I’ll let the reporters do the talking:
http://www.coloradoan.com/article/20090117/UPDATES01/90117008
Suffice it to say I’m pretty proud of my ma. She’s now the #7 ranked hit when searching our last name inGoogle’s search engine. She even has her own Wikipedia page now (and no, she did not make it).
First post of the new year.
2008 was kind of a lame year for me in some ways (although it did have it’s highlights)…some of my more ambitious efforts/ideas never really took off for various reasons. Work was stellar. The personal life suffered as a result.
2009 has me off to a much better start already on the flip side, and its looking like work is going to suffer a bit whether I want it to or not, due to congressional funding shortfalls.
Goals for ‘09:
Tonight, we dine on data.
The past few weeks I started playing with raw DJI data imported into Matlab (once again, thank you Google). Figured I’d post it for all to critique or (hopefully) credit.
My weapon of choice for starters: the Fast Fourier Transform. Why? I think a lot of information might be hidden in the signal spectrum that isn’t obvious when you’re just watching the price indices, and I’m tired of riding blind. I’m not a fan of moving averages…they’re low pass filters (weed the noise out, useful as it may be)…its like putting black tape over your side windows. They might make you react less and drive straight (which is probably their real intent, much to the boon of investment firms who get to hoard your money), but they blind you to the 20 ton truck coming in to T-bone you. I’d rather see ALL the data in its wondrous glory.
Back to the basics here for a sec…this data is sampled daily, so it tells you absolutely nothing about behavior within periods less than 2 days (Nyquist).
This first data set spans everything from Jan 1 2000 up to present. Why that period? Because I got tired of copying and pasting, and didn’t want to write a full blown robot to grab data from google just yet (but thats on the to-do list). Will probably expand it to cover the 80’s and 90’s when I’m motivated…as I’m learning, there are events in that period we need to consider for sake of comparison. After all, being able to make good investment choices is partly about knowing how to react (or not to react) to news.
So first, a plot with the entire decade up till now, and the signal content (third subplot). Ignore the second one (just a repeat of first in this one)…part of a mechanic I use later.
Clicky to get a full-sized version.
Some very important things here, right off. The signal plots are shown with period, not frequency (because its easier to think i periods of days than frequences of micro-Hertz). At first glance a VERY large quantity of the signal content resides in low frequency (high period) realm, but it turns out there are only a few points there, so I can’t quite trust it, although it does make some sense…lots of people doing lots of things seemingly at random for no apparent reasons, ie, paychecks getting invested into 401k’s bi-weekly.
Now, this one is a zoom on the signal spectra of the opening, closing, high, low, and volume data…this is zoomed way in on the lower left of the one in the first plot (ignoring the low freq stuff). The high frequency stuff is the most meaningful and useful to us.
First off, opening/closing/high/low…they all look the same. So…we’ll just use closing from now on. Note the strong 200 - 250 day periods evident. Whats cool about this one is that a) its rather close to the famous 250 day moving average indicator that many people use (thereby giving it some credibility), and that you immediately see some strong correlation between price and volume at that period (funny…the 250 day moving average could be a chicken vs. the egg problem…people use it because its there because people use it…you catch my drift?). 250 days is too damn long of a period to filter anyways…recessions are born and dead within 250 days. You go by that one, and you’ll miss the bus. I think the volume correlation kind of discredits it too, don’t you?!?
Now lower down there in the periods, there is a lot going on in the price spectrum, with no real rhyme or reason.
In the volume, I see another peak at 63 days…again, thats the other period used often in the famous moving average indicator so many use. Pretty crazy…people unknowingly inject crap like this into the market just by using a certain analysis technique!!! There’s another large volume peak at around 90 days. Guess what happens every 90 days? Quarterly earnings. Boom…you guess it. The 180 day earnings period is the strongest of all (and seems kind of blended with the 250 day effect).
What we can take from this so far (I think): a) moving averages are bullcrap, and b) pay the hell attention to quarterly earnings statements.
How to interpret the rest of that unknown mess from 5 to 150 days is the real question (and the real money maker). If you can do that, methinks you’re golden.
One observation: a number of the periods that pop out down in there in certain sections (ie, 50 to 150 days) are of similar magnitude…this could tell one they are somehow related, no? The important thing there too is that they are overlapped in time…one of those peaks could be resident to a small window of time…thats the hypothesis I’ll tackle next. I’m outta gas for now, and my DOW spectrum movie maker isn’t done yet (but gettin close).
More to come.
