Nostalgia for Binions circa 2003

I highly recommend this blog series on the 2003 World Series of Poker. I was in my first year playing poker and I won my first tournament (sts) at the 2003 WSOP. The third place finisher in my win was the Angel character he's talking about in Part 4. He is described perfectly in the article, but honestly, I thought he was great. Not great like I want to be his buddy or anything. But great in an iconic, old-school Vegas degen stereotype that made me love the city so much in those days.

I felt very nostalgic reading this. It reminded me of some great times with my first true love (poker that is). The stories filled in a lot of info that I was missing being so new to the game and seeing odd events through naive eyes. Binions is still one of my favorite places in Vegas for historical reasons alone. I do miss that place.

You should start reading from the beginning at Part 1, War of the Binions.

http://www.nolandalla.com/category/wsop/

Bitcoin Disinformation

Nearly every single negative article on Bitcoin is based on one or two fundamental inaccurate assumptions or misunderstandings about the currency. This guy makes that same fundamental mistake, specifically in believing that Bitcoin scarcity is only limited by the "word" of some Bitcoin company. 

The technical reality is that the maximum number of coins that can be created is hard-coded at a set figure of 21 million and that maximum is not only hard-coded into the software, but also into the validation rules of Bitcoin transactions. Should someone ever decide to increase the maximum number of Bitcoin and introduce that change into the system, the transactions approved by that change would never validate on the rest of the system. Therefore, it's impossible to be done without creating a separate and new Bitcoin-like currency through a fork of the validation chain.  

Moral of the story, the hard limit in number of Bitcoin is unchangeable and this guy is a moron for speaking with authority on something he knows nothing about. Oh and he has big ears.

http://www.toledofreepress.com/2013/05/09/treece-the-bitcoin-fallacy/

How to set up Outlook.com push email on android

If you are like me and hurried to reserve your name on Microsoft's the brand-spankin new outlook.com email service, you may be wondering what to do with it.  I still have yet to figure that out.

Regardless, it would be pretty useless to me if I couldn't set it up for push under Android, and luckily it is possible.

Here's how you do it.
  1. Go to your Android Account Settings screen and select to add a Corporate account.
  2. Enter your outlook.com email address and password and click next.
  3. In the Domain/Username field, enter: m.hotmail.com/username@outlook.com, where username is your outlook.com user name.
  4. In the Server field, enter m.hotmail.com and click next.
  5. Accept the defaults on the remaining config screens and you are finished.
Now you have your outlook.com email address set up for push email on Android.  

Now just to figure out why I've done this.

New Google Announcement

Google has recently announced that the next Nexus phone will not only include Near Field Communication (NFC) technology, which they introduced in last year's Nexus S, but that it will include Alternating Field Communication (AFC).  The new Nexus will combine Near Field Communication and Alternating Field Communication  to form the Near Field Layer (NFL). Unfortunately, it's not yet determined if NFL will work this year.

J-E-T-S Jets Jets Jets

The story goes that in 2007 when AJ. Smith of the Chargers fired Marty Schottenheimer after a 14-2 season, he called LT into his office.  LT was already concerned with AJ's decision making ability after losing his good friend Brees the year before & Smith wanted to reassure him. He told LT that if he listened to him, he would guarantee him a Super Bowl.  

This year, AJ released LT.

Prior to this season, I always found the story slightly encouraging as a Chargers fan...  I just didn't realize he meant with the Jets.

College Football Playoffs

On this day of College Bowl games, I find myself sitting here wishing more than ever for a college football playoff.  In my perfect world, here's how I see it working, loosely modeled from the NFL playoff structure.

I propose a playoff consisting of 14 teams played across 4 weeks.

The NCAA Division I conferences with at least 10 members get automatic seeds in the playoffs for their conference champion. For 2010 that would have been 9 conferences, Big East, C-USA, Big Ten, ACC, MAC, SEC, Sun Belt, Big 12, Pac-10. 

So, for seeding in 2010, the top 9 places go to the 9 conference winners in order of BCS standing with the remaining 5 wild card seeds going to the highest rated BCS teams that are not conference champions.

Initial week of playoffs would be ordered as follows with the team matchups using 2010 seedings:

week 1 - Wildcard Round
A: 1 Bye (Auburn)
B: 2 Bye (Oregon)
C: 3 vs 14 (Wisconsin vs Michigan State) 
D: 4 vs 13 (Oklahoma vs Arkansas)
E: 5 vs 12 (Virginia Tech vs Ohio State)
F: 6 vs 11 (UCF vs Stanford)
G: 7 vs 10 (Connecticut vs TCU)
H: 8 vs 9 (Miami of Ohio vs FIU)

week 2 - Quarter Finals
1: A vs H 
2: B vs G
3: C vs F
4: D vs E

week 3 - Semi Finals
A: 1 vs 4
B: 2 vs 3

Week 4 Championship
1: A vs B

For 2010, the seeding works out as such:

1: SEC: Auburn
2: Pac-10: Oregon
3: Big Ten: Wisconson
4: Big 12: Oklahoma
5: ACC: Virginia Tech
6: C-USA: UCF
7:Big East: Connecticut
8: MAC: Miami of Ohio
9: SunBelt: FIU

10: Mtn West: TCU
11: Pac-10: Stanford
12: Big Ten: Ohio State
13: SEC: Arkansas
14: Big Ten: Michigan State

Just missed the playoffs:
15: WAC: Boise State
16: SEC: LSU
17: Big 12: Missouri
18: Big 12: Oklahoma State
19: WAC: Nevada
20: SEC: Alabama

We would get to see some interesting matchups and teams with less BCS/AP/Coaches Poll juice would get a chance to compete with the big boys. Some might note that there are only two conferences missing from the automatic seed, the WAC and Mtn West. I would prefer to see 2 extra wild card spots than to guarantee a small conference a seed.  The WAC and Mtn West could also merge to guarantee themselves an automatic seed and still provide for 4 wild card spots.

You could also get rid of the two bye games by making it a 16 game playoff, but I like the idea of rewarding 1 and 2 with a little bonus.  Then again, maybe 1 and 2 would rather play the game for additional revenue.  Regardless, I'd be ok either way.

I know I'd watch nearly every one of these games and care a lot more during the entire college football season.