Always cool to study Astronomy a little, I did this evening, thought I'd share =]
Galaxies
- 200 billion known Galaxies in the known universe.
- Our Galaxiy, The Milky Way, 12 billion years old.(Huge disc with giant spiral arms, and a bulge in the middle)
Born in nebulas, born in clouds of dust and gass.
* Pillars of creation.
* Around many of them are planets and moons.
(We humans thought for a very long time the milky way was the only one until 1924, until Hubble found out otherwise).
He found fuzzy blobs of lights, far far away, whole cities of stars, galaxies, way beyond The Milky Way.
Random Facts
- M87, a giant elyptical galaxy, one of the oldest in the Universe, and the stars all glow gold!
- Sombrero Galaxy, has a huge glowing core, with a ring of gass and dust all around it.(Baal Galaxy?)
- Galaxies are big, really really big.
Some distances and perspective
On earth we meassure distance in kilometers, in space astronomers use lightyears. The distance light travels in a year, which is just under 9,5 trillion kilometers.
- Our Galaxy is 100.000 lightyears across, which is just a small spec in the universe.
- Our nearest neighboer, Andromeda is nearly 200.000 lightyears across, twice the size.
- M87 is much much bigger than Adromeda, nearly 5 times as big.
- But all of these are tiny compared to IC 1011, biggest galaxy ever found. 60 times larger than our Milky way.
- The first stars formed 200 million years after the Big Bang ( 13,8 billion years ago).
- Then gravity pulled them together, building the first Galaxies.
Mankind's incredible tenacity and creativity
Whatever we see in telescopes today are things that has happened millions or more years ago, because it has taken the light as long to get to us. The feint smudges, formed 1 billion years after the big bang is the furthest back Hubble can see.
Until recently, humankind made Act, a 500 meter tall telescope, and the largest in the world. Act doesn't detect visible light, it detects cosmic microwaves, from the time the Universe was a few hundred thousands year old.
It doesn't just detect early Galaxies, it can see how they grew. The footprints of all the growth, from a few hundred thousand years till now.
Letting Astronomers see how they form and evolve: Stars form cluster, forms to galaxies, which builds into clusters of galaxies which builds into super clusters of Galaxies.
- In the beginning Galaxies looked like poo, random and bulgy, now they look awesome and perfect. Gravity, gravity shapes and molds Galaxies
Unimaginable Power
- There's an unimaginable powerful and incredible destructive source of gravity at the heart of most Galaxies. And there's one at the deep center of our own milky way.
- For years scientists wondered what could be powerful enough to change how a Galaxy behave, and then they found out.... A black hole, not just any kind, a super massive black hole.
* It eats gass and stars, but sometimes black holes consumes too quickly, and what they are consuming are dispatched back into space in beams of pure energy.
* This is called Quasar, when they find one, they know the center has a Super massive black hole.
- The black hole in the center out of Galaxy is gigantic, 24 million kilometers across.
* Even though, Earth is in absolute no danger, since Earth is 25.000 lightyears away (trillions of kilometers). So the earth is safe... For now....
Dark Matter
Super massive black holes may be the source of huge amounts of gravity, but they don't have enough power to hold a galaxy together, according to the laws of physic, a galaxy should fly apart. Why don't they?
Because there's something out even more powerful than a super massive black hole. It can't be seen, and virtually impossible to detect, but it's there. And it's called dark matter, and it's everywhere.
- Scientist are discovering that dark matter doesn't just hold em together, might have sparked them into life as well.
- They think dark matter was created into the Big Bang, and that dark matter became the seed of the Galaxy, even though they have no idea what it really is and no idea what it's made of.
- They think that dark matter weight for weight make up for x6 as much as all other matter in the Universe.
Recently it's been detected in deep space, it bends it, in a process called gravitational lensing. Allows us to detect the pressence of dark matter. As a beam of light is travelling towards us, if it passes by dark matter, it gets deflected around it by the gravitational pull.
