Mark is the owner and founder of Timesheets MTS Software, an mISV that develops and markets employee timesheet and time clock software. He's also a mechanical engineer, father of four, and a lifelong lover of gadgets.
A poor tipping week for many this week, with 5 or 6 the most a tipper with any real logic could get. My own tips are now doing considerably better than any of the systems.
Results Round 4
| My Tips | System 1 | System 2 | System 3 | System 4 |
| 5 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 5 |
Current Leaderboard (Round 4)
| My Tips | System 1 | System 2 | System 3 | System 4 |
| 25/36 | 20/36 | 22/36 | 23/36 | 23/36 |
Second brew day was completed at 2:00PM.
1 x 1.7kg Coopers Stout Hopped Extract Can
1 x 1.7kg Coopers Dark Ale Hopped Extract Can
2 x Kit Yeast
0.5kg Dark Dry Malt
0.5kg Dextrose
0.25kg Maltodextrin
Fermentation Vessel in refrigerator – temperature probe taped to side of vessel in insulated holder
Boiled adjuncts in 4L of water for 10 minutes. Sat both cans in hot tap water for 10 minutes to loosen contents before tipping into FV. Rinsed cans in 2L of boiling water and added boiled adjunct mixture. Filled to 23L with cold tap water and aerated well periodically with large spoon. Temperature was too high, packed with ice bricks to get temp down to 30.4C. OG measured as 1.068 (target 1.065) and pitched both packets of kit yeast. Put lid and valve on FV and moved to refrigerator with heat belt wrapped to crash temp to 18.5C. Once at 18.5C set temp to 18.5C using KegKing temperature controller. Plan to leave for 14 days before taking SG reading. Target FG (according to the Kit & Extract Beer Designer spreadsheet) is 1.017 with a 6.7%ABV.
Keg King temperature controller – controls fridge and heat belt
2:00PM temp was 30.4C.
2:30PM temp was 28.4C.
8:30PM temp was down to 18.5C (target brew temperature)
9:00AM 26/4/15 – Significant airlock activity (bubbles every 1-2 seconds), krausen has started to form
6:00PM 28/4/15 – Airlock activity slowed to bubbles every 5-10 seconds
9:00AM 29/4/15 – No airlock activity
2:00PM 2/5/15 – First SG reading taken. 1.022. Drank sample (of course) and it was black and bitter with a hint of wateriness. But not unpleasant. Certainly none of the cidery undertones of my first brew effort.
5:30PM 6/5/15 – SG reading 1.022, fermentation has either stalled or completed. Turned set temperature up to 21C to try to get things started again and plan to take a reading on Saturday 9/5/15. If SG is stable again will rack to secondary, bulk prime, and bottle. Drank sample again, and wow, huge improvement on just four days ago. Smooth rounded mouth feel, no alcohol harshness and the wateryness is gone. Here’s the sample taken today:
10/5/15 – Took SG reading of 1.021. Concluded fermentation has stopped. Leaving set to 18.5C until Wednesday 13/5/15 and then will cold crash till Saturday 16/5 and will then bottle.
8:00AM 13/5/15 – Temperature controller taken out of circuit and fridge set to lowest temp.
16/5/15 – Turned off refrigerator and let FV come up to ambient.
17/5/15 – Racked off to secondary. Bulk primed with 115g of brown sugar dissolved in 200mL of boiling water then bottled into 750mL PET bottles. Yield was 22L (29.5 750mL bottles).
23/5/15 – Had first bottle. Very flat, no head to speak of, very dark, caramel and burnt flavours. A little watery and a very slight hint of a cidery twang. You can see a poured glass below.
1 Week after Bottling
30/5/15 – Cracked second bottle tonight. Little carbonation (as expected) but head was excellent and lasted to end of glass. No noticeable cidery tang and it may have been my imagination but it was a little smoother than last week. Lovely and dark and bitter and intensely satisfying. Alcoholic too, 1 750mL bottle is more than enough for me. Image of poured glass below.
Stout two weeks after bottling – nice head!
An interesting week this week with several 50/50 games. St Kilda vs Carlton in New Zealand could go either way, I’ve seen two Carlton games this year and one Saints game and they’ve both been woeful. GWS vs GC is an each way bet too, GWS has shown some form this year and the Coasters were good against a declining Geelong last week. The Hawks and the Power looks like a close game too, but I’ll lean to the Hawks because Port only just fell in over the line against an undermanned Roos last round. I’ve tipped against the majority of the systems for the Saints / Blues game (for no real reason other than the Saints appear more rubbish than the Blues) and I’ve gone against the Lions at home because of the Eagles forward line power.
