HN user
Look at the picture: American pool table in the foreground, pocketless carom billiards table in the background.
My aim was to explain the author’s terminology for those who’ve never seen a table without pockets.
“... Michelson would run ten or twelve billiards with a touch so delicate that the three balls could always be covered by a hat.”
Michelson was playing billiards on a table without pockets.
I agree that Michelson wasn’t playing 3-cushion because not even Willie Hoppe (best player of that era) had runs 10 or 12 on a daily basis.
Balkline was still popular as an amateur game in the 1920s, so Michelson could have been playing one of the balkline variants rather than straight rail.
Level of difficulty in billiards ...
Straight Rail < Balkline < Cushion Caroms < 3-Cushion
Whenever the author refers to “billiards,” he’s talking about a game played on a pocketless table with three balls.
He says “Pool” whenever he’s referring to pocket billiards, the game that most people are familiar with.
The best introduction to TDD that I've seen is Jon Reid's video tutorial here...
http://qualitycoding.org/objective-c-tdd/
Even though he's demonstrating TDD with Objective-C, I've recommended this video to .NET developers and they've still had an "Aha!" moment when Jon explains the "TDD Waltz".
ReSharper is an add-on component for Visual Studio that is (IMO) the best refactoring tool available for any IDE. ReSharper includes an NUnit-based test runner, too.
JetBrains is the company that makes ReSharper. I also use AppCode (their alternative to Xcode) in a way that's similar to how I use ReSharper. I do most of my iOS development in Xcode but load the project in AppCode before committing so I can take advantage of its superior code inspection and refactorings.
Your second point about American TV networks and pool is also true. Commentary is usually provided by some vacuous talking head who's never played pool before, gets excited about simple shots yet remains oblivious to the subtleties that actually make-up great play, like cue-ball positioning or safety-play. If you're lucky, there might be an inarticulate former pro to provide color commentary.
That's why one of the things that stands-out about the 1966 video clip posted earlier is how unusually competent the commentator was! Announcer was "Whispering" Joe Wilson.
Good observation. I wondered the same thing when someone else commented that most people are uninterested in watching pool on TV. Yet snooker is a big hit on TV in the UK, as you point-out.
I think that, historically, snooker became popular on TV in the UK because the BBC started airing the weekly "Pot Black" series to showcase their early color broadcasts. The green cloth and different colored balls looked great!
Makes sense when you consider that snooker, while still enormously popular, has also seen a decline from its 1980's high point. Color TV isn't much of a novelty anymore.
I think "What societal change explains this?" is a very HN-worthy topic. In fact, that was my first guess as to why a straight pool article was submitted to HN.
But the straight pool heydey wasn't in the 1970's...
If you go back to the 1930's, you'll find that straight pool was a popular spectator sport that often got more newspaper coverage than basketball or hockey. Ralph Greenleaf earned $2,000 a week performing trick shots for Broadway audiences. That's comparable to modern salaries for pro athletes when adjusted for inflation.
I think there's an interesting sociological question here, and that the answer is probably more complex than simply declining attention spans. Ned Polsky, a real sociologist (I'm not!), thought that pool's decline in popularity was caused by the decline of a "bachelor subculture" in America.
Polsky's book "Hustlers, Beats and Others" http://amzn.com/0202308871
Hope I didn't come across as bashing an entire generation. I count myself right there among the afflicted! Staying focused and productive as a software developer is a real challenge when your computer can become a TV at any moment, as Paul Graham put-it.
http://www.paulgraham.com/distraction.html).
And, besides, "The Wire" is awesome!
Sang Lee (Korean-American 3-cushion legend) opened a world-class billiards facility in Flushing, NY, called Carom Cafe. Heated billiard tables, the works. Sang Lee has since passed-away, but I just checked and the place is still open. Probably worth the trip!
They also host an annual memorial tournament where the world's best come to play. Raymond Ceulemans was guest of honor last year.
Twenty years ago, the only room in Arkansas with real billiard tables was a local place that catered to Vietnamese immigrants. I walked-in one day, cue in-hand, and was immediately halted by the owner who told me (in unfriendly terms) that they didn't offer 8-ball or 9-ball. I assured him that, despite my appearance, I knew how to play and won-over some new friends that day.
I've often wondered how many good ol' boys wandered into that place, found a bunch of pool tables without any pockets! and then went away, shaking their heads in bewilderment at the sight.
You're right, it was Irving Crane who won that match. Good catch! I got mixed-up because Joe Balsis also had some famous 150-and-out runs - including one against Crane in their very next match!
I'm glad you enjoyed the video. I'll go ahead and throw these out there, too, so everybody can see comparable "masterpieces" in other billiard games...
Ronnie O'Sullivan with a 147-break at snooker...
Torbjörn Blomdahl with runs of 20, 13 and 9 at 3-Cushion Billiards (a billiards variant not discussed thus far)...
