I won a free Kindle, and I just wanted to say thank you.

Yes, this sounds like one of these spammy posts where you see banner ads saying “CLICK HERE FOR FREE GIFT CARDZ*” with the fine print indicating you need to take a three-hour survey, get twenty other people to sign up too, sell your first born child and give your Social Security number to a Nigerian prince.

This is none of that.  I won a Kindle by playing a game and guessing correctly at random once-a-weekday pop culture questions.  I also got help from a few of my friends, who I also want to thank.

First, about the game.  It’s called Prediction Monster.  There’s one question every weekday, and It’s like ESPN’s Streak For The Cash but with Pop Culture, Politics, Sports, etc.

There’s a daily question, and if you get it right you get one point.  If you have currently have the longest winning streak, you win a $5 Amazon gift card.  If there’s a tie for the top, the $5 rolls over to the next day and the next until you have a single winner.

Examples of recent questions:

• How many Grammy nods will Adele get?
• How many goals will Crosby score in his first game back?
• How many user reviews will there be of the Amazon Kindle Fire by Midnight?
• What will Groupon’s stock close at on the first day on the exchange?

There are also bonus questions they post on Facebook and Twitter, and if you get those right you get a bonus point.  If you get them wrong there is no penalty against your streak.

They have a weekly $5 prize as well to the person who got the most points in a given week which is reset at the start of each week.

Incentives should tell me that I want less people playing because if there are more people, the odds decrease of me winning.  However, they’ve added a referral program that if you include my name in the “Referred By” section on the registration, then if you win $5 then I also win $5.  So now, I’m telling all of you.

So far I’ve won $165.  Insane, right?  Some wins were thanks to my good guessing, and the rest came thanks to the referral program.

So I’d like to thank my friends Matt, Ryan, and Stephanie for their pop-culture prowess.

And, it doesn’t hurt to do some geeky analysis while we’re at it.

This chart shows total winnings and contributions by me and my friends over time.  You’ll notice how the individual bumps contribute to the total winnings.  I won first, followed by some wins by Ryan in late July, followed by a huge win by Matt in August, followed by an even bigger win by Stephanie in September.  I followed up in late October with a new streak, and currently sit at the $165 total.  You’ll notice that it’s been a bit of a plateau the past two months, so it looks like I need to try harder to win more.

Thinking about that last point, I plotted out my winnings vs. the possible winnings.  Each weekday there’s $5 up for grabs, and a $5 weekly prize, totaling $30 a week.  There’s also another $30 each week given out to the referrers (this assumes that each day the winner also has a referrer, which isn’t exactly true but without going through all my e-mails it’s the best I can guesstimate).

The light purple line is the total dollars won.  The green line shows overall percentage of my winnings vs. total given out.  I broke this into two categories, where the blue line represents where MY question answering earned me the prizes, and the red line is the referral percentage for when my friends did the work for me.

So, while I crushed it in the beginning in terms of how often I was winning, you’ll see that I haven’t been doing as well lately.  What I have benefited from in the long-run was my friends doing well which contributed to my winnings.  Each time one of them won, you see the bump in the red line.  Overall, I’m very happy to say that I’ve won about 12% of the time, considering how many people seem to be playing on the site.

My goal from the beginning was to win a Kindle.  When Amazon announced the new Kindle Touches, I jumped on the opportunity to get one.  I could have just gotten the wi-fi version for free, but I figured that I would pay the few extra dollars myself and I get the 3G version instead.  So TECHNICALLY I didn’t get an entirely free Kindle, but I could have if I wanted to get a cheaper model.

Now the next thing I need to figure out is how to hack my Kindle to get custom screensavers on it…

Thank you once again to my friends and to Prediction Monster.  Not only did I win my way to a Kindle, but the site and the game have been genuinely entertaining and I look forward to continuing to try to win.  Oh, and if you’re new to the game and sign up, make sure to put me as a referrer.  Those ebooks won’t buy themselves, you know.

Essentially, it’s life advice told from a geeky perspective, and there will be a new “Geekspiration” every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Check it out, and enjoy!

• Original posts where we gather data and create graphs of interesting information
• History of data visualization and debates on what successful visualization looks like
• Resources in improving the visualizations you create for your job and your life
• Links to other sites showing great (and not so great) uses of visualization

So, come on over and have a look!

“How many minutes has each team led in the Stanley Cup?” my friend Drew wondered the other night as we were watching the tail end of Game 5.

Using the Sparkline feature in Excel 2010, I have looked at the minute-by-minute scores and the results are interesting.

Despite the series being all square now at 3-3, Boston is dominating minutes lead 164 to 36 (45% to 10%).

I’ll post an updated graph after Game 7…

Update: Here’s the chart with Game 7 updated:

Boston lead 50% of the minutes compared to Vancouver which only lead 9%.

It would be interesting to see how this compares to other series that have gone on to Game 7′s.

Update: Here is the 1994 Vancouver vs. New York Rangers series.

You may have stumbled here because of my “ad” on the CampCampPhilly website.

Sorry to disappoint, but there is no block replacement service here.  Try your “Reset” button and that should do the trick.

However, my name is Corey and this is my website.  Originally from Jackson, NJ, I went to school in Philly and now live in King of Prussia, PA, and I’ve recently starting writing for Geekadelphia.

I don’t post on my personal site nearly enough, however I post on Twitter with much more frequency.

Originally I created this site to track my adventures when I traveled in Europe in 2007, but since that point it’s expanded into musings on photography, food, sports, video games, and culture.  Sometimes I also rant about random things.  You can read about me in the About page.

Other things you might find interesting:

• I did a photo-a-day photography project called “Project 365” in 2009.
• I dislike running, but will be doing the Broad Street Run for the second year in a row.
• I just got engaged to my beautiful fiancée Kristine.
• My high score in bowling is 279.
• I enjoy bullet-pointed lists.

Thanks for stopping by!

I’m running for charity at this year’s Broad Street Run, a ten-mile race in Philadelphia. I’m going to start at the back of the pack, and collect donations for every person I pass. This way, it incentivizes me to run faster, because every person I pass means more goes towards charity.

The charities I am supporting are the American Cancer Society, the Lupus Foundation of America, Philabundance, and the SPCA.

I’ve set up a sub-site website where I’m accepting pledges for donations.  If you pledge a per-person amount, after the race I’ll tell you how many people I passed and how much your donation will be.  If you pledge a flat donation, you’ll have the opportunity to donate now.

http://www.coreyhulse.com/run/

Thanks in advance for your support!

Bacon + Reese’s Puffs = Breakfast of Champions.

Since then, in November 2009, I got a “new” car in that had about 90,000 miles.  Well, I recently hit 100,000 in the new car, my 2000 Volvo S40.

99,999 miles!

100,000 miles!

I had a great time with it and I want to thank my friends for making it fun.

I’ve copied some of my better posts over to my site, and you can find them under the awesomeopolis tag.

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Me: [Describes problem with item]

ThinkGeek Customer Rep: Alright I can get this set up for you, would you like us to send a replacement when we receive the defective one?

Me: that works for me

Me: I’d also like ten of your finest tauntuan sleeping bags as compensation for the inconvenience

Me: but only if they’re made of real tauntaun

ThinkGeek Customer Rep: Alright, it’s all set, I just sent you an e-mail with return instructions. Unfortunately all the real tauntaun ones are currently out of stock, it’s be difficult to get real tauntaun lately, something to do with a rebelion and the trade federation… I don’t have all the details but it’s gonna be awhile until the real tauntaun ones are back in stock.

Me: *sigh*

Me: alright then

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