06.04.06
New multitasking phone
I found the next phone I want. A phone that can make toasties amongst other things.
03.15.06
It’s betting time.
For this week (13-17th March) VictorChandler has a £60 free matched bet offer (normally £20). Which means, using the guide you can collect £40-50 in your pocket.
How to do it:
You will need to signup to both a betting exchange, and a VictorChandler. Once signed up to both, deposit £60 into your VictorChandler account as we are going to make a £60 bet with them. You need to first bet £60 of your own money before they will give you a £60 free bet, but don’t worry there is no chance of you loosing it with the system.
Now you will need to find an event thats on both VictorChandler and on your betting exchange where the odds at VictorChandler are above 2 (part of the T&C). In my case I found a good match on the UEFA game Roma v Middlesbrough. I matched up the draw with a 3.6 at VictorChandler and a 3.75 at Betdaq. According to the calc at the guide, this is a good close match only loosing 7.57% of the initial stake.
(note :If your too late for this match, try find other close matching odds and stick them in the calculator.)
Now looking at the calculator, look at the field that’s labelled ‘Lay Risk’. You will need to deposit at least this amount into your Betdaq account. Now look at the field on the calculator that is labelled ‘Lay Amount’. Make a lay bet for this amount at Betdaq.
Then make a normal £60 bet for the same thing at VictorChandler.
Wait till the bets are settled. After the bets are settled, you should be out of pocket £4.54, but also have a £60 free bet at VictorChandler to use. Repeat the process with the free bet and because the winning stake is not returned (info in the guide) you should have around £40-50 gain.
Update: For the second bet I found a nice little match with 5.0 for the bookmaker and 5.2 for the exchange. I matched this up using the calculator, and made sure I choose stake not returned. After the bet settled I was up £40 with no risk to myself. Not bad I say.
02.24.06
Who Shot Harry Whittington? - Place your bets now!
I suppose everyone has heard of the Cheney shooting incident by now, if not you’ve been living under a rock. Even the Daily Show had 3 straight episodes on the subject. I think it’s all been blown out of proportion in the news. I mean, one old person gets shot by accident on a hunting accident and doesn’t even die. How is this news? People are getting shot and killed all over the world.
Anyways, Bodog.com sent me a mailout the other day and in it you can bet on this very incident (no not if the guy will die or anything sensible like that). This is the bet and the odds as of now:
Will it be publicly revealed by December 31, 2006 that Vice President Dick Cheney did not shoot Harry Whittington?
Yes +500
Personally, I’d take the “No” option if it were available, but then I guess that would be the sensible option.
On another by similiar matter, if your a regulary Daily Show watcher, you might have seen the bit where they joke about how short a turnover the Whitehouse Press Secretary job is. I guess lieing to the public is a hard job. Here is the bet you can take:
Will Scott McClellan be fired/resign from his post as Press Secretary within the next?
Within 0-3 months 5/1
Within 3-6 months 2/1
Within 6-9 months 3/1
Within 9-18 months 4/1
Within 18 months-Until the last day of Bush’s term 10/1
02.13.06
Multi-Touch Touchscreens
Don’t know if this is a pre-recorded demo or the technology in action. Anyhow the idea is great, multi-touch touchscreens, that is the ability for a touch screen to register more then one thing touching them at a time. The next step in the UI ladder since the invention of the mouse. I want to have support for more then one mouse at a time as a cheap version till I get the multi-touch touch screen.
01.31.06
Taking stock of the situation
I finally decided after about a year to invest in the UK stock market. It’s actually the first time I’ve invested into a stock market (not counting company given stock options of course). It’s very overwhelming the amount of options and information available to help one choose a stock. Also one doesn’t have to just buy the stock, one could sell the stock before one has bought it and then buy it back later at a cheaper price (thats called shorting a stock). Sounds wierd huh?
But I intend to check out this playground of numbers and money, 2 of my favourite things. I guess your all curious to which shares I’ve bought? Well, I thought I’d start out easy and buy the ftse 100. Not all of it, but I bought it through whats called an Exchange Traded Funds (ETF). I bought some iShares. The FTSE 100 tracker to be precise. I know this purchase would of been better in March (up over 30% since then) but hindsight is always 20/20. Now this will be a long term purchase so it really shouldn’t matter how the market does in the short term. The UK economy is not going anwhere, and I have faith in it to last.
Here is a graph of the FTSE 100 over the last 3 years, straight up it goes:
Now for the numbers, I bought 170 shares of ISF. At a price of 579.65. Commission is £12.50 a trade, so total cost is £997.91. Total cost is really £997.905 so it seems the bastards have already taken half a penny due to rounding.
Warning: This is my personal blog, any stock or share information given is merely a diary of my accounts, not to be taken as financial advice. If you do, you have been warned.
12.15.05
New Employee of Adobe
I am now officially a new employee at Adobe. Officially it’s Adobe Consulting, the professional service department of Adobe. Basically we help other companies implement Adobe (and Macromedia) solutions.
This should be good. Adobe is a big, longstanding company. I heard they have good benefits too, I’ll soon find out when I get told all about them. I aim to enroll in the employee stock purchase plan.
For the start of the year, we are all getting shipped of to sunny California. Then straight after that I got some training in Japan, then a project in Italy, then back to UK. It will be a round the world trip.
Update: Well, the training got moved to California so it was just extra time in San Francisco. It was nice, I’ll put up pics laters.
