the newts.net

What a game. Talk about the come back kid! I was down to 275 chips with all 9 players round the table. Doubled through twice, hung onto to 2,000 chips for a while then hit the 3,500 mark. Couple of bad breaks had me down to 600. Clawed it back and the other players started to fall by the wayside. Got down to the last 4, just wanted to be in the money (3rd or better) after such a rollercoaster of a game… WON IT! :mrgreen:

$25 table :arrow: 1st :arrow: $112.50 Sweet. I actually got to :open: Cash Out:close: for a change, instead of the usual… deposit into your play account?

Wez has been known to twirl a pen around his fingers like he knows what he’s doing, but this guy could teach him a trick or two. He’s rather good.

Pen Spins —> [2.06MB .wmv file]
[right click -> save target as... to your desktop]

Jesus, turn your back on him for one second and…

A couple more flies tied up tonight:

Black and Orange Buzzer.

Black Hares Ear Buzzer.

But who’s got the key?

A few nights ago while working on the pc I had some Sky channel on in the background. I wasn’t really taking much notice of it but it’s nice to have a bit of ambient noise while working. The program finished and then I heard comming up next, the UK INDOOR Wind Surfing Championships! I thought I’d mis-heard but I kept an eye on the TV just to check. Sure enough… INDOOR wind surfing?!? Intrigued to find out how this worked, because as far as I remeber the wind doesn’t blow all that strong indoors, I watched the entire program. Sure enough, one giant indoor pool with starting ramps, jumps and the biggest set of fans all down one side of the arena. It was pretty clever stuff actually, and the fans obviously generated enough wind force as the wind surfers were going along at quite some speed and able to peform loop the loops off the ramp. You can read more about it here.

The thing that reminded me of this indoor outdoor activity, if you follow my thread, was this article in Saturday’s Sun newspaper:

The UK’s first INDOOR coarse fishery will open this year. The £225,000 project is being planned for the Lakeview Fishery in Melton Mowbray, Leics.
And it means anglers who loathe the wind, rain and snow of winter will be able to fish 12 months a year.
The two lakes with a total of 52 pegs and bankside vegetation, will have two heaters giving a constant temperature of 14 degrees centigrade even when it’s freezing outside.
There will also be lighting to allow angling to continue during the evenings at £10 a time.
Fishery owner Richard Goodburn, 53, said: “I hope to have the indoor lakes open by September 1st.”

What on earth is going on here? Are we turning to a nation of pussies or what? Jesus, if it’s too cold for you to fish, put another jumper on or buy a decent coat. If it’s still too cold then you’re a fair weather fanny and we don’t want your type round these parts anyway!

What next? Are we going to build an indoor North Sea so the trawlermen don’t get cold? And boy am I looking forward to the UK’s first INDOOR Sky Diving Championships!

As they say: If you can’t stand the heat, don’t stay in the kitchen. If you can’t stand the cold… Fcuk off to Florida or something!

But it’s just a half WOO YAY as I don’t actually get it until Monday. It’s being tested at the moment to check for any Dead Pixels, an inherent problem with flat panel (LCD / TFT) screens. Subject to passing the pixel test, 19 phat inches of phlat screen will be on my desk by Monday. WEDNESDAY

The CTX S962A.

I remember it well. It was a balmy summers day in 1991. I was laid out in my back garden listening to the cricket commentary on radio 5 live’s Test Match Special (TMS) when I heard the famous ‘Jonners’ & ‘Aggers’ laughter fit live as it happened. I was laid on the grass in stitches, hurting from laughing.

Brian Johnston.

England were playing the West Indies at The Oval when Curtley Ambrose bowled a vicious ball at Ian ‘Beefy’ Botham, forcing him to stumble backwards towards his stumps. Botham tried to lift his leg over the stumps but his inner thigh dislodged the bails and he was out ‘Hit Wicket’. [Score Card]

And so was spawned the infamous “Couldn’t get his leg over” commentary. If you’ve never heard it then you ought to be downloading it and listening to it. If you have heard it, then you know you want to hear it again!

Jonners & Aggers —> The Commentary [984KB]

What reminded me of it, appart from England’s (specifically Steve Harmison’s) continuing fantastic form against the West Indies, was this feature that Radio 5 Live are running to find the best sports commentary bloopers. Check it out, it’s pretty funny. You know where my vote went though!

Just started work on my Uncle’s new look site. Professor Stephen.J.Newton PhD, or Unc to me! Steve is an abstract artist who has exhibited his work all over Europe and parts of the United States. Along with his paintings, Steve is a respected academic who has a number of published books and papers to his name, along with a comprehensive resume as a visiting lecturer to universities nationwide. Steve’s artistic tendancies don’t just extend to painting. He’s an accomplished drawer and etcher, and also likes a strum every now and again! He’s got a site already which is offline at the minute, but should be back up within a week or so, and then from that site I will be harvesting various pictures and text to incorporate into my new design, along with a whole host of his new work and long overdue updates.

