Rich Karlgaard is an interesting writer - he had been the Forbes editor in charge of that tabloid of the tech boom, quarterly periodical Forbes ASAP - he's now editor of the Digital Rules column in Forbes. His most recent column, titled "Ten Laws of the Modern World," lists the following (much like, and as applicable as, the Ten Commandments of the Judeo-Christian faith):
Moore's Law
The Back Side of Moore's Law
Andy and Bill's Law
Metcalfe's Law
Gilder's Law: Winner's Waste
Ricardo's Law
Wriston's Law
The Laffer Curve
Drucker's Law
Ogilvy's Law
Follow your mouse here....
..Phyllostachys.
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Sunday, April 17, 2005
phyllostachys eight: finding your center
Have you ever felt that you've lost your center and aren't sure where to start? Well, like many of you, I've lost that center many times...and have learned from a few very scholarly people where to find that center once I've lost it. It exists within you...but can only be found via a very circuitous process...which may involve some form of centering activity, such as running, swimming, solo dancing....or perhaps solo tai chi.
The market is down right now, after 2.5 awesome years of tortured rise, so this is a good chance to regroup, find your center, find where your resources are best utilized. :-)
Find a tai chi teacher.
My original "blog"
...(Geocities was pre-blog, and yet very much fostered the same sort of activity)
...and the tai chi component thereof...
The market is down right now, after 2.5 awesome years of tortured rise, so this is a good chance to regroup, find your center, find where your resources are best utilized. :-)
Find a tai chi teacher.
Yang Family Style Long Form
First Section
1. Commencement
2. Grasp Sparrow's Tail
3. Single Whip
4. Raise Hands
5. White Crane Spreads its Wings
6. Twist Step Brush Left Knee
7. Play Chinese Guitar
8. Twist Step Brush Left Knee
9. Twist Step Brush Right Knee
10. Twist Step Brush Left Knee
11. Play Chinese Guitar
12. Deflect Downward
13. Parry
14. Punch
15. Apparent Closure
16. Cross Hands
Second Section
17. Embrace the Tiger and Return to the Mountain
18. Grasp Sparrow's Tail
19. Punch Under Elbow
20. Repulse Monkey (5 times)
21. Diagonal Flying
22. Raise Hands
23. White Crane Spreads It's Wings
24. Push Needle to Sea Bottom
25. Fan Through Back
26. Turn and Throw out Fist
27. Deflect Downward, Parry & Punch
28. Grasp Sparrow's Tail
29. Single Whip
30. Wave Arms Like Clouds (5 times)
31. Single Whip
32. High Pat on Horse
33. Separate Hands
34. Kick with Right Foot (toe)
35. Separate Hands
35. Kick with Left Foot (toe)
36. Turn and Kick with Left Heel
37. Twist Step Brush Left Knee
38. Twist Step Brush Right Knee
39. Twist Step, Brush Left Knee and Punch Downward
40. Turn and Throw Out Fist
41. Deflect Downward, Parry and Punch
42. Kick up with the Right Heel
43. Fight Tiger (Left and Right)
44. Kick up with the Right Heel
45. Club Ears (Wind Blows by Ears)
46. Side Kick with Left Foot
47. Turn 180 deg. and Side Kick with Right Foot
48. Deflect Downward, Parry and Punch
49. Apparent Closure
50. Cross Hands
Third Section
51. Embrace the Tiger and Return to the Mountain
52. Diagonal Single Whip
53. Part the Wild Horse's Mane (5 times)
54. Grasp Sparrow's Tail
55. Single Whip
56. Fair Maiden Works the Shuttles (four angles)
57. Grasp Sparrow's Tail
58. Single Whip
59. Wave Arms Like Clouds (5 times)
60. Snake Creeps down
61. Golden cock stands on left leg
62. Golden cock stands on right leg
63. Repulse monkey (5 times)
64. Diagonal Flying
65. Raise Hands
66. White Crane Spreads It's Wings
67. Push Needle to Sea Bottom
68. Fan Through Back
69. Turn and White snake spits out tongue
70. Deflect Downward, Parry & Punch
71. Grasp Sparrow's Tail
72. Single Whip
73. Wave Arms Like Clouds (5 times)
74. Single Whip
75. High Pat on Horse
76. Five fingers into cave mouth
77. Turn and punch to groin
78. Grasp Sparrow's Tail
79. Single Whip
80. Snake Creeps down
81. Step up to form crossed stars
82. Step back to ride the tiger
83. Turn and perform Lotus kick
85. ???
86. Deflect Downward, Parry and Punch
87. Apparent Closure
88. Cross Hands
[Perform starting to the right,
then second time through to the left.]
My original "blog"
...(Geocities was pre-blog, and yet very much fostered the same sort of activity)
...and the tai chi component thereof...
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
phyllostachys seven: Springing...down, in '05
Springtime 2005 is upon us - in the northern end of the Western Hemisphere, this means chirping birds, crocuses and daffodills, spring cleaning of the gardens, screens on the windows (for the moister part of the continent), screaming motorcycles on all the roadways...and listening to your neighbors scream at the local sports teams in the comfort of their living rooms (but now, of course, with the windows wide open). :-)
I had one tub of Phyllostachys Vivax sort of wintering over...but not really well protected, so it's now fried. I love having a sampling of those big, dark green waxy leaves close to our patio...so, I'll have to dig up another tub candidate. My two stands of bamboo (one the Vivax, the other a smaller member of the Phyllo. species) are now rustling more and showing signs of both winter burn and spring-time life. I'll have to begin culling out the culms and digging at the rhizomes soon, while the soil is moist, to curb the vivaciousness of this unusual garden plant (hence the name "vivax" for the larger specimen).
My investing has been in the doldrums lately. Traditionally, the wind is supposed to die down in mid-August, when most families are thinking of that last-hurrah vacation before Labor Day. But the wind has died down right now. I'm adrift (or, rather, in the case of some SEC-inquiry stocks, looking over the edge of a potential whirlpool). I rode part of the oil-lust wave, via a goodly amount of BPT (Prudhoe Bay Royalty Trust). I sold recently near it's high, having been spooked by chatter on Yahoo!'s message board for BPT, as well as a growing feeling that, while I think the price of crude will stay high for awhile, we might have run into the high end of the spectrum. When everyone else realizes this, the rising tide of oil stocks will come back down a bit. BPT, of course, is a two-edged investment. As the price rises...your equity investment appreciates...but lots of small investers are also seeking the high dividend yield that BPT traditionally provides...and this yield falls away as the security appreciates.
Tech stocks are my usual refuge in times of fear...I fear being out of them for too long, and I fear diving back into them. :-) SSTI is a very attractive company in the Flash RAM industry at this point - they're at their 52-week low, with strong sales and tons of cash (though reporting slightly weaker earnings), but the rash of downgrades attracts contrarian investors such as LongBow Research (out of Independence, Ohio). LongBow Research recently upgraded SSTI (from neutral to buy) and I assume that they did this out of contrarian interest (their website says that they watch for "critical trends" in various industries so as to provide their "institutional" clients with info on buying and selling). I e-mailed one of the tech researchers at Longbow, but have not heard anything back.
Another interesting Flash industry participant, which is at the top of its game in the same way that AAPL is, is SNDK. SNDK has $1.5B in sales, $1.3B in cash, no debt (well, $150M in long-term debt...but that's more of an asset, even though its on the lower side of the balance sheet), a respectable TTM p/e of 19.8 and a forward p/e of 17.5, and a very profitable stable of products and patents (being the creator of CompactFLASH, etc.). One of SNDK's downsides was that $100M in stock was stolen by a trusted law firm's employee on the Pacific Rim (Singapore or Taiwan, not sure which)...but that is slowly be paid back by a very chagrined (and short of cash) law firm - SNDK bounced back very handsomely from that loss with barely a glance backward, as it blows past its fabless competition (ahem, LEXR).
So why the doldrums, you say? Well my perennial favourite since the go-go days of the NASDAQ bubble has been Blue Coat Systems. I've been following and putting my money where my mouth is with BCSI ever since it was CFLO (CacheFlow). As CacheFlow, they marketed web caching servers. With the collapse of telecomm and the popping of the aforementioned bubble, CFLO re-created themselves into BCSI and altered their product (through internal work and acquisitions) to provide web-filtering, traffic control, WinProxy, AntiVirus and AntiSpam solutions, all in addition to a caching component -- all during the past 3 years. They were way up during the CFLO days, then way down before becoming BCSI, then way up for no apparent reason [other than following insider buying, that is], then down again (this latter downturn is now sparking class-action suits) and up again. We are now in the course of the last "up again"...but SEC news of investigations is interrupting the flow here....so despite strong fundamentals, it's anybody's guess as to whether buying now makes awesome sense...or not. :-)
Happy sailing!
Have some comments about my blogs here? Leave a comment (you don't have to be a member to do so).
Phyllostachys.
Longbow's SSTI upgrade
Longbow's Home on the web
I had one tub of Phyllostachys Vivax sort of wintering over...but not really well protected, so it's now fried. I love having a sampling of those big, dark green waxy leaves close to our patio...so, I'll have to dig up another tub candidate. My two stands of bamboo (one the Vivax, the other a smaller member of the Phyllo. species) are now rustling more and showing signs of both winter burn and spring-time life. I'll have to begin culling out the culms and digging at the rhizomes soon, while the soil is moist, to curb the vivaciousness of this unusual garden plant (hence the name "vivax" for the larger specimen).
My investing has been in the doldrums lately. Traditionally, the wind is supposed to die down in mid-August, when most families are thinking of that last-hurrah vacation before Labor Day. But the wind has died down right now. I'm adrift (or, rather, in the case of some SEC-inquiry stocks, looking over the edge of a potential whirlpool). I rode part of the oil-lust wave, via a goodly amount of BPT (Prudhoe Bay Royalty Trust). I sold recently near it's high, having been spooked by chatter on Yahoo!'s message board for BPT, as well as a growing feeling that, while I think the price of crude will stay high for awhile, we might have run into the high end of the spectrum. When everyone else realizes this, the rising tide of oil stocks will come back down a bit. BPT, of course, is a two-edged investment. As the price rises...your equity investment appreciates...but lots of small investers are also seeking the high dividend yield that BPT traditionally provides...and this yield falls away as the security appreciates.
Tech stocks are my usual refuge in times of fear...I fear being out of them for too long, and I fear diving back into them. :-) SSTI is a very attractive company in the Flash RAM industry at this point - they're at their 52-week low, with strong sales and tons of cash (though reporting slightly weaker earnings), but the rash of downgrades attracts contrarian investors such as LongBow Research (out of Independence, Ohio). LongBow Research recently upgraded SSTI (from neutral to buy) and I assume that they did this out of contrarian interest (their website says that they watch for "critical trends" in various industries so as to provide their "institutional" clients with info on buying and selling). I e-mailed one of the tech researchers at Longbow, but have not heard anything back.
Another interesting Flash industry participant, which is at the top of its game in the same way that AAPL is, is SNDK. SNDK has $1.5B in sales, $1.3B in cash, no debt (well, $150M in long-term debt...but that's more of an asset, even though its on the lower side of the balance sheet), a respectable TTM p/e of 19.8 and a forward p/e of 17.5, and a very profitable stable of products and patents (being the creator of CompactFLASH, etc.). One of SNDK's downsides was that $100M in stock was stolen by a trusted law firm's employee on the Pacific Rim (Singapore or Taiwan, not sure which)...but that is slowly be paid back by a very chagrined (and short of cash) law firm - SNDK bounced back very handsomely from that loss with barely a glance backward, as it blows past its fabless competition (ahem, LEXR).
So why the doldrums, you say? Well my perennial favourite since the go-go days of the NASDAQ bubble has been Blue Coat Systems. I've been following and putting my money where my mouth is with BCSI ever since it was CFLO (CacheFlow). As CacheFlow, they marketed web caching servers. With the collapse of telecomm and the popping of the aforementioned bubble, CFLO re-created themselves into BCSI and altered their product (through internal work and acquisitions) to provide web-filtering, traffic control, WinProxy, AntiVirus and AntiSpam solutions, all in addition to a caching component -- all during the past 3 years. They were way up during the CFLO days, then way down before becoming BCSI, then way up for no apparent reason [other than following insider buying, that is], then down again (this latter downturn is now sparking class-action suits) and up again. We are now in the course of the last "up again"...but SEC news of investigations is interrupting the flow here....so despite strong fundamentals, it's anybody's guess as to whether buying now makes awesome sense...or not. :-)
Happy sailing!
Have some comments about my blogs here? Leave a comment (you don't have to be a member to do so).
Phyllostachys.
Longbow's SSTI upgrade
Longbow's Home on the web
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