'Winning' The Lotto - For the people who asked

Ok Ok, first off, this isn't really going to win you the next jackpot, or the one after that, In fact it never guarantees that you will win anything.

So why are you reading this at all then?
Well, what I'm attempting to explain here, without using any maths, is a technique for maximising
your chances of winning some of the smaller amount in the lotto, and possibly make a little profit, instead of a total loss.

The technique I'll explain here is usable on the Irish lotto and other similar lotto's, its NOT usable on the EuroMillions for reasons I'll explain later.

Probability, Chance, Odds
In any lotto, the odds of winning are set very particularly, They'll be approximately 1 in (the population of the target audience), so the odds of winning the irish lotto are 1 in ~9 million, and the odds of winning your local GAA fundraising lotto is about 1 in 4000 and euromillions are 1 in ~76 Million.

This has two important consequences.
1. On average, someone (and only one person) will win the lotto on each draw
2. It's highly highly unlikely!!

Prize Money
Whatever the odds are set at, the prize money and cost of play must be set to suit. If the cost per line x chance of winning  is less than the total prize money, then by playing all combinations you will make a definate profit (and it's quite likely some rich business person will spot it and do it, it has happened!)
At the irish lotto's current cost per line, the total prize would need to be over 14 Million (and you'd have to already have 14 Million play) for this to be any good.

Where Does That Leave Us
Ok, so we cant afford to do all possible cominations of numbers, nor would it be worth it anyway...

Picking more numbers increases your chances of getting some of the correct ones. But obviously that means doing more lines. Picking say 12 numbers and putting them on two lines isn't really much use, as chances are you'll get 2 correct numbers on each line!! So you'll have to have to play your 12 numbers in multiple combinations, but there's 952 possible lines. You can construct combinations such that if (for example) your 12 numbers included 4 correct numbers, that these 4 will be on the same line. There's a huge number of lotto 'systems' on the internet that use this principle, with built in 'guarantees' which are simply selling you a list of combinations of a bigger group of numbers.

In short: Picking more numbers maximises your chances of getting at least some numbers correct, using some smart combinations of these numbers reduce your cost, while ensuring that if some of your numbers come up, that they'll be on the same line and therefore you'll win something, playing like this means you'll win some of the smaller amounts more regularly.

Play other Lotto Games
The Lotto 5-4-3-2-1 game has much better payout for the lower numbers, with payouts for 1 correct number! Some bookies also do games based on the lotto draw which have better payouts for your odds.

Reality Check
No-one can give you a system to win the jackpot. This technique increases your chances or winning smaller prizes, hopefully reducing your losses. Given that it works on chance, it's not going to pay you back on every draw, but over the long term, on average you could break even.

I'd advise using these techniques in a syndigate, that way you can afford to do choose more numbers, and more combinations of those numbers, and can also absorb the greater losses between wins.

Windows Azure Development

Recently at work, I've had to make a standard ASP.Net application work in Windows Azure.

At the time, I had been on some 'Early Adopter' days run by and on behalf of Microsoft. These courses all suggested that developing for the cloud 'requires a different mindset'.

Now, we had from the start of the project, assumed it was going to be big, so we had some important features already in place (multi-tenancy and stateless design)

So, how difficult was it?!

I created a cloud project in Visual Studio, Right- Clicked on the project and selected 'Add Web Role', Selected our existing project and built... No errors, no warnings...

Ran it in the the local dev environment... No issues...Uploaded to Azure...Mainly worked!!

So where were the issues: Local Disk Access, a number of images and xml files were being read/written or cached to disk. Some of these we architected out of the solution as there were better ways of doing it, but the solution using Azure Storage rather than local disk.

We used an IStorage interface, with two methods, save and retrieve, there were two implementations of this interface, Azure and InHouse, and they were used from within a httphandler. Uploads were read straight from the input stream to the Azure Storage stream asyncronously. This solved the issue we had, and used less memory on the role as nice side effect!

On the database side we had a number of issues, however all of these had been marked as deprecated in the move to Sql Server 2008 anyway so the advice would be to get the database working on Sql Server 2008, without using deprecated features, then move to Azure.

