Was this a good idea?

It's finished!

You can find me here - come by and say hi!

It snowed. I took photos

Many more here

Snow is still exciting

Despite being "almost 30" I still turn into an 8 year old when I see snow...

Observations on banking

I went to HSBC Bank at the Scott Arms earlier, to withdraw some dough. I have 3 observations:

1. The "starting your own business" leaflet had a cool looking dude with 2 tattoos, wearing a t-shirt and jeans and no shoes, sitting on a stool.

2. The in house radio station was playing Sympathy for the Devil.

3. There were cardboard cut outs with pictures of a. two pandas hugging; b. a baby polar bear; c. a cute tiger cub. It wasn't immediately clear why, although eventually I did see a little display of bookmarks about how sustainable HSBC were.

Banks are weird.

You know those "you know you are a child of the 80s if you..." email things?

Well, I have an addition for them...

You know you're a child of the 70s or 80s if you can't pull up the hood of your coat without feeling like Obi Wan.

Wogan vs Carrots.

Earlier on today I was asked what was better: Carrots or Terry Wogan. This was my answer. What would yours be?

Carrots or Terry Wogan. Excellent question – in fact, really in masters degrees in broadcast communication and catering, that’s the central tenet of many a good thesis. If it was broccoli vs wogan (as would surely have been the fashion in the 90s) then broccoli would win – but carrots don’t have the moral authority that broccoli has. Ok…so Carrot and Coriander soup may be the king of soups, and indeed, generally considered nicer than Wogan and coriander soup, but the Carrot Breakfast Show experiment proved a huge failure when the carrot consistently forgot to back announce records so no-one knew what he’d been playing. The Carrot did play some pretty good music though and had a penchant for folk-rock which lead to The Byrds reforming for the one off “Carrotacula” at Alton Towers. Seeing “Turn, Turn, Turn” lip synced by one of the greatest west coast bands of all times whilst riding the corkscrew was surely a cultural highlight of the last millennia.

Then there’s Eurovision – well, could a carrot do that job? I don’t think so…Sadly for Terry though, as good as he is, he’s not rich enough in the vital nutrient Beta-Carotene, and you can’t grate him and put him in a salad, so he loses. But it was close.

Merry Christmas

And a lovely 2007 to one and all :)

The Blogger Poker Tour

So, eagle eyed readers may have spied way down the page a banner about the Blogger Poker Tour, which I've been a keen participant in, if not writer abouter...

Well, top notch poker blogger and all round BPT coverer extraordinaire Mike has blackmailed me into writing substantitively about it in order to be potentially in line to pick up some much needed bonus points if I bust him out of the tournament. (Mike, I'm assuming, not being familiar with the term and being all English and suchlike, that that's what "launching" means :) )

I don't normally write about poker on my blog, for a variety of reasons, but it's by far my favourite game in the world, and in the not too distant future will HOPEFULLY be a facet of my professional life (not in the 'making money from playing poker' way though, I have neither the "mad skillz" nor "desire" to do that for a living) but in that I'm working on a project that involves poker...more hints and clues and stuff to follow...

Anyway, the BPT has been a series of freeroll tournaments, which are poker tournaments with no entry fee, which offer a prize...I have won no prizes whatsoever this season, but last season I won a huuuge $30, which I managed to build up quite a bit before removing the funds and paying some bills...Although I've not won any prizes, David's been crushing the BPT this season and is more or less guaranteed his place in the final...I'm sure he'd credit me and Phill with helping him with his game and being contributory to his success (I say I'm sure, but what I mean is "maybe" :) ) His game is constantly dangerous and unpredictable and he's got increasingly fearless which has really helped. I've had some excellent results away from the BPT, but it's just not been my stomping ground - I've managed a couple of "get near the final table and get horribly beat" finishes, but nothing better. I have had a great time there, and loved reading the coverage, especially Mike's - I know there's an incredible prize for the best blog coverage of the BPT, and I'm sure that's been a huge part of his motivation, but regardless, he's been absolutely devoted to the cause of the BPT, and expanding it, and it's fitting that he's hosting the last event of the season. It was gonna be PL Omaha hi lo split, which would have been AWESOME, but poker.com, where the tour is held, has not rolled out their software update in time so it's going to be deep stack no limit holdem. I could not be more pleased about this, as I've NEVER played a tournament with more than 2500 starting chips online, and am constantly bugging David, Phill and James to start with insane numbers of chips in our regular games - I think my natural game, which is to see as many flops as possible in position, is well suited to deep stacked games...anyway, I'll probably ending up busting out really early, but I'm sure it'll be fun - I'll let you know how I did tomorrow!

Love

So, the Beatles have a new album out.

And it's absolutely stunning. Just...stunning.

The Royal Tenenbaums Sketchbook

The Royal Tenenbaums is right up there with my favourite films. I really like this

I've said it before...

And I'll say it again...

I LOVE Firefox...

I'm no political analyst

But with the Dems winning some actual political influence and powers of oversight, could they not maybe investigate this a bit?

Talking of the midterms, I've spent the morning going through the political news section of digg, grinning and digging like a miner on double digging day

I have AMAZING friends

So, having been sad that I couldn't upload all my photos to flickr last week, I relayed the story of the 20mb upload limit to my friend Graham.

Today he appears on IM to say "I've bought you a present." We played the yes no game in order for me to guess and on my 8th attempt, with a fairly big clue, I got it...He's got me a pro account on flickr! He claimed they played a jedi mind trick on him by asking "Do you want to buy paulansorge a pro account?" whilst he was looking at my photos - he realised he did apparently! So, I've been uploading photos, and if it takes your fancy, please do go and have a look at my photo stream. For now, here's a picture called Mystery Path 2 to indicate the paths of photography that I can now walk down (or something like that anyway...)

Heartening Haloween Happenings

So yesterday me and my esteemed housemate had just returned home from an adventure and were standing around in the kitchen waiting for either the kettle to boil or the tea to be brewed when I spied several children trotting up to the front door. I thought one of them might have had a cape on and at a rough glance there looked to be about 3 of them. "Uh oh" I thought. "No treats have we" I thought. Then I spied the array of nature's bounty that we had in our metaphorical fruit bowl (we don't have an actual *bowl* as such, the fruit just sits on the side). Here was my chance to give out treats with a clean concious - healthy treats! Delicious vitamin packed treats! These kids are definitely gonna egg our house for giving them these treats treats! So I went to the door, laden with oranges, apples and kiwi fruits, expecting to see three disappointed becostumed kids. When I got there I saw five excited lightly-costumed-at-best kids - kids dressed up as "A gang of kids going from house to house demanding treats"...They "trick-or-treat"ed at me in best brummy accents and looked genuinely DELIGHTED when I offered them a choice of fruit. Kiwis went down best, followed by apples - the satsumas went untouched - who says kids aren't smart? Off they trotted to be rewarded by others for their complete lack of satorial efforts with actual sweets, and I was left with a warm sense of the righteousness of Jamie Oliver...

A Tree on its Own