Captain America

[peterbirks]

I hate the term "rockumentary". As portmanteaux go, it's right there at the bottom of the barrel with, er, well, I don't know what.

However, that doesn't stop the documentaries on musicians that I occasionally see from being top-notch, and last night's "The Devil And Daniel Johnston" was up there with the best. When this comes onto Channel Four in the UK, try to catch it, even if you have never heard of Daniel Johnston (or if you have heard of him, but, having heard his music, wish that you hadn't).

It was absolutely gripping for the entire two hours, questioning the way in which hip music fans put the mentally ill up on a pedestal and how they lionize those who die young (although Johnston is still very much alive). That would make for a fairly tedious "exposé". What made this different was that the film's director (name forgotten, mea culpa) was also a fan of Daniel Johnston's art and his music. I wouldn't call the film a joy from start to finish -- parts of it are too painful for that -- but it was superb to watch.

+++++++

I treated myself to a Pentax K100D yesterday, partly because I realized that I had never owned an SLR camera. Part of being behoven to booze for several decades is that you never have any money to spare. This kind of works to your advantage when you stop drinking (compared to those who have never drunk or smoked) because you are not used to spending money on anything apart from cigarettes and alcohol. So, although £400 (including 2GB card) seemed a bit of a jolt to me, I just had to tell myself that, in the grand scheme of things, it was far less than I save in an average month.

I put the settings to 1.5m pixels, partly because that's fine for smaller prints and partly because any uploaded pictures get cut down to far less than that anyway.

This was the maximum setting on my little Jena digital camera, and the memory card could manage 14 pictures at the setting. The 2gb card casually takes 1,300 pictures at that setting. Lots of changes in a couple of years, or what?

Fortuitously, there was a giant chess game taking place this morning in Trafalgar Square, so I could test the night-time settings. Seemed to work well, even with flash turned to "off".

+++++++++

Still awaiting news on Mr Ward's heroic back-to-back final table performance in Tunica. No news is in a way good news (no post overnight of "I'm out"). I can't access Gutshot from work (and it won't let me download Picasa, dammit!) so I can't say whether or not the forum is bursting with "congrats to Andy" posts, but I suspect (and rather hope) not.

The "GIQ" state of affairs on GIQ is the way I and Andy like it. Less of this high-profile stuff. I often goa couple of weeks these days without accessing either The Hendon Mob or Gutshot forums, because there is virtually no chance that there will be anything there that's worth reading. Now, The Mathematics of Poker, there's a book worth reading. But I really hope that nost of the posters on these forums never get beyond page 10.

I'm struggling through the EV Pot Limit fixed betting example at the moment (with three stake levels, short stack, medium stack and large stack). The conclusion is intuitive to most experienced players -- get all your money in early if you are on a draw -- but it does point out a distinct difference between Pot LImit and No Limit, and why poor PL players are likely to go broke far more quickly than poor NL players.

++++++++

Stop Press according to Poker Pages:


1 Andy Ward (London, United Kingdom) $81,694


Rock on.

PJ

Comments

This Is Spinal Tap

[badblood44.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if he originated the term, but "rockumentary" was coined by Rob Reiner in the opening scenes for Spinal Tap.

"So in the late fall of 1982, when I heard that Tap was releasing a new album called "Smell the Glove", and was planning their first tour of the United States in almost six years to promote that album, well needless to say I jumped at the chance to make the documentary - the, if you will, "rockumentary" - that you're about to see."

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088258/quotes

Re: This Is Spinal Tap

[jellymillion.livejournal.com]

I also have Spinal Tap as the origin of "rockumentary", which places it firmly in the ironic camp and allows those of us saddos who are proud of knowing it to patronise the know-nothings who use it in a pitifully ignorant and completely non-ironic way today.

I now have to confess that I don't know of a single word for "non-ironic". In the event that there should prove to be one, I shall be very ashamed. Hang on a minute.

Duh, "sincere". Well what the heck does that mean?

Re: This Is Spinal Tap

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

You know, that makes me feel really good; that the word was first used in an ironic way. Tell that to the Guardian TV reviewers, please.

PJ

Re: This Is Spinal Tap

[real-aardvark.livejournal.com]

Jesus, JM, do I have to come round to your place as some sort of household pet or something?

No, "sincere" is not an acceptable antonym of "irony." Of course, in the sense of "absence of irony," the answer you want might be almost anything, and particularly nothing ...

However. Taking the earliest known use of the term, ie Socratic irony, one would be referring to, literally, an absence of knowledge. As in Socrates' common question, "Well, I don't quite understand that. Would you explain?" This form of irony is in and of itself ironic, because, of course, Socrates knew very well what he was talking about, and was just waiting for his opposite number to tie himself up in verbal knots. (Here I should point out that this was a common rhetorical meme in Ancient Greece, typical also of Demosthenes and other lawyer/politicians.)

Of course, the real irony is that we have no idea at all whether or not this is the way that Socrates worked. All we have is Plato's word for it, and even he gets bored after the first book or so (of, I think, six), and resorts to putting diatribes into his subject's mouth.

