Poker near DC (2010 update)

In my previous post I said that Charles Town, West Virginia, may become the obvious choice for residents of Washington and Baltimore that want to play poker or table games such as blackjack starting this summer. I may have spoken too soon.

Pennsylvania signed into law legislation permitting poker and table games at its racinos. Cards could by flying as soon as July, but it will probably take longer than that. I have added existing Pennsylvania casinos to the map in yellow (Charles Town in is red) but the 2004 Pennsylvania law that legalized slots allows five additional locations that haven’t yet been built. The new law could potentially hurry that process.

View Larger Map

Click on the View Larger Map link to see not only a larger map but a list of city names. Click on the map pins (on either the larger map or the smaller one) to see venue details.

Not shown on the map are the Ohio cities of Columbus, Toledo, Cincinnati and Cleveland. Those aren’t particularly close to Washington D.C. but casinos will likely open there in 2011.

poker and blackjack to come to northeast West Virginia after all

Two years ago, four West Virginia counties voted on referenda to allow poker and other casino table games in their local racinos. Three of them (shown in purple on the map) approved the referenda, but Jefferson County (shown in red) rejected it.

View Larger Map

Jefferson County voted again last week, and this time the referendum passed 59% to 41%. Charles Town Races & Slots is already prepping 30,000 square feet of space for table games to start in June or so. If they do it right, they will be the obvious choice of Washington and Baltimore gamblers, who will have no convenient alternatives.

hybrid minivan update

Chrysler: The “EV” plug-in hybrid minivan is toast. It was one of three vehicles in Chrysler’s ENVI program which has been canceled. The hyperlinks in my 2008 ENVI post are now dead.

Honda: It has been reported that Honda plans to add a hybrid minivan in 2011.

Toyota: Rumors of a “Prius MPV” (small hybrid van) have been swirling for a couple years now. They persist despite no substantiation.

oOo

Chrysler update: The Detroit News says that Chrysler “plans to offer a two-mode hybrid version of the Dodge Ram pickup next year. It will be followed by a plug-in hybrid Ram and a plug-in hybrid minivan in 2011.” The article also predicts that Chrysler will sell a pure electric version of the Fiat Doblò in late 2011 or 2012.

The Michigan Messenger also mentions a hybrid Chrysler minivan, but other sources do not. They do point out that Chrysler received $70 million in DoE grants to support its ENVI effort.

Chevy Volt getting lots of press

The Chevy Volt is a plug-in hybrid sedan anticipated in late 2011. Periodically I search for news stories on the Volt, but today the news stories found me. I have heard four different news blurbs discussing the Volt today (over three different forms of media) without even trying. I would say GM’s public relations department gets a gold star today.

I’m taking away a gold star, however, for the design of the banner unfurled above the vehicle at today’s announcement. (See image.) To me, it screams “23 MPG.” GM wants us to read it “230 MPG” but I just don’t see the smiley outlet thing as a zero. Do you?

The story lead has been GM’s 230 MPG claim. That it’s turning heads is no surprise, but I’m hungry for more details. GM says the Volt’s city EPA rating will be 230 miles per gallon, which I don’t doubt (even though the EPA hasn’t tested it yet) because GM has been negotiating with the EPA over methodology for a while now. But it will be interesting to see what the accompanying highway and overall numbers will turn out to be, and what assumptions will be made to reach them.

GM has said that a fully-charged Volt should be able to travel 40 miles without burning any gas, after which it should get approximately 50 MPG until the battery can be plugged in and recharge. So for the city rating, it seems the EPA is presuming that 78% of the distance traveled will be on battery power alone.

0.78 mi@∞ mpg + 0.22 mi@50 mpg → 1 mi / 0.0044 gal = 227.3 mpg

I don’t think 78% sounds unreasonable, but I’m curious how it was chosen Of course, should you want to know how much gas you would burn were you to drive a Volt, you should ignore the EPA’s 78% figure and come up with a percentage that represents your particular driving habits.

Charging the Volt’s battery at off-peak times (night) should cost less than $1 in most U.S. regions, so those first 40 miles will be reasonably cheap. Do you have an outlet in your garage?

Sierra Mist Ruby Splash

There’s a new variety of Sierra Mist (PepsiCo’s clone of Sprite) out on store shelves. It’s called Sierra Mist Ruby Splash and it’s pretty darn tasty. Unlike some variations Pepsi has introduced, this one would seem not to be a limited edition or seasonal flavor but a permanent addition to the line.

It has a grapefruit flavor layered on top of the lemon-lime, but it’s not quite the same as other grapefruit sodas such as A-Treat or Squirt. Its appearance differs too. Sierra Mist Ruby Splash is clear, not cloudy.

