pyrosarco

I was sitting around this morning, listening to the Gym Class Heroes when I got to thinking that blogging about something on a low traffic site like mine, is in many ways, very similar to playing the stock market with out investing too much time in learning about it.  In both cases the person hopes for a good out come.  The blogger hopes the new post will attract attention to his or her site, and the person playing the stock market hopes that whatever new stock they have just gambled on will turn out to be a winner.

However, greater than 90 percent of the time, the post and the stock, does not preform as anticipated.  Why?  Well here are some problems.

The first is that the average blogger/investor is not intelligent enough.  They do not invest enough time in researching the post/stock, they do not check out who has written it before or where the company has been financially.  In most cases, the post/stock has already been over used.  The topic of the post was found, written about, and then “dugg” in a more primitive stage than you have learned about it.  If the topic was a web application, somebody was writing about it in its alpha stage.  If it was music, someone had stolen it and released the bootlegs for everyone three weeks before it came out.  It is the same way with the new stock you want to invest in.  Think about what has really attracted you to the stock?  Has it been all over the news?  Has it been shooting up recently because the company is making huge improvements or has recently merged?  If this is the case, then you’re most likely throwing you’re money away.  Sure you might be able to make some money if you stay in for a brief period of time, and get out right at the peak.  But those who made a killing have been in it from the beginning.

That brings me to the second issue of blogging and playing the stock market.  It IS all who you know.  Big bloggers typically work for big companies or have years upon years of experience in the field they are writing about.  Or if not one of these two, the blogger probably jumped on the bandwagon really early and has a large fan base due to comedic or learned informative value.  But back to the idea of big companies and years of experience.  Because they have either or both of these, the blogger knows people who can provide them with information.  The blogger is networked.  Friends keep him informed about the latest applications, games, gadgets, or whatever, that are coming out, then he or she writes about them.  Or the company that the blogger works for commands enough clout to get the blogger interviews with movers and shakers of the blogger’s writing topic.

The same goes for the ivestor.  The people making the money, reaping the benefits, are those who are in the know.  They are the people who invest for a living or know those who do.  They know about companies before the public does.  They have the opportunity to buy into the company and may choose to do so based on how the company is set up (the system in place) and who is running the company.  The investor educates him/herself about those two ideas, and makes a decision.  They know that once the company is in the limelight, that most of the money to be made is gone.  It is peaking, their money should have been in earlier, and those who buy now will most likely lose money.

In conclusion, blogging and investing are all about your education and who you know.  The more information that can be gathered and turned around the better, and the more contacts you have, also the better.

Two new Twitter applications that need to be implemented immediately.

The first should allow you to search your time line by putting in your user name and then a search term or phrase.  It needs to be online based and return you results. I believe I saw a wget form of this written in Ruby that didn’t have a user interface.

The second could be eliminated if the first one is made properly.  A program that archives your tweet time line and allows you to download it.  I believe I saw a version of this in raw python today, but I don’t know how to make it work.

Both ideas could easily be expanded upon by the producers of Twitter or by a third party.  Have a go.

My mother came home the other day going on and on about how she was going to make everyone listen to this lecture given by some guy dying of pancreatic cancer.  Naturally, I am like why should I care?  What does it matter to me?

Well she made me watch it just the same.  I had to rig the computer up to the TV so we could watch 76 minutes of YouTube video comfortably.  And, I must admit, it was interesting and he did have some good points, so now I am going to tell you about it, and suggest that you watch it.

Randy Pausch is dying of pancreatic cancer.  He doesn’t have long to live, were talking days or weeks.  He is a professor in the computer science department at Carnegie Mellon.  He works with virtual reality and has changed the way the world looks at VR today, through research and student work.  Randy is upbeat and practical about his condition.  He knows his fate and is not trying to deny it.  He was asked to speak in the Last Lecture series; a series about what professors would say during their last lecture.  This, is a little more true for Randy.

