Sunday, August 30, 2009

Book Review: Ace on the River

I just (8/29/09) finished listening to Ace on the River, by Barry Greenstein. Read by the author. This is a very interesting look into the life of a professional poker player. It is more a memoir than an "Advanced Poker Guide". It does include a lot of information on playing the larger game -- building a life while playing poker.

Thinks I liked:

  • Talking about the difference between tourney and cash game styles. Especially about how the cash game people look down on the tourney players, yet are jealous of the "respectability" afforded the tourney players.
  • The last section walks you throw several real tourney hands, and he walks you through how he played them, and what the optimal plays were. On the audio version, there are pauses to force you to think about the situation and make your own answer before he tells you his thoughts.
  • While tourney payouts are top heavy, so it's best to win. it is important to guard your chips more than a cash game, since there is no rebuy. This doesn't always mean cautious, tight play. Really it means evaluating where your stack is relative to the big blind -- and in a tourney the blinds are always moving up so they are a big chunk of the stacks. It may well be that you take a big chance when you're below 8 big blinds, because you've got to take it to stay alive.
  • Winning early hands gives chip power. Use your big stack "as a bludgeon" on your opponents
  • Conversly, realize the power of the short stack (more useful in a cash game). Easier to get odds to double you up. In a tourney, it's still nicer to have the big stack!
With a forward to Doyle, how could you not be interested?

Perl Iron Man Rules!

My Badge! Now that The Iron Man Badges are working, here's a quick recap of the Perl Iron Man competition rules and badges.
To stay in the Iron Man Challenge, you must maintain a rolling frequency of 4 posts every 32 days, with no more than 10 days between posts.

Badge Progression:

  1. Paper Man Paper Woman Start as Paper Man
  2. Stone Woman
  3. Stone Man After four weeks, move on to Stone Man.
  4. Bronze Woman Bronze Man "Get Further" you become Bronze Man. (12 posts?)
  5. IRON MAN IRON WOMAN 6 months of straight posting is IRON MAN.

Edit: updated with the female badges. It does not look good that two of those are missing!

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

August LA.PM update

August LA.PM meeting is tomorrow, Thursday August 27 at 7pm. See you then.
LA.PM homepage and directions

Our two speakers will be:

John Beppo
John will be talking about a COMET server he wrote in Perl, and integration into existing web applications.
Aran Deltac (bluefeet)
Aran presents: Destination Moose
Aran is an active CPAN developer, a Software Architect and Manager at ValueClick, the organizer behind the Thousand Oaks Perl Mongers, a member of the Perl Iron Man competition, and an advocate of Modern (aka Enlightened) Perl.
cpan: bluefeet
website: bluefeet.net
Thanks guys for agreeing to present! Looking forward to it!

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Perl6 hackathon

The kind fellows at Thousand Oaks Perl Mongers have moved the Perl6 hackathon from 8/22 to 8/29, so that I can make it. Thanks guys! So now I have 6 more days to get ready for perl6.

Thursday, August 13, 2009

August LA Perl Mongers Meeting

Hello Los Angeles!

What: Los Angeles Perl Mongers Meeting
When: 7-9pm
Date: Thursday, August 27, 2009
Where: The Rubicon Project HQ - 1925 S. Bundy, 90025
Theme: Perl!
Food: Pizza and beverage provided.
RSVP: Responses always appreciated.

Open Call for Presenters

What have you done recently with Perl? Come tell your friends and let us all learn together!

Presentations:

  1. Kenny Flegal: unknown presentation. He may be forced to cancel by an over-busy work schedule.
  2. You: talking 'bout stuff

About our speakers:

Kenny Flegal works at ValueClick, creating a new monitoring ubersystem. In his spare time he has a number of ventures to help lift others up by their bootstraps.

You are an awesome perler!

About your host:

  • Andrew Grangaard is a Senior Software Engineer at the Rubicon Project, and long time Perl Monk(ey).
  • The Rubicon Project (http://www.rubiconproject.com)
       The Rubicon Project is an Advertising Technology Company headquartered in Los Angeles. Their mission is to automate the selling and buying of online advertising.

See you at 7 on Thursday the 27th

View Rubicon Project in a larger map

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

I am Iron Man!

Rock on. I'll see about getting them live this week. Thanks very much.
--Matt S Trout

Matt S Trout wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 08:14:32PM -0400, Andrew Grangaard wrote:
>> Matt,
>>
>> I have my changes in a public github repository. They basically just sort the incoming posts by date when doing the comparisons.
>>
>> repository:
>> git://github.com/spazm/Iron-Munger.git
>> blogpost description:
>> http://www.lowlevelmanager.com/2009/07/iron-man-perl-redux.html
>
> Rock on. I'll see about getting them live this week. Thanks very much.

follow-up to Iron Man Perl, Redux.

Sweet, we may get our badges soon! And Matt doesn't Top-post! Next thing you know, it'll be Christmas!

Monday, August 10, 2009

Finding Time

We always talk about "finding time" and "managing time", but of course we can't manage time -- it's going to tick by regardless. We can manage what we do, what we choose to do, what we accept from others. I'm failing, I have so much I have chosen to do. The queue length is increasing and I have so much pouring in from others (wife and work) that I need to say "no" to something. But to what?
Effective executives start with their time.

"Know thyself," the old prescription for wisdom, is almost impossibly difficult for mortal men. But everyone can follow the injunction "Know thy time" if one wants to, and be well on the road toward contribution and effectiveness.
--Peter Drucker

Most of the "no's" seem to be related to my personal projects. I have a few awesome code projects bubbling up to the surface. I've got a neat Moose+Catalyst app that I'd like to toss together and integrate into Facebook, and that whole project is just to encourage me along my other goals.

I'd like to have this ready to present to the Mongers, but when? And I need to send out invites for this month's Monger and especially find someone to present, since my scheduled speaker is talking of bailing -- because he too is too busy with work. Also, I finally have webdav access to the los angelese perl mongers site, so now that needs to get brought "up-to-date".

When will I get the time to hack around again?

While looking for a nice Drucker quote, I came across this article on Time Management looks interesting. Maybe if I had the time to read it...

Saturday, August 1, 2009

July Perl Mongers recap

July Perl Mongers was on Thursday, July 16. We had another great crowd of about 20 people. I found myself having to shoo people out of the office at 10:30pm so I could get some post-meeting work done. That's always a good sign.

David "Xantus" Davis started us off with a quick look at mojolicious. Mojolicious is an MVC framework built on top of mojo. It is very new and very hip -- and *very* light on documentation at the moment, so it was neat to see someone who was having fun using it. Thanks a lot for volunteering your time to present!

Mon-Chaio's talk on "Interviewing (Perl) Programming Candidates" was surprisingly well received. I knew he'd give a polished presentation but didn't know just how much conversation and debate it would engender. I liked that it wasn't just a thinly veiled recruiting attempt since we're hiring. And who can forget bringing back the term perler. MC: Can you send me your slides, and I'll link them from here.

Informal polling showed that "third thursday" doesn't work well, possibly because of Mindshare.la but that people like Thursdays. In August we'll try "fourth thursday", August 27, 2009. See you then!