I’ve cut down down on my soda consumption over the last few years, but I’m looking forward to imbibing Ruby Splash again before too long.

Pepsi also sells a diet version of Ruby Splash sweetened with aspartame/acesulfame instead of glucose/fructose. I think most diet beverages taste terrible (or at least worse than tap water) but I tried Diet Sierra Mist Ruby Splash anyway for the sake of the blog. Unsurprisingly, I didn’t much care for it. Your milage may vary.

more third-party mini-DisplayPort adapters

Monoprice started selling mini-DisplayPort adapters a few months ago, but now another vendor has joined the game. Circuit Assembly Corp. sells not only the three types of adapters that Monoprice does (albeit at slightly higher prices) but also two it doesn’t.

• The miniDP-to-DP cable allows owners of a recent Macs to connect to monitors with full-size DisplayPort Connectors.

• The miniDP(female)-to-DP cable allows owners of laptops/desktops with full-size DisplayPort ports to connect to those crazy miniDP-only displays Apple (and others) sell.

Kudos to Circuit Assembly Corp. for finally providing interoperability between DisplayPort and mini-DisplayPort that had long been expected.

Mazda5 plug-in hybrid?

I have mentioned the hybrid Mazda5/Premacy six-passenger minivan before, but British magazine Autocar reports that Mazda has been working on a plug-in hybrid Mazda5.

Alas, it doesn’t sound like it will be headed for production anytime soon.

USPS 1st class rates up again

My blog entry on postal rate increases two years ago has been picking up a lot of hits, so I guess I should set the record straight. As of today, first class stamps are 44¢ and post cards are 28¢. This continues the recent pattern.

37¢ from June 30, 2002

39¢ from January 8, 2006

41¢ from May 14, 2007

42¢ from May 12, 2008

44¢ from May 11, 2009

(Additional ounces remain 17¢ each, up to the 3.5 oz. first-class letter limit.)

Triangle Music

While driving home from work today, I listened with interest to a review of a solo triangle album on NPR. Great, I thought.

You see, the triangle is an oft-maligned instrument. It is frequently the butt of jokes. For example, it’s not hard to find lark “how to play the triangle” videos on YouTube where the punchline is some variation of just hit it with the little stick, stupid.

I can sort of understand the intent of the humor. The “instructor” whacks the triangle willy-nilly with no thought to technique. It’s supposed to be funny in the same way how to boil water lessons are, but I know better. It’s a lot harder to play the triangle well than it is to boil water.

As an undergrad I took a one-credit percussion class and, believe it or not, the triangle was the instrument I had the most trouble with. You must hold it so it rings out pure when stuck, but also so you can dampen it when the time is right. And you mustn’t dampen it too quickly (unless you’re going for this effect) or it will make an ugly choking sound; you must dampen it gently. Also, the coordination between the striking hand and the dampening hand can be nontrivial for rhythmic passages. In short, the YouTube jokesters have underestimated the level of skill the triangle demands.

Some jazz tunes start with a nice triangle into. I intended to link to one here, but I wasn’t able to find one on YouTube or elsewhere. (If you know of one, please leave a comment.) However I did find a couple of legit YouTube clips demonstrating triangle technique.

But back to the NPR review. The album is Christine Balfa Plays the Triangle. It’s 55 minutes of unaccompanied Cajun triangle, which sounds good in theory but in practice it is ostinato triangle. Evidently each five-minute track consists of the same measure repeated over and over with essentially zero variation. And as the review (the audio, not the text) points out, the tracks themselves don’t really vary from each other either. Also, the triangle itself seems to be of the larger/darker variety for this recording and is never allowed to ring out with the glorious unmuted triangle sound, except possibly at the end of a track.

Had this review aired thirteen days earlier it would have been taken as an April Fools’ Day joke, and a decent one at that. The disc’s label itself calls it “the perfect gag gift,” which I guess explains its low $6 list price. I call it a wasted opportunity.

four arcade games and a pinball

Wil Wheaton asks

Hey, this’ll be fun: you can have any four classic arcade games in the world. Maintenance and cost aren’t a factor, and there’s no ROM swapping. Which ones to you pick? It’s really tough, but more fun if you don’t spend a ton of time thinking about it, so it’s right off the top of your head. … You also get one pinball machine.

These machines came to me immediately. They aren’t necessarily the ones I would want to own, but they are the ones to which I devoted much quarter-feeding time in my youth.

four classic video games, in the order I played them:

• Asteroids
• Donkey Kong
• Q*bert
• Qix

the pinball table:

• Taxi

The linked video shows a two-minute game of Taxi and looks and sounds suprisingly accurate considering it’s on a virtual table, not an actual one. Who knew? Here’s a decent video of an actual Taxi table, though it is overproduced and buries most of the pinball sounds.