Why I don’t play the lottery..
I found an excellent lottery simulator which shows just how slim the chances are of winning a lottery jackpot (match 6 between 1 and 50). When you run the simulator you will NEVER play the lottery again! 
My results were:
To summarise: I had selected 6 numbers (2, 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12) and at 1 draw a week it took 3.9 million draws (or 76,100 years) to match all six numbers and claim the jackpot. In real time it took the java lottery simulator a little over four days of processing to match the numbers.
Next time friends or colleagues say they are going to have a go at a rollover jackpot or one of the big Euro lotteries and get all excited about spending the winnings, show them this simulator 
Formula One: IT
I think it maybe more glamorous than it sounds but I would love to work in ‘IT support’ for a Formula One team. Check out these screen grabs from Melbourne qualifying. It is unusual to have a quick glance behind the scenes:
Is that a rack of servers I see in the background of one of the shots? Anyway, sure is some serious hardware with statistics galore 
Street View is still stunning
Street View has taken over my internet time this weekend . It really is stunning. Found myself in France on a mountain road today. Virtual holidays here we come.
The Stig on Street View
LOL. Top Gear’s ‘The Stig’ has been spotted in the BBC Centre on Street View:
Google Street View UK
I am truly fascinated by the brilliantness of Google Street View in the UK that has recently been made live. The quality of the images is amazing. I really want to know how many photos are stitched together to cover just the handful of cities in the UK. How do they get lined up so perfectly? How much storage space do they take up? Fascinating stuff.
Anyway, here is a warm welcome from someone in Edinburgh :
Panoramic photos
I don’t keep up to date with the latest mobile phones, I just want something that calls, texts, and takes the occasional photograph. Recently my phone provider upgraded my phone to a Nokia 6500c and I am impressed with it. Scarily it now has a higher resolution camera than my proper digital camera which I purchased 4 years ago. The photo results on the 6500c are impressive for a mobile (well to me anyway).
I was mucking about with the phone playing with the camera and decided to try a panoramic shot to see how it turns out. First problem is my phone doesn’t do panoramic (I can’t find the option if it does and I ain’t going to RTFM). I grabbed a few photos of the gorgeous wintery weather we are having at the moment and made sure each shot had about 20% of an overlap.
Next I opened Windows Live Photo Gallery* and imported the photos. I then selected the four photos and from the Make menu selected Create a panoramic photo.. The software done its magic, I gave the new creation a file name and this is the result:
Click for full super size
I must learn how to move the camera in a straight arc when taking photos though as the results show how much I moved it vertically. Cool bit of software and impressive quality photo for a mobile phone.
*I think the default install of Windows Photo Gallery on XP and Vista is different from Windows Live Photo Gallery as it doesn’t have the ‘Make’ menu. The update at the link above does have the extra features. A little confusing.
‘Minority Report’ technology is here
I remember watching Minority Report when it was released and being blown away by the technology in the film, most notably the whole futuristic User Interaction (UI) thing. When the characters were using their hands on clear ‘windows’ (physical, not MSFT) it looked so natural and intuitive.
Oblong Industries Inc has created a real world representation of this futuristic UI. One of the founders was the science advisor for Minority Report so it is no coinicidence in the similarities. Here is a demo:
Tetris. But not as you know it..
Found a great little flash and browser based game called 99 Bricks. Imagine Tetris crossed with Jenga with some physics thrown in. The idea is to build your tower of tetriminoes as high as possible before it topples to the ground. My love of physics in videogames is heightened even further by this game .
Google Earth Gigapxl photo viewing
This is what the internet was designed for. I’m speechless at this, you read it right that is a 1000 megapixel image. Or put another way you would need a video wall of 10,000 television screens to capture as much information as that contained in a single exposure (!?).
Load up Google Earth 4.3 and in the sidebar find Layers then drilldown through ‘Gallery’ and turn on ‘Gigapxl Photos’.
Now look for a mountain icon with binoculars and click to bring up the dialogue. Finally, click ‘Fly into this ultra high-resolution photo’. Now you can move and zoom all the way into the photo using normal Google Earth controls. Truly astonishing level of detail.
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- Locations of Gigapxl images
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- Finding the Gigapxl images layer
Driving games and professional drivers
This absolutely fascinates me. I have been a ‘driving game’ fan on PCs and consoles for many years. I have been enthralled with the progress driving games have made over the years. From Pole Position to Indy Car Racing. From Grand Prix Legends to GTR2. And on the arcadey side of things PGR4 and Grid. The joy of all these games was the ability for them to consume me into trying to better my laptimes and performance.
Games featuring real-life tracks are a favourite, I would be so engrossed in them. I would like to imagine ‘being there’. Man, I can usually tell a track in real life from the first few corners on TV footage!
In the early days ‘racing’ against CPU AI was frustrating fun. Today, racing against friends in a LAN or Xbox Live environment is something else on another level. The same can be said for the realism, physics in driving games have progressed at an amazing rate. With so much CPU grunt in todays machines much more stuff can be calculated and thrown around the environment. Just look at Grid and watch the tyre walls and cones scatter around the track when hit. Then examine the damage on your car. Amazing.
Couple into that my interest in motorsport and the two join very nicely. I have followed F1 for years but also like GP2 (due to using same cars), WRC Rally, FIA GT and Moto GP. When I am watching races I often wonder how the professional drivers would fare at driving games and how the games compare to the reality (odd I know!). I have found one professional driver in the FIA GT series who also plays driving games. His lap of Silverstone on rFactor is a joy to watch. Professional drivers playing videogames? Who would have thought it?
Anyway, back to the point of this post. I have always wanted to know what F1 teams use for their simulators and have finally found this video. Fascinating, a bespoke simulator just for Williams! This is Nico Rosberg driving the new track in Singapore. Would love to see behind the scenes, how it works and what it runs on:
