hamilton.likes.to.draw...

Ok, let's talk about the difference between gambling for fun, gambling for profit, and gambling with your life.

Gambling for fun is something most people can do. Hell you probably do it every time you play a video game. Gambling concepts, strategies, and triggers are all over the video game world. The new Battlefront Star Wars game is coming under heavy fire for having a gambling system in place that uses real money. I think the key to gambling for fun involves a few things.

1. Gamble with gains. Never gamble at the bottom of your worth if you want to have fun gambling.

2. Set yourself a goal, and cut out your goal from your gambles, if you've managed to win. You'll walk away with something, and you still had fun.

3. Always consider your gamble to be money spent. This is the problem a lot of gamblers can't get their head into, and they psych themselves out. "I'm up 5 since last hour." No, you're down 20 for the day.

Now gambling for profit is a different beast. It is 100% possible to gamble for profit, and not have a problem. BUT, whereas all the previous rules still apply, there's an amount of strategy and higher buy in that SHOULD discourage the average joe from thinking they can attempt it. gambling for profit involves a full understanding of the rules, the odds, and a complete separation of the personal need for any one amount of money.

I think this is where gambling with your life comes in, is when people can't see those road stops in the concept of gambling. They see people gambling with high amounts, and they think that's what gambling is. They see people making moves, and they think it's JUST guessing. They see people winning lots of money, but they don't see the losses the next day.

When I used to go to the casino I would leave my wallet in the car. I would bring in 50 dollars, and I considered it payment for the amusement park ride. If I got up above 100, 50 would go in one pocket, and I would only gamble with the other pocket. And most days I would walk away with nothing. But more often I walked away with 50. And some days I walked away with more. But I always had fun. I think it is possible to gamble and have fun. I think one has to keep their head about them in order to do it. But I think it's possible.

I do a lot of Social Media strategy and statistical analysis. Here's a set of tips about the major social networks hashtags.

First of all, let's get this out of the way. Hashtags WORK. On everything. To a greater or lesser degree.

Twitter. Hashtags are super important to your social media strategy, and make the difference between languishing in anonymity and rising up in the ranks. Twitter tends to be a place that thrives on tech talk, politics, and celebrity. So those tags tend to be the ones that get the most play. #javascript will immediately get a hundred eyes on your tweet. Plan your character count to include at least one relevant hashtag.

Instagram. Hashtags are equally important, but the audience is fairly different. On instagram, tags involving food, selfies, and art will get the major response that you're looking for. When hashtagging #java on twitter versus instagram, you will get a much different response.

Facebook. Hashtags are nearly completely irrelevant here. In fact studies have shown that using hashtags on personal posts discourages people from looking at your content. Which is a shame, because Facebook is set up to handle hashtags, it's just that no one cares.

Google+. Sigh. Why won't they just release an api so that third party apps can post to them? Google Plus is unique in that they will auto tag your posts if they find relevant tag information within your post. You don't even have to try. Of course, you can also help it along with some actual tags of your own.

Tumblr. Hashtags get generated as a side content for tumblr posts, and so don't have to be a part of your content strategy, but can be tacked on as meta information. This is a nice addition to the process. Tumblr thrives on immediate image content, and so photography and graphic tags tend to get the most play.

Is this a comprehensive list? Not even a little. These are just some notes I've made along the way while trying to stay relevant in a world that moves quickly every day. Hopefully you find something useful in here.