I have moved the blog to peterbirks.dreamwidth.org

All future updates will appear there. The archive of old LJ posts has also been moved there.

So, just over a week in of low-limit ($1-$2) NLHE in Vegas. 59 hours. And, after losing $240 in about 15 minutes last night, a grand total of $17 up ( Read more... )

So, five days into Vegas, and no blog, no photos. What's been going on ( Read more... )

There was an interesting piece from James Mackintosh in the FT on Saturday, where he acted the grim reaper for equities. He observed (and I paraphrase here) that if we recovered and interest rates went up, the appeal of equities relative to gilts would collapse, whereas if the economy did not recover, current dividend levels were unsustainable, ( Read more... )

So, a collection of British tourists, enjoying a quiet drink in a bar in Rome, are viciously assaulted by masked Romans armed with knives, iron bars and clubs. Several were hospitalized and at least one will need an operation ( Read more... )

Dell announced a 47% drop in profits this morning. That's a neat indication to anyone who supports buying "growth companies" as an investment strategy that the important part of that strategy is to know when to get out ( Read more... )

I got a whole load of "replies" to very old posts tonight. They were, of course, all exactly the same. And whatthe point is in replying to posts that a blogger made six years ago, I really don't know ( Read more... )

They are going to install Microsoft Lync on my machine at work. I see that it previously had the snappy name "Microsoft Office Communicator" - a title that might not have sold many copies but which at least did what it said on the tin ( Read more... )

I read nearly all of Jared Diamond's The Third Chimpanzee while on holiday, as well as Ian McEwan's Sweet Tooth It takes concentrated effort to read real books these days. It used to be that there was always a bit of spare time here or there, but these days I spend that time checking my email, or Facebook, or Twitter, or reading today's newspapers ( Read more... )

Alvin Roth and Lloyd Shapley have won the Nobel Prize for economics. It's another kind of gane-theory award. You might as well award the Nobel prize for economics for showing the optimal strategy with two draws to come and a Kxxx badugi against one opponent who is drawing one ( Read more... )