However, in common parlance today, irony has rather lost the rhetorical element. The absence of ignorance is not knowledge. Likewise, the absence of irony is not sincerity.

A better antonym would be "literalism."

Now. Don't bother me again. I have bigger fish to fry, and what's more, they haven't even evolved from sea-slugs yet.

Re: This Is Spinal Tap

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

Yes, I was going to say "literalism", but I couldn't really be bothered to pick up on it. So, you can be pleased to know that your viewpoint is shared by a hack. I'm not sure whether or not you will consider this a good thing.

PJ

[jellymillion.livejournal.com]

Pentax. Interesting choice; what prompted it?

Speaking as a Canon EOS400D purchaser of a couple of months ago, that is. A very happy purchaser, I should add. Although since I already had four EOS lenses the choice was only ever going to be which Canon, not whether.

It probably doesn't matter much, mind you - all the current DSLRs seem to be pretty damn good. As Patti B's stuff (http://www.flickr.com/photos/whipartist/) shot with a Canon XT (350D) shows.

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

I chose the Pentax because CameraWorld had featured it in its front window since before Christmas, and I walk past Camera World every morning, and I didn't fancy paying six hundred and ex-ty quid for the K10D or for the Canon on offer.

I was also aware that the old SLR Pentax lenses fitted the K100D, and that these lenses had a reputation as being of quite good quality.

I've had a look at the camera since buying it, and it's great fun; the manual is well set-out, and the machine is perfectly usable by the camera-illiterate, while haveing lots of options available for people who understand the technicalities. I'm actually looking forward to using it.

PJ

[jellymillion.livejournal.com]

Cool, As I said, gushy reviews notwithstanding, with some hundreds of residual value in lenses I was never going to leave Canon. Having been a film SLR punter years ago, it's amazing how much more camera I got for little more in pound terms (and a lot less in real money).

Why throw away pixels?

[(Anonymous)]

Who needs to stack 1300 photos on a card? I use whatever resolution the camera gives me. I might want to blow up some small detail in the photo. I might kick myself later for taking a low-resolution photo when I could just as easily have taken a high-resolution one.

I had a series of non-digital Canon SLR cameras for years, starting in 1976 when I went to Berlin. I got my first digital SLR late last year, a Nikon D50. The bloody thing turned out to be faulty and I'm still waiting to get it back from Nikon. They weren't willing to swap it for another one because I failed to report the fault within the first fortnight of ownership.

This being my first experience of Nikon, I'm none too chuffed, though it's possible that Canon may not have responded any better.

-- Jonathan

Re: Why throw away pixels?

[jellymillion.livejournal.com]

Switching from Canon to Nikon is a bit like converting from Islam to Judaism. So it probably serves you right. I do know someone (news photog at The Sun) who went to Canon when he went digital, because the top-end Canons at the time blew the Nikons away. He loves his £5K a go EOS gear - I can't remember if he has two or three. Goodness knows what his lenses cost.

[andy-ward-uk.livejournal.com]

I should think Gutshot have more important things to worry about right now. They appear to be basing their case entirely on semantics. However, I expect it will boil down to who has the best lawyers (excuse my cynicism).

Andy.

gutshot

[(Anonymous)]

Since the police have documented 2 cases where they obviously
took money out of the prizepool and charged players for playing
it seems they have no foot to stand on.

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

I'll admit that the Gutshot line has me slightly puzzled, but I expect that the lawyer is of the view that judges far prefer making a technical ruling based on the letter of the law than making any ground-breaking ruling on the lines of "the whole law is bollocks anyway". This is certainly the case in insurance, where you get Jarndyce v Jarndyce-like cases on the obligations of brokers to buyers, of brokers to insurers, of insurers to reinsurers, and on the technical meaning of certain contracts (or, rather, the technical meaning of uncertain contracts), none of which bear any relation to reality and common sense.

I guess Gutshot is claiming that the letter of the 1968 Act (no matter what its intention) does not cover poker as offered by Gutshot. An equally valid line would be that the 1968 Act might have intended to cover poker (as part of card games), but that it was wrong, which is why it is being updated. (the "it's all bollocks" line). Lawyers are petrified of taking this approach, partly because it entails use of common sense and justice rather than the "I think that you look at the letter of what is written....." approach, which is guaranteed to make me want to bosh someone within 30 seconds, and partly because, the more technical and narrow a ruling, the more likely they are to be kept in work for future cases on the same topic.

PJ

Pix and Pox

[real-aardvark.livejournal.com]

So, you're off both booze *and* cigarettes? (Christ, I just hit ctrl-i out of horrible, diseased, Windows habit there and saw the source HTML for this page. I never want to do that again. Sort of like seeing your grandmother's knickers in the laundry basket before they go into the washing machine.)

I'm definitely impressed. So impressed, in fact, that I shall go outside the Swedish sanatorium masquerading as a hotel after I finish this and knock back a coupla fags, half a pint of aqvavit (I wish; I'm not a licensed alcoholic, and hence the Swedes won't let me near the stuff), and any belligerent scotsman who cares to get in my way. Well, that's the theory.