Well, in preparation of Mr. Obama getting elected (and this is really the only reason I would fear his administration, unlike all the other yahoo republicans these days…), I decided to buy a rather sporty weapon, lest he ban them from sale as many fear he would.
As a wise man once said, go big, or go home.
My weapon of choice was a Rock River Arms Elite Comp LAR-15 rifle. They were sellin like hotcakes at the show, and I was lucky enough to get the last one.
Also bought a holosight for it…quite possibly the coolest piece of gun gear ever invented. This sight is a holographically registered targeting reticule that is optically projected into the targeting plane. What does that mean? That means you can put the reticule on target looking through the HUD at any angle, and the bullet will be on target. Got mud, snow or rain blocking part of the HUD? No problem, just look to the side. Still on target. There’s a 3X flip-to-side magnifier that goes with it too…may get that at some point.
Fun times…
A Letter from Afghanistan…it speaks for itself:
Hello everyone,
As you know I am not a very political person. I just
wanted to pass along that Senator Obama came to Bagram
Afghanistan for about an hour on his visit to ‘The War
Zone’. I wanted to share with you what happened.
He got off the plane and got into a bullet proof
vehicle , got to the area to meet with the Major General (2
Star) who is the commander here at Bagram.As the Soldiers where lined up to shake his hand he
blew them off and didn’t say a word as he went into the
conference room to meet the General. As he finished, the
vehicles took him to the ClamShell (pretty much a big top
tent that military personnel can play basketball or work out
in with weights) so he could take his publicity pictures
playing basketball. He again shunned the opportunity to talk
to Soldiers to thank them for their service.So really he was just here to make a showing for the
American’s back home that he is their candidate for
President. I think that if you are going to make an effort
to come all the way over here you would thank those that are
providing the freedom that they are providing for you.I swear we got more thanks from the NBA Basketball
Players or the Dallas Cowboy Cheer leaders than from one of
the Senators, who wants to be the President of the United
States. I just don’t understand how anyone would want him to
be our Commander-and-Chief. It was almost that he was scared
to be around those that provide the freedom for him and our
great country.If this is blunt and to the
point I am sorry but I wanted you all to know what kind of
caliber of person he really is. What you see in the news is
all fake.In service,
CPT Jeffrey S. Porter
Battle Captain
TF Wasatch
American Soldier
…or lack thereof. I’ve lost much of mine, and I want to know where it went. This sums it up perfectly:
I have all of these cool things I want to do, but there is something stupid in my brain keeping me from doing them. Part of it is its just so easy to get into the grind now, and just kind of go with the flow. It’s not like I don’t do anything interesting or fun…I do…its just that I don’t care as much about doing it all, and I’m not passionate about any of it. I was very passionate about a lot of things for the first year or so I was here. Then I think I just gave too much, and it sapped it all. So maybe now I’m just letting it all well up again so I can give another big burst.
It definitely comes in bursts for me. There are times that I don’t get jack done for a few hours, and then I’ll have a burst for an hour and get more done in that hour than some people can do in days. I just wish I knew how to sustain it. Gotta figure that out.
…for the moment anyways. It’s been one of those months. Time is just passing me by it seems, while I sit on the curb and wave at myself going by. Accomplishing things, but nothing great. Just existing. The motivation to achieve greatness has left me for the moment, and I haven’t really a choice in the matter. It’ll come back at some point…I know it will. It almost did this past week….almost…but not quite. I know exactly what it was that shut me down…this is what I do when I recover from over-exertion. I go into cruise control for a couple months.
I’ve got several very important things to do this summer. Somehow, I’ve gotta find the motivation to reach the destinations.
So what does it mean, exactly, to be 25?
I’ll tell you:
And thats about it. Happy birfday to me, world!
Oh, and seriously…whats with Chuck Norris, kung-fu master turned politician? I’ll tell you: world domination.
Chuck Norris can face away from the toilet, pee over his shoulder, and not spill a drop on the floor.
I read an article on slashdot today about a prediction that 2008 is the year for too much information. I’ve always been of the mindset that everyone is just too weak and unable to adapt, but I’m starting to think they’re right. This damn blog is proof in and of itself. Who actually reads all the crap that is put out these days (this blog included)?!?
Now, to back up a step, I write on here more for my own benefit and enjoyment than for anyone else. If someone else stumbles across this and enjoys the random reading, more power to em.
I think my post earlier this year on my thoughts about humanity approaching some sort of asymptote in it’s existence is reminiscent of this whole issue. We are simply generating and keeping more information (useful and otherwise) than can even be imagined, and requiring ourselves to parse and take it all in, more than is humanly possible.