Triggers the birth of galaxies, and keeps them together, scientists call it, the master of the Universe.
Unfathomable vastness
Scientist have come so far, they've built almost the whole Universe in a super Computer. Here you can't see individual Galaxies, can't even see clusters. But what you can see is Super Clusters, linked together in filaments, in a vast cosmic web. One finds a cosmic web which lights up all of the Universe, making the Universe looks like a gigantic spunge.
Each of the filaments is home to millions of Galaxy clusters, all bound together by dark matter. In the simulation, the dark matter glows along the filaments.
Dark matter effects where in the Universe Galaxies will form, holds together the whole superstructure of the Universe, binds them in clusters, and clusters in super clusters. All are locked in a web of filaments, and without it, the whole structure of the Universe will fall apart. This is the big picture of our Universe.
It's a giant cosmic web, and hidden deep within one of these filaments are our Milky way.
Dark Energy
In recent times, the last decade scientists found something new, kinda scary. Dark Energy, far more mysterious than dark matter, since we don't have the slightest idea what it is or what it's doing. Like space has little springs in it, make things repell eachother and pushes things apart.
If Dark Energy wins vs Dark matter, it make Galaxies spread apart and push things away from eachother. But that's not going to happen for a very very long time (trillions of lightyears).
Fantastic time to live in
We're extremely fortunate, life has only evolved on earth because our tiny solar system was born in the right part of the Galaxy, any closer to the center, we wouldn't be here. Since life there is extremely lively, radioactive.
To far away from the center would be just as bad, ain't as many stars, we might not exist at all. We're not to far, not too close, perfect distance.
Endless questions to ask, and mysteries to solve. More and more scentists are focusing on Galaxies, it's amazing time to live in, where we're making the most extraordinary discoveries imaginable
The Milky Way is on a collision course with Andromeda, and since the bigger of galaxies crashing eats and consume the smaller, Milky Way will lose. Which is doomsday of our own Galaxy, but according to Astronomers it'll be amazingly beautiful.
February went quite well. Didn't get to play as much as I would have wanted, but in the end the bottom line was good. Right now also Chicago Poker Classic live events are going on. Played a $350 tourney there, but got knocked out after not getting too many cards and then losing two flips in a row a few hours into it. Going to try to satellite into the $3k main event--I usually do quite well in sats, both online and live. It's a really nice series of events with very good structure, so plenty of opportunities for skill to come into play.
Mostly for myself, I've been having troubles with it for quite some time. I figured if I studied it some, took some notes, got it in my blog It'd help me a lot.
1 - Get a schedule
your body thrives on running on a routine; erratic sleeping sessions will interfere with your internal "biological clock". For some people, and depending on work and routine, a very short rest in the afternoon (the Spanish call it the siesta) could help alleviate drowsiness some people experience during the day. But make sure not to oversleep.
2 - Be mindful of what you have eaten or drunk before bed
* Stomach should not be too full, but not too empty.
* Digestion doesn't work well while asleep.
* Do not eat heavy foods a few hours before sleep (But not go to bed on empty stomach either).
* Caffeine sits in the body for 8 hours, so no tea or coffe in the evening.
* Drink 2l or more of water a day. Hydrated body is awesome.
* Alcohol may make you feel sleepy, but will greatly reduce sleep quality.
* Great foods in the evening, before bed: milk, turkey, yogurt, ice cream, peanuts. Since Tryptophan helps the body produce serotonin in order to relax.
3 - Keep the room dark
* Avoid any kind of light, pull curtains across the blinds, LED clocks, computer lights so forth. Also really hard to go back to sleep if exposed to bright light.
4 - Change your sleeping position
* When on your back, have a pillow under ur feets.
* When on your side, have a pillow in between your legs.
* Avoid sleeping on your stomach, it's shit.
5 - Exercise
Your body wants to recover, if you've not exerted yourself there isn't much to recover from, and it might distrupt your sleep.
* regular exercise can make your sleep deeper and more restful.
* Don't exercise right before sleep.
