A new game show starts here next Tuesday on Channel 9, Wipeout. The latest creation from Endemol USA (Big Brother etc). The show starts with 24 contestants who are quickly whittled down to 12 in the qualifying challenge. Some of you may remember a show around in the late 80’s called “It’s a knockout”, and of course you have seen the current “Gladitor” series on TV and possibly even “Friday Night Games” from Big Brother, well WIPEOUT is a sort of like those, only better.

Straight from the USA, only 2 episodes have aired so far (before we get it here in Australia). The 12 contestants who make it through the qualifing round continue on through additional water filled, mud pool, rubber balled, slippery and foam covered courses only to be cut in half again. The remaining 6 will battle it out in another spinning, running, falling, jumping, splashing timed course, until the final 4 are decided.

Bigger is better! In the final round, the contestants battle their way through a huge obstacle course, apparently “the biggest ever”. Whoever does it in the best time, wins $50,000 cash! Great prize. The show will air once per week and it great viewing for those who love seeing people getting pwned.

It should have been on Friday nights so you could get drunk with your friends and watch, I am sure it would be twice as funny.

This one is fun. WIPEOUT on Tuesday nights!

I had an interesting conversation with some colleagues this week, one of whom I thought was quite internet savvy. He is a regular eBay user, yet he claims to have no knowledge of a bidding method known as “snipering” an auction.

In a few short days, eBay will be testing a new policy on its guinea pigs Australian user base. From May 17, sellers will be required to offer PayPal as a payment method on all auctions. From July 1, PayPal will be the only available payment option (apart from the old pickup / cash trade). eBay hopes to attract new users to the site with their new “safer” policy. However, most comments so far suggest that it will push many (current) users away, as fees increase through the use of both (eBay owned) services.

Let’s face it, eBay is going to crap anyway, so we may as well discuss a few of my favourite eBay buying and selling techniques.

Buying Tip, Snipering and the uneven proxy amount: Well this isn’t really a tip. It’s more like an instruction. If you are new to eBay, you will (should) get used to snipering by the end of the first auction you bid on, unless of course you are an idiot and have bid too much for something that no one else wants. If not, you will notice that in the final seconds of the auction someone outbids you and you lose. That is a sniper, welcome to eBay. It is the only real way to bid and win on eBay.

Some people don’t even realise how eBay’s “proxy bidding” system works, so they will never understand sniper bids. But if you have your head around proxy bids, then you must sniper. Just like a regular proxy, work out the maximum you are prepared to pay for an item, let’s say it’s $40. For heaven sake, don’t put the $40 bid in at the start of the auction. To sniper correctly, you have to enter your $40 with only seconds to go.

But let’s say you did, and now the item is at $12 with 5 minutes to go, you’re laughing to yourself going “Gee, look at this Mary, I’m winning this thing for $12 and it’s worth $70 in the shops!” Don’t worry, if there is even one (1) other person that wants it, you’re not going to win. Even with your $40 proxy.

The item has 2 minutes to go, some idiot on dial-up puts in his “sniper” bid a few minutes out and the bidding hits $31. You’re still winning and it looks like he hit his $30 limit. Your proxy has auto-incremented your bid to $1 more than his maximum bid. 5 seconds to go, you can’t believe your eyes! F5, F5, F5. Bidding for this item has ended, you were outbid. PISS! How did that happen? WTF? It sold for $40.11? Someone beat you by 11c? Let me tell you why.

They are smarter than you. Their spend limit was $40 too, but their “smart” proxy was set at $40.11. So they win because they bid more, but only 11c more. Even though the regular minimum bid increment is $1, they have pipped you at the post for 11c. Always use an uneven proxy amount, I usually use $1.21 or something over my maximum. This is an awesome snipering technique and one that you must employ to win more on eBay.

There is another reason the odd amount can win, and it’s what I refer to as a “rounder”. I am a rounder myself, but you can’t be if you want to WIN on eBay. If an item is worth about $80-$100 and the shipping is $15. You can be guaranteed that someone will have a proxy at $85 (making the full payment round off to a neat 100 sheet). $85.11 and you could win here too.