I would say that a 147-break at snooker and a 20-run at 3-cushion are roughly comparable achievements to a 150-and-out at straight pool.
But there's probably never been a player who could achieve such high levels at all three variants - they actually require quite different skill-sets. Snooker players rarely use sidespin ("English") on the cueball while 3-cushion players use extreme amounts of top, bottom and sidespin that you'll never see in pool.
I've always wished there was an all-around competition to determine the best at all three games. My guess is that the all-around best would probably be a relative unknown instead of the current World Champion from any one of the three.
It seems like straight pool provided a more accurate means of distinguishing skill levels between players. Dallas West (straight pool pro from 70's) once said that he knew he had arrived as a pro when, as a teenager, he finally ran 100-balls in a row. He then said that he had made a 100-ball run every day of his life since then. There's a similar jump in standing at 50-balls. A complete beginner might have to practice hard for a year to clear a single rack.
9-ball players like to boast about their long runs, too, but there's an element of luck (the break shot) that throws a kink into direct comparisons between players' high runs. Earl Strickland once ran 11-racks in a row to win a $1 million prize, but a player with a "six-pack" (6-racks in a row) isn't necessarily half as skilled.
Snooker balls are smaller than regular pool balls. There's also a difference between snooker equipment manufacturer in the U.S. and what's used in the United Kingdom and the rest of the world. American snooker uses 2 1/8" balls on a 5' x 10' table. British snooker (also the standard for the rest of the world) uses 2 1/16" balls on a 6' x 12' table.
Snooker is a major sport in the United Kingdom where players earn millions in prize money and endoresements. Pool pros in the U.S. earn less than most of the people here on Hacker News. And, yes, hardly anybody cares to watch pool on TV.
Simple answer: Declining attention spans.
For those who've never seen straight pool (AKA 14.1) played, here's a link to video of an all-time classic match: Joe Balsis running 150-and-out to beat Irving Crane in 1966.
For a pool aficionado (like me), it's a delight to see such a masterful performance. But for most people, watching a guy shoot-in balls for an hour without missing is probably like watching paint dry.
I love the game, though. I like snooker even better, which was also popular in the U.S. back in straight pool's heydey. Now it's hard to even find a snooker table in the states.
There's a start-up scene starting to grow around Northwest Arkansas somewhat. Innovate Arkansas and the ARK Challenge are a local source of seed funding.
NWA TechFest http://nwatechfest.com and Little Rock TechFest http://lrtechfest.com/ are good events for networking.
There's a good network of local .NET User Groups across the state, too. NWA, Little Rock, Fort Smith, Jonesboro all have one. If that's too Microsofty for you, I'm pretty sure there's a Cocoa group in NWA.
The Tulsa TechFest is in your hometown - http://techfests.com/Tulsa/2014/default.aspx. It was actually the first of the TechFests, and draws over 1,000 people.
I've attended both Dallas and Houston TechFests, and Tulsa usually comes-out on top even though it's in a smaller city.
Also looks like Steve Wozniak will be speaking at the Mabee Center in April, 2015.
There's a story on "The Daily WTF" that's almost certainly about Epic Systems. Epic apparently uses an obfuscated 60's-era language called MUMPS.
See http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/A_Case_of_the_MUMPS.aspx
I found another article that says Epic prefers to hire fresh college graduates because they're easier to mold into the "Epic Way."
I'm leasing a server from MacStadium that's used for iOS continuous integration. I could also see MacStadium being useful for someone learning iOS development who isn't ready to splurge on a new Mac.
Check out Ray Wenderlich's iOS tutorials at http://www.raywenderlich.com/store/ios-5-by-tutorials.
I was expecting something about the Cocoa Touch UIKit.
You're absolutely right. "Simple to use, simple to build" is another thought in people’s minds. They don't realize it's actually harder to build something that's simple to use.
What do you think of the OP's plan for developing his own implementation of the idea?
An old freelancer's rule-of-thumb for calculating hourly rates is to take your desired salary and divide by 1000. So, a freelancer would need to bill at roughly $70/hour to make the equivalent of $70,000 in a year.
This rule-of-thumb is fairly accurate, considering time spent on non-billable tasks as well as overhead and taxes.
I've wished many times for ReSharper-like refactoring in Xcode. Now JetBrains (the ReSharper people) have announced CIDR, an Objective-C IDE.
Apparently CIDR is still at an early stage (pre-beta even) and doesn't yet support debugging on a physical device, but I still take this as great news. I think allowing developers to download and try CIDR now will give JetBrains the feedback they need to deliver a great finished product.
Check out the Austin .NET User Group (http://www.adnug.org). The meetings are typically sponsored by a different company each month. The sponsor usually gives a short pitch, looking to hire developers, before the technical presentation starts.