There
was a song in the mid 1980's called Dream Weaver and
the lyrics went something like : "I've just
closed my eyes again, Climbed aboard the
dream weaver train".
Interesting
song by a fellow named Gary Wright and may just well
be where the html editor programme DreamWeaver got
its name. In fact this site is made with an older
version of DreamWeaver and I use it every day. Mildly
interesting you say, but what's this got to do with
racing and the quest for the holy grail of the perfect
system?
Simply
this - with racing form guides now all computerised
and freely available, are you using them to their
full potential to assist you in your selection management?
Now, DreamWeaver does cost quite a few dollars to
purchase. A quick search of Ebay this morning finds,
in fact - none - but they do come up from time to
time. It is instructive to note that there are a lot
of Dream Weaver fitted sheet sets on Ebay and a couple
of records of Gary Wright singing Dream Weaver - but
I digress!
There
are, on the net many, many different free html editors
which will do the basic job just as well without all
the bells and whistles. And what a job they can do
for you in relation to racehorse selection.
As you
probably know, the free form guide you can download
from the RISA site is written in html - the code of
all web pages. Up until now, you have most likely
gone to the site and found the form guide for the
meeting you are interested in and pressed print -
and out it pops on your printer.
However,
you can download the form guide to your computer by
using the "Save As" function and downloading
it to a directory of your choosing. Many of you may
do that already for viewing at a later time. But here's
where having a few basic html editing skills comes
to the fore.
Take
the time to learn some html editing skills and it
will reward you enormously. How? Well, say you are
working on your holy grail system and one of the rules
is, for example, "eliminate any horse that has
not won at least 21% of its lifetime starts".
Up until now, you've probably sat there with a biro
and small ruler and gone through the printed guide
and crossed them all out. Which is fine but makes
the form guide useless if you want to use it in another
way for eliminating horses in another system you may
be trialling.
If you
load the guide in to an html editor, you simply highlight
the horses you want to get rid of by holding down
the left mouse button and highlight that horse's entry,
press delete - hey, presto, they're no longer in contention.
Do the same again if another rule is "eliminate
any horse that has not won at least 4 times"
- scan down the guide looking at the right hand side
for the number of wins section in each horse's form
- bang - they're all gone and what's left in your
downloaded form guide are your main contenders - ready
for further fining down.
This
can save you hours and hours of unnecessary pen work
- and also allow you to run many systems more than
what you are probably doing now with a lot less hassle.
Google
"free html editors" - I did this morning
and there were 7,510,000 results popped up so I'm
sure you'll find one there to suit! Take the time
to learn some basic skills in handling html web pages
like the RISA form guide and you will be amazed at
what a difference it can make to your form guide editing
- yes - editing. You already do it but just not in
an electronic form.
With
the number of different methods I test on a daily
basis, there is simply no other way it could be done
- and I have tried just about all of them!
Yes - it
will take a few hours to get the hang of it, maybe
many hours, but I recommend it to you as a worthwhile
exercise - you won't be disappointed with the overall
time benefits. Who knows, it may even launch your
new career as a web page designer!