We’ve got all these damned gadgets now to help us manage the information (and are doing a very good job of it to be honest), but they are persistent in their nagging, and don’t let up unless you “accidentally” drop them off of a tall tower (which a friend of mine did recently).
What happens if we don’t parse it all and don’t keep up? Best case: the assanine schedules and commitments we hold ourselves too fall apart. Worst case: an extremely vital and important piece of information slips through the cracks of email passed over due to bad subject lines, or crappy spam filters, opening the way for worldwide disaster.
What is the limiting factor? Human mental bandwidth.
What is the (human) solution? In my opinion, there isn’t one. At least not of the sort that we hope. Large human societies, governments, social networks, and the like are best described as massive non-linear stability problems. Any attempt to model them, and hence, control them, is doomed to be ill conceived, and forever bereft of success, for the simple fact that no SINGLE person can understand the entire problem. We are bound to a future of unpredictable periods of instability, catalyzed by any one of a number of single or multiple dependent or independent events.
Why do we care so much? Damn good question. Simple answer: humans love control. We HAVE to be in control. We MUST be master of our own destinies. This ties into our beliefs on religion and spirituality. Do YOU have control of your fate? Do you even WANT to have control of your fate?
The only reason we in this country have the stability we do is because some smart dudes a few hundred years ago recognized the fact that societal control is impossible. The only constantly predictable (and hence, controllable) element we have is the very one we sometimes hate the most: our own selfish desires. Somewhat paradoxical. Societal (community) stability is derived from selfishness.
What is my point in all this? I think it’s this: turn up the damn spam filters, ignore the crappy emails, stop trying to parse and react to every bit of information, stop trying to save the world, and do what you want to do for a change, without getting in the way of others. Unfortunately, not everyone thinks this way, so our stability problem is not controllable.
So maybe that is my point. We’re screwed no matter what we do. We die eventually anyways. Probably worth caring more about what happens after we die. Doesn’t matter how smart you are, how politically deft you are, how influential you are, how many friends you have (or don’t), how many people you lead (or follow). It doesn’t matter because some jackass with a gun can very well come right up out of the noise floor and blow your head off, for no reason whatsoever, and there’s not a damned thing you can do about it. Some rare heavy element can embed itself in one of your cells and you can develop cancer as a result, and there’s not a damned thing you can do about it. A boulder could roll down a hill onto your house while you sleep and there’s not a thing you can do about it. The whole point is that YOU do not have control of anything on a large scale.
We have to know our limits. We’re nearing them. Recognize and live within them, or bad shit will happen.
Now that was a ramble. More crap added onto the pile of crap. Well, guess what: I’m proud of my crap =).
Googlified
Yes, that is now officially a new word. Googlified. Which describes my blog. My blog, my wonderful blog, has been googlified. See it’s catching on.
All you on facebook reading this (because I have facebook automatically import from my blog) won’t see the changes unless you go to my website/blog: NikkelNet. Now clicky clicky…
Ok. You should now be reading this from my website. Look around a bit…note the
There is also an example video ad generator on this page here (or at least there will be soon once I figure out what the problem is…).
All are driven by Google AdSense, the incredible advertising platform developed by Google (see also, Google AdWords, which is how you advertise via Google), which allows normal people like me to monetize their crappy (but rapidly becoming less crappy) website content.
I use WordPress to drive my site now by the way (in case you didn’t notice), and I’m rapidly becoming proficient at hacking it’s code to bits to make it do what I want.
Google Lunar X-Prize
In case nobody saw as well, Google is sponsoring the next X-prize, dubbed the Google Lunar X-Prize. In short, there is a $20 million dollar prize for the first private entity that lands a robot on the moon, and drives it 500 meters across the surface while taking radioing back to earth at least 1 Gigabyte of high res digital still photography, high res near real-time video of the drive, and an unspecified amount of high definition video. I plan to participate in it…one way or another…
Google Earth Fire Feed
Also, for anyone interested in the raging fires in CA, there is a great Google Earth feed that shows the extent of the burn. It’s pretty amazing…you should check it out. My friends at JAI Camera Solutions, who donated hardware to Team Scorpion for the DARPA Urban Challenge, was supposed to head out to the Urban Challenge NQE this weekend at the Southern California Logistics Airport in
Victorville, CA, but their CEO is now not let them go because he fears for their lives (for good reason…he is from Denmark apparently and has no concept of the size of California…this fire would probably have swallowed Denmark alive!).
Global Warming
I haven’t had time yet to re-work my global warming post, but it’s coming soon people. Prepare to be un-Al-Gorified in a serious way. =)
