I'm starting college one week from today on the 7th of September. The course I'll be doing is a PGCE in ICT (Post Graduate Certificate in Education in Information Communications and Technology) at Edgehill University in Ormskirk just outside of Liverpool. So I'm making the big move over to the UK on Wednesday. The course runs from September to June and includes 3 different placements in schools were I'll be getting teaching practice and at the end of the year I'll become a qualified teacher.

photo credit: wouter_kersbergen

As I mentioned, I've was away in Liverpool before and this was for a interview to teach maths (this course was also at Edgehill). I received an offer for the maths course but only for entry in September 2010. I was told to brush up on my subject knowledge over the next year. I was happy to be accepted but becoming a teacher has been on my mind for years and I finally decided that now was the time to do it. Having to wait another year was not an option in the times that's in it so I re-applied and went for ICT.

photo credit: solofotones

I returned to Liverpool for the second time and was successful in gaining entry for the ICT course in 2009. It's probably worked out as a blessing in disguise as I'm much better equipped to teach ICT than maths. I selected maths initially as it's one of the core subjects on the curriculum, couple with the fact that I really like maths, I wanted to challenge myself to teach it. As I say though I have a feeling that everything has worked out as it should have. Although it's all a bit rushed; I've only known that I've been accepted on to the course for a couple of weeks. I'm really looking forward to making the move and getting stuck in to the course.

photo credit: jnxyz

I'm not alone, my girlfriend has also been accepted on to the course and will be making the move with me We have worked in 3 jobs together since 2005 so we're used to helping each other out. A lot of people might see this as a bad thing but we've worked on the same projects right at the next desk. We moved to Microsoft and worked on different projects but worked on the same floor. We then worked in an office with 20 people were everyone was quite close knit and we've never had a problem (apart from the odd wee disagreement, which probably would have happened even if we worked in different jobs anyway ) The course itself if meant to be really tough so it'll be nice having my best friend there with me to help me along every day

photo credit: derek*b

I've decided that I will be blogging about my PGCE course as it helps to structure the workload and it'll act as a diary of my experiences throughout the year to help track my progress. I already have another domain name that I'll be using to blog about my PGCE and won't be blogging on here about it (I'll post a link to the site when I get it up and running for anyone that wants to track my progress). I've had a look around and a lot of trainee teachers started off with blogs at the beginning of the year and they disappeared very quickly. From talking to people that have completed the PGCE course it's understandable, such is the demands placed on trainees over the year. A friend of mine said that she was basically working on the course from 7.30 in the morning to midnight Monday to Friday and about 6 hours on Saturday over the last few months of the course, so it won't be easy! With Lucky.ie, a really challenging course and another blog to track my PGCE I hope I can keep everything going and that I'm still able to keep this blog alive!

photo credit: totalAldo

Lucky.ie has been a massive success in the first month so that will take priority over this blog if need be. My PGCE blog is not essential but if you've tried blogging before you know how much it helps so I'll be working hard to try to track my experience as regularly as possible. That's all for now, if you don't hear more from me over the next week or two you'll know why. I will be back though!

So far, apart from the first week, I've been able to turn a profit every week while taking part in the online betting competition I'm involved in over on lucky.ie. It's great fun placing the bets and blogging on the site and because I've won for 3 weeks in a row, I'm questioning if I could consistently make a profit by betting online?

photo credit: Will Palmer

Make no mistake, I'm under no false impressions here. I'm not getting carried away and I'd need to be able to consistently turn a profit over a 6 month period before ever contemplating trying this out full time. In fact, if you were to ask me now for a definite answer I'd say that it's more probable that I'll loose than win in the long term. My fellow contestant on lucky.ie, Sean has said that gambling helps decision making and improves your knowledge of probability, statistics and chance. This is definitely true and to really ever have a chance of consistently winning you need to be constantly studying form and increasing your knowledge.

photo credit: Kristian M

So far, here's what I think will give me the best chance to win money and hopefully succeed on lucky.ie.

These are just my observations. Professional gamblers may tell me I'm wrong but until operating like this stops working for me I'll continue to bet within these rules. I have broken my own rules at times over the last few weeks and sometimes this might work if I need to get bigger wins. However, I have regretted breaking my rules as it could have made me go broke, and in the long term risking you're entire bankroll will not work. Yes, you need to be prepared to loose everything if you're gambling. If you don't risk it all at once though, you're definitely decreasing you're chances of going broke. No matter what, you'll definitely need a bit of luck now and again!

When I kicked off this blog on the 1st of May 2009, the first thing I did was to challenge myself to post for 30 days in a row. I completed this and it established some content for this blog.

photo credit: Mykl Roventine

My post rate has fallen back recently, even though I've been pretty busy over at lucky.ie. However I want to get this blog kicked in to shape and I'm thinking that I need to set myself another challenge to keep the content flowing. Along with this I want to implement so of the updates I have planned for this blog. I'm not back from Liverpool until next Monday but I'm going to start of a new challenge and begin making these updates from the middle of next week!

I'm involved in two new websites that are launching on Saturday. I've mentioned TopCommentator.com earlier this week and the other site is a .ie website aimed targeting Irish readers although we'll be happy to get as many international visitors as we can to the site also. I've teamed up with Sean at Smemon.com on both these projects and he's wrote a little bit more about the .ie project here.

photo credit: TopTechWriter.US

I suppose with TopCommentator.com, I've been mentioning it for a while and it's probably not the best move in the world to be mentioning a site that isn't live yet. But we've agreed that this is a long term project and we can develop the look of the site over time. For the launch on Saturday we just need enough content on the site to establish the idea behind it before getting down to a bit of work to move the site onwards. The general idea is to get traffic for the site but we'll be approaching it slowly and letting the traffic grow naturally over time. We're hoping that we can produce stats on this project that are valuable to others that are looking to build traffic for their own websites.

For the .ie project, this is very much a fun project where myself and Sean will be competing against each other online and blogging about our experiences. With this one, again we want to establish the site over time and we're open to the idea of getting more people involved as the site grows, with a view to eventually making this a community based site. I'll be updating this blog with a link to the .ie site on Saturday, and you can keep checking back on both it and TopCommentator.com to track our progress.

photo credit: Will Lion

I had it in my mind at the beginning of the Summer that I'd have at least 3 established websites by the end of the Summer. With Rudevid.com, TopCommentator.com and the .ie project I've already achieved this. All these sites as well as my blog will only get better over time but I'm slowly building a small portfolio of sites, so this blog is working well for me as a control centre for running my projects from. There's at least 2 more sites that I'll have up and running before the end of the Summer, so there will a good bit of work maintaining all these sites. If I keep working at all of them and get each project whipped into shape then I'll be learning new things all the time and hopefully I'll be producing better and better sites as time goes on.

I made a to do list at the start of this week and here's a progress report:

photo credit: nocas