Happy Hardware

Vista SP2 has mae its way onto my machine finally... Flight Simulator still wont install, and had some trouble with Visual Studio 2008, however got enough of that on that I can be productive.....

Anyhow, during the course of my re-install of Vista I managed to mess up my MBR such that my data partition disappeared... OK I know I should have had a real backup, rather than copying to a partition on the same drive, but I didn't...

Where this gets interesting is in the recovery...I needed an application that could simply write an MBR, because I knew the data and the partition descriptors were all fine...

There seems to be a number of tools on the market, and none offer a 'find partition and re-write mbr entry'... most copied data of the 'damaged partition'... The best (and simplest) of these was Find And Mount, which does exactly what it says, finds partitons, and mounts them (as read only drives - and free version has a transfer speed limit). The particular feature I used however, was that it could tell what the starting sector of the partition was...

Using the starting sector and the capacity, I could tell the ending sector... this enabled me to use dtidata_partition_repair_tool, which is an mbr editor (and can make your pc unbootable if your're not careful) Using this, I could reinsert the entry for my data partition, and without even rebooting, windows scanned for the new partitions and found it, all my data safe and well!

I have no affiliation with the makers of
dtiData_partition_repair_tool
or
Find And Mount

Windows Update Vista Woes

I was one of the early adoptors of Windows Vista. I bought the OEM version the day it was released, for my home built machine... I had very few driver problems, and had only one annoyance (User Account Control) which I promptly turned off... I like the UI, it did seem faster, and as I got the x64 version, it showed my 4Gb of RAM, my world was good...


Or so I thought.... After a number of updates, Windows update stopped working... I decided to revert to XP, and wait til SP1 came out. SP1 came out, and I couldn't Install it, because to install SP1, you need the updates that wont install (even for the standalone version)

But around that time, I went to the microsoft Developer Developer Developer conference. Here Microsoft provided Trial versions of Vista SP1. I installed this with my licence key, and apparently the world was good again!

Updates installed like clockwork for a while... before grinding to a halt...

Attempts to install further updates were futile, and even purchases like MS Flight Simulator would fail half way through installation. I gave up.

SP2 has now been released. And after having paid €75 for flight simulator, I'd actually like to play it! So I attempted to fix things again. In an email to Microsoft, I explained all that I had done, and in failness, they did respond, but the response contained a list of webpages that I had already visited, and contained essentially the same information as my original email to Microsoft.

So I attempted a clean install. Still no joy....

So I'd really appreciate if Microsoft could provide a fix for Servicing Store and Windows Update... and distribute it as a bootable ISO, so that we can actually get the damn thing installed!!

Diving Dublin

As every diver knows, Bouyancy control is essential in diving, and its good bouyancy control that seperates excellent divers from mediocre and beginning divers. What many divers dont realize is good bouyancy decreases your air consumption, and helps you enjoy your dive more (letting you see more rather than having to concentrate on where you are all the time)

It was with this in mind that I decided to do the Peak Performance Bouyancy specialty. I did my open water, and now this with OceanDivers in Dun Laoghaire. They run their pool dives from the National Aquatic Center in Blanchardstown. (Please note I am not affilliated with OceanDivers except from being a satisfied customer)

The peak performance bouyancy specialty consists of a little theory, and two open water dives. OceanDivers go a little further and add a pool session. In this, you'll play some games under water that force you to look at your bouyancy (fitting through a hula hoop is hard enough in scuba gear out of water, try it under water!!)

Once at sea, you will optomize your weighting, (I'm down at 12kg for a 2piece 7mm wetsuit, need to get a single piece and go to the gym to get more off)...

Anyhow, did dive1 last thursday evening, we went around the back of Dalkey Island, to a sheltered place called Seals Bay. Visability was great 2.5-3m, sea was calm, we went on a slack tide, and the colours were amazing with whites of Plumose, and Dean Mens Fingers, and oranges of the starfish and Anemones... all gently swaying, it was amazing!

I'd highly recommend Seals Bay for an easy gorgeous dive, Peak Performancy Bouyancy Specialty to make your diving more enjoyable, and OceanDivers to do it with, both the Instructors, and the Boat Crew (always ready with hot drinks and winegums!) they help make every dive special!