I watched his lecture on Achieving Childhood Dreams.  At the beginning he lists his childhood dreams and the lecture is on how he achieved them.  One of the dreams he speaks about was playing in the NFL.  Albeit he didn’t make it–he is really skinny and does computer science–he said as a kid he used to play football.  The defining point was when he was talking about his coach.  One day, he said, the coach was just pushing him harder and harder, not giving him a break.  After practice was over, the assistant coach–or someone–came up to him and said, “Man the coach was really riding you today.”  Randy agreed, and got a response along the lines of, “When people really ride you about something, it shows that they care.  You really have to be concerned when you know your doing something poorly, and nobody is telling you about it.”

It was things like that, that I took away from Randy’s lecture; along with the need to have goals and chase them.  I also drew a comparison with the Chase credit card commercial and their tagline “Chase what matters.”  You have to do what you like in life.  So the question for you is, Do you care enough to watch this video and open your mind to some new ideas?  A new thought process?  Don’t do it because he’s dying, don’t do it because I told you to.  Do it because you’re interested and want to learn.

Here are links to the:

YouTube Video - Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

Randy Pausch’s Website

Watching Clay Shirky speak about the pitfalls of TV may not seem like you want to do, but believe me, it will change how you think about your favorite pass time.

During his speech, which can be found on Making Light, he throws around a couple of figures.  The first of which, is that the Wikipedia project took about 100 million hours of man time to create.  Then he compares that with the amount of time we, as Americans, spend watching TV each year: 200 billion.  He preaches what we could do with that time, if we devoted it to something constructive rather than just passively sitting on the couch.  Even games, yes video games, he says, are more productive–the thirty year old man pretending to be an elf in his mothers basement–is better than watching TV.  I would have to agree.

But the point here, isn’t that we should be playing more video games; and not that we should cut TV out of our lives.  The point is that we should remove some of our passive time, and replace it with something worth while.  A blog, taking the kids to the park, writing a book, working on Wikipedia, teaching someone, playing an insturment, et cetera.  If we moved even one percent of the 200 billion hours we spend watching TV, think of the amount that could be accomplished with those 2 billion hours.

Later in the video, he speaks of someone’s four year old daughter running behind the TV and looking for a mouse.  This is because society is now being raised to interact with media.  Kids do not want to sit passively by, they want to be a part of it.  Don’t you?

Watch the video and let me know what you think.

I do my best thinking while watching TV, or so I think.  I was watching Desperate Housewives last night–don’t laugh at me–when I was hit with the concept of the “parking space society” as I call it.  I was also receiving some mental stimulation from The Long Winters, which are a band.  I was struggling with the fact that I am supposed to get a job so I can earn money and pay for things.  However, I am not qualified for most jobs–having not completed much of college, I have very little in the line of marketable skills.  This means that any job I will get, will probably be boring, monotonous, and not too my liking.  Back to the parking space society thougth.

Eva Longoria on Desperate Housewives has been burdened with her newly blind husband.  With out getting into too much back story, she is used to being rich and getting her way all the time.  However, now she is poor and has to tend to her husbands most basic needs because he can no longer see.  One day she decides to take him on her errands.  She visits this place and that place leaving him in the car on the premise that she will be right back and can do things faster than he can because he is blind.  After this situation reoccurs about three times, he gets bored just sitting in the car and wanders off; asking some kid to take him to get some food.  When Eva Longoria comes out to find her husband gone, she freaks.  Then as soon as she finds him, someone starts harassing her about parking in a handicapped spot.  She clearly isn’t, but she says it is for her husband.  At this point her husband starts to reprimand her.  In return she says she is poor, incredably busy, and has a blind husband to take care of.  If she can get a handicapped parking spot because of that, she is going to take it.

