Corporations: Where creative people go to die

I work in a large corporation. Those of you that know me know what that company is. It's been nearly a year since I've joined the company and so far the experience has been lukewarm.

Since joining the company, as sort of an "initiate" into this whole corporate world, most newly hired members have attended all sorts of little lectures from the HR group with huge dreams of us creating all sorts of new fangled technologies for the future. At the same time, I still remember the HR people, during our orientation that our relationship with the company was that they "pay us and we work for them." We might not like the job we do, or some of the people around us, but the contractual relationship is pretty much "do what we're told to." Sounded like a paid version of slavery to me.

And now, that I think about it all, the whole idea seems rather absurd. I know there are people within the company coming up with projects that will hopefully make large sums of cash, the reward structure is that you might get a promotion or a bonus.. somewhere in the ball park of $10,000 or more depending on the contribution. But seriously, why would you want to settle for $10,000 if you're coming up with a multi-million dollar idea? I don't see any really good incentives.

And with that happening. I also think working in an environment like this will cause creative people to eventually go brain dead. I for one firmly believe that believe that creativity cannot be fostered by forcing people to follow orders. Especially from older people that aren't as in touch with the latest technologies or where the direction of technology will be going. I don't believe that most higher ups have the youthful visions of the younger people when it comes to understanding the potentials of what we can do with technology.

It says a lot about why most of the hottest start ups and growing companies are or have been full of young people. Older people, especially normal managers usually just can't cut it with coming up a great idea. It seems to be that they latch on to whatever seems hot or a cool seeming idea of someone else and start whipping people to do their bidding. I think it is kind of rare to find a management level kind of person that truly understands the pulse technology and where might it go.

One must truly love what they do, understand what would be truly be great to have and understand the community of people that use these things to understand where things will go. I'd have to say that most management people don't understand... they're just being paid to have their underlings make somethings that'll turn a profit.

Usually for large corporations it means more of the same. Make things smaller or bigger, faster, cheaper whatever. It's all sort of a variation of the same thing. 30~40 years ago, I guess you could say that having corporations was a necessity, because it was pretty expensive to get things done. Things have changed and the up front capital to building something or even getting a startup up and running has gotten much cheaper and I think it is the small startups with the fresh ideas are the ones that are going to have the biggest impact on society.

Large corporations aren't places where people have new ideas. Atleast that it from what I've seen so far, no matter how the managers and HR people want people to be creative to come up with the new great hit. The working environment of a large corporation just doesn't encourage people to be creative or take chances.

You just can't be creative when you have a bunch of managers telling you what to do while at the same time having to do all sorts of stupid things to get an idea past a manager so that you can just try it. It just doesn't work that way.

Would you want to pay $100,000 or $1,000

You know the saying "nobody got fired for buying IBM," I now have an idea of what that really means.

To do some experimentation work, we're ordering a $100,000 machine, custom built from the ground up. We have some power supplies here, some data loggers there and a bunch of other high precision stuff that lets us connect some wires to samples and measure data. After going through 2~3 levels of management to get the funding that machine is getting built. The problem is that I believe that I can build something that can do the same thing and probably out spec the machine that is coming in for about $1,000.

Sure, I made a presentation and suggested the idea of my version of the machine to the leaders, but it gained no traction. One suggested that it might be too much trouble to build the thing on our own. I recognize that the circuits that I've built will need some fine tuning to get things into spec but I think it's something doable. It annoyed me considering that with the current economic situation that we are being told to slow down on what we spend our cash on. Hell I'd rather build the machine and sell it off to them and pocket the difference!

The thing is that out of the people in my work group, I am pretty much the only person that knows anything about designing circuits and making programs. This is totally up my ally. Instead, they make me take charge of farming out the work to an outside company which I have a feeling that I can outclass the engineers doing the electronics and programming. I can understand why people might think spending $100,000 on the machine that we are brining in is reasonable but it's people with the $1,000 idea that can blow this stuff out of the water is what revolutions are made out of.

I have no interest in trying to bash heads with management because sometimes I think they're off the deep end. I've tried once to change the culture of a laboratory but that plan was met with resistance and apathy.

It would be exactly like the engineers at Xerox first giving birth to the graphical user interface and the mouse and then having the management people have no clue what this all ment. Apple and Microsoft came swooping in and now this technology is everywhere. It's exactly like that. Xerox would most certainly be smacking themselves in the head now for letting something like this get away from them.

I've once read somewhere that even if you've got a great idea, you're going to have to ram it down the throats of management to get anything done... in that sense, people won't understand a good idea even if it smacks them in the face. Some people at first thought that Google was a stupid idea with Yahoo, Excite and all the other search engines out there. I'll let results speak for themselves.

