I started making my stock log public at lamdar.com. It’s pretty much just my total market thoughts and some stocks I look at. I’ve been good in the past for logging what stocks I like and why, but not so much about stocks I look at but don’t like, so hopefully I’ll be able to keep that record here. Don’t expect it to be very verbose though so don’t go making any trades based on something you see there.
Since I’m getting old and forgetting a lot of stuff now, I’ve gotten into a little note taking kick. Lamdar, with my stock thoughts is still a work in progress, and I’m also trying to start taking programming notes too. A lot of stuff will just be basic functions and things that I found and don’t want to forget, but I’ll also try to make guides on more substantial things that I don’t want to relearn like data binding or php image manipulations. Yes, I know it’s another ugly default template. Umm… less creativity = more technical skill? At least that’s what I like to tell myself…
Due to Google Desktop being incompatible with certain things that I need to run, I recently had to find an alternative. The thing I liked about it was that it kept the main things I’m interested in (mail, stock quotes, and rss feeds) on one easy sidebar. Thinking back, I remembered trying out the Yahoo Widgets after they bought Konfabulator last year, but there weren’t many useful widgets at the time. For those who don’t know, Konfabulator was basically what Dashboard on Macs was based on. It creates a simple framework that allows developers to create widgets that sit on a users desktop and do pretty much anything you can think of. Anyway, I decided to give Yahoo Widgets another shot since it looked like there were a lot more available now, and this time I decided to look at the framework a little deeper. It turns out widgets are amazingly simple to create or tweak so now I have exactly what I wanted and I’m planning on creating some other things I’m interested in. The only downside is that it’s a memory hog, chewing anywhere from 5-20 megs of memory per widget so unless you have a decent amount of RAM you probably don’t want to run this. Anyway, I think I see what all the hype about WinFX and Avalon is for and if Windows Vista doesn’t come out soon or if Apple ever fixes their threading/concurrency problems, I might have to think about getting a Mac too.
I know I don’t lead the interesting life that Charles does, nor do I write about entertaining things like Dave does. I also know that I write quite poorly due to the fact that I’m an engineer without any grasp of eloquence or creativity. Instead I just link to random garbage like this guy and his blindfolded rubik’s cube videos. Just remember, nobody’s forcing you to read…
It annoys me when people find out that I do well with stocks and they just ask, “What stocks are good now?” Rather than trying to actually learn how to pick stocks, they just want a quick answer. Brings to mind that proverb about giving a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day, but teach him how to fish and he’ll eat for life. I think that’s the thing that really separates the successful people from those that are not: the desire to actually learn a skill rather than having the finished products handed to them. With stocks, unless a person completely holds your hand and tells you “buy this now” and “sell this now,” you will need to learn skills beyond just the picking of companies. So to the point, don’t go in the forums and buy stocks that we like unless you know the rest of the strategy that goes along with it. And yes, we are trying to get that part down too. Till then…
So I’ve decided to make a personal website again. It’s mainly to track thoughts on stocks, but there are a lot of things I want to test out so this would be a good place for it. I currently have a lot of other things going on now though so progress will be slower than me running to see Brokeback Mountain with a big group of guys. Hopefully logging stuff here will help me follow through with things though. Till then, go post some ideas in the forums…