Some poker losses are more painful than others

Tonight I got beat at hold-em, with aces full of jacks by aces full of kings. It really annoyed me (as well as costing me some money), and in retrospect it works like this:

1. I had my hand on the flop
2. There was no possible better hand using the flop
3. I bet vigorously to protect my hand and drive out those who might have had an ace with a king or queen.
4. I continued to protect the hand, making it expensive to chase
5. There was only one caller to the first bet
6. The king came up on the last card

The conclusion I reach is that the pain of losing is relative to how good your hand is, and how unlikely it is that it can be beat. I think the size of the loss is less important than the feeling that you were cheated by fate. Losing the same amount betting on a lesser hand, particularly if there are over cards and some indication that a better hand is possible, seems to be just a normal statistical risk. Playing well and having someone play poorly and stay in looking for a low probability card, and then be rewarded by a win is far worse than being beaten by good play. I can only assume that he didn't believe that I had the full house and that his three aces king high would be good

Note: after my first bet there were only two of us in the pot, so there was no large pot relative to the bets.

More anti-gun hysteria in NYC

The news coverage of the shooting in NYC today is so biased as to be fiction. It seems that a disgruntled worker returned to his former workplace and shot his former office mate, with whom he had a long history of disagreement and reportedly legal actions. The former worker shot his coworker, then left. There was no indication that any further violence was planned.

A construction worker followed the shooter and alerted police of his location. At that point there was no obvious threat of violence, the gunman was leaving the scene quietly, probably headed for his car.

When the police arrived they confronted the shooter, who then reached for his gun. The police opened fire, killing the gunman and wounding nine innocent bystanders. No witness has indicated that the gunman fired, and the body markers which were visible on TV appeared to be all people behind the gunman. It is interesting that the CNN coverage reported 14 total shots fired, without commenting on the size of the police magazines. They did note that the gunman had a "45 with an eight shot magazine" and that the police "prevented further violence." The gunman had his gun away and was leaving quietly, I'd like to see how that gets spun. It is interesting that Mitt Romney appeared immediately on TV to thank the officers for their service and bravery.

I don't want to jump to conclusions without the full facts, but it would seem that the police could have followed the shooter until he reached a location more suitable for a confrontation. With his gun out of sight and having already refrained from shooting anyone else, there does not seem to have been a need to confront the shooter, even if it meant he might escape. This was not an act of terror by the gunman, it was a very personal killing of one man, and provoking a gunfight on a crowded street should have been avoided if at all possible. The fact that the bystanders were behind the gunman may have led into the immediate police summary which concluded "some of the victims might have been hit by police bullets." Sounds so much better than "shot by police," doesn't it?

This is just the latest in a series of incidents where multiple officers fired many shots, most of which missed their intended target, and each of which resembled a panicked "shoot until the gun is empty." barrage rather than the two shot "tap-tap and evaluate" taught to most upstate police. The Amadou Diallo shooting, the groom and wedding party shot multiple times in their car at a bachelor party, and now this poorly aimed barrage at a non-threatening suspect using a crowd of bystanders as a backstop.

Mayor Bloomberg, if you want "more and better gun control," stop harassing the disarmed law abiding citizens and start with you own police force!

JBIG images

I discovered years ago that there is a lossless image format called JBIG. It's used in fax messages, and while it can be used with color images, the common use is with bilevel (aka black and white) images. When saving a scan of a document, book page, or anything else which is (or originally was) b/w, using JBIG will save about 30-50% in space over other lossless image formats, such as PNG or GIF. That makes a big difference when you have a lot of data to preserve, or transmit.

There are tools to convert images to and from JBIG, I usually use one called cjpeg although there are others..

A Dark Night in Munich

No, not the "Dark Knight," but "A Dark Night in Munich," the beer. This is one of many from the "Longshot" brewing contest, and was part of a six pack I got at my local good brew store.

You can see how it look below, being held to a light because it's way too dark to appreciate without transmitted light from behind.

The aroma is fantastic, I took a good sniff and got a rush of malt, with just a tinge of hops and alcohol, and I have to say this was one of the most inviting brews I have tried in a long time. Then I took that first sip and found a pretty good replica of the Dubel samples I've tried after good reviews from European tasters.