So far what I've learned is that if you really want something done, you're going to have to rely on your self.

2007 and 2008 Yearly Expenditures

It's been a while since the last time I posted. Since the new year has started and I have some interesting data, I've decided to update with a post. And now, without further adieu I shall get on with it.

For those in the know, I keep track living expenses so I have an idea of where my money goes. The other benefit of tracking expenses is the ability to forecast future expenses which might be useful for setting cash flow objectives (ie. setting up income goals). The previous year is an interesting year, in that it was my first year (well, 9 months) as a salaried worker and with it, a move from Sendai to the outskirts of Tokyo.

Interestingly, I've realized that I've never posted my 2007 living expenses and I will be posting that data along with my 2008 data. The comparison beween 2007 and 2008 will be interesting as I will be able to compare my life as a student, living in Sendai versus living "in" Tokyo as a salaried worker. I will automatically note that living expenses in Sendai (especially for restaurants and entertainment) is much lower compared to Tokyo and we will see some of this information coming out of the graphs I will be presenting next.

2007 Expenditure Results

I shall start off with my year 2007 data. Firstly a bar graph of my categorized monthly data in the following figure (click to enlarge).



The currency for this and the following figures will be presented in Yen. The yen is quite strong at the moment with the exchange rate sitting at 100 yen : $1.4 CAD. The best way to interpret yen, however (especially when living in Japan), is to equate 100 yen to about $1, which is what 100 yen feels like when you spend it in Japan.

The graph is broken down to Food, Goods, Transport, Service, Room, Entertainment and Travel expenditures. My last report in 2006 did not include the "Travel" grouping but, I found that travel expenses are very significant irregular expenditures that should have a category of its own-- I've often found myself having a hard time classifying travel expenses between "Transportation" and "Entertainment" expenses as traveling is the intertwined combination of both.

Firstly I will summarize the 2007 cost totals by category:

Food: 267,465 Yen (think, $2,670)
Goods: 127,285 Yen (think, $1,270)
Transport: 61,416 Yen (think $610)
Service: 149,787 Yen (think $1,500)
Room: 391,232 Yen (think $3,900)
Entertainment: 234,254 Yen (think $2,340)
Travel: 1,083,542 Yen (think $10,800)

Firstly, monthly food expenses hover in the 40,000~28,000 (think $400~$280) range. The food expenditures tend to vary if I go traveling or not, where food expenditures tend to get lumped in with travel expenses and food expenses for the months of Nov and Dec are zero during my 3 month travel stint through SE Asia. Food expenses tend to be a rather stable recurring expense and on average sits about 35,000 yen/month.

The goods expenditure for 2007 was 127,000 (think $1,270) for the year. The only major expense I incurred was buying a suit for 31,000 yen. The rest of the incurred goods expenses ended up for esoteric things like floss, cell phone straps, post cards and etc.

Service fees totaled 149,787 yen (think $1,500) for the year. Half of the costs came from monthly cell phone usage (about 4,000 yen/month) and other small things like health insurance, snow board rentals and the like. I should also note that I was swindled out of 20,000 yen ish in Denmark by some Russians and I've lumed the damage as a "service fee" in my accounting books.

Transportation expenditures mainly consisted of me buying gas for my scooter (about 2000 yen/month) and the occasional car trips with friends into the country side, which might be a 4,000 yen/person (think $40) kind of thing. In general, my transportation costs have been quite lot.

Rent fees varied between 29,750 yen to 33,935 yen/month. The variation owing to varied usage of electricity, water and gas. Housing relating costs tend to be very constant.

Entertainment costs at it's maximum peaked at the 29,600 yen/month with the minimum sitting at 17,400 yen/month during a full month in Sendai. Compared to going out in Tokyo, going out for food and drinks or doing something is much cheaper compared to Tokyo, that data will be presented later.

Travel costs for the year came in at a whopping 1,083,542 yen, which would feel like something in the ball park of $10,800. The main expenditures here were a 10 day trip to France in February, a trip back to Canada in May, hitting Aomori in August for one of their summer festivals and the total costs of my first 2.5 months of traveling through SE Asia starting through mid-october with costs being tallied up to the end of December.

Living in SE Asia is very cheap. My traveling expenses for November, while I was in Vietnam, Singapore and Malaysia accounted for a total of 227,684 yen (feels like $2,270) for an entire month of expenditures! This is like 1/2 the cost of a round trip ticket to Canada and I should note that these expenses also include plane tickets for me traveling around countries in SE as well!