Buying Tip, Buy Now Elimination: Sellers often start their auctions at 99c, generally because the exorbitant eBay fees. It’s ok to throw a bid on here, I like putting a very low bid on something just so it ends up in “My eBay” so I can keep an eye on it, because I generally forget if it’s just in my watch list. But its even MORE important to put a first bid on, especially if the seller has a starting price a lot lower than their “Buy Now” price. Say an item that is worth $400-$500 is listed with a starting bid of $200 and a Buy Now of $500. Put in the $200 bid immediately, get rid of that $500 price tag out of everyone else’s mind. Don’t remind them it is worth that much money, don’t let anyone else know. Oh and if someone lists something for $0.99c and $2000 Buy Now, just put the $1 in to piss them off. The “Buy Now” option disappears as soon as a bid is placed. Sucker you just wasted 10c. Note: 10c is accurate at time of writing, by the time you finish reading this post, eBay have probably upped their Buy Now fees.

Selling Tip, Go Long, Start Low use a Shill Bidder:

Go long. I always like to use the longest auction option which is 10 days. Due to proxy bidding, a 10 day listing is basically a week long advertisement for the auction that is going to happen in 9 days, 23 hours and 59 minutes. Yes that’s right, everyone knows the auction doesn’t really “happen” until the last minute. Research your market before you list. Have a look at who else is selling etc. If someone has a similar item to you with great bids and 6 days left, it might be right to put in a 5 day auction and get all those bidders to hop on yours first. Don’t let the dummy set a precedent with that auction, pushing it through the roof and then the other bidders pay too little for yours. If there are early bids, make sure the dopey one gets on your auction too. Sometimes, in this case, it is better to put it up for 7 days. Maybe pick up the dummy who misses out (because of snipers) and then thinks he has to pay way too much for yours just so he doesn’t miss out again.

Start low, the 99c auction saves you listing fees. It also looks good in the search listings when you scroll past an item that has 49 bids on it. Lots of bids attracts lots of attention, it also gives suckers that winning feeling. It also might create a bit of “bid rage” where people get suckered in to paying too much to retain that “winning feeling”.

“But its too risky to list my $1,000 stainless steel fridge for $1 starting price, what if I don’t get the money I want?”

Don’t be a fool, you never go in to battle (read “99c listing”) without a shill bidder. OMG Paul, what is a shill? A shill under eBay policy is illegal. Don’t read passed here if you have any morals. A shill is a friend of yours who bumps up the price for you. A shill makes you more money, a shill makes eBay LOTS more money, so I think they probably turn a blind eye to it. Oh but if you see evidence of shill bidding, please inform eBay.

Use your shill to push the crap out of stupid people’s early proxies. Use your shill to set your own “reserve”. Use your shill to push “rounders” to their proxy. Use your shill to win your auction if you think you are going to get crushed. Just email the under-bidder after the auction and sell it to them on the side.

Anyway, I could go on all night about eBay buying and selling techniques, but I have an item finishing in 30 minutes and I have to get my shill bidder suited up for action.

Note: Paul Cherry does not condone the use of “shill bidders” or any other method or means that violates eBay policy and local laws. This post should be read for its comedic value and used for educational purposes only.

I’ve seen these billboards and bus shelter ads popping up all over Brisbane. It is for some “secret launch party” that Christian Bowman is running. I can’t see it being so “secret” if he is running advertisements all over town. I smell bollocks Christian, what is going on?

Michelle Lozanovki, one of the female contestants of the 2008 Australian Biggest Loser TV show, is apparently allergic to money. In an amazing feat of stupidity, this fat apprentice hairdresser from Sydney, NSW tonight turned down the chance to leave the house for $50k.

Here is how it went down. Michelle won the weekly challenge of being the “biggest loser” by losing the most weight in week 6 of the 12 week competition. Her prize is $50,000. The catch? Leave the Biggest Loser House and give up her place in the competition.

Leaving with the $50k also means the overall prize of the game show becomes $150,000 (the money is removed from the $200k final prize).

Her Mum comes on the show, let’s call her Mrs Stupid Lozanovki. Mrs Stupid tells her obese daughter that “her place is in the house” and that her dead grand parents would want to see her in the house. I can only assume that Mrs Stupid is filthy rich.

Michelle from Biggest Loser speaks to her original USA trainer Bob Harper and he says “take the money”. Wow, even an American is smarter than “fats Lozanovki”.

Somehow, Michelle could not see that she could leave the house in week 6, spend $500 a day on the best personal trainer for 7 days per week for the next 6 weeks ($21,000), buy the best food for about $100 a day ($4,200) and fit out an unbelievable home gym for about $10,000 and still have how much? About $15,000 of the $50,000 to spend on her new wardrobe. And that’s 6 weeks, the absolute maximum amount of time she could possibly have left in the house. If she gets voted out in 2 weeks time, she’s effectively paid $25,000 a week for “weight loss training”.

Maybe, just maybe it may have been a sensible decision if ..

• There was less than 4 people left, giving her a greater than 1/4 chance of winning the whole $200,000 (ie, 4 x $50,000) . Even then, it is still ridiculous. Tell me 1 person you know who would pay $50 for the chance to win $200, when the odds are not even really an “out of a hat” 1 in 8 chance.
• If the voting was based on viewer participation and not by the colluding bunch of fat bastards “playing the game”, or;
• She gets out of the place and gets an endorsement deal worth > $50k because someone else agrees that “health is more important than money” and decides to pay her a ridiculous sum of money to represent it.

I honestly can not wait to see her get kicked out now. If anything, this has made me want to watch the show even more.

Michelle Lozanovki, Biggest Loser or Biggestest Loser?

Tonight on ACA they reported about all of the “stars” at Aussie Millions. They spoke to Aussie comedian Stephen Curry and Hollywood actress, turned poker pro Jennifer Tilly. Phil Laak was sitting right next to her the whole time, but they never introduced him or asked a single question. So according to A Current Affair, the only stars of poker are Hollywood celebrities, surely they could have mentioned a few of the best in that “sporting” field. They did touch on Joe Hachem for about 5 seconds, but the reporting always seems like they don’t really know what they are talking about and/or throw in too many puns. “This guy certainly knows when to hold’em and when to fold’em”.

Anyway, for my update. Apart from the fact that they ran a story about the Aussie Millions the night after I mentioned it in an email about the Phil Ivey identification mistake, they also apologised! At the end of the episode they said sorry for the error mis-identifying poker play Phil Ivey as James Blake. I win!

Tonight on A Current Affair they reported about all of the famous tennis stars you can see in Melbourne during the Australian Open events. Usually at this time of year, I would be knocking about Crown Casino in Melbourne for the Aussie Millions (Australia’s biggest poker tournament). I am not going this year, but for the past 3 or 4 years I have seen many of those tennis stars in the Crown hotel complex.

Anyhow, on tonight’s show of ACA, they reported spotting “big hitter James Blake” in Melbourne. They showed footage of their crew interviewing “Blake” outside Crown as he stepped into a limo. They must have asked him “What are you doing?” as he replied “Oh I’m just going off to play some golf, I might play some poker in the car”.

Unbeknown to the ACA reporter, they were in fact speaking to professional poker player Phil Ivey (pictured below in the shot of mine from Aussie Millions 2006). Phil loves two things, poker and golf. I am not sure if James Blake likes golf or poker, but it seemed to make sense enough for ACA to air it.

I can just imagine the Nine ACA researchers or reporters typing “black male tennis star” in to Google, to which they are presented with the first result which talks about James Blake. “Yeah that looks like him” they must have said to themselves. Or maybe they thought, “How many rich black people can there be in Melbourne? It has to be him”.

According to Wikipedia, Phil Ivey has over $8 million of recorded poker tournament winnings, a few million more than his stunt double James Blake, who has won over $5 million playing tennis.

I shot ACA an email to tell them they confused the two, it would be interesting to see if they say anything about it.

Phil Ivey has often been referred to as “the Tiger Woods of poker”, maybe James Black has been called that in the tennis world at some stage too? I am surprised ACA didn’t say they caught up with Tiger Woods.

Just in case you’re reading my blog and thinking “I should have Paul Cherry around for dinner, I wonder if he likes steak?” well, wonder no more. If you follow these simple guidelines, you can have Paul over for a steak dinner any time:

• Large.
• Eye Fillet / Rib Eye.
• Cooked Medium.
• Accompanied by some form of potato.

We cooked steak here the other night. We visited a local butcher and got some large rib-eye on the bone. They were probably 700 grams each. I put them on the grill plate, about 1 minute per side, turning half way through to get some nice grilled lines. Then it went into the oven for about 30 mins at 160 degrees Celsius with the mini roast potatoes. The steak came out a beautiful medium, like a little roast beef.

Served with a side salad of cos, beetroot, red onion, capsicum, carrot, cheese, celery and soy crisp croutons.

