the weekly whinge

So I haven’t blogged for months. Not that I’m exactly inundated with people emailing me every day asking when the next entry will arrive, but even so I feel bad. Why is that? Perhaps because I spent time and effort (albeit not very much) figuring out how to get this to work and setting it up. Maybe because in my heart of hearts I truly believe if I were just to write more, people would understand how urbane and witty my thoughts are and I would be lauded as the next Wilde. Only without the prison bit, obviously.

Anyway, I’ve added a new category - web development - which should a) make my blog more relevant to all you internet geeks (nothing like whoring myself out to the mass market) but b) (and more importantly) really give me something to whinge about.

Currently most of my paid-for development is php and javascript, so you should find some random whinges in here fairly regularly since (as you’ll know if you’ve ever tried them) they’re both highly whinge-worthy. I’ll also probably be whinging about browsers if I’m having a bad day, and there may be the odd post about shellscripts or other Linux/Unix stuff, but the majority of this category will probably fit “web development” best.

I suppose I should have a “meta” category for this type of blog entry, since it’s a blog about the blog. How postmodern.

So using long variable names in php makes a difference to the speed of your code.

It’s true: try this…

<?
$s=time();
for ($c=0; $c < 100000000; $c++) {
$verylongvariablename++;
}
print time()-$s . "\n";

$s=time();
for ($c=0; $c < 100000000; $c++) {
$a++;
}
print time()-$s . "\n";

?>

This gives me a difference of around 20%.

Of course in the real world you won’t just be incrementing variables in a tight loop so the difference is essentially irrelevant and I wouldn’t recommend anyone starts sacrificing readability by shortening variable names, but I thought it was interesting.

Who knows, you might too

So I was watching Premier League Poker last night and, while commentating, Roland “WPT champion y’know” De Wolfe was having a whinge worthy of yours truly about how lucky Phil Hellmuth had got throughout the whole tournament (Phil won this heat, giving him 4 out of 5 for the series so far).

Yeah, Phil’s been running hot for 18 years, Roland. I guess your WSOP bracelets are just weighing down your wrists.

Isn’t it amazing how the best players in the world always seem to get lucky?

Until today, I had no idea you could set up these in firefox. I’d used similar functionality in konqueror and been suitably impressed, but no-one had ever mentioned it as a firefox feature, as far as I could tell.

It now turns out that you can set up something very similar in IE 5+. Years of my life wasted… Kinda.

So I’m reading all the hoo-hah about the arty ending to The Sopranos and it occurs to me that this is yet another cult American TV series which I don’t get, along with Six Feet Under and The West Wing (off the top of my head).

I don’t know why but everyone goes on about them as if they’re just amazing but when I rented the whole first series of The West Wing I ended up watching about three episodes and going “what?”…

Lost, err, lost itself in the second series (about episode 208 it completely disintegrated into rubbish-ness), Prison Break became a completely different show after they broke out of prison (well, yeah, I guess that was to be expected :)) and ground to a halt for me when they all started digging holes looking for buried treasure.

OK, 24 is still great and Kiefer is still the God of Sunday nights, but even that has become a little tired since season 4. This last season was stuffed with new people who we don’t really care about and ended on such a complete nothing that I had to check that, yes, that was 24 hours and there wasn’t another one to come.

Yes, we used to watch a load of stuff - Frasier has some of the funniest moments of TV ever and Friends was mandatory Friday night viewing, while Sex and the City kept us laughing for all six series - but they’ve ended (in Friends’ case, thankfully, it has to be said)

So the only other American TV we still watch and enjoy in our household is Desperate Housewives, heaven help us.

Maybe the only thing the Americans can do well any more for more than one season is torture and violence or sitcoms about what are essentially gay people played for the camera by heterosexuals…

I’ve kind-of forgotten what I was going to write about here, but, err, I think I got my point across

My better half was driving along in her Clio about 2 months ago when some stupid bitch in a Jeep Cherokee decided it would be fun to pull out from a driveway into the side of her.

Although it was a fairly low-speed crash (about 25mph) the damage to the car was significant - the central column was bashed in, the driver’s side window smashed (all over Chris, you can imagine she was shaken up!). Anyway, Norwich Union arranged to have it picked up by a specialist repair centre (I won’t name names… yet…) who spent nearly two months doing a solid professional repair, not just sticky-plastering over the cracks, oh no.

Anyway, we got it back on Friday and I immediately noticed that the driver’s door is on slightly higher than the near-side which, were I to find it on a second-hand vehicle I was considering for purchase, would be a clear sign to steer well clear. So, not being a trained mechanic I figured I ought to get one to look it over.

Den is a great mechanic who I trust implicitly and he managed to look over the car last night. The look on his face when I came to pick up the car was enough to tell me that I’d done the right thing in getting it checked out.

I won’t bore you with the exact details but suffice it to say they left sections of the underneath of the car unsealed, forgot to put some of the cabling in its mountings (so eg the rear brake hose - it’s discs all round - is hanging loose and rubbing against a bracket), and left the central locking faulty.

As you can imagine the car is going back today. The thing that really annoys me, though, is that they continue to carry out repairs even though the cost must be far beyond the write-off value (the car’s 5 years old).

Norwich Union, of course, refuse to discuss the issue: their Indian call-centre is staffed with aggressive and unhelpful script-monkeys who fail to attempt to understand our questions and flatly refuse to ask the assessor to contact us. One fax to their head office has produced no response and a second - sent today with a copy of Den’s assessment - is likely to do the same.

