May 8, 2008
Oil prices hold over $124/ barrel
Humm, it is May. Driving season hasn't started for the summer. My prediction earlier of $140/barrel for christmas is looking low.
Posted by Martin at 10:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Read this book for good narrative AND future scenario planning (rated 5 stars)
There are lots of doom and destruction books out there painting a bleak picture of the post industrial world. Most paint a kind of Mad Max future of renegades. I am not sure that is how it would go. I think it would be more a slow steady slide with people hanging on all the way down, mostly in denial. That is what Kunstler sees. The story starts 15 years after a big bomb destroys NYC and LA. Not unthinkable in today’s terrorist world. The infrastructure just sort of breaks slowly. Various diseases run rapid. Transportation fails due to lack of oil. Do you know that the overstuffed grocery store next to you only has about two days worth of goods? If the distribution system breaks down, the food runs out QUICK! Look what happened during Katrina. That was not the future, that was the recent past! And Burma. The only reason these regions survived is that the greater organism (the US, the whole world) was still healthy and could provide life support to the damaged part. How many bleeding sores can one country have at a time? Can one world have at a time? There is a tipping point somewhere. We haven’t found it yet and I pray we never do. But if you want to see one VERY plausible vision of how the world would be with multiple open sores coming quickly next to each other, read this book. I rate 5 out of 5.
Posted by Martin at 9:34 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
A story about "Hold Tight"
Was flying back from NYC to Seattle yesterday. Grabbed Harlan Coben’s new book in the airport. Read on the plane and late last night. Quick read. Coben does something in this one I don’t really like though. Many thriller writers do it, but Harlan usually is more economical with this device. He starts four or five different narratives with different characters, in the beginning of book, and eventually ties them all together. Part of the fun of reading is trying to figure out how the narratives are connected before the writer tells you. Usually each narrative is individually compelling enough to stay involved in and the transitions are logical enough to not mess the flow too much.
This one had jarring transitions and seeming totally random separate narratives that had no apparent link until 3/4 of the way through the book. The problem with that is you are reading one narrative you like and are engaged in, then he throws you into another that you could care less about and all you can think about is “when am I going to get back to the story”. In the end, the final chapter of course it all ties together, but with gum and sticky tape.
I wouldn’t put this up as one of his best, but it was an enjoyable waste of 7 hours. I rate 2 of 5 stars.
Posted by Martin at 9:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
May 7, 2008
more prefabs for the surf home
thanks to a prosper member for the pointer to LVM homes. nice mondern kits. not prefab so you get a wider home since some is erected on site. i like.
Posted by Martin at 9:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
May 5, 2008
10 minute review of online task managers
Looking for a better task manager than LookOUt. Tried a couple with Jott integration. All sucky.
1. KeepUp. If you only do tasks that everyone else on the plante does like "anniversary" and "daylight savings time" and "pick up the kids". then this one is for you. I actually have my own life and my own tasks. Making a "custom task" is a pain. No outlook upload. Dead.
2. 43actions. Only for the hard core geek. Very minimal (good). too minimal (bad). Feels like the old line editor "vi". No instructions. No outlook upload. You gotta have read the GTD book and love that system. Next...
3. Sandy. Cute graphics. appeal to the undersexed geek in me. No outlook upload. Simple command understanding like "remind", but separate calendar. You can subscribe to the Sandy calendar in outlook on the web (cool), but unfortunately that is not my main calendar. bad. Next.
They all suck. So it seems that Jott has integated with a bunch of sucky task managers. Hummmmm....
Posted by Martin at 2:00 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
May 1, 2008
thinking about affordable housing
has to be prefab. There are lots of modern prefab houses out there. Most for yuppies on a budget. Still the usual cost is $130-$140/sq ft wo/ site prep or lot. The KitHaus is not much more than a hotel room and costs $30K, nearly $280/ft. The ABOD project is for REAL budgets. about $1500 when mass produced. About $10/ft. House in a box. Designed for Africa. Not much more than a shed. Could be a cool play house. I am going to try to buy one for my surf property down in Westport.
Posted by Martin at 4:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
thinking about virtual data rooms
just doing some due diligence on a deal. They have a virtual data room at V-rooms. I have just used sharepoint before for this kind of thing. Sharepoint has less logging features and less workflow, but is free. I like v-rooms, but it is expensive. and they have full logging of everyone who looks at everything. sometimes that is not what you want (according to the lawyers).
Posted by Martin at 10:57 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
April 30, 2008
reposting Prosper loan with higher rate
Posted by Martin at 12:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
April 21, 2008
China Energy Recovery raises money
Thanks Sean for the link. CER Financing - Final Draft
Seems like if you have the words China and Energy in your name you can get money. This financing is about the size of a normal venture financing in the States, but it is notable in that it is the first outside China financing for this company. I also like the idea that China is the "saudi arabia of waste energy". There has got to be lots of opportunity to gain effeciencies in a country where it has been more important to build coal plants and grow than think about effeciency. I hope CER uses the money well.
Posted by Martin at 1:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Dubai group buys into biodiesel
Posted by Martin at 1:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
April 18, 2008
Invest in Clean Tech Businesses with me through Prosper
Buy my syndicated Loan through Prosper
Posted by Martin at 3:39 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
April 17, 2008
All the best utilities from LifeHacker
Looking for new tools to make my life more productive, i clicked over to LifeHacker. Their LifeHacker Pack has all the essentials. Happilly I was already using most of them. Installed Trillian again for another go and am trying out SyncBack paired with my Drobo.