| Game | My Tips | System 1 | System 2 | System 3 | System 4 |
| Richmond vs Melbourne | Richmond | Richmond | Richmond | Richmond | Richmond |
| St Kilda vs Carlton | Carlton | St Kilda | St Kilda | St Kilda | St Kilda |
| Essendon vs Collingwood | Essendon | Essendon | Essendon | Collingwood | Collingwood |
| GWS Giants vs Gold Coast | GWS Giants | Gold Coast | GWS Giants | GWS Giants | GWS Giants |
| Port Adelaide vs Hawthorn | Hawthorn | Hawthorn | Hawthorn | Hawthorn | Hawthorn |
| Fremantle vs Sydney | Fremantle | Fremantle | Fremantle | Fremantle | Fremantle |
| Brisbane vs West Coast | West Coast | Brisbane | Brisbane | West Coast | West Coast |
| Geelong vs North Melbourne | North Melbourne | North Melbourne | North Melbourne | North Melbourne | North Melbourne |
| Western Bulldogs vs Adelaide | Adelaide | Adelaide | Adelaide | Adelaide | Adelaide |
Well, all the favourites got up this week. It’s interesting that none of the systems picked Port Adelaide. The main reason for this is the moving average that each system uses to evaluate relative team strength. Port lost their first two games badly and were sitting low on the ladder, which offset their high position in the last few rounds of 2014. This, coupled with the game being played in Victoria means no system selected them. I personally picked them because Port’s two first games were against tough teams (Swans and the Dockers) and North Melbourne were beaten handily by Adelaide in Round 1 and were flat track bullies last week against the hapless Lions.
Results Round 3
| My Tips | System 1 | System 2 | System 3 | System 4 |
| 9 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 8 |
Current Leaderboard (Round 3)
| My Tips | System 1 | System 2 | System 3 | System 4 |
| 20/27 | 18/27 | 19/27 | 18/27 | 18/27 |
An interesting round this week. At first glance there’s only one game that could go either way, North vs Port. However, closer examination suggests that Brisbane at home to Richmond should give an edge to the Lions, but they’ve had a diabolical run with injuries. Couple that with Richmond being truly awful last week and it’s a struggle to pick a winner. The four automated tipping systems suggest that the Collingwood vs St Kilda game is going to be close, but despite that all four selected the Magpies.
| Game | My Tips | System 1 | System 2 | System 3 | System 4 |
| Collingwood vs St Kilda | Collingwood | Collingwood | Collingwood | Collingwood | Collingwood |
| Carlton vs Essendon | Essendon | Essendon | Essendon | Essendon | Essendon |
| Adelaide vs Melbourne | Adelaide | Adelaide | Adelaide | Adelaide | Adelaide |
| Sydney vs GWS Giants | Sydney | Sydney | Sydney | Sydney | Sydney |
| North Melbourne vs Port Adelaide | Port Adelaide | North Melbourne | North Melbourne | North Melbourne | North Melbourne |
| Brisbane vs Richmond | Richmond | Richmond | Richmond | Richmond | Richmond |
| Hawthorn vs Western Bulldogs | Hawthorn | Hawthorn | Hawthorn | Hawthorn | Hawthorn |
| Geelong vs Gold Coast | Geelong | Geelong | Geelong | Geelong | Geelong |
| West Coast vs Fremantle | Fremantle | Fremantle | Fremantle | Fremantle | Fremantle |
It was a bad tipping week this week with several upsets, two of which were completely out of the blue. Almost no-one could have predicted the Saints getting up over the Suns and Essendon doing a number on reigning back to back premier, Hawthorn. Obviously it’s tough for any system to predict these sorts of upsets.
Results Round 2
| My Tips | System 1 | System 2 | System 3 | System 4 |
| 5 | 4 | 5 | 3 | 4 |
Current Leaderboard (Round 2)
| My Tips | System 1 | System 2 | System 3 | System 4 |
| 11/18 | 10/18 | 11/18 | 10/18 | 10/18 |
Here’s the AFL tips for round 2 of the 2015 season! The two deadband systems have chosen Sydney over Port Adelaide so (I guess) that suggests that match is likely to be a close one with homeground advantage giving the slight edge to Port. Last year Port were unlucky to lose to Sydney at the SCG early in the season but Sydney beat Port quite easily at Adelaide Oval late in the year during the Power’s losing streak. An interesting statistic is that Port has actually lost 9 of their last 15 matches. Despite this I still picked the Power to win in front of 50,000 screaming fans!