6 - Weird circumstances
* If outer circumstances, problems in life etc. are on your mind. Start meditating.
Random tips
* Keep the computer off 1 hour before bed
* Chamomile tea supposedly doesn't count when it comes to tea in the evening
* Don't sleep too long, shoot for around 8 hours. Too little or too long will make you grouchy and tired the next day
* Avoid having on music or TV
Put in a decent amount of volume in February I think...would've liked a bit more but with school and a girlfriend I'll take the just under 3k hands a day that it comes out to. Definitely my best month ever, as I made almost $400 playing mostly 10NL and about 14k hands of 25NL in the last couple days of the month. Made Platinumstar and have my eyes set on Supernova now that I have the roll to be grinding 25NL a lot. I'm actually pretty close to getting to take shots at 50NL, and I hope to be trying that by mid-March. I've mentioned before how proud and excited I am given my history of basically being a loser degen and donating to microstakes fish all across teh interwebs, but having almost $800 in my bankroll as of right now is kind of putting it into perspective for me that my perseverance and hard work have paid off. Being a losing player for so long is really hard to come to terms with, and it's very refreshing to have a positive graph to look at and be proud of. This may seem like a brag, and I guess it kind of is...but please forgive my elation with my results in light of the fact that I lost for almost a year before having a decent month like this.
As for March, I'd really like to start taking shots at 50NL by the middle of the month. Realistically I'll take a shot once I have about 25 buyins, although I might go against that and try at 20. I don't plan on making Supernova by the end of the month, but I think it's definitely realistic to say I can make it by the end of April. With that said, I have 89k VPP to go, and I'd like to get that down to about 45-50k to go so I'll be on pace to break it by the end of April. I'm done using the 4,500 FPP $50 releases, and am going to begin just hoarding them in order to get the 250k FPP $4000 releases once I hit Supernova. I figure by the time I hit Supernova I'll probably have right around there if not more considering I'm making about 2k FPP a day at 25NL, and will definitely be making more at 50NL. For the first time in my life, it's "when I hit 50NL" as opposed to "I really hope I can get to 50NL."
This is the biggest tl;dr I've ever written I think, but if you made it this far, I thank you for being interested enough to read through this and wish you (and the rest of LP) the best of luck at the tables, as well as in life, in March.
+4k rakeback
+1.7k online grind
0 online MTT
-2.4k live cash
-3k live MTT
= +300 month. 44 winning months streak continues thanks to luckboxing MTTs on the last minute (still ran bad there tho, was so close to making like 10 FTs yesterday). Shouldn't have played live, it's rigged, but LAPT was fun, met urubu, Baal, dumped some money at 25/50, and overall had a great time. Gotta start grinding for real this month, gonna try to reach 200k VPPs, gotta stop being so lazy. Also moving up sucks, gonna stay at 100s forever. Higher stakes are rigged, retards run even hotter up there.
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.
ive been supernova last year then i didnt play this year (2kvpps so far in 2011), when do i lose it? it says i lose it at Feb if i dont maintain 7500 vpps each month or did i misinterpret the whole thing? im still supernova now and its march 1 here already.
yep back to silverstar now haha. gg
problem solved
Working unreported? Should I worry about taxes?by LikeASet, February 28
So yeah, I work at restaurant that pay's me in 100% cash. They do not report my hours and I don't have any other form of reported income. Tax season is comin up and I'm not sure wether I should actually report my hours or not. The owner of the restaurant says she'll report my hours whenever I want to have them reported but for now it's a mutually agreement that I'm not reported. So I'm not gonna have that W2 form.
I used to work at this restaurant long before, then I came back starting around a year ago as a server and I make around 900-1250 a month just working weekends. Should I be worrying about the IRS getting on my shit? How would they find out?
Ok this has been driving me crazy dont know if it's a good idea to post it here but w/e.
As some of you know i've lived in the Netherlands for some time, and also in Belgium before I moved to Croatia.
