Paul Brown's Blog

Scratch off Lottery Ticket Fun

// February 8th, 2010 // No Comments » // Fun

The 7 losing tickets

Over Christmas I played a game I almost never play: the lottery. I thought it would be fun to get a scratch off ticket from each state on our way from Georgia to Pennsylvania and see how much luck I could have.

Pictured above are the tickets that I still have because they didn’t win any money for me. Not shown are the two tickets that did win. Of course I expected to lose money on the whole experiment, and that’s exactly what happened. I also tried to get holiday-themed tickets, to make it more festive.

Here are some stats for you:

Overall stats: I paid $15 and won $3 of that back.

Georgia: $2 ticket; 1 in 4.21 odds, including breaking even.

South Carolina: $2 ticket. Won $2 back. 1 in 3.91 odds.

North Carolina: $2 ticket. 1 in 4.22 odds

Virginia: $1 ticket. 1 in 4.49 odds

West Virginia: $2 ticket. 1 in 4.35 odds.

Maryland: Two $1 tickets. 1 in 4.13 odds for losing ticket. Won $1 back on other ticket. I guess I was feeling lucky in MD.

Pennsylvania: $3 ticket. 1 in 3.98 odds. This one was the most fun (the big green one)

New Jersey: $1 ticket. Did not state the odds, but the website says “better than 1 in 5″.

Obviously this is all fun and games, and I wasn’t playing to win, I was playing to have fun. A good friend of mine calls the lottery the “stupid person” tax, and I whole-heartedly agree, because you’re gonna lose in the long run no matter what happens. You just might get lucky, but don’t count on it.

Halloween 2009 – Cylon Jackolantern

// November 1st, 2009 // No Comments » // Fun, Technology

Historically I am not much into participating in Halloween festivities, mainly because I can never come up with a great idea for a costume. Maybe next year that will change. This year, however, I did come across a site in my Google Reader (I don’t remember which blog was the original source) that included a video blog from MAKE Magazine about making a cylon jackolantern.

Here’s the original MAKE video post about it:

There’s a link on that page to Evil Mad Scientist Labs where they sell a basic Larson Scanner kit in their store, and that is the one I used in my jackolantern. Next year I might order the parts separately and take an even more DIY approach (perhaps even etching my own circuit board). This basic kit was a fun little project and it let me exercise some soldering skills. Take a look at how my final product turned out below.

And see him in action! This video is probably a bit too long, but it’s only 20 seconds and I didn’t feel like editing it.