My point is not to go get yourself a handicapped parking voucher, but to look into this situation.  Do you see the parking space society?  Everyone is supposed to fit into a standard square.  People who are different get the better spaces, whether it be that they are handicapped, rich, famous, or have just been at a company for a long time and now have a space near the door.  Whatever it may be, I don’t like it.  I don’t like the concept that we as a society should all fit into the same space.  We are channeled and driven towards a common goal–to make money for a company.  Why?  Why would I want to spend my time working for something that is not going to recognize me?  Why should I conform to a society where I park in a rectangle, buy my food at a grocery store, listen to the popular music and wear the fashionable clothes?

On a personal note, I don’t want a job that requires me to do the same things over and over again.  A job that is constraining is not beneficial to either myself or whatever company I will inevitably have to work for.  I will not do my best work in a forced, focused, path.  For me a job needs to do for things:

1. A job should teach you something new; constantly.
2. A job should let you earn money.
3. A job should constantly change environments; this promotes the first thought.
4. A job should be fun; if you don’t enjoy it, it’s not worth having.

Therefore, I urge you not to give into this parking space society.  Challenge the norm and do not conform completely to the ways of the system or you will be lost in it.  If you find yourself already lost in the system, make a plan to get out, or at least partially remove yourself.  Back out, pull out, push the cars, out of the way, do whatever you have to, so you don’t become trapped in the parking space society.  Park where you want.

Many thoughts ran through my head today as different things occurred.  Perhaps one of the most humbling series of thoughts I had came while I was watching Boston Legal.

Anyone who watches the show regularly knows that one of the main characters, Shirley Schmidt, had another main character, Alan Shore, fight in court to allow her father to be put on a morphine drip in order to die without pain.  During that process a third main character Denny Crane, Alan’s best friend and also a lawyer, witnessed Alan’s closing remarks.  The remarks were made about Shirley’s father having Alzheimer’s and not having the conscious will to live, or even realizing the fact that he was living.  He then stated that his best friend, Denny, was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s and wanted Alan to take care of him in the best way possible when the time came.

However, that is just back story to where my thoughts were taken.  At the end of the show Alan and Denny regularly sit on a balcony where they smoke, drink, and sum up the shows precedences.  At the very end, Denny says, “Sleep over?” and Alan responds, “Sure,” before clasping Denny’s outstretched hand.  It occurred to me during this moment, while one man was holding a cigar and the other a scotch and both were holding each other’s hands, that our needs in life go from less to more to less sophisticated.  As children we look to bond with our peers; one of the ways we do this is through sleep overs.  We bond with our friends who have similar interests–Pokemon, video games, playing shoot-em-up and running around the house, etc.  As we grow older we abandon the sleep over, thinking it too childish and not a valuable use of our time.  We worry about problems like the mortgage and the electric bill, or we create problems.

Side thought****

And as we come out of the age where we are trying to be totally responsible, we relax a little bit and once again seek just to bond with others.  When Denny and Alan clasped hands, it wasn’t intended to be sexual, it was to show camaraderie.  To show the relationship that is there, the friendship, what really matters.

What really matters is how you treat others and how you are remembered.  At the end of the show, Shirley Schmidt sits next to her dying father, saying he was a great man.  What made him great was never explained, but I imagine that it had to do with how he managed work and what problems he overcame.  To me, this should be cast aside for the more Denny and Alan greatness.  What you do on paper, what problems you solve, numbers you crunch, deals you made, will all be forgotten.  How you treated others and the relationships you form, will be how you are remembered.  So forget about taking out the trash or the leaky sink for a few minutes and set up some bonding time with your best friend, your wife, your kids, your parents, whomever you haven’t talked to for awhile.  To steal a line from Gary Vaynerchuk and twist it a bit, “Legacy is greater than Currency.”

****Sorry this side thought would have interrupted the flow of the post.  I had to laugh because I could have taken the sophistication of needs in a whole other direction while still staying with the sleep over concept.  As children we bond with members of the same sex; primarily because of similar interest.  At the end of Boston Legal, Denny and Alan were also bonding over shared interests.  What I had to laugh about was that sophistication could be taken as emotional and physical.  Think about it.  Do we really abandon sleep overs as we get older?  No, we don’t.  We just call it something different and bond differently–usually with members of the opposite sex through sexual means.  

