Betting Strategies, A Warning
For several years now I have had a side interest away from computing and technology (well, there is still maths involved, and Excel, Web Sites....ok, so not totally devoid of computing and technology).
Betting strategies fascinate me and, like many I am sure, I spend time trying to find a selection of consistent strategies to ultimately provide an income. Until then I guess its the 9-5 for me 
. Much money, time and research has been pumped into this goal by many and I have had my fair share of this. Being realistic, determined and testing, testing, testing before commiting hard moolah is the name of the game.
In the early days I was very naive regarding 'sold on the net' betting strategies and took some hard hits. Determined to beat this I stepped back and learnt as much as I could about bookmaking, the maths behind it, strategie and statistical analysis of racing in general. With a better foundation I have progressed further in developing my own strategies and am (slowly) edging my way towards the ultimate goal of making a living.
I mentioned a warning in the title and this comes back to my early days of buying and trying sold on the net strategies. It started a few days ago when I got an e-mail regarding a new software program that guarentees profits (don't they all). The product in question (although this could relate to many of the online products promising similar wealth) is 'Racing for Green'. It sells itself as a guarenteed way to make profits. The first rule of betting is that there is next to no guarentee of profits other than a good bookmaker producing a good percentage return book, that is balanced, bet upon and without error (but even this still happens and the bookie gets shafted).
What frustrated me most about this product is that it is being sold for £27 to produce calculations that can be made in an Excel (or similar) spreadsheet in a few minutes. Fundamentally, it is taking the 'snapshot' prices of all the runners and increasing the price by a percentage to produce an 'underround' or potentially profitable book. The big issue with this - the higher bets have to be taken to complete the book. Its suggested that the bets are left InPlay so that the fluctuations allow for the increase. Even though I knew the answer I dry tested this with several UK horse races InPlay. It is simply a case of luck to get all the bets placed. When the favorite leads out to the end you will lose as the price tends not to drift upwards in this case.
Apologies if I have waffled but having been stung in the early days by things like this it gets me annoyed. A little knowledge goes a long way, so be wary of people bearing promises of wealth.... Dedication, time, experience and knowledge are the ways to enjoy betting and make some money, not quick fix solutions...
Let me know your experiences in this area or if you have any comments on this.
Battlefield 3 Update
The Christmas Holiday did afford me some hard earned gaming time which allowed me to finally reach the rank of Colonel Service Star 2, with over 170 Hours of gameplay to date. Here are my key BF3 preferences;
Weapon: USAS-12
Soldier: Assault
Game Types: Conquest and Team Deathmatch
Fav Maps: Grand Bazaar, Metro, Seine Crossing, Oman (B2K) and Sharqi (B2K)
Design Work Continues…
The two main areas of design work currently under investigation are the two key processing areas, the PPE (PowerPC Processor Element) and the SPE (Synergistic Processing Element). The PowerPC element of the design should be 'relatively' straight forward to implement quickly as a lot of foundation work has been done in this area already with the PearPC PowerPC Architecture emulator. By utilising some of this source as a basis for the PPE module could benefit both projects. The SPE module will require a bottom up write from scratch approach as it is important this is done correctly as the core module will be used for the multiple SPE's on the system.
The biggest design challenge for me currently is working on the best approach to handling the large 128 Bit registers that are utilised and the opcode processing on them. My development environment is still a 32-bit Intel Dual-Core Architecture and I am trying to decide whether to use this as a 'lowest common denominator' or whether to bite the bullet and upgrade to a 64-Bit Processor (which of course would make the work and transition to 128-Bit registers really easy ).
Headers fixed for IE9 Users
Have now applied a fix to the site that should now show the post and page headers to users of Internet Explorer 9. This was a known issue with the Lightword Theme I am using.
Hopefully the New Year has started well for you all, I know it has for me, so lets hope the rest of the year is great !
Tech Request/Question – PS3 Boot
Officially off on vacation but after a lot of 'conflicting' research I have some questions regarding the PS3 internals;
a) Has anyone actually dumped the SYSCON ARM Microcode of a PS3 yet? Am interested in examining a dump to understand the ring configuration for the Cell Processor.
b) Also, is there a decrypted bootldr out in the wild? This would be perfect to test some early SPU code emulation.
c) Finally, is an accompanying encrypted lv0 available for the bootldr to decrpyt? This would be perfect to test early PPC code emulation.
Ideally, an entire core dump would be helpful but anything from above would help. I have attempted extracting the SYSCON updates from a 3.55 PUP with no luck despite following various instructions and using different tools.
Any help or guidance on any of this would be great. I know there is a lot of hard work been done now and historically in extracting a lot of this information (I'm a software guy not a hardware guy so major props to all working on this). My best reference I am using at the moment is the PS3 Development Wiki.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year
Signing off for the holidays so wanted to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy and Prosperous New Year !!!
‘Project Cell’ Underway
As implied previously I have been working on some paper based designs (yes, I am from the old-school of coding) for a Cell Broadband Engine™ emulator that will run on today's mid-range PC; by mid-range I am looking at general dual core processors. Over the coming week I am looking to validate the designs against reference material I have and plan the initial code framework. I have already received a degree of interest in this work so I have setup a 'Project Cell' page (see side-bar) that I will update in the New Year as work continues [note: this is just a placeholder page for now but you are free to leave comment or e-mail me with any questions you may have]. At this point this project is purely a 'proof of concept' that a Cell processor with PPC and multiple SPU elements can be emulated successfully. If achieved, then doors open to other possibilities.
Christmas Holiday Gaming….
Only a few days now until the Christmas Holiday is upon us. Personally I love Christmas, spending time with the family, carols, snow (occassionally) on the ground ...... wait ....... who am I kidding! A week off work, loads of food, drink and gaming 
.
Have been playing BF3 on my PS3 since release and find it one of the best online multiplayer FPS I have played (not going to get into a BF3/MW3 war here ). I am currently a Rank 39 "Chief Warrant Officer Five" and hope to crack Colonel (45) by the New year. My ranking has definitely sped up since acquiring the MAV under recon (sorry to all opposing TDM players ).
Let me know your gaming preferences for the holiday season....
P.S. To the family - Only joking about above, of course I am looking forward to spending lots of time with you .
Atari Jaguar Page Available
Just a quick updated to let you know that my Atari Jaguar page is now live. This has information and links to my Atari Jaguar Emulator "Jagulator" and my Atari Jaguar Assembler and Linker Tools, SMAC and SLN. See 'Pages' section in the sidebar.
PlayStation 3 Emulation
Had an interesting group of discussions recently regarding the emulation of the Playstation 3 console. Many conversations regarding this usually revolve around the battle of the MFLOPS, number of processors, Polys-Per-Second etc., which have their place, however I sit on the side of the fence that says; Yes, a degree of resonable emulation of the PS3 on a mid-range PC is indeed possible. Having worked on various emulation projects, privately, publically and commercially, I believe this can be achieved through a combination of low level coding, High Level Emulation elements and smart operational design of the code. This is one challenge I have to admit whets my programming appetite but have had difficulty in obtaining any good internal information on the system other than the public Cell and general development documents published by IBM and Sony. To start any project of this kind would require a lot more technical detail of the system that I have yet to obtain 
.
Would be interested in your comments on concept or emulation in general.