phyllostachys twenty-six: Grace Piper

This interview is the eighth in a series of short interviews by Alex Landefeld of fellow attendee's and presenters at PCPGH2. Grace Piper is the Director of Production for the nascent Devour.tv and has been producing the Fearless Cooking vidcast, at FearlessCooking.tv -- "I READ COOKBOOKS THE WAY SOME WOMEN READ ROMANCE NOVELS":

Click To Play

phyllostachys twenty-five: Joan Dickerson

This interview is the seventh in a series of short interviews by Alex Landefeld of fellow attendee's and presenters at PCPGH2. Joan Dickerson is a local Pittsburgh digital artist, a nascent podcaster and a recent member of the Pixel Corps.

PodCamp Pittsburgh 2 (PCPGH2) is was a FREE BarCamp-style community UnConference for people who create, enjoy or are interested in learning more about blogs, vlogs, audio podcasts, web video, content networks and new media monetization.

Click To Play

phyllostachys twenty-four: David Tessitor

David Tessitor, of pghfree.net, is an Allegheny County Council-at-large candidate. David has a long history of organizational and political involvement in the Pittsburgh region and is partaking in his second Podcamp Pittsburgh event, the first having been the PGH Bootcamp in April, 2007:

Click To Play

phyllostachys twenty-three: Melissa & Michael

Melissa Robison, of MyDesignSelfStudy, and Michael Domingo, of Nante Koto: Online Dating Misadventures Podcast, gracefully consented to an interview at Podcamp Pittsburgh 2 on Sunday, August 19th:

Click To Play

phyllostachys twenty two: Tommy Vallier

Tommy describes himself thusly on Twitter: "Bio: Web developer, podcaster in training, general web geek. I live online when I can... I mean really, why not?".

Now, take a green frog, tie-dye rainbows, dv-camera-toting podcasters, free coffee and breakfast treats, sessions teaching all from branding to recording, and copious after-dinner drinks, and you have a great recipe for a podcasting conference with a little bit of Tommy Vallier mixed in.

The interview with Tommy represents the fourth in a series of eleven Podcamp Pittsburgh 2 interviews to be posted to Alex Landefeld's logos [dot] Blip [dot] tv videoblog site. Check out the previous three, presenting from first to third: Mark Rauterkus, Steve Brady and Richard Horn.

Noticing a severe misrepresentation in his interviewing for such a broad-based event as Podcamp Pittsburgh 2, Alex resolved to interview more women on his second day of shooting...and that's what he did, as we shall see from the next round of interviews to be posted.

Tommy Vallier's interview:

Click To Play

..phyllostachys.

phyllostachys twentyone: Happy Birthday, Norm!

Everyone at Podcamp Pittsburgh 2 wishes Norm Happy Birthday. Without his invaluable enthusiasm and assistance, we'd be podcamping in Point State Park! ;-)

..phyllostachys.

Click To Play

phyllostachys twenty: pcpgh2

PCPGH2

Why Podcamp?

Click To Play

phyllostachys nineteen: Podcamp Pittsburgh 2!

My weeks are defined in part by my long driving commute...and my driving commute is made more endurable by the podcasts I listen to. Listening to the twit.tv, pixelcorps.tv, maccast and venturecast podcasts have been most entertaining and educational...and have encouraged me in part to join the pixelcorps.com community. Searching on iTunes this past week for "investing" turned up a few new ones of interest. I listen on an iPod Shuffle, 2nd Gen - I like simplicity in my technology. :-)

Here's this weeks listing, with parenthetical notes on frequency:

The Index Investing Show (new)
this WEEK in TECH - AAC Edition - TWiT 109 (weekly)
this WEEK in MEDIA 65 - Hello Doctor Quest... (weekly)
PodcasterNews: The Engaging Brand - Show 102 - Engaging Communities (periodically)
MacBreak Tech: Living with the Finder (new)
Marketing over Coffee Marketing Podcast (weekly)
The Index Investing Show (new)
NYT: David Pogue - 8/2/07 - (periodically)
Options Insider Radio: Ep. 7 (new)
Options Insider Radio: Ep. 6 (new)
Options Insider Radio: Ep. 5 (new)