Feel free to comment. Thanks!

I have suddenly become obsessed with statistics, and I don’t mean baseball.  I want to know more about the statistics of my life.  For instance that number of cheeseburgers I eat in a year, the number of soda I drink this month, the miles I put on my car today or last Tuesday, whatever.  I just want to be able to track it and then see it later.  Why?  Because it is cool.  Who doesn’t want to know how many miles they flew this year, how many grams of caffeine they ingested today, etc?

These thoughts were spurned by two things that I found today:  gtFtr fitness stat tracking via Twitter that may or may not be sub par right now.  I haven’t actually tried it, but it is in beta and the graffic on the main page makes me question how good of a program it is if the graffic doesn’t look good.   And the other site I found is Feltron Eight, he publishes anual reports about himself.

What I think the program should look like:

I think the program for computers should look like the launcher program you can get for Mac and the ripped off launcher program you can get for Windows. It should collect information and make pretty looking bar graphs, line graphs, pie charts, etc.

How it should act:

To access it via computer one could simply start it by typing ’stats’ on their desktop.  The program will then launch like the launcher program. At this point the user should be able to start typing a tag or category name.  For instance ‘crunches’ or ’sodas.’  The program will recognize this category or provide several selections until the user either types the full word or clicks on the selection.  Say the user chose ‘crunches.’  The user should then have the ability to put a number such as 50 directly after crunches.  It would look like ‘crunches 50.’  This will then be added to the daily total of crunches.  This way the user will be able to do 30 crunches now, 50 this afternoon, and 20 this evening, but the collective total will be 100 crunches.

Hundreds of different categories could exists such as ‘push-ups’, ‘miles driven’, ‘miles flown’, ’sodas (drinken)’, ‘pizza(slices eaten)’, etc.  Once collections are made, graphs of daily, weekly, monthly and yearly statistics can be generated.  But why stop there?  Not only should it tell you how many slices of pizza you ate, but it should know that there are eight slices per pizza, and tell you how many pies you actually ate.  It could take in infromation about the type of soda you drank and out put how much caffine you ingested over the course of the day, week, etc.

There should also be an online component that functions much like Twitter, that one can set up their own stat trackers and then text/instant message/web their stats in via phone, PDA, whatever.  Generic statistic categories should be provided.

How to make it:

I really don’t have enough experience with coding to get this thing off the ground.  Please contact me if you do have enough experience and would like to work with me to make this program.

I have a Moto Q running Windows Mobile 5, and it is a batter hog.  I mean seriously, my phone died once already today.  Granted the 100+ text messages I receive each day isn’t helping, but what am I supposed to since I need to contact people and they need to contact me?

Well, with some researc I found this app that will help anyone one who uses a smart phone (I think) or at least those of us that have one with Windows Mobile 5.  The program is called Candelight and it comes as a .CAB file.  You download it, install it on your phone, and then click on the icon to activate it.  Presto!  It dims your screen, instantly saving you battery life.

But on the other hand, I still have the problem of receiving a gross amount of text messages.  Everyday I receive well over 100 texts and my phone battery just cant keep up with it.  Part of the problem is the fact that I have a Moto Q, and that it is running a lot of other tasks at the same time.  My problem is really the vibrations.  One it is annoying, and two making parts move kills the battery.  To my knowledge, there is no way to turn off the vibration notification on the Moto Q.  I have tried going through the menus and researching it online to no avail.  Does anyone know of such a way to turn of vibration?  A hack, anything will do.

If not, is there someone out there willing and adept at writing .CAB files that would be willing to take a few minutes *ahem* and write a program that will install and give you options to control the vibrations of your smart phone?  Espcially in the case of a Moto Q running WM5.