BUH Blog

Mixture of Market Analysis in one Blog

The Bull Trader blog brings together the two high level methods of analyzing the markets - technical analysis and fundamental analysis. Well, not exactly together - but in the same blog. Combining the experience of four authors, The Bull Trader is a collaboration which seems to aim for coverage across the spectrum of analysis and levels of readership. The one area that I am very weak in is how to read a stock chart - certainly a skill that comes from years of experience. Beyond the commentary - which is good - the visuals given by the charts and the annotations on the charts is excellent. Rather than just being an information source, The Bull Trader is also a great place to learn about price patterns.

Mozy - Windows Backups

I can’t remember how I found it - but I stumbled on a nice service/software that I have needed for a long time. Mozy is a remote backup service. You download some software (yes, win-blows only), which runs in the background, and select the files you want backed up. Well, that is where the W A I T I N G begins - it is really slow the first time through. Why? Because it is packing up the files you selected and then shooting them over the internet to the Mozy servers. That took a couple of days. It will slow down transmission while you are working on your computer - but it is still apparent something is running. When you leave the PC alone - it is pretty quick - maxing out your bandwidth.

I forgot to mention - it is FREE for the first 2 GB - cool, huh? I went for the paid version, which is $4.95 a month - but you get 30 GB of backup storage. The biggest amount of data I have (not on any of my servers - on my Windoze PC) is my email files. That alone is like 3 GB of data, so I wanted to make sure I got that. Yeah, I could throw it on a CD… No, actually I can’t! It won’t fit - even with compression. And I don’t have a DVD burning in my PC. Backing up big files like that are a pain. After the initial slow backing up of files - now it seems to be doing DIFFs of the files and only making backups of the differences. Very nice.

Now, I have not tried to reconstitute any files yet - I guess I had better at some point in the near future. I may have a false sense of security, but so far Mozy seems to be a nice little service.

Car Audio Wholesale

Finding car audio wholesale at affordable prices can be tough at times, with many retail outlets advertising “wholesale” prices. It’s a fact though, that if a retail outlet is selling a product it cannot possibly be wholesale. Well, one business is changing that with deep discounts on products like speaker boxes and car audio.

Streetsoundsonline.com offers genuine wholesale pricing to the public. They cut out the middleman and purchase directly from the manufuacturer and pass the savings onto the consumer. This means lower prices and more sales - which in turn lead to larger buys from the manufacturer and increased discounts for the consumer… it’s a win-win situation.

AMD or Intel - Still debating

I was really looking forward to the release of the Core 2 Duo chips from Intel a couple of months back. I am in a desperate need of a new computer - at least I would lead you to believe that! Honestly, the little computer that I use - 4 years old and running and Intel Pentium 4 at 2.2Ghz - works. It works. Yes, it is slow at times - especially when dealing with Microsoft Outlook. Yes, yes - I know - I should be trying other email clients, but have never gotten around to it. Probably the bottleneck is the hard drive. My machine is running a standard IDE drive - all 80 Gigs of it. A SATA drive would probably help a lot.

Now, back to the processor choice. My system runs slowly when I am trying to do certain things - at those times I dream about the newest processors and their ability (the dual core processors) to handle multi-tasking a bit better. Over the summer I was certain about getting an AMD X2 3800 - it had a wonderful price to performance ratio - it was the cheapest of the AMD X2 (dual core) processors and at $300 it was well priced. Here it is three months later and I STILL don’t have a new computer.

The biggest reason for this - my computer still works! It is slow - but works. And the dang Core 2 Duo got me all excited, so that froze me for a while. Then AMD dropped the prices of all their X2 line 50%! Now we are getting closer to the Xmas season and things will really get interesting in the processor world, but I would say the odds are 50:50 that I am still using the my old computer come Jan first of 2007…

Shelby GT500

Wow, has anyone seen this? The Shelby GT500 is Ford’s replacement for the GT, aimed at offering Mustang enthusiasts something to buy while SVT is working on building the new Cobra Mustang.

Apparently, this thing makes right at 500 horsepower and has a full 3 year 36,000 mile warranty from Ford. Pretty impressive, especially considering it costs less than the Corvette. If I wasn’t a Mustang fan before, I probably am now.

Rain Gauges

Rain gauges are wonderful purchases for anyone who is an outdoors fan. For instance, if you have a luscious garden and want to know how well your flowers are doing, a sun rain gauge is perfect, as it tells you how much rain is benefiting your plants. If you prefer something more decorative, most rain gauges come in hundreds of themes and colors. With choices from sailboats, to horses and pigs, these are fun filled items to purchase on any rainy day. Fortunately, they are extremely affordable, as most only cost $16.95

Modelling Football Plays

Dang it! Yet another idea that I never pushed hard to bring into reality - realized by another visionary (visionaries?) -> software for the evaluation of football plays. They claim to bring “proven game theory strategies into professional sports.” In the FAQ it says that “The core model replicates, with amazing accuracy, the play-calling and statistical outputs of typical NFL teams.” Sounds like some interesting modeling going on.

Well, just for the record - in case their methods don’t work out - here is a brief concept of how I was going to tackle (ugh) the problem. I was actually more interested in the evolution of new plays. How? The high fidelity of football video games (even at the time I was looking at it in the mid-1990’s) would allow for potentially trying out new plays against all types of competitors. The new plays would be created using genetic programming techniques - at least that was my initial thought process. I actually spoke with several people about it, but I think it was a little too “out there” for most people to conceptualize the basic process. Well - good luck to Pig Skin Revolution!

The Bedazzler

With fashion constantly on consumer’s minds, it is no surprise that the Bedazzler has people ordering dozens for family and friends. Have you ever had difficulties trying to add rhinestones to clothing? Want an easier method that will allow you to add unique designs to your outfits? The Bedazzler not only attaches gems and rhinestones to any type of clothing within minutes, but it also comes with fifteen free patterns! Although this product was sold on TV for $19.95, you can save $2.00 by purchasing it here. It is a wonderful gift for teenagers and young adults alike. Mothers will thank the Bedazzler, as they’ll never have to spend hundreds of dollars on clothing again!