Hops on the tip of the tongue, aggressive malt at the back of the throat. Lovely aroma just doesn't seem strong enough to survive the action in the mouth. I am not a big fan of the Dunkel style,which is just a matter of taste and not a fault of the brew. To my taste this is a fine example of a Dunkel which tastes just as it should for this style. Note: I don't dislike Dunkel style, but my evenings seem to end with an IPA most of the time.

The neck label tells me "Corey has been working on his Munich style Dunkel for some time, and the result is this amber medium-bodied brew with a nice malty backbone.

Trivia note, it seems that my great grandfather was postmaster of Munich about the time of the civil war in the US. Later two of his sons came to America together to make a new life, had an argument, and never spoke again. My mother told me it was just like them, whatever that means.

Food parings: Goes pretty well with chili or chaddar (plain or on rye crackers). Did not try with a real meal.

Invitation: if you have ideas for good food pairings with Dunkel, please leave me a comment, I have a few left.

New battery tech changes the game

Scientists in Korea have invented a way to recharge batteries up to 100 times faster than existing Li-ion batteries.

From hand tools to cars, faster charging batteries would be a significant selling point. From the description of this technology, it is possible that faster charging will be paired with higher discharge rates, allowing better response to short heavy loads. It doesn't appear that this technology will improve capacity or lower cost however, so the market impact may be limited to markets already using batteries, rather than penetrating into new markets.

I had hoped that ultracapacitors would move into this market space, being cheaper and lighter, and inherently fast to charge and supportive of high discharge rates when needed. That hasn't happened, and I'm not really sure if this is due to the recession making companies reluctant to invest in new tech and advertizing to show it to the public, or if there's some engineering issue which is holding the conversion back.

Self defense against cat humor

Why do I lock the bathroom door when I'm the only one home? Because two of my cats can open the unlocked door, and they think it great fun to sneak in and pounce to the top of the toilet and then flip the seat down.

Stephanie Plum rdies again

While I was waiting for my car inspection I finished #17 in the Stephanie Plum mystery (or humor) series. While the premise is getting a bit old, it still contained a number of laugh out loud passages and stories. The sex is getting more frequent and graphic, but this is no Fifty Shades of Gray, it started at them "then we turned off the light" level. Stephanie is getting marginally more competent at what she does, but the theme is still "barely capable bounty hunter ekes out a living with the help of luck and her friends."

If you haven't ever read on of these, they really are funny, the characters are consistent from book to book, and they do evolve over time, although slowly. If you can picture some of the scenes in the book they are seriously funny, although unlikely. Like many women with liberal arts degrees Stephanie is doing something she would rather not, just to have a job, and as is often true in that case, she's not really all that good at it. The fact that there even is a book 17 should tell you that people really do enjoy these books, and for pure entertainment they are closer to the Marx Brothers than the Three Stooges, ie. not really dumb.

Trap at a new club, representing a new club

Yesterday my grandson Scott and I went to the A.R. Shooting Club to represent Elsmere at a trap shoot. My summer league shot at Elsmere a few times this summer to fill in dates, and I really like the facilities, mainly the 300 yard rifle range. My usual club is hemmed in by development, and has only a 100 yard range, now closed to handguns. As a future member on the waiting list, I could represent them, and did. I shout 49/50, and was moderately happy with the result.

The rural clubs north of NY City are on lovely winding roads, perfect for two gentlemen adventures to travel briskly in a sports car. Unfortunately the driveways into these clubs are not smooth beautiful roads, but typically unimproved paths on rock filled dirt, far better suited to a truck, 4x4, or at least something with more ground clearance than the size of the rocks hunting my oil pan. We took the old Explorer, and had a good time.

My grandson shares my love of following small roads which go in the right general direction of our destination. They often lead to exciting views, decrepit buildings, and sometimes outstanding fishing spots. He also shares my habit of not returning by the same path I took to get where I am, so knowing the back roads has become a shared pleasure.

A new approach to sharing my thoughts

After looking at what I was doing with blogs, my Halfway Point blog started almost 30 years ago as a mailing list, my Beer Blog which has run for six years or so but has degenerated to beer reviews for the most part, several other blogs, I decided to just post here, and use the label feature to let people read all of it or only the parts they find interesting.

So this is a compendium of what interests me, from the mundane to the burning issues, science, politics, and of course beer. Welcome to a peek at what I found interesting as it happens.