11.30.05
Playing chicken with a bus
Damn some bus drivers can be rude. Some are nice, but the rude ones really stand out. For instance, at one of my bus stops, the bus stop is at the lights. Sometimes some of the rude bus drivers, close their doors, and move up and wait at the red light, some poor geezer would see the bus, run up to it and tap on the door to get in. Which is reasonable because the bus stop is at the lights, and the light is red. Its not even an main street interjuction, just some back alley light. Some of the rude bus drivers would just look at the poor people tapping and just shake their head. Heck, I’ve even had it done to me. It so frustrating looking at the bus you want to get on and they won’t let you. You gotta run to the next bus stop and hope he gets stuck at the lights. They must laugh when they pick you up at the next stop and your huffing and puffing. You could of just let me on back at the first bus stop, you didn’t have to be a cunt.
Well I’ve always thought, how could you get back at someone like that who holds the power? Then I thought, what if when he didn’t let you on, you just stood infront of the bus till he did? Surely he can’t just drive over you. I wanted to try it on the next bus driver that did it to me.
Little did I know I would get my chance, but at a different bus stop for different reasons. I had to go somewhere after work which was 25mins walk away for a little errand into the city. It was bloody freezing, so I thought I’d use public transport to get their quicker. To get there by tube needed a changing of line, and there was a bus just out front that took me there so I thought I’d wait for that instead. Buses come every 5-10 mins right?
Wrong
I waited what felt like 20mins for the bus. Several other busses passed, multiple times, but they weren’t the one I needed. Did I mention it was COLD. So finally I see my bus, and I try to wave it down. Imagine my frustration as he blindy doesn’t stop and continues on. I was furious. Lucky (or unlucky for him) he was stuck at the lights just 20meters down. So I ran down there and tapped on his window to let me on? He shook his head and said no? What the hell? Ok he wants to play games, so I go stand in front of the bus. He trys tapping the accelrator to move forward and scare me, but I hold me ground. We wait for a while, the lights change full cycle. I go up to his window, trying to stay infront so he can’t drive forward, and ask him again to let me on as I was waiting at the bus stop and he didn’t stop. He tries to tell me I wasn’t at the bus stop. Bit more arguing ensues, so I go back, Arthur Dent style, in front of the bus. I attempt another negotiation, but he starts flicking switches on the top of his panel and on the roof. It looked like he was signalling for the police or something, maybe they got a quick switch for trouble against a bus driver. So I figure, stuff it, he won’t let me on. I start walking away, he flashes his lights at me. I turn around and walk back and he opens the door and lets me on.
He tells me to stand there next to the window as he drives off. We have a discussion, I assure him I was waiting at the bus stop for 20mins, in the cold, waving at him when he passed. He said I wasn’t there and that, am I telling him he isn’t doing his job because his job is to see people at the bus stop and stop for them. He also told me that my life wasn’t worth risking for a bus ride, there is always another one 5 mins behind. So I counter with that I’ve been waiting for 20mins, that its bloody freezing, and I reiterated that I was at the bus stop, waving at him. Eventually he apoligised and said I could go sit down, I apoligised also as it was the right thing to do. Funny, noone on the bus said anything or even cared, or moved a muscle during this whole thing. Typical stone face Londoners on public transport.
11.23.05
Tishoff
My buddy whose off in Peru just got a haircut. You can read about him on his blog at:
Anyways, his haircut was kind of familar and I wondered where I seen it before. Then I remembered, its The Hoff!
Decide for yourself.
11.15.05
Birthday
Woo, yesterday was my birthday. Another year and I feel so old, even tho others would consider me young. Age is in the eye of the beholder I say. My dad is over 80 and my mum is just over 5o. I even got a little brother who is 15. Not bad for the old man 
How did I celebrate my birthday? Well for starters I came into work nice and late (like thats unusual, but bday is a good excuse). I had to dress up for the day because we were going to an expensive restaurant near work. I caught a bit of flak at work, people were asking me when the job interview was.
After work, went to this nice, expensive restauarant called Gordon Ramsey’s at Claridge’s. It’s one of Gordon Ramsey’s signature restaurants. He has apparently won 3 Michelin stars. The only chef in London to do so. Michelin stars are probably the most famous and influential gastronomic ratings in the world.
The food was exquisite, even though it was small. They had some nice free bread, and a free apertif dessert that had some red jelly in the middle of this shot glass. It was delicous. We ordered 2 courses, a main and a desert each. For my main, I ordered the cornish lamb. It was soft and tender and juicy, with some nice crunchy bits. Of course I just ate the meat and left the spinach and olive and who knows what other things on the plate. Nat had some sort of potatoe risotto. I’m not to knowledgable on what it is, but she reckons it was delicous. For desert I ordered the creme brulee and Nat got a chocolate fondant. My desert came out with some anise icecream, which I reckons tastes like anisead and I abhorred. Nat’s desert came with milk icecream, and because she likes anise, we swapped. Perfect.
I was full by the end and couldn’t finish the last bit of my creme brulee. Weak I know, but I filled on bread and drink and I was merry. The total of the bill came to £187, so we rounded up to £200. Kind of expensive for just a two person, two course meal, but I don’t plan on eating there everynight. Once was enough for me. We didn’t get to see or hear the infamous Gordon Ramsey, or the guy who won Hell’s Kitchen in the US and came to work for him over here. The head chef that nite was Mark something. We couldn’t even see the kitchen. Though I read on their website you can get a table thats in the actual kitchen itself. That would be cool.
For my birthday present I got a new Remington electric razor. It’s something I wanted for a long time. No more buying razor blades. I gave it a whirl this morning. Though I missed a bit so I still need a bit of practice. We reckon it looks and is the male version of a vibrator.