Every day, I weed out numerous bits of blog spam from my blog advertising Texas hold ’em at online casinos and online “pharmacies”. Reading Slashdot this morning, there’s a bit about a Wired article about pokerbots.

The first thing that sprang to mind was that maybe pokerbots will make online casinos so unprofitable for their operators that they’ll shut down and go away.

One can only hope.

I’m a bit late with this, but Kathy and I went to the last show of Les Grands Feux on the 13th. The displays were quite impressive and from our vantage point slightly to the left of the reserved seating, we saw the show front-on, rather than edge-on like the other night we went to. Next year, I think I’m going to buy reserved seats since the rest of the site is general admission and there’s usually something blocking part of the view.

Pictures are from the 13th are online here.

Both albums of pictures are here.

I’ve just updated the Asterisk-friendly Unlimitel dialplan I host based on the most recent information from Unlimiltel. It’s available here.

Donald the Sun Worshipper, one of my travelbugs, is on the move again! Since I released him in early November 2004, he has visted caches in Ontario, British Columbia, spent much of the winter in Costa Rica before moving on to the Netherlands and now France.

Pictures are online here.

Kathy and I went to Les Grands Feux du Casino du Lac-Leamy this evening. The assigned seating was sold out so we bought a couple of general admission tickets and eventually found somewhere to set up our chairs. The fireworks were quite impressive, but the sound system, at least where we were, was less than perfect. Because of the size of the site, they were using an FM-radio-based system to extend their sound system. There was interference on our speakers for most of the show. But that didn’t interfere with the whole experience very much.

Tonight’s team was from South Africa. They have won the top award for the show a couple of times in the past and stand a very good chance of winning it again this year.

The first piece of music was the Star Trek: Next Generation theme. Very impressive when set to fireworks. There were some which looked like rockets being launched into orbit, which drew a big response from the crowd. These particular fireworks rose very slowly compared to most fireworks and had a streaming trail like the exhaust from a rocket.

The display ended with dozens of “flash bangs” which lit up the site as though it were high noon. Very cool!

Over the weekend, I was up at the cottage. One afternoon, I was out looking to buy a pie for dessert. I went to a local establishment with both a restaurant and take-out window which I’d bought whole pies from in the past, but found out they don’t sell whole pies any more.

“How many pieces in a pie?”, I ask.

“Six.”

Six was one more piece than I needed, but let’s face it: how many pieces of pie is “too many”? Chances are any superfluous piece of pie would be consumed in short order.

“I’d like six piece of apple pie, please.”

“If I sell you six pieces, I won’t have any to sell in the restaurant,” she says.

“…”

“And, I’d have to sell them to you for $3.25/slice.”

This worked out to $19.50 for an apple pie.

“Nevermind,” I say.

I didn’t bother persuing the obvious line of questions about why it mattered whether I was buying the pie to eat it now or later. Nor did I ask what she would have done if six of us had shown up and each ordered a slice of apple pie.

And I didn’t get a slice of apple pie, either.