You need a bit more practice on this spending money lark. Why, I don't have any, and I've just spent a hundred quid today buying a USB wireless dongle I already have and a set of skype headphones that I can't use because the special offer ran out last year. Marketing and personal incompetence, that's the secret of civilisation.

The thing about SLRs isn't really the number of pixels. (Although 1.5M is a bit silly. 4M is good enough for most uses.) The main advantage, apart from being able to see what you're photographing, is the amount of light that gets through the lens. Remember, a camera can only be as good as the amount of light it captures. (This is why the camera function on a mobile phone is such a stupid idea.) The next most important thing is the digital processing chip, and I understand that Sony does these best. On the other hand, if you set the SLR to raw mode, I don't suppose the chip matters in the slightest -- now you need a decent photo-processing suite on your pc. Round about £500 worth should do it, apparently.

Then again, you're only photographing things round London, so I'd suggest a box brownie, a fag hanging out of your mouth, and half a can of warm Tennant's to keep you company while the pigeons arrange themselves in their customary Busby Berkelely routine. Whilst Ethel Merman disports herself in the fountain, no doubt...

... which brings me to Robert Lindsay. I am a huge fan of Robert Lindsay. So much so that I will watch anything he appears in, including that rather feeble sitcom with Zoe Wannamaker. I would even recommend "Bert Rigsby, You're a Fool," and, as one Amazon reviewer says (correctly), "His 2 minute rendition of the entire film of "Singing in the Rain" is not to be missed."

Re: Pix and Pox

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

Fuck me, PD, you're worse than Palfrey.

Ahh, you've made the Ctrl+i error as well, have you? Horrible, isn't it?

Yes, after a failed attempt in August 1998 (where I relapsed in December in the most spectacular fashion possible, in a New York bar. I really must tell the story of that one day), I finally quit booze the week after Easter 1999.

Amidst buying a flat at the same time and smoking like a trouper, my weight dropped to 140lb. Then in January 2001 (I think) I quit smoking as well, causing my weight to balloon to 163lb, at which point I resorted to the gym for six months. This served only to keep my weight static, so I gave up after nine months or so. My weight then gradually crept up to 173lb or thereabouts, which cause another, more persistent, gym escapade in January 2005. I've roughly kept it up since, although the weight hasn't really come off. This is at least in part because of the weight training and the appearance of muscles in places I didn't know I had muscles. The downside of that is that it gets to the stage where you have to go four times a week just to keep those muscles in trim. Bleaagh.

But, I meant to talk about cameras. The Pentax has a separate lens/body system, obviously, but the 18/55 lens that I bought with it seems cool enough for a peasant like me. I took a flash picture in my front room and the amount of light generated (and captured) was stunning (for a peasant like me....).

Forget that RAW mode crap ... that's for the real buffs. My actual concern was to take better photos in London at night (without flash), and the camera seems more than adequate for those purposes. I guess that the proof of the pudding will also come when I take it to LV, where the ability of the colour capture becomes most obvious (LV is a very 'blue' place. London is very 'red').

PJ

Re: Pix and Pox

[real-aardvark.livejournal.com]

The story can wait, and we'll look forward to it.

Ironic that Mike was interested in the meaning of "irony," because I no longer know how to write in a literalist way.

When I said I was "impressed," I meant, literally, impressed. As in "impressed." I hope I make myself clear. I try to do this when commenting on computer blogs (only the finest sort, of course), and I generally fail. Cut me through the middle and it'll read, "irony." Sign me off as, impressed.

(Or perhaps "zincy." Damn. There goes that nasty habit of mine again.)

RAW's good, but, as I say, requires post-processing through software. Quite expensive now, but, as is the way, it'll be dirt cheap in two years' time. If the camera supports capturing it in RAW mode, but presenting it in "processed" mode, then I'd go for that. You can always store both. Disk space is already cheap.

And, Peter, what's this about being worse than Palfrey?

I am not now, nor have I ever been, a Friedmanist. Nor do I believe that the Laffer curve represents anything more than a drunken economist with a grudge, joining two points on a graph together on the back of a napkin with a purple crayon. Can you say "reductio ad absurdo?" (No, Mike, I know you can't. I'm guessing that the inverse of "reductio ad absurdo" would be " per ardua ad astra," but I might be wrong. Look it up in the Kiddie Book of Roget's Thesarus would you? There's a good chap.)

However, this entire site is badly fucked and suffers from layers and layers of lousy web design and/or standards, of which the ninny callback on ctrl-i is just one, amongst many, perfect examples.

Give me three months, five programmers, and the world at my feet, and I could actually make something like this site a much happier (and therefore less intrusive) experience for all concerned.

I mean, this is the first time that I've actually thought that XML is a Good Idea. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Well, you wanted Palfreyisms.

Palfreyesque enough for you?

PS I dimly remember you claiming that Elvis had Wittgenstein beat hands down. For some reason, this seems relevant. Are you ever going to explain why, or need I subscribe to "The Thoughts of Chairman Birks?"

Oh yes, and the gym thing. I sort of wish I'd never rowed at college. Lots of fun for two or three years, but it changes the way your body thinks about you, and then you have to spend the rest of your life in a gym sweating it out.

Or, like me, in a bar, not giving a fuck.