The most financially painful parts of my travels were through Australia and New Zealand, where the high currency costs and the high living costs of those countries immediately doubled my traveling expenditures to 401,967 Yen (or like $4,020) for the month and this is after me trimming down my expenses like crazy in these countries (I lived relatively well in SE asia!). The combined costs of my SE asia costs for Oct, Nov and Dec with my France and trip to Canada quite quickly put the my traveling costs to about $10,000 CAD for the year, my largest (though irregular) expenditure.

My total living costs for the year of 2007 in Japan amounted to a total of 2,314,981 yen, half of the expenses coming from traveling. I know for sure that if I wanted to save money, I'd stop traveling.

The following pie chart illustrates the percentage breakdown of my living expenses (click for a larger image):



As shown here, travel expenses logged in at 47% of my expenses, nearly half of of all the money I spent in 2007. The next larges expenditure comes in the form of my rooming fees at 17%, then food at 12% then entertainment at 10%. The remaining service, transport and goods fees sum up to approximately 12%. If I wanted to trim down my expenditures, the most obvious things would be to trim down my travel and entertainment expenses and the remaining expenses would be considered "fixed expenditures."

2008 Expenditure Results and comparison with 2007

The end of my SE Asia trip occurred in mid January where I made my return to Japan for my placement interview prior to starting work. After the interview, I would remain in Japan until the end of March, where I would make my move from Sendai to the outskirts of Tokyo in a city called Atsugi. My expenditures for this year will generally include costs to settling down as I picked things up I needed over the entire year.

For my 2008 yearly data, I have made an additional category in addition to the usual Food, Goods, Transport, Service, Room, Entertainment and Travel break down to include salary deductions, as 2008 marks the year after I graduated from my masters program and me starting my work, and thus becoming required to pay government related expenses.

My 2008 expenses are summarized in the following chart (click for a larger image):



The summarized 2008 total expenses are summarized below:

Food: 400,223 Yen (think, $4,000)
Goods: 327,232 Yen (think, $3,270)
Transport: 141,896 Yen (think $1,410)
Service: 149,146 Yen (think $1,500)
Room: 281,159 Yen (think $2,800)
Entertainment: 474,034 Yen (think $4,740)
Travel: 436,524 Yen (think $4,370)
Deductions: 404,682 Yen (think $4,040)

Looking at the monthly data for food since moving to Atsugi, I find that in general, I am spending approximately 40,000 yen/month or 10,000 yen more/month to what I was spending in Sendai. In general, I am finding that I spend about 1,000 yen more every time I go to the grocery store when buying things. I have heard from friends that the grocery store near by where I live is somewhat expensive and that is showing up in my monthly expenes. There are some cheaper grocery stores in Atsugi, but it takes an additional 10 minute round trip via scooter. It would be an interesting experiment to see what savings I can generate by changing stores.

The costs for Goods for this year totaled 327,232 yen, with the most signigicant expenditure being the new desktop computer I bought over the summer. The computer is a Dual Core Athlon, 2x500 GB hard drives, 2x19" monitors, Geforce 9600 video card, 4 GB DDR2 ram system. This desktop has incredible power over a laptop and is still cheaper with a total price tag of about 120,000 yen (think $1,200 CAD). Most purchase of durable goods for this year included electronics parts in the 10,000 yen range / shopping spree and wedding presents for friends whom have rencelty gotten married.

Transportations costs for this year totaled 141,896 yen. Compared to my 2007 transportation costs, this is a drastic increase owing to weekend trips to Tokyo via train. A one way ticket to Tokyo from where I live costs in the range of 500 yen and traveling around to the different parts of Tokyo will cost an additional 300 yen extra, easily bringing my weekend transportation expenses to 1,300 yen. Having friends in the Tokyo area results in having everyone quite spread out, as opposed to having most of your friends concentrated in a smaller region while living in Sendai. While in Sendai, I rarely had to use any public transport to get out anywhere to meet up with friends. This is not the case when it comes to living in Tokyo. Monthly train costs easily rack up to about 6,000 yen/month which is easily 3 times the 2,000/month I used to spend just on gas for my scooter while in Sendai.

Service expenses for 2008 totalled 149,146 yen, which is almost spot on with the 149,787 worth of expenses for 2007. Apparently, moving to Tokyo did not result in a chance in my cell phone habits. Other notable service charges for this year included moving costs to get my stuff out of Sendai to Atsugi. My moving costs were subsidized up to 50,000 yen and I took an additional 28,000 yen additional charge to move extra things and my scooter here.

