I occasionally have conversations with people about playing the lottery. Some, like me, have a flutter but others are dismissive, "What's the point - you only have a one in fourteen million chance of winning".
I had a dull walk with the dog this evening and was thinking about this. Yes, it is only a one in 14m chance of winning the jackpot if you play once, but what is the chance I will ever win?
I buy two lines for the national lottery twice a week, which is 208 attempts a year. So 14m divided by 208 makes it a one in 67,308 chance of winning the jackpot in a year.
Assuming I started playing when I was 30 and carry on until I'm 65, that'll be thirty-five years of entries, bringing the chance of me ever winning the lottery jackpot down to 1 in 1,923.
So, if I carry on playing the lottery twice a week for the rest of my working life the odds aren't so bad I could win, and if I do it results in a massive, life-changing event.
The odds aren't so terrible and the upside is enormous. But what about the cost? Only £7,280 over 35 years.
So thanks for the cynicism friends but I'll carry on playing.
Mobile apps have become the developer's new playground.
With the phenomenal success of the iPhone, mobile applications, or apps, have boomed. There are numerous examples of developers making significant incomes from iPhone apps but until now other platforms haven't seemed a good bet.
Then yesterday I saw an article on The Register about an Android developer who has published his sales figures. Edward Kim's app to help find your parked car is now earning him $400 a day, or $13k a month!
It's not the same level of the top iPhone apps but the android marketplace is growing and while Apple launches one phone a year, Android is becoming the smartphone platform of choice for multiple handset manufacturers.
Well it's that time of year again when we start to look forward to the new Football season.
As usual the pre-season warm up consists of who's staying, who's going, who's being bought etc etc.
If you've a team you'd like to write about, or perhaps you'd like to write about a particular aspect of the game, then please do get in touch. You don't have to have any writing experience, just a passion for the game.
David and myself would like to thank you once again for visiting our site in the past year and we'd also like to thank all our writers, both past and present for their contribution.
At Real Life News we're always on the look out for new writers and since we've been running this site we've had a wide variety.
We've had some that want to contribute the odd post here and there, others look at it as a long term hobby or stepping stone to bigger things.
Some write on our environment blog, others on footie, but if you fancy a rant about a subject we don't yet cover, we're always on the look out for new ideas.
