For the best Gmail performance, we suggest disabling Firebug for www.google.com.

Windows or Linux Users

To disable Firebug:

1. Open the Firebug pane in your Gmail tab by clicking the Firebug icon.
2. Click the down arrow next to the Net tab, and select Disable monitor for mail.google.com
3. Repeat Step 2 on the Console and Script tabs.

If you’d like to keep Firebug running, you may improve Gmail performance by following these steps:

1. Click the green or red icon in the bottom right corner of the browser window to open Firebug.
2. Click the Console tab.
3. Select Options.
4. Uncheck Show XMLHttpRequests.
5. Click the Net tab.
6. Select Options.
7. Check Disable Network Monitoring.

Mac Users

To disable Firebug:

1. Click the green or red icon in the bottom right corner of the browser window to open Firebug.
2. Click the bug icon in the top left corner of Firebug and select ‘Disable Firebug for mail.google.com.’

If disabling Firebug for Gmail doesn’t improve performance results, you may have to entirely disable Firebug.

Here’s the link to the original article. Google support document.

According to the plugin site, “Once it’s running it’ll begin collecting information about your pageviews, which posts and pages are the most popular, where your traffic is coming from, and what people click on when they leave. It’ll also add a link to your dashboard which allows you to see all your stats on a single page. Less is more.

Finally, because all of the processing and collection runs on our servers and not yours, it doesn’t cause any additional load on your hosting account. In fact, it’s one of the fastest stats system, hosted or not hosted, that you can use.”

I’ve found it to be a quick install and the developers are pretty proactive with keeping it up-to-date and backwards compatible.

Here’s the email I recieved:

Dear Google Apps admin,

In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology.  This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5.  As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.

We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010.  After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar.

Google Apps will continue to support Internet Explorer 7.0 and above, Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and above.

Starting this week, users on these older browsers will see a message in Google Docs and the Google Sites editor explaining this change and asking them to upgrade their browser.  We will also alert you again closer to March 1 to remind you of this change.

In 2009, the Google Apps team delivered more than 100 improvements to enhance your product experience.  We are aiming to beat that in 2010 and continue to deliver the best and most innovative collaboration products for businesses.

Thank you for your continued support!

Sincerely,

The Google Apps team

Email preferences: You have received this mandatory email service announcement to update you about important changes to your Google Apps product or account.

Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

and heres a link to an article for it: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/feb/01/google-docs-dropping-ie6-support

Unfortunately, Cooper is not The American Mastiff you’ll find in my comic.

It was late in a tournament and everyone at the table had deep stacks. The blinds were 500/1000. I was in the little blind at the time and I had two cards I can hardly remember but I think the were 52 off suite, or something close to that.  There was an initial raise 2500 pre-flop with three callers including myself and the big blind. The initial raiser was two off the Big. The flop came Js-3d-7s and I checked, as did the Big. The pre-flop raiser made 7500.  The late caller folded and before I did anything I clicked the “Time” button, then typed, “I only have two pair…guess I’ll just call-fold”. Hinting that I would likely fold if he pushed on the turn. The turn comes 9d and I checked acting as if I would check raise him given my statement and the crappy board.  Surprisingly, so did the “raiser”.

Now I can make a play on almost anything that comes, right? Well, a 7d comes and there’s a flush on the board and I check. The “raiser” bets about half the pot and I quickly come over the the top with double the bet. The “raiser” types, “What? Did you hit your boat?”. I’m laughing cause I have nothing and hopes, as you would, that he folds.  He hits the “Time” button and waits. I’m guessing he does have a flush and is debating on whether to call or to at least look like he’s making a tough decision.

He finally folds and I show my rags where I don’t even have a pair. He LOL’s me and says, “Nice play… I had a flush.”

About three hands later he says again, “Damn man, you made me lay down a flush…well played”, so at this point I truly feel he did have one. However, even if he didn’t I still outplayed the “raiser” because of my chatting. I don’t abuse this method but I have found it to work over the years.

Let me know how it works for you.

Full Titl Poker Royal Flush

Royal Flush on Full Tilt Poker

Ever wonder how to play a royal flush? It’s easy. Play it good enough to show everyone and to obtain any comps from the poker room, be it online or at a casino – should they be available. In this tutorial I’ll give you the knowledge to win ANY hand when you have a royal flush. I’m pretty funny right?

The hand went down something like this in a $.50/$1.00 ring game on Full Tilt Poker…

With 2-gap suited connectors in the early position I wanted to push out the driftwood and see where I was. With $2.50 as the table was moderately tight given that is was a Friday night and low-limit NL game. There were two callers behind me and the flop comes 4c, Qd, Qs. Now knowing I don’t have any of the flop I still wanted to know who might have hit that QQ on the board so I bet $2.00 and maybe I win right there, maybe.