Room related expenditures totaled at 281,159 yen for 2008 compared to 391,232 Yen compared to 2007. This is mostly due to living in the company dorm where the rent is cheaper compared to living on one's own. I was previously living in an apparement share arrangement in Sendai with monthly base rent at 28,000 yen/month (a pretty good deal!) and I am now currently living in the company dorm at 16,000 yen/month, yielding the a 12,000 yen difference in savings. Over a 9 month period, this easily equates to the 100,000 yen savings recieved over the 9 months I've lived here. Though, if it would mean that I pay 100,000 more, it would be nice to be freely able to invite friends over. Unfortunately due to security reasons, friends are not generally allowed to stay over in the company dorms.

Entertainment costs for 2008 totaled 474,034 yen compared to 234,254 yen in 2007; a 240,000 yen increase (about 2 times). Going out and doing the same things I did in Sendai compared to doing things in Tokyo is doubly expensive. If I were to go till past midnight on food and drinks in Sendai, I'd spend about 5,000~6,000 yen. If I were to do the same thing in Tokyo, I'd spend 5,000 yen on the first dinner and drinks and then +3,000 yen on the next place for drinks (I also have to say that the food in Sendai also tastes better!) Often parties and events occur far from where I live and I generally would incur transportation costs to get to the event. Needless to say, going out and having fun in Tokyo is easly 2x more expensive compared to Sendai. Include going out for dinners and the occasional drink on weekday with colleagues, the costs here easily add up.

Travel costs for 2008 totaled 436,524 yen. The bulk of my travel expenses for this year was from my trip back to Vancouver + Toronto and the return leg of my New Zealand trip in January. Smaller traveling costs were incurred in Oct, Nov and Dec from trips back to Sendai for the Jazz festival, a wedding and an alumni reunion for my research lab.

Salary deductions for this year totaled 404,682 yen. Deductions represent any direct deduction from salary and government related taxes. These deductions include income tax, pension payments, unemployment insurance and medical insurance. The spike seen in December is a result from receiving a "winter bonus" which is payed to most salaried workers and paying taxes on it. In Japan, bonuses are given out in summer and winter totaling about 2.5 times your monthly salary (as a result, monthly salaries here are a bit lower).

My total expenditures for 2008 totaled 2,614,900 yen (think $26,150). Living expenses (total expenditures - salary deductions) were 2,210,218 (think $22,100) compared to 2,314,981 yen in living expenses in 2007. The numbers are comparable because of the expensive SE Asia trip represented in the costs.

There will be an additional tax (municipal) deduction on my income starting next year as municipal taxes take a year to kick in and will result in a doubling in the amount of taxes I pay (yuck). Those numbers will be seen after my 2009 expenditure summary is compiled.

Finally, attached below is the pie chart of 2008's expenditures:



Compared to the 2007 pie chart we see that the cost of food (12% vs 15%), entertainment (10% vs 18%) and transportation (3% vs 5%) have increased since moving from Sendai. We see a decrease in rooming costs (11% vs 17%) resulting from living in the cheaper company dorm. Service fees remain relatively the same. Travel costs are lower due to the lack of any "long big" trips for this year and in it's place, I get to pay taxes in the form of deductions instead.

I have to say that comparing 2007 and 2008 pie charts is rather misleading because percentages tend to be viewed as linear. For example one might just think that transportation costs from 3% to 5% as something insignificant since it might only look like a 2% increase (it pretty much doubled in my case!) and it also does not do a good job of illustrating the total amount of cash spent. I will limit pie chart graphical interpretations to the year only and avoid pie chart to pie chart comparisons in the future.

Final Comments

By the looks of the data, it does seem that living in Sendai and maintaining a social life is much cheaper (at about 2x) compared to the Tokyo region. Transportation costs are also cheaper for Sendai since traveling around by train is not really required (especially if you live in the down town area).

Most of my disposable income seems to go into the traveling and entertainment category. If I wanted to increase the amount of money I saved, it would be an no brainer to cut back on traveling and going out. Traveling and entertainment costs for 2008 hit in the 900,000 yen range (think $9,000). Obviously cutting down to zero would be quite painful, but cutting down to 450,000 yen (think $4,500) would be rather reasonable (if most of the cutting occured with the traveling part). I spent about 300,000 yen on goods and it might be reasonable to cut that down to 150,000 to get a total 600,000 (think $6,000) in savings over an entire year.

Interestingly $6,000 over an entire year somehow doesn't sound like a huge amount, but it does makes quite a difference when it comes to traveling and having fun. However, if saved and invested properly over several years, it can make quite a difference. I would be interested to run some calculations later on, but that would be for a different post.