I'm in Belgium atm visiting some friends and there has been a crazy competition on the radio.
There is a sound they play every hour, and you need to send a text message. They call one person every hour, and the one who guesses the sound gets 67800€. Each hour someone doesnt guess it, 100€ is added to the prizepool.
People from belgium can confirm this.
So since only resident of Belgium can participate, no one here that isnt from Belgium so i will give 2K to the person that gives me the right answer, but i'm afraid no one will guess it.
you need to click on: KLIK HIER OM HET GELUID TE BELUISTEREN.
The hint is: I play cards alone, with two but never with 4. Dont look too far because this could be based on belgian cardgames
If you are right it will be on the site so I wont be able to hide it. I know i dont have any 100% guarantee that i can give you that you will get your 2K, but why wouldnt I if I just won 67K thx to you.
I know this is al kind of lame but i thought i'd just give it a shot
I have had this old school CRT 26" widescreen TV for years now. Its done me proud. But I think its time to get a new TV. One reason that spurred this was playing game on Xbox360 and realizing how crappy the resolution is on it, that I have to sit really close to read text and stuff because its not very crisp.
So with that being said I started doing some research, and hmmm seems to be alot of different views on each of the TVs on the market at the moment. Its pretty confusing!
Some important points for deciding TV;
- I like playing racing games and fast paced games on my Xbox360 - I have read on some sites that LCD is bad for this, and plasma is hands down better. Others say LED is similar to LCD and you still get picture lag?
- It does not have to be huge. I could live with 32", 42" would be amazing.
- Price range - Probably do not want to spend much more than 500 pound sterling, but anything less than that would be good.
- Needs to have a stereo mini jack audio output. Will still use onboard speakers though
- Would like it to have 1080p, afaik xbox only uses 720 ? But for future If i change to PS3 or something, I want to have the 1080p there.
What sort of specs should I be looking for? Refresh rates, colour ratio thing, resolutions etc? Regarding LED, I read that many are just backlit LED and are really no difference to LCD except use less energy. The full LED ones, I cannot seem to find these. I presume they are super expensive?
If you know any models or personal experiences with of these 3 types, please do reply
I am a movie fan, thus I couldn't have missed this year's Oscars (didn't watch it live, because of the time difference, though).
I have to say that I am pleasantly surprised that The Social Network didn't win the Best Picture. Despite all the positive reviews on the film, I found it not as good as most of the other nominees this year. I loved Inception and greatly enjoyed True Grit and Black Swan. As for the winner, The King's Speech, I feel that the prize is deserved, mainly due to very good acting by all three main characters (applause for Colin Firth - a truly great, Oscar worthy, performance) and a fresh, well written script (who would have thought that a history of a stammering king can be so interesting?).
Natalie Portman played her role very well in the Black Swan and I couldn't see anyone else being the winner, although I'd like to honor Michelle Williams for her role in Blue Valentine. She was also very good.
Supporting roles: The Fighter took both and, for me, the Academy made the right decision. Both performances are powerful, convincing and realistic.
There was absolutely no doubt that Toy Story 3 will take the Best Animated Picture award (how could it not - it was nominated for the Best Picture). As for Best Foreign Language film, I haven't seen the winner yet, so I can't elaborate on this one.
It is said that the biggest loser of this year's Academy Awards is True Grit. Ten chances and no win. I wouldn't say this is a big surprise. Although the movie itself is very good in almost every aspect, it is brilliant almost nowhere. The competition was simply better. I wish the Coen brothers more luck next time. They are extremely talented and nearly all of their films are hits, so I'm looking forward to Gambit, which is due to release in 2012.
All in all, I think the year 2010 abounded in several good films and was better for movie fans than the previous one. Hopefully 2011 can top that.
P.S. I saw Blue Valentine yesterday and Ryan Gosling really should have been nominated instead of Jesse Eisenberg or James Franco (haven't watched Biutiful). In this movie he proves that he is a great actor, even though he's still relatively young. I'm sure we'll hear about him in the future.