The first person behind me folds and “the cutoff” smooth calls. Bingo! (S)He has the Q. Turn comes As and gives me a whole host of outs because I surely don’t put “the cutoff” on AQ being in late position and only calling preflop. So, I check to control the amount and HOPE the cuttoff keeps in low. “The cutoff” bets out with $4.00 and at this point I’m getting just over 3/1 to call given all the previous action so I call. If I miss it’s an easy fold because I’ve already put him on a QQQ.

Then BAM! I spike the Js. I know that I must make it look like I’m bluffing at the pot with a flush. You and I know I have a flush but it’s one of those things where it’s a “I know that (s)he knows, that I know I don’t have a flush” but in this case I do and it just happens to be the absolute nuts. LOL!!  So I go all-in to make it look like a bluff to get the call. In reality I can’t hurt his bankroll with what I have left and (s)he is priced in to couple that decision making process but I believe (s)he made his(her) mind up a long time ago that (s)he’s not folding.

As Spock would say, “the logic is sound commander”.

While managing one of the many feeds I setup or maintain I had to claim the post in Technorati and in doing so I needed to create a post so Technorati can confirm I’m an authorized person. That post requires that I place a code into the blog, which ends up in the feed, because Feedburner works PDQ. This is not a problem on a new feed but can result in spam for an existing subscriber base.

Feedburner Troublshootize:
“As a last resort with a regular feed or a podcast, you can resync your feed. You should only resync if your feed is more than 1 hour out-of-date and pinging FeedBurner does not update it or your podcast files are not being turned into enclosures by our SmartCast service.”

Although it’s really not that drastic, the key point you should take away is that your feed MUST BE 1 hour out-of-date! I tested the ping Feedburner a number of times and it errored with a “full throttle” message.

Deleting an Item From Your Feed. It’s more like refreshing your existing feed.

Follow these steps to delete an item from your feed:

1. Remove the item from your blog’s feed. When dealing with Wordpress, there’s two ways of doing this. You can either set the item to be a draft again, or delete it. If you aren’t dealing with WordPress, this is a fairly simple task so you can probably figure it out for yourself. In general, if the post does not appear on your blog’s index, it probably isn’t in your feed.

2. “Nuke” your feed in Feedburner. You can do this by heading over to Feedburner and then clicking on the ‘Troubleshootize’ tab. Scroll down until you see the header ‘The Nuclear Option: “Resyncing” your feed’ and click the button to ‘Resync Now’. It’s kind of odd to find this option here, so that’s why I’m making a blog post about it. It was the last place that I decided to look. The option is also hidden under the page fold so it’s harder to find.

It’s as simple as that. The resync option is played up to be a catastrophic event (”nuking” your feed), but it’s painless. Your feed will be rebuilt from your updated blog feed that does not include the extra post instantly.

Google Search Experiment

Look ma’ no hands!! While looking into an issue (beyond the fact that I misspelled Atlanta in my search)  as a web developer and seo practitioner I ran into a Google search results page that displayed far more than I was expecting. I came across an article on Mashable that said Google randomly selects people for beta testing. Although, a cursory search did not locate the article (I’ll update with a link once located).

There are pro’s and con’s to that, which I’ll outline later but an FYI would have been appreciated. I’ll see if Google equally surprises me with a phat fat check!

I’ve since learned that I accidently enabled an SEO toolbar and Firefox plugin that modified my Google SERPs.

poker position at the table

When learning to play poker the first thing is obviously understanding the value of the cards and how to call/bet/fold.  That said, I will not go over the basic terminology such as “what is a button”, “big blind”, etc. Assuming that, the most important aspect to understand uber-beginner poker is know about position.

Position in the poker world refers to the location of your seat to that of the button. If you not the image with the standard table of nine seats. The table is broken into three region with three red seats, three blue seats, and three green.

As a new player you’re likely to start at the low limit games. The following general rules, for the most part, still apply to any level but it’s very important to emphasize as a beginner. In understanding poker position you should be very conservative if your seat is in the red region and only play premium cards.  In the blue region I recommend the same conservatism but you may consider suited connected cards (e.g., 8hearts & 9hearts with a call). In the green area you can open up a little bit with the range of cards you call and/or raise with. However, in all cases your understanding and gaining information about what sort of cards that a person may be raising with or calling with.

Now as you gain experience you will learn to understand table image, player image, your perceived image, table size and the affect of cards that can be played, levels of aggressive play, pot odds, implied odds, tells (false and real), cash play versus tournament play, and the limit your playing at and it’s affect. Although the above generally applies to all levels the previously mentioned variables can and will affect the position rules.