it wasn't a system at all.  The woman featured in the show was the "winner" of a elaborate brute force attempt to whittle a starting field of over seven thousand runners down to one person who had inevitably backed five winners in a row.

Brown's crew had sent out every possible permutation of tips across five six-horse races to find the one unlikely winner, removing anyone with a losing bet from the pool after each race.  The number of participants required to do and produce one guaranteed winner is six times six times six times six times six, a total of 7,776.

The ten heads video is apparently just a small clip from a nine hour flipathon, although because it's Derren Brown I'm just not sure whether to really believe this.  Don't rule out some some magic coin shenanigans here, although the point he's making is definitely valid: anything can happen, and it will happen eventually.

Here's an example I made earlier.  Am I the luckiest blackjack player in the world because I got dealt this almost-impossible great trio of hands?  It should happen roughly every 85,000 deals.  I've lost count, but I must have played at least that number in the past six months, so it was bound to happen eventually.

The nine hour filming session suggest that their experiment ran a little behind expectation, although not too badly.  Because the outcome is not guaranteed, variance needed to go in their favour to make sure this shoot didn't last several days!

A streak of ten heads should appear once every 1024 flips.  One flip every ten seconds would be just over 3000 over 9 hours, but you have to figure the actual number would be much less than that, allowing for enough breaks to avoid insanity.  He probably tossed the coin 1500-2000 times.

Derren declinesd to mention whether or not they also experienced an equally likely streak of ten tails during this trial, and if so whether it put him and the crew on lifetilt.  I expect it would do.

This arrived in the post this morning:

I don't like to look a free shit horse in the mouth.  But really, what's the point of sending out a promotional diary a full month into the year?

I guess it's a true reflection of just how unimportant a player I really am to BetDirect.  I'm sure those that gave them some good action last year got their pocket sports diary well before 2007 came to an end.

I bet they had boxes of the things, and they must have been working their way down the list with all the leftovers, finally realising they still had enough left to send to scumbags like me.

I placed one £25 bet, which I hedged with another bookmaker, and then took the £25 welcome bonus bet, which I also hedged.  Overall, doing this is worth about £10.  It's not spectacular, but it doesn't take long and there's no variance because one of your bets will always win.  There are plenty of sportsbooks with these free bet offers so you can double the value if you hedge using another site's signup promo.

Anyway, it's nice to know that when there's a decision to be made over what to do with a pile of surplus stuff, I'm still slightly favoured over chucking it in the bin.

Carefully constructed compositions using all available light sources, or photos spoiled by taking them through perspex?  Art or bollocks?  You decide...

Is Welsh Cheddar an oxymoron?  I was not aware of Wales as a great cheese-producing nation, let alone producing a quitessentially English cheese from Somerset.

Nevertheless, I received a nice lump of Welsh Cheddar - made by the Snowdonia Cheese Company no less, it's mountain cheese - in the post today, along with a bottle of port thanks to the people at Virgin Trains, who are still convinced that I'm a VIP.

I requalified for another year of Traveller by booking eight return journeys from Stafford to Cheltenham Spa for just under £600.  I collected all the tickets but didn't use any of them and didn't even need to send them in - the system flagged me for renewal automatically from the online bookings.  I'm still wondering if there's double value to be had here by using those same physical tickets to get a second membership for someone else...

The perks, as well as the occasional free cheese, are unlimited weekend travel anywhere on a Virgin train for two people and it'll take no more than a dozen trips pay for itself.

I've already made two trips to London this month.  Just last weekend was the Spice Girls, which was terrific, and quite insane, and I'd go again in a flash.  Also we tried to go Christmas shopping but it was a complete nightmare; so bad we gave up and went to the cinema just to get off the streets.  Thirteen quid each you know - in the afternoon!

Unfortunately the Virgin network was cut in half last month (as was the Christmas freebie; last year there were mince pies too!).  They've lost the Cross Country routes so most of the free seaside weekends are out.  Torquay, Brighton and Bournemouth are gone, but at least there's still Llandudno.

Home delivery is meant to take the stress out of shopping for groceries.  I had a delivery this evening for a Christmas dinner we're hosting on Saturday.

I can live without the sausage/bacon mash-up, I can make it up from ingredients if necessary.  Even my limited culinary skills can deal with wrapping one thing inside another and slamming the result in a George Foreman grill.

But how do they manage to run out of sprouts six days before Christmas?  I can't believe I'll actually have to leave the house to go shopping for a vegetable I don't even like, but it just wouldn't be Christmas without the little buggers...

I've just stumbled on - and I can't even remember how - work of artist Eric Joyner and his fabulous Robots & Donuts collection.

Obviously, this one is my absolute favourite.  DUCY?

I can't even remember the last time I watched football, but I was betting on it at the weekend thanks to a Sporting Index "safety net" promotion.  The deal: lose up to £50 over the weekend and get your money back on Monday.

This is a great promo, almost the same as a free £50 fixed odds bet if you use it well.  To get maximum value, you have to find a single spread bet with a fixed downside and a reasonable upside.  If you play volatile spread markets, there's the risk that you could lose much more than £50, or win or lose a only few quid which makes the refund hardly worth having.

Not that I'm complaining, but I'm sure this promotion must actually discourage action.  Even for a genuine bettor, if you lose a bet early in the weekend and are guaranteed £50 back on monday morning, in effect you have to win that £50 on your next bet before you can take any profit from it - so why bother trying to win it back when you can just sit tight and wait for the refund?

I backed Norwich City.  I can't remember who they were playing, and I didn't particularly care.  I wouldn't have been any more likely to make a better decision if I'd considered the game.  I'd realised it was already Sunday and opportunities to use this free bet were running short, so I jumped in and bought their win index at 11.5 for a highly suspicious £4.34 per point.

The "win index" on a football game awards 25 points for a win, 10 points for a draw nothing for a loss.  So if Norwich lost, my total loss would be 11.5 x £4.34, a fully refundable £49.91.  If they won I'd be looking at a nice little profit of £58.59.

In fact the game was a draw, although I only saw my bet result not the game result, and I just wasn't interested enough to look it up.  It was a small loss of £6.51, but because the safety net promotion covered net losses from the whole weekend I got to have another go.

This time I bet against West Ham.  They were playing some other team that I don't remember, and I only know that it was West Ham because it says so on my bet result.  I just went for whatever game was on TV at the time.  It was about 30 minutes into the match and they were a goal up, so I could sell the win index at 19 for £7.30 per point - slightly less suspicious, but it's still pretty obvious what I'm up to if they care to look!

Worst case, if West Ham stay ahead and win, I'd be down another £43.80 - with the previous loss that's just a few pence more than the refund limit.  If they give up a draw, I'm up £65.70 on the bet and if they manage to throw it all away for me, I'd be counting £138.70.  Worth a random punt for sure.

Another draw, and I'm £59.19 up on the day.  Result!

It's a good few weeks since I've been in this part of town so this could be pretty old news.  But worth mentioning nonetheless.

The last remaining city on the giant coffee house bingo card can be crossed off.  Stoke-on-Trent finaly has a Starbucks!

I had to double-take when I saw this walking through the Potteries Shopping Centre in Hanley but the arrow did not mislead.  A few seconds later I was handing over two quid and change for a very, very large cup of coffee.  Bliss.

There's a price to pay though.  It's taken over the entire food court, so Stoke now has a different dubious honour: it's the only city in the UK without a Burger King.