September 2008 Archives

Strictly on technicals, I am picking these stocks for long and short positions:

Short: ALJ, CTAS, RSH, APOL, STT, ATHR, CHH, DISH, CVS, BAX

Long: REP, JOSB, PXD, ARTC, BVN, ACAS

Pairs: REP/PXD, ALJ; ACAS, STT

Note: STT is on SEC list of protected short stocks.

The strategy has not been backtested and I make no assurances of performance. You use these recommendations purely at your own risk.

2008-09-24 14:45

Any sane person would want to have been on the opposite side of almost every one of those trades. The longs were consistently way off and the shorts would have lost money, too.

Short positions

ALJ	3:58PM ET	15.81	1.99	14.40%
CTAS	3:59PM ET	28.29	0.25	0.88%
RSH	3:59PM ET	17.06	0.13	0.77%
APOL	3:59PM ET	57.51	1.49	2.53%
STT	3:59PM ET	54.67	0.64	1.18%
ATHR	3:59PM ET	23.96	0.40	1.70%
CHH	3:59PM ET	28.94	1.70	5.55%
DISH	3:59PM ET	23.83	0.19	0.80%
CVS	3:59PM ET	33.16	0.50	1.49%
BAX	3:59PM ET	65.09	1.08	1.69%

Long positions

REP	3:58PM ET	29.22	0.15	0.52%
JOSB	3:59PM ET	31.72	7.99	20.12%
PXD	3:59PM ET	56.61	0.11	0.19%
ARTC	3:59PM ET	29.73	4.27	12.56%
BVN	3:59PM ET	23.39	0.48	2.01%
ACAS	3:59PM ET	26.18	1.90	6.77%

I saw this in someone else's website: any link on your page that you hover over pops up a snapshot image of the page. Cool!

I decided I needed to add it to my own Movable Type website. As near as I can tell, it just requires adding some JavaScript to the Footer template.

I like this graphic of sector performance from the New York Times. Mind you, as my buddy Jeff says, "How is this going to make you money?" I have to admit I don't have a certain way in the market, but I think it is a good high level filter for finding stuff to investigate.

This sounds like a reasonably cool way to get a powerful development platform for PHP.

JSBuilder for compressing and merging JavaScript files.

Combine and compress JS files and resources from a simple user interface. Currently Windows-only. Supports the following features:

• Compresses Javascript and removes comments (uses JSMin)
• Build arbitrary file types to multiple output targets in one project
• Includes a console version for automated command-line building

I've been asked a few times about appdomains. I know the basics in a theoretical way, but I was unclear on the actual application. I asked my first question at StackOverflow, Good example of use of AppDomain, to clarify.

2008-09-20: What is an application domain - an explanation for .Net beginners appears to be the basis for the wikipedia article on appdomains.

I recently got these two videos from the Charlie and Lola series for my six year old niece:

1. Charlie & Lola, Vol 7 - This Is Actually My Party
2. Charlie and Lola, Vol. 8: I Am Collecting a Collection

I saw it on TV first and thought it was nice. The cartoons have pleasing drawing. The plot and characters are enjoyable. I thought it was pretty cute. Hope she likes them!

Turn to this article to see the new 100 billion dollar note.

Bad news for investors who take stock tips from Fortune.

In December, Fortune magazine admitted it had been remiss naming insurance giant AIG one of its "10 Stocks To Buy Now" before a yearlong 18 percent decline. "We... didn't expect [the] mortgage unit to be such an albatross," editors wrote. To correct the error, the magazine had a fresh list of "The Best Stocks For 2008" -- including Merrill Lynch. "Smart investors should buy this stock before everyone else comes to their senses," Fortune wrote, calling a recent correction in Merrill stock "an overreaction." Investors who followed this advice are now down 93 percent.

There is a really good post at StackOverflow.com called The Hidden Features of C# that asks, "[W]hat are the most hidden features or tricks of c# that even c# fans, addicts, experts barely know?" And lots of the answers provided were unknown to me.

Here are some favorite points:

• Parallel Computing
  "Microsoft's Parallel Computing Platform (PCP) team [...] enables the shift to modern, multi- and manycore hardware, by providing a runtime that provides core support for parallelism and resource management, programming models, libraries, and tools that make it easy for developers to construct correct, efficient, maintainable, and scalable parallel programs."
• LINQBridge
  "With Studio's multi-targeting and LINQBridge, you'll be able to write local (LINQ to Objects) queries using the full power of the C# 3.0 compiler--and yet your programs will require only Framework 2.0."

