Powered by Twitter Tools

Post from: Dan Nedelko

No related posts.

Powered by Twitter Tools

Post from: Dan Nedelko

No related posts.

The Province of Ontario and specifically “Premier Dad” or Dalton McGuinty announced that online wagering on Casino, Poker and Sports (via ProLine) will be offered in 2012. Now beyond the fact that I’m 100% sure that the OLG (Ontario Lottery and Gaming — the overseer of all things gambling in Ontario) will royally screw up the implementation of any online gaming site there is the higher level issues I have with Dalton McGuinty.

Specifically in Ontario:

1. We’re not allowed to host Mixed Martial Arts events — meaning they can’t be held in the province. Ed. Note: Yeah I know. *sigh*.
2. If you’re under 22 you can’t have a drop of alcohol in your system if you’re driving a vehicle. Ed Note: I’m all for this actually let’s just make this simple and make it zero tolerance for everyone.
3. Cigarettes cannot be on display in any convenience store. They have to be covered in these massive grey cabinets, see teenagers are dumb, they even even cover their eyes and when they do they think they disappear.

In Ontario under the McGuinty government we’re coddled and treated like morons. I say this as a pretty consistent supporter of the Liberal party — although I would say I’m a fiscal conservative (ie don’t waste massive amounts of money) and social liberal (ie universal education for all, public support for the most vulnerable in the community).

Also keep in mind this Ontario Liberal government is scandal plagued. Here are few notable examples:

eHealth Scandal — the Ontario government hired a completely under-qualified Sara Kraemer to digitize all public health records in the province. It’s a daunting task and as I predicated when the project was started they screwed it up royally. Not only has nothing been accomplished but there was also a nice contractor scandal to go alongside with it.
OLG Expense Scandal — In Late August 2009 the entire OLG board resigned over inappropriate expenses. Now we’re not talking about a cup of coffee, these were ongoing an high ticket price expenses from corporate douche bags that made 6 and 7 figure incomes. Some examples include:

• gym memberships worth $250
• Weight Watchers memberships
• club link golf fees
• a $1,500 bar tab at a $3,700 dinner for 38 people
• a $500 nanny fee so that a vice-president member could attend meetings, an amount since repaid

OLG Insider Lottery Wins — yeah you heard me right. If you’re from Ontario you know about this scandal but if not then you might need a bit of background. It comes down to people who were selling tickets were claiming their own winning tickets to the tune of $198 Million over a 13 year period. Scandals will hapen, I can imagine that retailers get greedy as they only get a small percentage of sales. But 13 years!?

This basically tells me the OLG is either incompetent and filled with highly paid, bureaucratic, do nothing greedy corporate douche bags or their just as greedy and corrupt as the insiders performing the fraud. Maybe a little from column A and a little from column B.

Learn more about the OLG Insider Lottery Scandal (via CBC News).

Ok, so you might be wondering what my point is here. I’m not simply ranting about the incompetence of my Provincial government or the scandal plagued OLG (or my personal opinion of the agency which as you can tell isn’t very high).

I’m saying that:

1. Legalized and regulated online gaming makes sense — simply put prohibition doesn’t work. It’s been proven over and over again.
2. Government run gaming agencies should not be the sole provider of gaming services. It should be a regulated and licensing process to let actual competent organizations run profitable and fair e-gaming websites.
3. A government monopoly on the egaming space is going to be rife with:
   • Really really bad sports betting lines. This is in the house’s favor (obviously) but the lines on ProLine are simply so far out of whack with any other competing lines it’s ridiculous. Wanna lose parlays and be offered bad lines? Play ProLine.
   • Poor customer service and not a clue from an operational side what makes an online casino thrive. Frankly they can contract it to a private sector company here in Ontario and they will not know what they’re doing either. They simply haven’t operated in the space.
   • Online Poker will suffer from a lack of volume (always a problem in the poker space for upstart sites) unless they plug into another network like Cake but they won’t and they can’t since these operators are currently violating UIEGA and I don’t think that is politically correct.
   • Poor security — yeah yeah you’re gonna secure it. So was the BCLC with their PlayNow online gaming site.
4. Create a licensing system and let third parties operate legally in Ontario. Let’s not make this yet another LCBO scenario, but who am I kidding I’ve lived here all my life and I’m predicting it’ll never change. This will ensure a legitimate group of operators who will then provide tax revenue to each of the provinces offering their services in that locale.

