Tue, 22 Nov 2005
If you’ve been into computers as long as I have then you remember text adventure games like ZORK. OK, fess up, how many of you have been eaten by a Grue? In any case, an article on Slashdot last week was talking about text adventure games or “Interactive Fiction” (IF). Well, that got me thinking about about IF and how writing a text adventure game might be an interesting writing excercise. So there ya go, I need to do some research on how these games are created. My first thought was to build my own text adventure building software, but then I had a sudden fit of sanity and decided to do a BIT more research. After searching SourceForge and playing with Google I came upon ADRIFT ADRIFT is an excelent example of adventure building software. The demo allows you to build an adventure with a maximum of 10 rooms but other than that all the features are enabled. It took all of about 3 days of playing around with Adrift before I decided it was worth registering. And at less than $19 it’s a cheap way to play around with IF. Writing Interactive Fiction is a great combination of writing and programming. The writing part obviously comes from writing the room descriptions, dialog, object descriptions while the programming part comes from setting up actions and conditions such as : Only allow the player to open the safe if they’ve found the envelope with the combination written on it EVEN IF they enter the correct combination. So I’ve been geeking out and writing an adventure about a CIA agent who has to retrieve some stolen laser weapon plans from a Russian spy. Since the project I’m working on at my job is pretty unsatisfying it’s kind of nice to do something geeky and technical at home. My brain needs a little challenge like that every now and then. If you want to play some of these games (all of which are free) go to the ADRIFT web site and download the Adrift runner program. Then go to the Adventures section of the website and download games to your heart’s content.This story is from the
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Mon, 14 Nov 2005
Music Lessons and New Web Site
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[/music/teaching] department
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Sun, 13 Nov 2005
This blog entry is a repaired blog entry with the links fixed. I was listening to episode 50 of the Card Club podcast on Lord Admiral Radio and they had an interview with Isabelle “No Mercy” Mercier. In that interview she mentioned that her mother plays in the $1 tournaments on PokerStars. “What’s this?” I thought. “PokerStars has $1 tournaments? I had no idea” Well it turns out that yes, they are constantly running 45 player tournaments at a buy in of $1 + .20 $1 goes to the prize pool and 20 cents goes to PokerStars. There is no rake. These tournaments are great. It gives you a chance to play a LOT of hands for very little money. Playing a lot of hands really helps solidify the strategies that you learn from books. Want to find out how weak A 10o really is? Just try playing it a few times. Want to have it pounded into you that AK is a drawing hand and not an automatic winner? Try playing it to the river a few times. Yes, when you can play nearly 100 hands for $1 you really start to see why the strategies you’re reading about work. So I’ve been playing these tournaments and so far, I’m not doing too badly. I’m essentially using the strategy that Henry and Zog talked about on their Poker Diagram podcast. It’s an extremely tight strategy but it seems to work. After you’ve played a few hundred hands with this strategy you start to learn where to loosen up (just a little bit) to take a few more chips or to steal the blinds. So far, it seems to be working PokerStars Tournament #14663960, No Limit Hold’emBuy-In: $1.00/$0.20
45 players
Total Prize Pool: $45.00
Dear DruLeeParsec,
You finished the tournament in 3rd place.
A $7.00 award has been credited to your Real Money account.
PokerStars Tournament #14752266, No Limit Hold’em
Buy-In: $1.00/$0.20
45 players
Total Prize Pool: $45.00
Dear DruLeeParsec,
You finished the tournament in 2nd place.
A $10.00 award has been credited to your Real Money account.
PokerStars Tournament #14870254, No Limit Hold’em
Buy-In: $1.00/$0.20
45 players
Total Prize Pool: $45.00
Dear DruLeeParsec,
You finished the tournament in 6th place.
A $3.00 award has been credited to your Real Money account.
PokerStars Tournament #14902805, No Limit Hold’em
Buy-In: $1.00/$0.20
45 players
Total Prize Pool: $45.00
Dear DruLeeParsec,
You finished the tournament in 1st place.