| Game | My Tips | System 1 | System 2 | System 3 | System 4 |
| West Coast vs Carlton | West Coast | West Coast | West Coast | West Coast | West Coast |
| Richmond vs Western Bulldogs | Richmond | Richmond | Richmond | Richmond | Richmond |
| GWS Giants vs Melbourne | GWS Giants | GWS Giants | GWS Giants | GWS Giants | GWS Giants |
| Collingwood vs Adelaide | Adelaide | Adelaide | Adelaide | Collingwood | Collingwood |
| Gold Coast vs St Kilda | Gold Coast | Gold Coast | Gold Coast | Gold Coast | Gold Coast |
| Port Adelaide vs Sydney | Port Adelaide | Port Adelaide | Sydney | Port Adelaide | Sydney |
| Geelong vs Fremantle | Fremantle | Geelong | Geelong | Geelong | Geelong |
| Essendon vs Hawthorn | Hawthorn | Hawthorn | Hawthorn | Hawthorn | Hawthorn |
| North Melbourne vs Brisbane | North Melbourne | North Melbourne | North Melbourne | North Melbourne | North Melbourne |
Results Round 1
| My Tips | System 1 | System 2 | System 3 | System 4 |
| 6 | 6 | 6 | 7 | 6 |
Current Leaderboard (Round 1)
| My Tips | System 1 | System 2 | System 3 | System 4 |
| 6/9 | 6/9 | 6/9 | 7/9 | 6/9 |
I’ve been tinkering with the idea of creating a spreadsheet to systemise match tips for Australian rules football for a while now. This is because of anecdotal evidence that a reasonable systemised method of selecting winners is likely to out perform most football tippers because it removes any psychological bias.
So, in my spare time in the last month I’ve done a little statistical analysis of the past four years of match results and arrived at a few factors that seem to have the strongest correlation on who does (and doesn’t) win each match. As you imagine, these include who is the home team, relative ladder positions, and so on. I’ve come up with four slightly different systems to tip each week, with various parameters tuned to fit actual match results over the last four years.
Systems 1 and 3
Systems one and three use the same straight comparison of weighted relative ladder position and match type (home, away, interstate, neutral). System 1 includes a bias for some teams, predicting that certain teams will rise up the ladder in 2015, and certain teams will drop. System 3 does not.
Systems 2 and 4
Systems two and four use the same comparison used by the first two systems but apply a dead band selection. Basically this means if the comparison is sufficiently small then these systems select the team that has the highest weighted relative ladder position. Additionally system 2 uses the same bias for some teams that system 1 uses.
Tips for Round 1
Here’s the tips for round 1 (along with my own tips). Each week I’ll update the tips and compare the performance of each system.
| Game | My Tips | System 1 | System 2 | System 3 | System 4 |
| Carlton vs Richmond | Richmond | Richmond | Richmond | Richmond | Richmond |
| Melbourne vs Gold Coast | Gold Coast | Gold Coast | Gold Coast | Gold Coast | Gold Coast |
| Sydney vs Essendon | Sydney | Sydney | Sydney | Sydney | Sydney |
| Brisbane vs Collingwood | Brisbane | Brisbane | Brisbane | Collingwood | Collingwood |
| Western Bulldogs vs West Coast | Western Bulldogs | Western Bulldogs | Western Bulldogs | Western Bulldogs | West Coast |
| St Kilda vs GWS Giants | GWS Giants | St Kilda | St Kilda | St Kilda | St Kilda |
| Adelaide vs North Melbourne | Adelaide | Adelaide | Adelaide | Adelaide | Adelaide |
| Fremantle vs Port Adelaide | Port Adelaide | Fremantle | Fremantle | Fremantle | Fremantle |
| Hawthorn vs Geelong | Hawthorn | Hawthorn | Hawthorn | Hawthorn | Hawthorn |
Someone sent a question through this site to me yesterday.
Hi Mark,
Thanks for your site. I’ve been using yoast meta descriptions since beginning my site (800 posts) and now want to use the post excerpt in archives. Is there a way to use the yoast meta desc. as the wordpress excerpt? I find documentation on using excerpts as meta, but not the other way around.
Thanks for your help,
If you’re wondering Yoast SEO is the most popular WordPress SEO Plugin and it allows you to override a lot of default WordPress post values to better optimise your on-page SEO. If you’re wondering what a META description is then you should read this article on Wikipedia.
As it turns out, the solution isn’t too hard. First, check the WordPress documentation to see if there’s a filter that can be used when the post excerpt is retrieved (there is). Second, have a poke around the wp_postmeta MySQL database table and check what meta_key Yoast uses to store his post META description. Turns out that key is _yoast_wpseo_metadesc. Once we know that it’s simply a matter of writing a couple of lines of PHP and dropping it into the functions.php file:
add_filter( 'get_the_excerpt', 'replace_post_excerpt_filter' );
function replace_post_excerpt_filter($output)
{
$output=get_post_meta(get_the_ID(), '_yoast_wpseo_metadesc', true);
return $output;
}
In the first line we’re adding the get_the_excerpt filter and in the third adding the new filter procedure. The procedure itself is fairly simply, the get_post_meta function allows us to pull the Yoast META description for the post. Then we’re replacing the excerpt passed to the function with the Yoast value.
Of course this is going to replace the post excerpt everywhere. If you just wanted to change the value in your WordPress archives then you could just edit your child theme’s archive.php file (assuming your theme has an archive.php file). Just look for the main loop and some code that looks something like the_excerpt(); and replace it with:
echo get_post_meta(get_the_ID(), '_yoast_wpseo_metadesc', true);