Review Notes:
- the Index Investing Show is interesting - very focused on diversification, which is always good.
- the MacBreak Tech show is a very good overview of Finder, with Jon Foster and Ben Durbin of PXC.
- Options Insider Radio is very good, especially for an options newbie like me. Very good intro to the industry. New podcast (8 episodes).
- Anna Farmery's Engaging Brand is always a Must Listen...and this one tops the list! Great interview.
- David is a long time friend, so it's cool to see how well he review's tech. Cool overview of IP telephony.

See you at Podcamp Pittsburgh 2, today! :-)

..Alex.

phyllostachys eighteen: phone vs. phone

Googlephone vs. the iPhone? Are you kidding?

I've seen some interesting comparisons in my time...but this is like comparing a skateboard to a Toyota Camry - they both travel the same highway...but one provides access to markets the other doesn't.

If people are still looking at the iPhone as, well, a "phone", they're way missing the bigger picture: iTunes, YouTube, oodles of customers walking through iMac and Macbook-laden Apple Stores, non-Apple users getting used to Apple's flawless product development strategies. The iPhone is so not just a phone - it's an introduction to a whole product cycle - it's so more of a "halo" product than Saturn's Sky or Pontaic's Solstice...or even Microsoft's Halo 1st, 2nd and third generation games, which were designed to win folks over to the Xbox.

Still think Googlephone is an Apple competitor? :-)

..phyllostachys.

phyllostachys seventeen: Podcamp Pittsburgh 2

So, inevitably, with PodcampPittsburgh2 weeks away, I feel a podcast comin' on!

I've been somewhat focused on the fascination of "podfade"...and I've allowed time and the summer...and procrastination...to cause my own podfade with MinuteLit and MinuteLit Tech. Well, no more!

First some blogging/linking, though:

I check google news daily for Apple, and found this interesting story about the new Scion xB.

Podcamp Pittsburgh2 is coming soon to an Art Intstitute near you! (As long as you live in Western Pennsylvania! ;-)

I've been doing a one-up-style vid-cast called Logos, at Logos.blip.tv. This is a vid cast about Words...and the most recent Word was Vacation. We went south from Pittsburgh to the Shenandoah valley region of Virginia, visited a vineyard or two and spent some time reading, filming and surfing - water this time, not the net!

I've been lisening to lots of podcasts in the past week or so, after finishing JK Rowlings latest wrap-up masterpiece. MacBreak Weekly, This Week in Media, This Week in Tech, MacCast, CBC Radio's Quirks and Quarks, Marketing over Coffee, The M-Show, VentureCast, VentureVoice...and much, much more! Whew. Those guys (and gals). Leo LaPorte, Alex Lindsey, Kenji Kato (sp?), Craig Syverson, David Hornick, John Dvorak, etc. All current tech news, all very good tech know-how. All this banter actually go me interested in Pixelcorps, whose online training/community I joined for the summer...and hopefully beyond. Digital tech is, well, enthralling. Thank you, Killashandra Ree! :-)

Saw on slashdot Friday this thought provoking article: New Theory Explains Periodic Mass Extinctions. Very interesting. For those of you who follow science theory/fact, this makes me speculate that those finding extra-solar planets will begin in earnest searching out those planets which perhaps don't have the same galaxy-style wobble that the Sol system has, in the hope of identifying a longer-live species environment. Do you agree? Disagree?

