Well, it’s that time of year again. March Madness. Time to make your picks for the tourney, and show how much we really do suck at sports :) Last year we had about 15-20 people sign up, but only about 10 of them actually filled out their bracket. Lets get a couple more people this year.

The Rules

Rules are simple. Just pick all the teams you think will win. Whether it be your alma mater, or just a blind group of picks, anything works. Remember though, it’s pretty rare that 2 #1 seeds make it to the final game.

The Signup

Go to http://tournament.fantasysports.yahoo.com/men . You want to join Group #66748. The password is bl0gg3rs. If you want to just reply in the comments, I will use the system to send you an email to join the group.

Group: 66748
Password: bl0gg3rs

Best of luck.

I signed up at LinkedIn about 2 years ago (September, 2003 to be exact). Only recently did I start updating my LinkedIn network, and have realized how much of a great application this is.

Privacy and a Great Design

One of the great features of LinkedIn is the fact that it is private. Only people that know you can get connected to you, as they have to know your email address. And how can you go wrong with that design. Not only does it look great, it’s very useable.

Connections

So, I am constantly contacted about Flash freelance opportunities, and every so often, I just can’t take a job due to workload. So LinkedIn is usually my way to find a couple replacement suggestions for the job. If you have a LinkedIn account, add me to your contacts. My email is josh [AT] joshdura [DOT] com.

Dream.In.Code is having a pretty sweet competition tonight. Basically, they will post 4 problems, all of which will need to be addressed via code. You will have 48 hours to complete the 4 problems.

Rules

Only 1 Submission Per Problem (No Corrections Accepted).

Submission should be in .zip or .tar.gz format and include the following:

• A text (info.txt) file with your member name, compiler and language used (including version), and problem name
• Original source (not compiled)

You may use any language that supports file input/output and line-by-line file parsing. Some possible languages include: PHP, C++, C, C#, ASP, ASP.NET, VB, VB.NET, Java, and Perl.

Prizes

Klipsch GMX 2.1 Speakers
ASP.NET Book
$25 Gift Certificate of Your Choosing (Online)
Super Awesome Swag Bag From Klipsch
1 Year of Web Hosting
Several other unannounced prizes

To find out more, check out the dream.in.code forums

Our friends over at Studiowhiz are putting together a donation drive for Caitlin. Their goal is to reach $3000 to buy a laptop. If you have a couple spare dollars in Paypal, send it their way as it is very much needed.

From the Studiowhiz website:

In January 2003 the dear little girl shown here was born to one of our founding members – and Caitlin has become a very special little girl to many of us here. Sadly Caitlin was born with some complications (Cerebral Palsy amoung others) and this shocked many of us. Recently she has been suffering some further complications and had to return to hospital. We thought about sending a HUGE bunch of flowers to brighten up the hospital room, to brighten up Caitlin’s life (not to mention her folks). However we’ve decided to change tact see flowers are great but they fade and we are a more practical group of people – so we have decided to pool our funds and start a collection. Instead of giving flowers we are going to create a Fund for Caitlin. I’ve talked with the family and found out some more things (some of which I knew before too). Thankfully the Australian government do support this family very well, however with any government there are many things they do not cover everything. So I asked if there was something specific we could raise funds for and it turns out there is.

So, after the great success of the Designer/Developer Poker Tournament, I decided that a full fledged site, devoted to it was in order. Thus, Style Bluff was conceived.

The Technology

With the help of Ruby Genious Abel Rios, we have created a completely geekifyed website. The site was developed with Ruby on Rails (except for the forum, thats PunBB), with a CSS/XHTML front end. We are currently in a very early stage of development, so expect certain things to not work. One thing for example, is that you have to register once for the site, and seperately for the forum. We expect to have this fixed soon, but we just wanted to get people started on the site. Also, no tournaments are currently scheduled as we have yet to decide on a poker site to use (deciding between Ultimate Bet and Party Poker).