A $14.00 award has been credited to your Real Money account.
PokerStars Tournament #14927031, No Limit Hold’em
Buy-In: $1.00/$0.20
45 players
Total Prize Pool: $45.00
Dear DruLeeParsec,
You finished the tournament in 4th place.
A $5.00 award has been credited to your Real Money account.
PokerStars Tournament #14929727, No Limit Hold’em
Buy-In: $5.00/$0.50
27 players
Total Prize Pool: $135.00
Dear DruLeeParsec,
You finished the tournament in 5th place.
A $11.00 award has been credited to your Real Money account.
Total Entry Fees paid : $11.50 Total Prize Money Earned : $50.00 Yeah, PokerStars rocks.
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[/poker] department
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Hey folks, Well, the links are fixed again and we seem to be back up and running (Except for the RSS feed which is now broken. It’s always something) So I need to know. Is anybody reading this? If so send me a quick email. Thanks blogmail@brouelette.com
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Sat, 12 Nov 2005
I’m still working on the link problem. I have the catagory and permanent links working now, but the links inside the blog stories are still broken. (WHY!? WHY?) But first a quick gloat. PokerStars Tournament #14976097, No Limit Hold’emBuy-In: $5.00/$0.50
27 players
Total Prize Pool: $135.00
Tournament started - 2005/11/11 - 14:43:52 (ET)
Dear DruLeeParsec,
You finished the tournament in 1st place.
A $50.00 award has been credited to your Real Money account.
Congratulations!
Thank you for participating.
Yeah, PokerStars (and me) still rock.
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[/poker] department
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Fri, 11 Nov 2005
The links inside the blog stories arn’t working. I’m working on it and I’ll get them up and running as soon as I can.This story is from the
[/geek] department
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Tue, 08 Nov 2005
I was playing in Poker Stars tournament tonight and I couldn’t believe the very first hand: PokerStars Game #3010757441: Tournament #14870254, Hold’em No Limit - Level I (10/20) - 2005/11/09 - 00:35:04 (ET)Table ‘14870254 3’ Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: DruLeeParsec (1500 in chips)
Seat 2: scoopurazz (1500 in chips) is sitting out
Seat 3: 4lula (1500 in chips)
Seat 4: Pal Pit 8 (1500 in chips)
Seat 5: jer022 (1500 in chips)
Seat 6: hartless01 (1500 in chips)
Seat 7: shoop10 (1500 in chips)
Seat 8: returd99 (1500 in chips)
Seat 9: Japedo18 (1500 in chips)
scoopurazz: posts small blind 10
4lula: posts big blind 20
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to DruLeeParsec [Kc Kh]
Pal Pit 8: raises 1480 to 1500 and is all-in
jer022: calls 1500 and is all-in
hartless01: folds
shoop10: folds
returd99: folds
Japedo18: folds
DruLeeParsec: calls 1500 and is all-in
scoopurazz: folds
4lula: folds
*** FLOP *** [Jd 5h Jc]
*** TURN *** [Jd 5h Jc] [8d]
*** RIVER *** [Jd 5h Jc 8d] [4c]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Pal Pit 8: shows [Ks As] (a pair of Jacks)
jer022: shows [Ts Kd] (a pair of Jacks - lower kicker)
DruLeeParsec: shows [Kc Kh] (two pair, Kings and Jacks)
jer022 is sitting out
DruLeeParsec collected 4530 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 4530 | Rake 0
Board [Jd 5h Jc 8d 4c]
Seat 1: DruLeeParsec (button) showed [Kc Kh] and won (4530) with two pair, Kings and Jacks
Seat 2: scoopurazz (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 3: 4lula (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 4: Pal Pit 8 showed [Ks As] and lost with a pair of Jacks
Seat 5: jer022 showed [Ts Kd] and lost with a pair of Jacks
First hand of the tournament, I triple up and 2 players are already out. Unbelievable.
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