That's it for now. The next thing I was going to talk about was Options...for background on that, check out my logos.blip.tv videos!

ttyl,

..phyllostachys.

phyllostachys sixteen: LibraryThing.com

My journey was quite typical for me: starting at news.google.com, I linked to the science pages, on which I found a link to a company doing quantum computing. So, I next googled the company's website, read through the main page - the company is really building a quantum computer...if ever there was a push to Verner Vinge's Singularity, this has got to be it! ;-)

About half way down the page there's a link that reads "D-Wave, in the Founder's Words" -- "Dr. Geordie Rose speaks out on a wide range of topics, including the media myths and misconceptions about quantum computing." Interestingly, you don't see many links on a company's website that link off to another location, so this must be interesting.

Personal blog pages are becoming something of a resume on the web, but I've never seen a link to a person's favorite list of books. Dr. Rose had a link that said, under the heading "Geordie's Books", there was a link to something called "My LibraryThing". I mean, books are sooooo 19th century, aren't they??? Intrigued (as I am about books generally, anyways), I linked on over to this strange term labelled "LibraryThing".

Linking, hypertextually across the web, is how I learn many new things. That's why I love using finance.yahoo.com - there are so many great tidbits of information...and so many links to new and different ways of organizing all that information. With Googles' new News search utility, I don't need a "news aggregator" separate from news.google.com...it is my news aggregator. I look through the top news section, link over to Business, or Science, and if I don't see anything interesting, I type in a search term, such as "Apple", after which you'll see all sorts of news (or blog posts, linked to at the bottom) about the iPhone, Cisco's friendly battle about tradenames...and sometimes something like "there's a bad apple in every workplace", a sociological piece about working with others.

So, imagine my surprise, not knowing what to expect, when LibraryThing turns out to be a way for people to list the books they own, and do reviews on some or all of those books. Okay, that's simple. My spouse uses something call Readerware, where you can scan in the ISBN bar code, and Readerware will link out to some web site and download the entire meta information, as well as recent sale prices. Naturally, if you're posting your books on the web, you want to sell them, right?

Not so at LibraryThing. This, as it turns out, is a social website, one of the new breed of internet sites, a la Myspace, Facebook, Blogger, etc. Once you've entered in a book, either by ISBN, Library of Congress number, or just a portion of the title, you're presented first with a list of matching titles -- there may be different editions, publish dates, types of media (book, audio, dvd), or people may have entered the title information differently. Once you click on a title that looks correct....it pops into your list of recently added titles. Then LibraryThing's internal programming takes over, and on your profile page you see lists of other LibraryThing users who similarly have the same books as you do in their personal library. Now, on the surface, that's just interesting. But...thinking socially, if someone collects (and presumably) reads books similar to your own, perhaps there are other similarities. Do you see where this is going? Myspace is the place for kids and restaurants and young adults to post their favorite bands, favorite clothes, favorite shopping malls, etc., thereby linking to others on similar social interests. But LibraryThing actually may show, specifically if the person has started reviewing books, beyond the actual, but sadly frequent one-liners: Ice Towers by Duncan McGeary "It certainly isn't any better to be in Icetowers compared to Snowcastles", something about the person he or she wouldn't ordinarily reveal - this same type of revelation is sought by many readers in the writing by some authors, such as the reporter-shy Thomas Pynchon. (The Icetowers was reviewed by "bluetyson", an Australian LTer who has actually reviewed some 3100 books, so perhaps the periodic one-liner can be forgiven in this case.)

Somehow, after surfing about in LibraryThing for the better part of an evening, I came across the page of LyriqueTragedy. This name was interesting to me, in part because of my classical Greek undergraduate degree, and the obligatory studies of Oedipus Tyrannus (Oἰδίπoυς τύραννoς), etc. The voice behind LyriqueTragedy is a university lecturer, a reviewer of books (not only in LibraryThing, but also via Blogger posts and LiveJournal entries), and an aspiring writer. Here's where the beauty of the web as a communications medium shines through: after a week of communication, LyriqueTragedy may be willing to produce a netcast (podcast) with me, which is potentially to be called "Minute Lit". I've already produced episode 1 with this description:

"Minute Lit - the netcast for reading and discussing the single and assembled words of literature -- Episode zero-zero-one"

My next part of the process is to design, with LyriqueTragedy, a few more episodes, and figure out how to produce it to the web. The direct source of my Podcast fever, as mentioned in my previuos post, is PodCamp Pittsburgh. If you can put together interesting content, you'll draw interested listeners.


bye for now.

..phyllostachys.

(update: I figured out how to post this netcast to the web. Apple's ".mac" makes this very easy!)

phyllostachys fifteen: PodCamp Pittsburgh Nov. 10-12, 2006

Nothing like a tech conference to get me back into my blog...especially a _free_ tech conference. :-)

A good friend sent me a note about an "un-conference" called PodCamp - a conference devoted to audio and video blogging - how to do it, what to do, etc. Ten minutes later I was signed up as an attendee (the sign-up is wiki-based)...and 24-hours later I had posted my plans for a presentation titled "Video to Web: Shoot, Assemble, Publish to Web".

The conference is the second of it's kind and the first to be held in Pittsburgh. The first PodCamp was held in Boston, at the Bunker Hill Community College, on Sept. 9th & 10th, 2006. People have been audio blogging for a while (considering an audio blog, or "podcast", is effectively a pre-recorded radio program, designing for distribution via the web in a compressed file format), so the PodCamp is long time in coming. The Boston event seems to have been very well attended, with bloggers from other locales flying into Beantown for the event. You can download or stream some of the podcasts of the PodCamp Boston sessions.

Although Apple's iPod is by no means the first mass-market digital music player, it is certainly the coolest [I supposed that's debatable, and therefore a biased statement] and best positioned with an established supporting music/video sales arm, iTunes. With this marketing double-whammy that Apple has ingeniously submitted to the computerized world, the inevitable "xerox-ization" of the name "iPod" has occurred, with all sorts of "pod" words popping up in the modern vocabulary. This has gotten so pervasive that Apple is flexing it's legal muscle, suing various organizations by suggesting that the "pod" syllable is theirs and theirs alone. I won't give an opinion about which side is correct....but my phrase "xerox-ization" I believe explains both the fate and the eventual outcome of the matter - the syllable will be/is firmly ensconced in the public domain as a metaphor for all things digitally audio and video.

I personally have been shooting video and publishing via Apple's iMovie and Google's video site for many months. Though I am by no means an accomplished filmmaker, I am implementing inspiration as it occurs. My most recent production, "Apple Festivals 2006", was a fun short produced by my son and I before attending two local Apple Festivals, each occurring on opposite ends of the Pittsburgh metropolitan area from each other on the same day...hence my use of Google Earth within the video - it allows lots of "hopping" around the globe.

This film shows that though amateurish, I am using the great resources provided by Apple on every Macintosh, iLife '06. The iLife suite of applications includes iMovie, for production of films from digital video "footage", and GarageBand, for creation and assembly of digital audio. You can use iDVD to burn to DVD...or just find a web-based distribution location (your own website or one of the many popular sites). I suppose a high-speed digital connection (DSL or cable) is a given...though I know even the US is nowhere close to a 100% market saturation of high-speed access - though this is improved by such services as Verizon's wireless services.

So, on to planning for my PodCamp presentation...and planning my next video (plugging the house that my wife and I are trying to sell).

..phyllostachys.

phyllostachys fourteen: Fathers Day

I was hard at work yesterday morning...when my wife came in and said "What are you doing???!!! You said you'd be out cutting the lawn!!!" Well, back into the doghouse! :-)

What I was doing was attempting to put together appropriate music (in GarageBand) for one of the oldest and most eventful father's day stories of all time: the homecoming of Odysseus, who hadn't seen his wife Penelope and son Telemachos for nearly 20 years (10 years for the Trojan War, 10 years for the trip home). There are scads of references to fathers in the Odyssey: Zeus is a Father, Odysseus has a father, Telemachos has a father, Polyphemus the cyclops has a father (Poseidon [or Neptune, depending on a Hellenic or Roman bent of the translator], who causes so many travails for Odysseus), and each of the Greek kings reference their fathers (kings of Sparta and Pylos, where Telemachos travels in the first book of the Odyssey).

It's really almost too much for an aspiring bard to comprehend! So, what follows are the lines I've adapted for a later-to-be released musical compilation (there are arguably more appropriate lines...further re-reading will bring those to light).

Since I could not finish the musical masterpiece for your listening pleasure....I dissuaded my young son from watching a movie, took him with me while I went up to take a shower, and proceeded to tell him the short version of the trials of Odysseus:

-- of Telemachos' travels to Sparta and Pylos for news of his father,
-- of Odysseus' homecoming (on Fathers Day, of course),
-- of how he identified himself definitively to his wife Penelope (the construction of their bridal bed, and the stringing of his hunting bow),
-- and of how he, Telemachos, Athena (in earthly garb) and several helpers dusted off the scores of suitors eating and drinking in the household that day.

Happy Fathers Day, Dads!

..phyllostachys.

Telemachos' Fathers Day:

"The gods were discussing
in the halls of Olympian Zeus,
the fate of Odysseus, of the tears of
his wife Penelope and his son Telemachos

The goddess, grey-eyed Athene, said to Zeus
"Father, son of Saturn, King of kings,
I will conduct Telemachos to Sparta and to Pylos,
to see if he can hear anything about the return
of his dear father --
for this will make people speak well of him."

"My mother," answered Telemachus, "tells me I am son to Odysseus,
but it is a wise child that knows his own father.
Would that I were son to one who had
grown old upon his own estates,
for, since you ask me, there is no more ill-starred man under heaven
than he who they tell me is my father."

"I will tell you the truth, my son," said Odysseus to his son. "It was
the Phaeacians who brought me here. They are great sailors, and
are in the habit of giving escorts to any one who reaches their
coasts. They took me over the wine-dark sea while I was fast asleep, and
landed me in Ithaca, after giving me many presents in bronze,
gold, and raiment."

http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/dyssy10.txt

phyllostachys thirteen: Used Books - Read 'em!

Used Books - Read 'em!

I am addicted to many things in life: breathing is chief amongst them addictions, but also coffee, daydreaming, the stock market, bamboo, used books and the opposite sex...not necessarily in that order. As with most addictions, each finds its way into all the nooks and crannies of my life (sequentially, of course - men can multitask as well as women...as long as the tasks are sequentially ordered! ;-).

Used books are no exception. I haven't found a used bookstore I haven't liked (although like/dislike has a graduated scale) - each offers hours of browsing and thinking. But, the best used bookstores are sometimes those without a store presence. Let me give you an example.

I've found a cool used-book bookstore called Paradox Books near where I work in Wheeling, West Virginia. I've made some great finds at Paradox, from books on wines of the world, to great sci-fi, and more recently, a $1 copy of Benjamin Graham's "The Intelligent Investor" (New Revised Edition, (c) 1964). In keeping with the area's flavour, Paradox also has a full range of Playboy's, dating back to the late 60's. ;-)

Aside from selling books, etc., inside, Paradox has a large bookshelf outside of it's front door, somewhat protected from the weather. This shelf is there so that the book-addicted person, who comes and finds the store closed for some reason, has the chance of satisfying his or her thirst for yet another used book. In addition to this outdoor bookshelf, Paradox has a table of books in the Centre Market (the cool little market in which Coleman's Fish Market is an anchor tenant) which are free for the taking. Yesterday, I perused these books during my lunch break, and walked away with two tomes: "The Federal Reserve System: Purposes and Functions" (by the system's Board of Governors, (c) 1961), and "Modern Introductory Analysis" (a Houghton Mifflin textbook from 1964). I nearly picked a book on an introduction to symbolic logic...but an inquiring mind can latch onto only so many new tangents of thought/learning. ;-)

So, an addiction appeased for a few more days. Although I'm currently reading the "Intelligent Investor" book, I really want to learn more about the Fed, now that we're having a changing of the guard at the helm of the Fed (from Greenspan to Bernanke). I suppose I could go to the Fed's website (or to www.wikipedia.org, for that matter), but a book still has lots of appeal. I'll crack the other book to see what I can learn in a short time about analysis (mathematics is a foreign language I'm continually trying to expose myself to)...and to see what ideas I can introduce to my 4-yr-old. ;-)

So, go read a book...a used book!

..phyllostachys.

phyllostachys twelve: picking up, moving on

Hurricane Season, 2005, has just about left the stage. Civil unrest (aside from certain invasions) is just about to take center stage. And, the Northern Hemisphere is just about to weather another winter. Although the possibility of higher fuel prices is waning with the memory (in non-affected areas) of Katrina, Wilma, Beta, etc., higher energy costs are here to stay.

How, then, can we afford these prices? By working a little bit harder, a few longer hours (easier during the shorter days of Winter), and with more intent to a warmer (or at least more solvent) future.

Working harder is easy for me to say...I have had a string of decent jobs over the past two decades, each of which seem to have helped pay the bills and allowed me to put some away for a rainy (or graying) day. But what about those people who are under-employed, ill-employed (just barely suited to the task) or not employed? It's easy to say "get a job"...but the great leveler is that we may each face a point of uncertainty in our lives in which we don't know which way to turn, where the next meal, roof or paycheck is going to come from.

At my level (such as it is), it seems easy for me to take solace in learning: I know, from education in the past, that I can read, study and learn much of that which I'll need to get ahead...and learn on-the-job that which I haven't learned yet. For self-directed as well as community-guided learning, a great leveler was the public library...and more recently, the Internet: both provide easy access to copious amounts of information to anyone willing to (1) walk into a library (learn how to open a web browser), (2) know how to read (how to search) and (3) find gobs of information that you need to learn from or are having fun learning from.

But as economics or nature remove access to such excellent public institutions (thanks, in the U.S. to Andrew Carnegie, among others), we are left with challenges as to how to get the information to the masses....without exposing paper to the elements. Proliferation, therefore, of computer technology to the masses, with a built-in browser linked to the ever-expanding presence of a search engine (e.g., Google) seems to be a potential answer. Currently, one needs to be literate to access the media on a computer....soon, however, video (and, on the horizon, VR?) and 3D interaction will allow greater numbers to access all the information they need to improve themselves (and hopefully not blow up the rest of us -- a very real concern in a world of open information and relatively open borders/airspace).

So, the key to bringing the masses along with the "digital haves" is to encourage increasingly better methods of education, increasing levels of health (thanks to orgs like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) and increasing access to the digital libraries of the world.

..phyllostachys.



2005 Hurricane Names

The Gates Foundation

Adam Smith on Wikipedia

phyllostachys eleven: Do you hear the winds of change?

Change is coming...can you hear the surf recede, with the fish flopping on the beach of your life?

How do you encourage your peers that saving all that they can versus spending all that they can is the course of action they should be pursuing? I don't know...I think we each have to come to that realization in our own time...constant reminders from friends and media can begin to be somewhat nagging. But that realization must be there - hopefully sooner than later.

I hear the winds blowing in my ears: Greenspan is retiring, metals and oil are priced way high, China and India need more energy resources...as the industrial focus moves across the Pacific and Indian oceans, Western religion is on the wane (just as it was 1700 years ago), Eastern religion is as strong and thriving as if the past 1300 years had not just passed, the earth is slowly warming up, with polar caps shrinking and water levels rising...and we're continually discovering more Solar System objects which may cross Earth's future path.

All we can do is continue to learn, and exhort others to do the same. A friend has issues with alcohol and cardiovascular disease...a dangerous combination. As a friend, I can just support and encourage more water intake vs. alcohol...something we all should strive for.

I picked up a used book last night for 50 cents, at the used book shelf at Apple Hill Playhouse in Delmont, PA (just before the curtain rose on Neil Simon's "The Sunshine Boys"): "The Interpretation of Financial Statements," by Benjamin Graham and Charles McGolrick (1955). This is a cool little book intended to privide any investor or teacher with standard insight into how a company's financial statements should read...and as a possible introduction to the more in-depth analysis of investments in Graham's "Security Analysis." One of my primary gauges for the health of a company is the "current ration," or current assets to current liabilities. Graham points out "When a company is in a sound position, the current assets well exceed the current liabilities, indicating that the company will have no difficulty in taking care of its current debts as they mature." Graham takes it a bit farther by excluding inventory (depending on how an enterprise treats inventory) in what's call an "acid test" of the "quick assets" (exclusive of inventory).

Knowing your way around a company's balance/income/cashflow statements can provide quick insight (though only a snapshot) into the apparent health of a company, Enron or Francisco d'Anconia (of San Sebastián Mines fame) notwithstanding. My favorite place to review all aspects of a company is Yahoo!'s Finance site, http://finance.yahoo.com. Check it out. :-)

..phyllostachys.

phyllostachys ten: John Maynard Keynes

An acquaintance at the public health club where I swim asked me "who do you think are the greatest investors?" My answer was that other than an investing great like Warren Buffett, I'd say someone who has amassed wealth by investing time, sweat and money in building their own company - Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison all jump to mind. My acquaintance asked if I'd heard of Keynes.

Well-read investors should have heard of Keynes...and I have, having first been introduced to him by Louis Rukeyser's book-on-tape series on the history of Economics. Keynes was the British Economist known primarily for developing the policies that most readily led the US and Britain out of the woods after the "Great Depression" of the '30's.

According to Time Magazine:
"Keynes' basic idea was simple. In order to keep people fully employed, governments have to run deficits when the economy is slowing. That's because the private sector won't invest enough. As their markets become saturated, businesses reduce their investments, setting in motion a dangerous cycle: less investment, fewer jobs, less consumption and even less reason for business to invest. The economy may reach perfect balance, but at a cost of high unemployment and social misery. Better for governments to avoid the pain in the first place by taking up the slack."
The Time 100

My acquaintance said that in addition to being an effective and well-respected ecomonist, was also a very successful investor. Said Keynes, "Successful investing is anticipating the anticipations of others," which is, of course, what the markets are all about - successfully navigating the torrential runs of human emotion in trading. After this conversation, I went home and did some Google searches on Keynes and investing....and found some interesting guidelines...which sounded eerily like a quote from the Oracle of Omaha. Now, of course, I cannot refind that quote...I'll relay in a later post.


On the subject of books, I noticed that my acquaintance had brought a book for reading on the treadmill. He showed me Jeremy Siegel's new book, The Future for Investors. I'd never heard of Siegel, but have since learned that he's a Wharton School finance professor who wrote Stocks for the Long Run in 1994, in which he touted that stocks have been the best investment vehicle since 1802 -- he touted this just before one of America's greatest bull markets. Siegel has his own website (see below) and was featured in a WSJ article on 05/05/05 about his new theory that retiring baby boomers will sell all their assets...and the markets won't be saved unless billions of Indian and Chinese investors step in. A controversial idea, of course....but how the heck else do you get people to argue and plan for the future? :-)


..phyllostachys.

BTW, today is the inauguration of the use of Google's adsense on this site...let's see how we do. :-)

For more on Keynes, see:
The History of Ecomonic Thought website

For more on Siegel, go to:
Jeremy Siegel's website

phyllostachys nine: Karlgaard Rules

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.

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.

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...

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!

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Phyllostachys.


Longbow's SSTI upgrade

Longbow's Home on the web