Someone came up with a website that allows you to upload MP3s and to add cowbell and Christopher Walken (as SNL character Bruce Dickinson) to the track. Some favorites:

• Devo - Whip It
• Joe Jackson - Is She Really Going Out With Him?
• The Beatles - A Hard Day's Night
• Queen and Bowie - Under Pressure
• Genesis - I Can't Dance
• George Harrison - While My Guitar Gently Weeps
• The Beatles - I Am The Walrus (acoustic)

My wife thinks this cartoon summarizes her life. It just might.

I'm trying to cut back but sometimes it's irresistible. I don't send stuff on "that begs the question" when people really means it raises the question anymore. Life is just too short.

Still, at her prompting, I did write to the NYT writer about his use of the phrase "prodigal son" in this article:

"So far, no one has taken up Mr. Pettit's call for Philadelphia's best grave robbers to bring home the city's prodigal son before the bicentennial of Poe's birth in January 2009."

The parable of the prodigal son is about a son who prematurely claims his inheritance and spends it all wastefully. That's what makes him prodigal: his wastefulness of a great resource.

You label Poe a prodigal son because you think the parable is about leaving or leaving and returning rather than the wastefulness. Poe was perhaps wasteful of his talent or his money, but that is not the central part of your argument.

No doubt that will set everyone straight and we can move on.

Korean Freestyle Slalom Rollerblading (2 minutes)
Amazing 12 year old girl skates slalom course to music

Blind date (30 seconds)

So recently I started moving IP addresses found in Movable Type's mt_tbping table to mt_ipbanlist, with the view to turning the trackback spammers invisible. As I understand it, IP addresses found in mt_ipbanlist are sent away with a 403 error or otherwise do not show up in the traffic log. I found a list of banned IP addresses online and added them to my mt_ipbanlist table. Now I have over 26 000 banned IP addresses and yet I still get about 5 spammy trackbacks per day. How many spammers are out there?

Banned IP list

SWIG is an important software tool for integrating external libraries into applications. Previously mentioned here.

SWIG is a software development tool that connects programs written in C and C++ with a variety of high-level programming languages. SWIG is used with different types of languages including common scripting languages such as Perl, PHP, Python, Tcl and Ruby. The list of supported languages also includes non-scripting languages such as C#, Common Lisp (CLISP, Allegro CL, CFFI, UFFI), Java, Lua, Modula-3, OCAML, Octave and R. Also several interpreted and compiled Scheme implementations (Guile, MzScheme, Chicken) are supported. SWIG is most commonly used to create high-level interpreted or compiled programming environments, user interfaces, and as a tool for testing and prototyping C/C++ software. SWIG can also export its parse tree in the form of XML and Lisp s-expressions. SWIG may be freely used, distributed, and modified for commercial and non-commercial use.

Air Traffic Safety vs. Capacity

Any runway has a finite capacity. The key to understanding this is in understanding time. Only one aircraft is allowed to use the runway at any time. It takes a certain amount of time for a departing aircraft to taxi onto a runway, accelerate to flying speed and lift off. Likewise, it takes a certain amount of time for an arriving aircraft to touch down, slow down and taxi off the runway. The time it takes the typical airliner to do either one -- land or takeoff -- is roughly one minute.

The math is as simple as it is inescapable. Roughly 60 airliners can use a runway in one hour if conditions are absolutely perfect. It is physically impossible to improve that number. However, it can get a lot worse.

Piecing Together the Dark Legacy of East Germany's Secret Police

The Stasi, the state police of East Germany, kept extensive files on citiizens, totalling an estimated 1 billion pages. When the Berlin Wall fell, Stasi agents shredded and hand-tore the documents for months. Not all of the documents were disposed of, though, and now the hand-torn pages are being digitally reassembled using paper scanners and computer programs to logically stitch the pages together.

#9 "Dorvid Days"

David travels cross-country to meet a woman who comes with some extra baggage.

The New York Times reports on a website, ManyEyes.com, that allows users to upload their data for use in online visualization software. Cool.