Enjoy.

Over our holidays we have planted some herbs in a few big pots. I want a proper herb garden eventually, but because we rent it has to be in pots for now. We started with “seedlings” rather than from seeds to give us a bit of a head start.

We have some rosemary that is a little more mature than the others, and it’s actually good enough to start using straight away. We have also planted some thyme, basil, celery and capsicum.

Rosemary is a woody, perennial herb with fragrant evergreen needle-like leaves. The fresh and dried leaves are used frequently in traditional Mediterranean cuisine. They have a bitter, astringent taste, which complements oily foods, such as lamb and oily fish.

Thyme is often used to flavour meats, soups and stews. It has a particular affinity to and is often used as a primary flavour with lamb, tomatoes and eggs.

Basil should be used fresh; in cooked recipes it is generally added at the last moment, as cooking quickly destroys the flavour. The dried herb also loses most of its flavour, and what little flavour remains tastes very different, like hay. Mediterranean and Indochinese cuisines frequently use basil, the former frequently combining it with tomato. Basil is one of the main ingredients in pesto.

We used some of our rosemary to make this delicious roast lamb on Christmas Eve.

Merry Christmas to all!

Those who know me are generally aware of my elite craftsmanship when it comes to making poker tables. Ever since the first one I constructed in 2004 and published the “How To Build a Poker Table” plans on Poker.com, I have been known to throw the odd table together. After that first one, I started building poker tables (to sell) with an old workmate of mine Jason, who continues to build poker tables under the Card Shark brand.

Anyway, I recently completed a special poker table for my sister for Christmas. This one has some nice patterned vinyl for the padded arm rail and hot pink playing surface. It sits on Ikea legs (with built-in storage) and some LED lighting. I took a few photos during the build process and am still considering whether to re-publish the “plans” with the all-new methods.

Here is a photo of the end result.

Ok so my first post is a bit off topic to what I promised, but hey, it’s my blog and I can do whatever I want, I’m an adult.

Welcome to PaulCherry.com.au, I am Paul Cherry. I started working in the online industry in early 1998 for a company then known as Toast.com. I responded to a advertisement in the local paper for a position as a “Search Engine Updater”. When I started, I actually joined a small group of developers who became the foundation of a brilliant SEO team.

The direction of that business evolved and it soon became known as DarkBlueSea (ASX: DBS). Within DBS I served many roles. I became manager of the SEO/traffic team and worked on various products including the beginning of DarkBlue.com (an affiliate network) and Fabulous.com (a domain name registrar and parking solution). There are close to 1 million names in total parked with Fabulous.com, half of which are owned by DBS. That’s right, DarkBlueSea has one of the largest domain name portfolios in the World, with over 550,000 registered to the company itself.

I left DarkBlueSea in 2005 to pursue another interest of mine, poker. I began working on Poker.com as a webmaster/SEO, where my only job was to keep the site at number 1 for the term “poker”. After several years, as internet businesses do, the direction changed. Poker.com became more than just an affiliate portal, we had a shot at building and running our own poker software client.

At Poker.com I helped design the software, became tournament director and then managed the affiliate team. We had a considerably small team (for a poker room) and I performed many tasks from software concepts through to marketing campaigns. I traveled to several industry events representing the poker room and even to the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas with some of our best players.

October 2006, all hell broke loose with the online gaming industry as the US House of Representatives passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act by slipping it in to the SAFE Port Act. The World’s biggest poker room, PartyPoker.com, lost 60% of its share value overnight.

The Poker.com software became CarbonPoker.com and continues to accept US players, while other poker rooms closed their doors to the USA. The owners of the company who I like, got out, and I soon followed. Poker.com became a poker information portal once again. CarbonPoker.com (and the software management company) has created a new poker network called Merge Gaming.

Early 2007, I began working for Boomerang.com.au (Australia) Pty Ltd. Boomerang is an Australian owned and operated web publishing company based in Brisbane. I am currently employed as the Business Development Manager and am involved in domain management, affiliate advertising and the company’s web development programs.

I am starting this blog quite late in my “online career” however I believe it to be a necessary platform for my future endeavours and also my current rants about the industries I am involved in.

Over the coming weeks, and in to the future, I will write my thoughts about (mostly Australian) affiliate programs, domaining, SEO/SEM and anything else in between. Welcome to PaulCherry.com.au.