Matched Betting is a technique for guaranteed profit from free bets and bonuses offered by bookmakers.

During my second year of University I discovered Matched Betting and started making money from it.
After a couple of weeks of doing this, I realised that I needed some way of tracking everything. Excel was the obvious option, so I created a spreadsheet with some simple User Forms for data input.

As time went on it became apparent that no matter how good my spreadsheet was, a dedicated desktop application would be easier to use, more accurate, and would allow for more specific features. I originally started developing a WinForms application as I didn't know any other way at the time, but thankfully a work colleague pointed me in the direction of WPF and the wonderful world of data-binding.

As I worked in London at the time, I ended up doing most of my learning on the enjoyable 150 minute commute every day by either reading or watching Pluralsight videos. It wasn't long before I fell in love with WPF and couldn't stop raving about it to my work colleagues. In the end I was asked to do a presentation about it to our team, which helped my learning further as I had to read about WPF in more depth.

Anyway, that's enough about my love for WPF, let's get back to my Matched Betting application; after leaving my first job I ended up spending a solid month devoted to working on it, and after countless hours of development and frustration, I had finally built something that worked well and was aesthetically pleasing.

I now look forward to the new features and improvements to be added in version 2.0 and the eventual Android app to go alongside it.

I played 7a-side football every week with my work colleagues and I enjoy looking at statistics. If you put those two together then you get yourself a fun project.

This would be my first time both creating a WinForms application and using SQL server.

I finished the project after a couple of weeks and it worked well; I could easily input match details and would then be displayed with calculated tables. I would send out the stats before each match every week and everyone was happy.

The next challenge was to create a website so the standings would be easier to view for everyone. I learnt about MVC and created a simple website hosted on Azure. Again, it worked well and did what I wanted.

I compiled a lot of pictures after travelling around South America for five months so I needed a fast and efficient way to sort them into sub-categories. I also hadn't done any programming for the same amount of time and decided I would allow myself a few days of fun.

The app is quite straightforward:

1. Open app.
2. Choose directory containing any media files that need sorting.
3. Create any required folders to copy/move media files into.
4. Copy/move media files into folders.
5. Close app.

I needed an easy way to download maps for my South America video so I created a simple desktop app which uses the Google Static Maps API.

I managed to get a scholarship from Google for an Android development course.

I've always wanted to make an Android app and this course taught me all the basics.
Eventually I plan on learning how to use Xamarin so that I can make apps in my favourite language but I figured it would be useful if I first knew how Android works.

I needed a website to showcase my home projects and I wanted to improve my web developer skills. One of the challenges that I had to overcome was using the Scrollspy plugin with two navbars.

There are a couple more projects that aren't polished enough for my portfolio yet but are worth a mention:

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Identity Server

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Notes

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Rocket League Statistics

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Smart Thermostat