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Yes, it's been a fortnight since the blog, but that kind of thing happens when you're spending too much time revising freaking Attachments and Stress. So today we have four different things - you can read none of them (you suck), one of them (you still suck), two of them (a bit o' suck), three of them (pretty good), or four of them (nul suck). In the order they appear :

The Usual Surreal Nonsense (below)
A Comment on the Halo 3 Beta
How I won a 90-person poker tournament
Some thoughts on revision and seabirds

So go! Go now! Read those that you want, and refer back to the suck index to see how much you suck.

Some Surreal Nonsense about the Transformers Movie

With the release of the Transformers film imminent, I thought it might be wise to take some time to go over the previous appearences of some of your favourite Hasbro toys. I'm sure we all remember Optimus Prime's moving part in Bleak House, and the time we saw Megatron in his bit part in the utterly shite That's So Raven, a series about a bird that behaved exactly as it should.
But most of us remember that most enigmatic of Transformers - Starscream - in his incredible part in long-running TV series Starscream and Hutch. Below I present recaps of some of his better episodes, and the dialogue that accompanied this most excellent actortron.

Episode #1 : The Beginning

Police Chief Dobey : Hutch! I've got a new partner for you!
Hutch : As the reserved intellectual character, I'm going to have to spend some time reading Plato to decide whether or not I want this new partner.
Police Chief Dobey : His talents compliment yours. While you can out-think the enemy, he can randomly transform into a jet for no useful reasons!
Hutch : Done!
Police Chief Dobey : Excellent! He's waiting outside in the parking lot.
{Voiceover : And thus began the epic partnership of cop and giant transforming Cybertronian evil rebel thing which could randomly turn into a jet at various intervals.}

Episode #32 : The Day Of The Confusing Hostage Scenario

[Police cars are parked outside an apartment building]
Police Chief Dobey : Thank goodness you two are here! The criminals have barricaded themselves inside, and we can’t hit them. Any ideas?
Hutch : Right. I figure the criminal mind is like a pancake – soft and smooth, but easily flipped. I’m going to get a megaphone and engage in philosophical dialogue with the criminals. Eventually they will realise the greater nature of their existence and will come to the conclusion that their struggle is pointless. They will then give themselves up and surrender peacefully.
Police Chief Dobey : That’s a great plan, Hutch, but it looks like Starscream’s already demolished the building with his stupidly big laser cannons and turned the criminals into chargrilled ashes.
Hutch : Well then what's the point? What part do I play in the team? WHY DO I EXIST?
Police Chief Dobey : Very existential. Been reading Nietzsche?
[Hutch looks put out]
Hutch : .... Yes.

Episode #67 : The Day That Hutch Lost His Teeth And The World Randomly Inverted

Starscream : What the hell’s happened? It must be the work of Optimus Prime, trying to defeat our crime-fighting partnership!
Hutch : Leth get him!
[Starscream transforms into a jet and flies off while Hutch fumbles with his car keys. By the time Hutch arrives on the scene, Starscream has already dealt with Optimus Prime and found Hutch’s teeth]
Hutch : Starthcream! Thtop doing that!
Starscream : What?
[Hutch takes his teeth back]
Hutch : You always get here first and butcher everyone before I have a chance to shake my 70s hair. Why do you have to transform into a jet? Can’t you transform into something useless, like a Smart Car?
Starscream : Well if that’s the way you want it, maybe we shouldn’t be partners any more!
Hutch : Fine!
Starscream : Fine!
Hutch : Fine!
Starscream : Fine!
Hutch : Why am I still inverted?

Thanks to Wikipedia for pretty much that entire entry, having never watched either of those shows. Also, that might be Starsky I left in for all I know, but oh well.

Some Thoughts On A Tiny Bit of Beta, or STOATBOB.

---If you don't know what that means, don't bother to read this---

Hmm. Well, the beta is very, very good. The variety of weapons in addition to the new equipment basically makes battles a lot more interesting, since there are so many more situations than can happen than in Halo 2. All 3 maps I like, though objective games on High Ground make me want to vomit. I hate them. Slayer games on it, though, perfectly good.
Snowbound is fantastic. The mix of huge, open areas and closed areas below the main map make for a good selection of battles, and I love the shield doors. You can't shoot through them, but you can walk and melee through them. Makes for some interesting stand-offs...