We’ve now had the courtesy car (a Ford C-Max, which is surprisingly nice, by the way) for two months: that must have cost a grand or so. On top of the £3.5k they’ve spent on the actual repair (now set to increase further) the write-off value is now just a dot in the distance. A more cynical observer might wonder whether the garage is giving some sort of kick-back to the Norwich Union assessor to let them carry out the work.

Last time I went into The Halifax I had to queue because they were dealing with some stupid idiot who had lost his paying in book or something… and when I got to the counter she said “you can pay it in at the machine - you don’t need to have deposit envelopes already, it will give you one”

So this time, when I went in and there’s only one cashier and two people waiting I thought “I’ll give it a try”…

So I went to the machine, pressed “deposit” and “cash”, and the amount, upon which it spat out an envelope and said “this deposit will not be available until 5/6/07″ (that’s 5th June to any American cousins)

Now that’s not good enough - it’s a cash deposit, FFS!, so I figured “I’ll go inside and put it in there”, except now the machine is waiting for me to put the envelope in the slot…

So I press “cancel”… nothing happens

I press “clear”… nothing happens

So now there’s a queue of people behind me thinking “what’s this tosser doing”… and I can’t just put the empty envelope in because the bank might think I’m trying to defraud them or something…

So I have to wait 90 seconds while the machine just sits there beeping at me… I can’t even walk away cos it still has my card.

Eventually I get my card back and I go back inside and there’s no queue, so I walk straight up up and she says “sorry, would you mind waiting, I’m just in the middle of a transaction”, and I’m like “can’t someone else help me” and she’s “I’m just finishing this transaction, I’ll only be two minutes”, and I’m “oh, only two minutes, well that’s F*CKING FINE then, after all my time isn’t worth ANYTHING, I’m just the F*CKING CUSTOMER, I’ll just STAND AROUND LIKE A C*NT waiting for you F*CKING DO YOUR JOB PROPERLY you STUPID B*TCH.”

Of course I didn’t say any of that, I just pouted like a spoilt child and mumbled “Like I have a choice”.

So the whole thing from start to finish took about 10 minutes for a transaction which actually takes about 30 seconds.

The only “Extra” I’m getting there is a few points on my blood pressure.

Bah.

So with Chris playing in the $1500 no-limit WSOP tonight and the local Gala casino having a £10 freezeout starting at exactly the same time, I thought I’d play and hope the coincidence brought me luck.

Now the Leicester Gala is a bit strange - the card room is quite small but friendly and the tables are only 7-strong when full. I’ve played there a few times and done ok - made one final table and got down to the last 20 or so a couple of times.

This time, I sat down at the table with a mix of players who seemed alternately friendly and quiet. The guy to my right told us he’d been playing til 3 the night before, clearly meant to intimidate. Bah.

I start off in the BB, never particularly happy about that, but it’s only 50/100 and the stacks are 3000, so I can afford to be a bit conservative at the start. 3 callers and I’ve got 7-2 offsuit. Flop goes nowhere, there’s a 2x raise and everyone folds.

Next hand is equally useless and it’s folded around to the blinds - I call the 100 and completely miss the flop. This early I’m not going to go stealing (it’s a £10 game so people tend to call with one overcard) so the hand’s checked down.

I spend the next 5 hands following Harrington’s (which was recommended to me) “conservative” hand set and watched as the first bet stole each pot. OK, thinks I, this table is worth the odd steal.

Next hand, the guy to my right makes a small raise post-flop (2xBB) and I go over the top with 5x. He calls. Arse. I’m set to do the same thing again but he raises all in when the third spade comes on the turn. I can’t possibly call - I think I have 10 high or something - so I’m now down to 1900 after one round.

The next steal attempt is a bit more complex - a nothing flop comes and is checked around, then a jack comes on the turn and I go for my chips, then check - a clear trapping tell, or so I thought. Everyone checks. River is a nothing so I bet 300, get called by the guy to my left who hasn’t said a word. He shows ace-jack - so much for my fake tell - he didn’t care.

So now I have like 1600 left so I play nothing until I’m in the BB again. I get T4 and hit nothing and simply can’t do anything, so fold.

Then the call comes “lowest stack on this table” and I jump up, happy to get away from this insane table where an AJ doesn’t mean a raise in middle position against tight opponents, only to find I’ve been moved straight into the big blind position on my new table. I’m not happy.

Next hand I try to make something and get called down - and the dealer shows my complete bluff after I muck it, which as far as I’m concerned is just bad form.

Next hand I pick up A9c and figure I need to get going - I only have 1200 or so left. Raise preflop gets four callers (???), the flop comes 8TJ with two clubs. I now have a nut flush draw and an up-and-down straight draw, so I bet 200. Not enough, everyone calls.

Flop is ace of spades - as far as I’m concerned that’s my perfect card - I now have a nut flush draw, up and down straight draw and top pair. I throw in my final 800 and finally get some folds - but the one who calls has QK and has just hit the nut straight. I don’t hit my miracle club on the river and that’s me, out in 22 minutes and not quite knowing what happened.

Analysing afterwards I know I should not have tried to raise the guy to my right in the first place - what was working for everyone else was a single bet, with a reraise I needed to have something (to risk 1/6 of my chips, at least!). After that I was on the back foot, behind someone with a lot of chips (thanks to my idiocy) and who was happy and good enough to bully me (the small stack) and in front of a guy who won’t raise AJ. I don’t feel too unhappy about the last hand - while I should definitely have gone all-in after the flop, I did get more money in the pot and chances are I might have got a call anyway from the girl who did win with her higher up-and-down draw.

Bah. I just hope Chris is having more luck than I.

Whinge on the way soon. I also need to decide on some more whingey colours.