The Rules

Instead of trying to give away a prize for each tournament, we will run the tournaments in quarters. There will be 9 tournaments per quarter, with the top 10 finishers in each tourney getting a specified amount of points. The 10th tournament will decide who gets the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place prize pools. This, and many other changes to the format can be found on the site’s FAQ’s .

So sign up, have fun, talk shit, and spread the word…

Macromedia has officially announced the Flash Player 8 Public Beta. Please test your current applications, sites, etc. with the new player. The beta introduces a new update mechanism, which seems to be based off of the Central installer (very very easy). Don’t worry about it screwing up your browser (being a beta and all), as it comes with an uninstaller. Once done testing, submit feedback to Macromedia. They listen, trust me.

Things to Test

Check all of your client sites. Check all of your applications. Check all of your daily visited sites, make sure all Flash content works as before. Getting these bugs fixed now, ensures that the final product will be that much better.

Signups are officially closed. All of those who have signed up will be recieving an email from me within the next couple days regarding info for the tourney. Thanks!

It’s my pleasure to announce the 2005 Designer/Developer Poker Tournament. It took me a while to find a place to host this tournament, but I finally found a friend who has connections at UltimateBet, to get them to host it. So, without further ado, below are the details…

The Details

When: July 13th, 2005, 9pm EST – Thats exactly 3 weeks from today
Where: UltimateBet – ( download here ) if you want to put a referrer in, use the username joshdura :D
The Game: No Limit Texas Hold Em. This will be a Multi Table tournament, with 10 people per table. You will start with 1500 in chips. No rebuys.
Who: Any Designer, Developer, etc. that wants to play. Just leave a comment in this entry, with your UltimateBet username, and I will get you signed up.
Cost: This is a Freeroll. Free to Enter, Free to Play.
Prizes: Well, as of now, the only thing I have to give is a Timbuktu Flash MX 2004 Bag, and a couple DRK CD’s. If you would like to donate a prize, please contact me
Why: Why not? It’s FREE! If you don’t know how to play, follow the links below to learn the basics of Texas Hold-Em, and then sign up. There is no reason to not try :)

Links to Hold-Em Tutorials…
Basic Hold-Em Rules
Lessons from Pros
Jeff Croft’s Beginner Tips
Andrei Herasimchuk’s Poker Articles

This will be a Freeroll, meaning it is Free to enter. We might be having a $5-10 buy-in tournament in the future, but I figured I would start this out with a Freeroll to allow people to be able to learn, etc.

Ultimate Bet

I wanted to make sure to write a section here about Ultimate Bet, as I am sure there are some people that are skeptical about the software. First things first, it is PC only. Unfortunately the only people that offer a Mac compatible software is Poker Room, and that is Java based. They don’t offer Private Freerolls, so that was a no-go. Second, Ultimate Bet is by far one of the leaders in the online poker industry and can be trusted. You don’t have to give them any personal information (other than email) to signup for a free account. So you have no excuse :) If you have any questions, please post them in the comments.

Publicity

My blog gets a decent amount of traffic, but not enough. Lets get this thing advertised, and get at least 100-150 people in this thing. If you don’t mind, post an entry on your blog linking to this post.

I have been passed a Musical Baton by Keith Hall.

Total size of music files on my computer: 130 Gb. aprrox. (I am at work right now, and cannot check)
Total size of music files on my iPod: 9.84 Gb.

The last CD I bought was: Revis – Places for Breathing

Song playing right now: Jet – Come Around Again

Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me:

1. Revis – Living Rooms
2. AFI – Miseria Cantare
3. Submersed – Hollow (some people pronouce this Sub-Mer-Sed)
4. Crossfade – Colors
5. Micronaut – Perdition (thanks to Keith from iPodarmy)

Five people to whom I’m passing the baton:

1. Abel Rios
2. Danny Dura
3. Mike Chambers
4. Sean Voisen
5. Sam Robbins