The Battle Rifle seems a bit toned-down, which is nice. The new grenade is very cool and makes a satisfying explosive noise and visual effect. I particularly like the fact that it's like the Pipe Bomb from Duke Nukem. While the rest of that game was a brainless shoot-fest, I always like the Pipe Bombs. One final, important point :

The explosions are the nicest explosions I have ever seen.
They are amazing, and further enhanced by the variety of grenades. If you have 2 people getting into a grenade-throwing war with each other, you're going to see a colourful display of nades, in addition to Brute Shot explosions, rocket explosions, missile pod explosions...
All in all, good stuff.

But people have been whining about the BETA not working perfectly. Do you expect it to? If so, why? It's not finished software, you morons.

Some Poker Advice, And How I Won A 90 Person Tournament

Yep, here's some poker stuff. If you're not interested – and you suck megabutt – then skip right over this and find something else in the entry you are interested in.

Otherwise - I finally won a 90-person tournament! I'd come 2nd twice and 3rd twice, so it was about time. You start off these tournaments with 1,500 chips, and so by the end I had the total of 135,000.

First, how I went out in heads-up in the tournament I came 2nd in. Then, how I finally won the next tournament I was in. Then, a comment on a very good hand. Then, finally, 6 things I figure you need to remember in poker - not that I intend to give away everything I do, since I'd still like to win at school.

Now here is possibly the best call I've ever made.

Blinds 60/120, and I just call a raise of 240 with 4s4c, leaving only me and the raiser in the hand. The flop is Ts9sTc. He raises me 1,200.

Now, even though I have a pair worse than both of these, I'm still pretty certain I'm in the lead. He might have raised with a pocket pair, but I think he raised with something like AK (it later turned out it was AsKs he raised with, so he flopped a flush draw).

I think for a while before calling, because at this stage that's quite a bit of money. Normally I would throw away a pocket pair that low at this point, but for the reason above I felt I might actually be in the lead at that point. I wasn't totally sure what I was expecting to catch if I did call and he didn't make a higher pair, but...

I call, and the turn is a 4 of spades.

The magic card.

The perfect card! He makes his Ace-high flush while I make my full house. I decide to check, and he bets another 1,000.

I just call. River is something worthless and I check again, allowing him to do my betting for me. He raises me 2k, I go all-in, and after some deliberation he folds, rather impressively. Regardless, I nearly double up, even though I would normally fold an underpair in a few seconds.

My final victory in a 90-person tournament

I pretty much always make it to the final table in these tournaments, and this time I made it with about 12k chips from our 1,500 starting chips. That put me somewhere in the middle of the range of players, but luckily the blinds were still fairly low, at 120/240 I think. That means a lot more players will see more flops, and it won't be reduced to just going all-in based on your pocket cards.
Things were going okay until we were down to six. I then check-raised someone who had two pair against my straight, until I nicely doubled up to around 30,000 chips. After that I proceeded to knock out almost everyone else until it was heads-up. I had about 100k chips, and my opponent had 30k chips.
From here on in I just played very aggressively, raising 5k on the faintest of draws, on this logic - if she called, 5k was a tiny fraction of my chips. But every hand I was forcing her to decide on the fate of a 1/6th of her chips, and so unless she had something major she couldn't take the risk that I might actually have something.
Once I had 120k and she had 15k, she moved all in with Kh7h. I called with Ac4s, and the cards were wholly uneventful. I won on high card...

I was going to write here about the six things I would say you should remember in poker (and it's a lot more advanced than "Yay! A good hand! BET BET BET!"), but I shall leave that to a future entry if anyone is interested.

Some Thoughts on Revision and Seabirds

Well, revision is well under way, and isn't it fun? I really hate two particular topics in Psychology - Attachment and Stress. The rest I feel I can do pretty well in, but it is those two I really, really hate. Ah well.

As for the seabirds, I went to see the Guillemots at the Town Hall. Their first half was very experimental, and the second half they played some of their songs. For the experimental half it was mostly a total instrumental apocalypse, with just a wall of sound resonating around the hall - in a good way. The lead singer/guitarist/pianist was hilarious (intentionally so, I think) when on the piano, because he sometimes resorted to simply pressing as many keys as possible with his hands, arms or head. Their songs later on though were the highlight, since they were really rather good.

Anyway, there's a load here. Surely everyone is going to have something to comment on?