So for these reasons I wouldn’t say that this is a huge revelation or earth shattering event plus any additional revenue garnered by the Ontario government will blown in absolutely ridiculous and ludicrous scandals and programs (all day Kindergarten anyone?)

Stay tuned. I’ll definitely be updating this post with any new (and stupid) revelations in the Whacky Wild Dalton McGuinty Gambling Extravaganza!

Update August 12,2010: Looks like the Alberta Government is also seriously considering online gambling offerings. (via The Edmonton Journal)

Post from: Dan Nedelko

Related posts:

1. Online Gambling in CR Government Sites
2. Online Casino Suite — Site Review
3. Online Casino Games for British Columbia

Powered by Twitter Tools

Post from: Dan Nedelko

No related posts.

@Sportsbook_com Just talked to a friend of mine I’ve know for a while and he assures me you’re right. I take it back Cheers. in reply to Sportsbook_com #

That was exciting fun and illuminating all at the same time Sit down. Breath Deeply. Relax. #

@Sportsbook_com yeah that could be the case but that’s not magical considering the domain name Anyhow you guys keep on rockin’ #

@pearsonified good point. I was goofin’ off a little bit there #

@pearsonified let’s blame @google Notice a slight load blip before the font styles apply? I’ll do a quick howto for others #thesis users. in reply to pearsonified #

Powered by Twitter Tools

Post from: Dan Nedelko

Related posts:

1. Google Font API Thesis and Wordpress

@Sportsbook_com Just talked to a friend of mine I’ve know for a while and he assures me you’re right. I take it back Cheers. in reply to Sportsbook_com #

That was exciting fun and illuminating all at the same time Sit down. Breath Deeply. Relax. #

@Sportsbook_com yeah that could be the case but that’s not magical considering the domain name Anyhow you guys keep on rockin’ #

@pearsonified good point. I was goofin’ off a little bit there #

@pearsonified let’s blame @google Notice a slight load blip before the font styles apply? I’ll do a quick howto for others #thesis users. in reply to pearsonified #

Powered by Twitter Tools

Post from: Dan Nedelko

No related posts.

This makes me pretty happy since it’s always a pain to have to ignore high quality fontography in place of web safe fonts. Here’s a bit of background on the whole thing if you’ve missed it.

Google Blog Font Directory Post

Google Font Directory

Google Font Directory Preview Tool

I’m going to quickly cover how I integrated this into a Wordpress theme which took all of about 5 minutes then how I integrated it into the ever popular Thesis Theme which I use on quite a number of sites which I own.

Before we dive in here are a few examples. First a non-Thesis example.

Before

After:

Non-Thesis Wordpress Integration

1. Go to The Google Font Directory Preview tool.
2. Select your font and options.
3. Go to your website.
4. Crack open your header.php file.
5. Add the following link (with the font details you’ve selected) into your file:

<link  href="//fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Cantarell:regular,italic,bold,bolditalic" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" >

6. Open up your style.css file in your Wordpress theme.
7. Depending on which CSS element you are looking to replace simply comment our your current font styling.
8. Copy Paste and replace with the Google font preview tool.

For Example:

body {
margin-top: 0px;
padding: 0;
color: #4c4c4c;
background-color: #F3ECC4;
font-family: 'Cantarell', serif;
font-size: 14px;
font-style: normal;
text-shadow: none;
text-decoration: none;
letter-spacing: 0.0em;
word-spacing: 0.25em;
line-height: 1.23em;
background-image: url(images/bg.jpg);
background-repeat: repeat-x;
}

Voila — easy as pie. You can see from the two screenshots below the difference this makes on your site. Much cleaner, more readable, and definitely more professional.