The blog that turns it aroundby Carthac, February 27
So I was listening to the 2+2 pokercast last week, and they had an interview with an online guy whom I had never heard of. His name was Foucault82, and apparently he has a pretty popular blog. One part of the interview caught me and made me think about LP and its blogs. Something so glaringly obvious, yet I would be amazed if more than a few people think it normally at our site.
When you make a blog, you have to remember you are not writing a blog as a way you can read about yourself. You are writing a blog in which OTHER people want to read. People generally don't want to read about your sick downswing, sick new item you bought, sick amount of VPP's you earned, etc.
Thus, I have decided that every time I make a blog from now on, I have to have a reason to do so. There has to be something entertaining that YOU READERS will be interested about. No more whine blogs(hopefully) about how bad I run, brag posts about how good I run, etc. etc.
I will start off giving a little update about myself, but since I am still relatively unknown around LP, I am going to put it in a spoiler and those that wish to read it can, and those that do not can pass on by.
It may be a huge coincidence, it may be a super sick heater, it could be a lot of things, but from what I can tell FTP is just amazingly softer than PS.
Here has been my start so far at NL50. Running good and bad, but I feel like I am playing well enough to beat the stake so far. Need to put in more volume to see how well I am playing, so lets hope I can keep playing well enough to keep the BR going up.
Not as good as the previous two, but still very good in my opinion. This series is really starting to become something I look forward to. So many quality poker references, a fresh story line, well developed comedy, etc. I can go on for days with the compliments. If you have not seen The Micros yet, I recommend watching it from the beginning. Each episode is about 10 minutes, so it won't take you too long to catch up. I promise you that you will not regret watching them.
News article of the day: Creepy story about man being eaten by spiders, termites, and other various creatures
Seriously, how can shit like this happen? This is something that would be straight out of a horror movie. The line “They were coming out of his nose and his mouth.” really got my skin crawling.
For those of you SC1 purists that feel SC2 can't hold a candle to BW, I beg of you to make the transition. I admit that SC2 does not have as high of a skill cap as the original, but the opportunities, tournaments, and community additions to SC2 are what people that played BW dreamed of.
Let me start by recommending a podcast to you. It is hosted by a guy named JP that works with Major League Gaming, along with 3 old SC1 pros: Nony, Incontrol, and Day9. The podcast is well done in my opinion, and the 3 of them together produces an amazing amount of hilarity. Here is a quick snippet for you. I hope you enjoy and check them out
For those of you that have not heard, there will be a SC2 tournament beginning in a month or two called the NASL. The prize pool is currently $400,000 USD, and will be spread over 4 tournaments. There will be daily casts of the games, which will be hosted in a studio in Los Angeles, capped off by a live 16 player finals for each tournament. This really is going to be huge, and may branch off into more opportunities for SC2 pros to make legitimate jobs out of playing the game they love. If you want to learn more, here is a thread to check out and read up on.
Now the only question is what challenge? $50 deposit @ NL2? $1 HUSNG's? 180 man's? Learn micro-PLO? I havent put any effort into poker in quite awhile, just splashing around with whatever random idea to run it up comes to my head. I'm busto and have this entire week off, so figure I might as well make it a grindathon. Hopefully I dont waste too much time sleeping in, watching netflix, and playing vidya games.
I'm looking for $30 on paypal to continue my subscription to leggopoker. I can trade money on FTP.
I have lots of previous trades from a few dollars to a couple hundred on here. So I'll send first if you're reputable on here. If I don't know you then you send first.
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thanks to luckboxing MTTs on the last minute (still ran bad there tho, was so close to making like 10 FTs yesterday). Shouldn't have played live, it's rigged, but LAPT was fun, met urubu, Baal, dumped some money at 25/50, and overall had a great time. Gotta start grinding for real this month, gonna try to reach 200k VPPs, gotta stop being so lazy. Also moving up sucks, gonna stay at 100s forever. Higher stakes are rigged, retards run even hotter up there.
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