Alpha Core

This is Noli – my horse. Or to be more precise with everything: her given name is Magnolia and she is a pony of the kind ‘Deutsches Reitpony‘. Noli was born in the stable were I took riding lessons when I was a child. In this stable every child could choose a horse or a pony to look after it, which basically meant grooming it regularly. I happened to choose a pony mare, named Towy Valley Marguerite, but because this name really is a lot too long, she is called Margie. After a while the owner decided that Margie should have a foal. And that’s where Noli occurs in this story. She was born in 1994 when I was 12 years old. Ever since then I also took care of her and on my 15th birthday my wish came true and Noli was my present. We changed stables then and Noli is now living in an open stable near Hamburg. The picture on the left side is taken in summer, when Noli was standing on a meadow and the picture on the right side shows the two of us going for a hack in winter.

It’s been a while since there was a silly internet game worth mentioning. That’s over now! May I have the pleasure to introduce to you Sling, a game in which you control a little green ball of slime dangling, flying and bouncing around in 50 levels. The story is utter and complete nonsense and that’s great!

There’s also an easier Junior version of the game and soon there will be a sequel called Sling Fire. Enjoy!

Since almost a year ago, we’ve seen an enormous increase in popularity of the game poker, the Texas hold’ em variant to be more specific. I think it was around the time that the latest Bond movie (Casino Royale) was shown in theaters that I started to take some interest in the game. Sure, in high school we played some draw poker, but no game was ever as much fun as a regular hold ‘em one, simply for the reason that there’s a lot more interaction in this variant. The main reason for this are the ‘community cards’, a set of (eventually) five cards lying in the middle of the table that are shared by all players. Just two cards, called the ‘pocket cards’, are being dealt to every player at the beginning of every hand. These two cards are the only ones that can give you an edge over your fellow player. The community cards add a lot to the game and they offer a feeling of interaction. The game isn’t just about your hand and your luck drawing some cards anymore.

Update (October, 7th): NBC airs a great daily show called Poker After Dark and puts all episodes online for free. Watching the series is a good way to learn more about poker and to get to know some of the successful players out there. It’s really exciting and fun to watch! There are also some nice shows on Joost that are highly entertaining, e.g. the WPT (World Poker Tour) finals. Read more

Daniel Unger from Germany is the male winner of the Triathlon World Championships.

The triathlon took place in the city center of Hamburg and is therefore also known as the ‘Hamburg City Man’. The starters for the world championship had to swim 1.5 km in the 17 °C cold Binnenalster, afterwards quickly jump onto their bikes to cycle 40 km through the city center and at last change into running shoes and run over a distance of 10 km. Unger succeeded to leave the other starters behind himself and finished in a time of 1 hour 43 minutes and 18 seconds, which secured him the gold medal. Javier Gomez (Spain) won the silver medal (01:43:22 +00:00:04) and Brad Kahlefeldt (Australia) won the bronze medal (01:43:36 +00:00:18).

The female winner of the Triathlon World Championships is Vanessa Fernandes (Portugal), who finished in 1 hour 53 minutes and 27 seconds. Emma Snowsill (Australia) won the silver medal (01:54:31 +00:01:04) and Laura Bennett (USA) won the bronze medal (01:54:37 +00:01:10).