The old site which should be back online soon is here.

And you can follow my progress with the re-designed site here.

Steve has an exhibition comming up soon with the respected Basil Beattie, we hope to have the new site fully funtional for that and updates of the exhibition quickly uploaded to the site.

Yep folks it’s the big 34 for the very lovely Ms Cole soon to be Mrs. Ornz.

Ms. Cole (aged 32 1/2)

So we’re all off to the Green Man to get pissed and fed before retiring to Chez Ornz for snifters, home made apple pie courtesy of a very kind customer of mine and an ass whooping at Virtua Tennis. Quality.

FUCK ME!… It’s like having a CRYSTAL BALL!

What on earth Wez was searching for to find such a disgusting pair of mingers is anyone’s guess, I don’t know who the other couple are though ;0)

Oh it just gets better! Not only do the England boys trounce the West Indies, Man Utd see the final nail driven into their league title coffin by local rivals City!

Tim Howard picks another one out the back of the net :0)

What a day!

What a fantastic result for the England boys in their first test over in the West Indies. The Windies bowled out for their lowest ever Test Match total of 47 all out in their second innings at Sabina Park - Jamaica. What a fantastic display of disciplined line and length bowling by Steve Harmison who took an unbelieveable 7 wickets for 12 runs!
It’s pretty fair to say that the West Indies are not quite the side I remember as a lad in the 80’s when they truly dominated the world of Test Cricket, but take nothing away from our lads, this is a magnificent feat and a real boost for the team for the up coming 3 tests.

Steve Harmison.

I have very very fond memories of a holiday I had in 86 when we visited several of the Carribean islands including Barbados on Christmas day. We hired a taxi driver (I fail to recall his name, but what a guy!) for the entire day who took us all over the island to see all the sights, bit like our own private guided tour. Two things our driver said stick in my mind to this day about that trip, the first was “We have TREE HUNDRED ‘N SIXTY FIVE beaches in Barbados, one for EVERY DAY OF THE YEAR” (In a strong West Indian accent) the other was the never ending, all day berrating we got over how the England Cricket Team were pants and the fact that they could never touch the West Indies, the best in the world. At the time he was dead right, and our only defence to the fact was that in the West Indies the sun shone for about as many days as Barbados has beaches, where as in England we’re lucky if we can get 6 weeks of weather conducive to playing cricket.
Oh how I’d love to meet him again today :0))

Iv’e just worked out how to make a small fortune playing poker…

…Start with a big one!

And some people are none too happy about it. I haven’t been to a circus since I was 6, and the thought of majestic tigers being brought up in captivity purely for human entertainment doesn’t enamour me in the slightest. No matter how well they are treat. I have never taken direct action against such a show though, unlike our Wez, so HUZZAH for Wez and as a tribute I made this mini film.

Circus Wez —> A flash movie tribute to the tiger’s friend. [207KB]

**NEW IMPROVED**… Now with Tiger Roar & Gaz’s agagagagag!

There’s a customer where I work, a bit of an electronics expert, who subscribes to the Everyday Practical Electronics mag (EPE). He kindly passes it on to me when he’s done with it, and I was reading a very interesting story in this months edition. It’s all to do with IBM and a pioneering new technology they are developing for producing microchips.

You can read more about it in this BBC report or an even more indepth piece from IBM themselves. The quote that struck me was:

“The most complex circuit they built — a 12 x 17-nanometer three-input sorter — is so small that 190 billion could fit atop a standard pencil-top eraser 7mm (about 1/4-inch) in diameter. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter; the length of five to 10 atoms in a line.”

190 BILLION electronic circuits on the top of a pencil rubber?!?

Not 190 thousand or 190 million, but 190 billion circuits fitting on the top of a pencil rubber. Incredible. The implications this is going to have on the future capacity and physical size of electronic storage devices is mindblowing.
I can see the future now. We will all have an electronic storage device about half the size of a grain of rice implanted under our skin. This device will be able to store, lets say, our entire music collection, our bank details and all our keys in electronic form. You be able to walk up to your car and it will recognise the chip in your arm and open the doors for you. Same with your house etc. You’ll be able to walk into your bank, go up to a cash machine and request £200. No cards and no pin numbers required. You will sit infront of your pc, download a song, and via blootooth it will be beamed from your pc to your microchip and added to your collection. You’ll be able to go round your mates and his hifi will be able to read the info off your chip and play your tunes… etc. etc. ad infinitum.

There’s some amazing stuff in the pipeline and technology will continue to progress at the phoenominal rate it has over the last 20 years, possibly exponentially. Is it all good news though? Or does it all sound slightly Orwellian?