Posted by Martin at 2:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
April 16, 2008
A story about "The Shack"
I was in the airport two weeks ago (big surprise). Was looking for plane reading. Saw The Shack along side the usual mystery and thriller best sellers. Picked it up thinking it was regular old escapist fiction. It is written as such, but is actually very meaty in philosophy. Some heavy subjects are handled in a very available, accessible way. Like, “If there is a God, how can he (or she) let murder happen?” As a Catholic, much of the proposed “theology” is more “modern church” than I am used to, the basics are pretty sound. I especially like how the guy figures out the essential mystery of the Catholic church, the Trinity. How can God have three beings and all be the same and different at the same time? That is the key actually and the hardest part for most people to get. I rate 5 of 5 stars. A must read for anyone on a faith journey of any kind. I am going to send a copy to Bill Maher.
Posted by Martin at 10:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
magnetic bike led night lights
now these are cool. ReeLights. clip em on, no batteries, ride lighted up forever.
Posted by Martin at 10:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Obama thinks hunting and god are disorders brought about by poverty...
I know it sounds unbelievable, but I am not making this stuff up.
From HE:
One minute Obama was bowling in Pennsylvania with nice, ordinary people wearing "Beer Hunter" T-shirts, and the next thing you know, he was issuing a report on the psychological traits of normal Americans to rich liberals in San Francisco.
Obama informed the San Francisco plutocrats that these crazy working-class people are so bitter, they actually believe in God! And not just the 12-step meeting, higher power, "as you conceive him or her to be" kind of God. The regular, old-fashioned, almighty sort of "God."
As Obama put it: "(T)hey get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
The rich liberals must have nearly fainted at the revelation that the denizens of small towns in Pennsylvania have absolutely no concern for the rich's ability to acquire servants from Mexico at a reasonable price.
It's going to take a lot of "framing" for Democrats to recast Obama's explanation to San Francisco cafe society that gun ownership and a belief in God are the byproducts of a psychological disorder brought on by economic hardship.
Posted by Martin at 8:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
don't blame biofuels for food price increases...
biofuels and government policies that support them are easy whipping boys for recent increases in food prices. The Oil companies have been happilly fueling the cries for reduced biofuel mandates because of increased food prices. But wait. Ethanol is made from Corn. Biodiesel is made from soy and other veg oils. The food stables the world's poor rely on are rice and wheat. There was a drought in the world's wheat basket, Australia this year. Humm, is something else going on? And now even the New York Times agrees that biofuels are only partially to blame:
"Work by the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington suggests that biofuel production accounts for a quarter to a third of the recent increase in global commodity prices. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations predicted late last year that biofuel production, assuming that current mandates continue, would increase food costs by 10 to 15 percent."
wow, didn't think I would be agreeing with the NYT today.
Posted by Martin at 3:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
April 14, 2008
Drobo First Impressions
Ok, last week I got my Drobo. got the USB attached one. Maybe should have gotten the NAS version with the 1gb ethernet card as I think that is faster than USB, but that wasn't at NewEgg when I ordered. The thing was dead easy to set up. Just stick the drives in, plug in the power, plug in the usb and put in the CD. A bit confusing was that it asked me what format to use formatting the drives, FAT32 or NTFS. As a geek I appreciate the choice and chose FAT32 as I am using Vista. But not sure even this choice is in the purview of most of the target audience. It formatted the drives. One confusing thing is that the format offered me to make two partitions since I had 4 750Gig drives and the NT limit is a 2TB partition. Of course it said it in more user friendly manner, but I know what was behind it. So I said, ok, two partitions and gave them two different drive letters. Then after the formatting was done, I looked for two new attached drives. There was only one, H:. That was 2TB. Hummmm. Looks like it didn't format two partitions and somehow I lost 1TB. So over to the Drobo Dashboard. It said 3TB of drives, but (2.72TB actual*). I never found in the help or anywhere what the "*" refers to. Somehow I am guessing Windows overhead, I loose 280GBof storage. Then Drobo says I hve 2.03 TB "avaiable for data" and 704.2GB "used for protection" and "overhead" of 2.23GB. I am confused about all the different numbers and why it takes 25.8% for mirroring/protection. That is less than typical RAID so I am happy, but I just hope it works when a drive fails.
I am playing music off the Drobo drive, MP3s. Ok, now the fun part. Lets pull out a drive. Ok, the pulling was easy. Drobo is now flashing red and green and the music continues to play. The Drobo dashboard is flashing "data protection in progress" an dthe free space went down by 750GB. But the data is stil lthere and I am still streaming. Wow. While it is running, I just plugged in the 750GB drive again. Still flashing red to green lights, and still playing the music. In about 3 seconds, the "free space" goes back up to 1.44TB and actual back up to 2.72. Still flashing Data Protection in Progress, but still playing music. I don't care what it is doing. I pulled out a drive and put it back in without interruption to the music playing or loosing any data.
Drobo RULES!
Posted by Martin at 11:03 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
April 10, 2008
Here is another funny Barack site
Barack Obama Stole Your New Bicycle Very much like Your New Nanny.
Posted by Martin at 10:53 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Loving the updated BarackObamaIsYourNewNanny site
With the MSM in love with Barack Hussein Obama, it is very hard to get through the halo to what life under a Barry Presidency would actually be like. What if you could tap into The REAL Barack Obama Twitter feed that stripped away all the positioning and pandering? Well now you can. Check daily to receive the decoded spin and Hussein's actual wishes, desires and true hopes for this country.
Posted by Martin at 10:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Important Pajamas Media interview exposing Rev. Lee's antisemitic views
and Obama's complacency in the scheme to "get back at white/jewish America" for all the wrongs experienced by the black community over the years.
This is not new politics. This is old school politics of racial devide and hate. Old school politics of "now it is my turn with the spanking stick and revenge is going to be sweet". That is not what America needs nor deserves.
Posted by Martin at 9:57 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