Now what about Thesis? Things are a little bit different there. So let’s dive right in — by the way, I’m not getting into the specifics of changing a CSS element in Wordpress because well, this isn’t a Wordpress tutorial site. I’m putting this up to be helpful.

If you’re having trouble figuring out how to change your theme CSS elements there are tons of Wordpress tutorials out there that can help you out.

Thesis and Google Font Library Integration

Here’s the before of The Dusan Nedelko Foundation which is running Thesis:

And After (Ohhh, Ahhh, Ohhhh):

In a similar way to a normal Wordpress theme this is pretty straight forward we just want to play nice with the way Thesis handles things.

Step 1 — Add the include into the section of the theme. I’m sure there are tons of ways to do this. I actually add head elements in a slightly different way than through the Document Head section in the Thesis admin.

Open up you custom_functions.php file and add the following:

// Add the include for the Google Font API's
function google_font_api() {
$goog = "<link  href=\"//fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Reenie+Beanie:regular\" rel=\"stylesheet\" type=\"text/css\" >\n";
$goog2 = "<link  href=\"//fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Crimson+Text:regular\" rel=\"stylesheet\" type=\"text/css\" >\n";
$goog3 = "<link  href=\"//fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Lobster:regular\" rel=\"stylesheet\" type=\"text/css\" >\n";
echo $goog;
echo $goog2;
echo $goog3;
}
// Add the hook
add_action('wp_head','google_font_api');

Obviously you need to add the include for whichever Google font you want to add. You can also feel free to copy and paste the lines from the Google Font Directory Preview tool into the Thesis Site Options->Additional Scripts section.

Same deal I just prefer to keep things tidy in my own way.

Step 2 — Add the code to your custom.css to override whichever elements you want:

To change the site title:

.custom #header {
text-align:center;
 font-family:'Reenie Beanie', serif;
  font-size: 22px;
  font-style: normal;
  font-weight: 400;
  text-shadow: none;
  text-decoration: none;
  text-transform: none;
  letter-spacing: 0.015em;
  word-spacing: -0.041em;
  line-height: 1.23em;
  text-shadow: 4px 4px 4px #aaa;
  padding-top: 0em;
  padding-bottom: 0em;
}

To change the body text:

body.custom {
 font-family:'Crimson Text', serif;
  font-size: 12px;
  font-style: normal;
  font-weight: 400;
  letter-spacing: 0.015em;
  word-spacing: -0.041em;
  line-height: 1.23em;
  }

To change the sidebar headline text (this has my own custom styling in there and you can also add/remove whatever you want for style purposes):

/* Custom Widget Headers */
.custom .sidebar h3{
  font-family: 'Reenie Beanie', serif;
  font-size: 24px;
  font-style: bold;
  font-weight: 400;
  text-shadow: 4px 4px 4px #bbb;
  text-decoration: none;
  text-transform: none;
  letter-spacing: 0.015em;
  word-spacing: -0.041em;
  line-height: 1.23em;
  text-align:center;
border-top:1px solid #e48902;
border-bottom:1px solid #e48902;
list-style:none;
margin:0px;
padding-top:5px;
padding-bottom:5px;
background:#eee;
width:100%;
margin-bottom:5px;
color:#353535;
}

There you have it — as you can see below on my brother’s memorial foundation website: The Dusan Nedelko Foundation the changes make a really nice addition to the site, increasing the styling while remaining nice and simple.

Hope that was helpful and let me know if you have any thoughts, comments, rants, raves or whatever.

Pura Vida.
Danno

Post from: Dan Nedelko

Related posts:

1. Wordpress Injection Attack
2. Google to Index Google Voice?
3. Wordpress Backup Plugins

Powered by Twitter Tools

Post from: Dan Nedelko

No related posts.

Post from: Dan Nedelko

No related posts.

Just followed @wwtdd I think my chances of afterlife redemption have gone down a bit…awww screw it #

Powered by Twitter Tools

Post from: Dan Nedelko

No related posts.