Having my butt kicked in the market

The stock market is depressing that I've stopped looking at it and really didn't really want to post on the blog since it's all I've been posting about recently.

I still have some positions left in the market and things continually get worse and worse. My account is taking a huge hurting. At least I can be thankful that I have a stable job and I've kept a decent reserve of cash for living expenses. Though my rainy day fund, which was supposed to let let me live worry free for at least a year or 2 worry free has been substantially crushed.

In the big picture of things, I guess living through a screw up like while young isn't too bad. I'll recover the cash through work and I don't have any debts. I'll also have experience living through an economic crash, which is far better experience than any textbook might actually offer.

Unfortunately, I am away from my main computer at home for atleast the next week which I have access to my trading account (there is some time dependent password that I didn't bring with me to access my trading acount) so I don't know how much I've lost. But it's now at least in the -$10,000 ball park. Ouch.

This loss, compared to the $100,000's with others have lost is small potatoes so I'll just be glad with that and equip myself to deal with things better the next time around.

Ugh: Scaling out of the market

Obviously I don't understand what is going on in the market right now. I have sold off my positions in dividend yielding companies because the dividends they would pay out simply does not keep pace with the amount of money I was losing daily from the drop in stock prices.

I've already lost about 50% of what I had in total in the market after a 25% drop in prices. I now have first hand experience in understanding what it is like to lose a good chunk of cash in the market as a result of leveraging. Relying on my gut and decent book prices of a stock wasn't sufficient to prevent myself from losing big time, as it seems that macro economic factors in the market is brining everything down.

I sold my positions today because I am believe that the market will continue to deteriorate and will admit that I made a huge mistake on trying to catch a local bounce that never did happen. For the time being, I will scale back and get out of my positions in the market over the course of the next while. I am expecting bad 3rd quarter reports and probably worse winter sales.

I will be spending the coming week/month doing research on understanding what went wrong and developing a better prediction of the future.

Dodged the bullet

I held on to my positions... I've seemed to dodge the bullet for the time being.

Will probably get slaughtered in the market

I am very amazed with the prices dropping as they are right now. To the point that they don't make sense. I originally thought I had found a bottom in the market a while back, but it seems that I was wrong as the markets are starting to panic about the 3rd quarter results, thus pushing the stock market lower.

30 minutes till the markets open today. Asia is down 10% as of today and it looks like things are going to be particularly nasty today. The stocks I hold right now are probably going to open 20% down and me being leveraged, I am going to get hit pretty badly, with numbers as they are right now, I am likely going to lose about 1/2 of what I have in the market today.

This is truly a humbling experience as I am going to have my ass handed to me. Well, I guess this is a lesson better learned now than later.

Market Outlook

Disclaimer: This is obviously a personal opinion here so I highly suggest that readers here take this with a grain of salt.

I have been thinking about my plans to trade over the coming year and this post is to help me to keep track of my frame of mind over the coming months. That is, in the case that I screw up pretty badly, I'll know exactly what I was thinking.

With the stock market in confusion, I believe that the market will be over responsive to any sort of news in the coming future and I am expecting high volatility. The market will likely rebound over the next month in a similar fashion seen in the January crash after the Bear Stearn debacle. With government intervention from the US and around the world, I believe that the markets will temporally stabilize over the coming months.

However, I still believe that the fundamentals of the economy will still be weak.

My plans are to now to get myself into some positions in the market over the next few days. The market has rallied rather sharply over the course of the last 2 days and I believe that there will be a small dip coming up as people cash out to take out some profits.

I will mention that I did something rather bad yesterday and got into the market a little early (call it an emotional trade) and got hit by a small dip in prices towards the end of the trading session yesterday. I see that strong nerves are required to prevent reactionary trades and thus am requiring myself to formulate a strategy that I will stick to and evaluate as events develop over the coming year. But enough of this tangent...

After the rebound, I expect that winter sales will be poor due to the poor financial condition of the general public and will be expecting that companies to post sub-par quarterly results for the first quarter of 2009. With this said, I believe that the stock market will stagnate or slide downward towards the beginning of next year.

Officialy, the US is not in a recession yet as defined by having 2 consecutive quarters with negative GDP growth. However, I believe that the current Bush administration has been cooking the numbers so that they will not have to announce that the US is in recession and take the blame for their poor economic policies. The word on the street, however, is that the US is in recession as a result of rising commodity prices.

Monte carlo simulations on the November US election results indicate a 97.8% chance of a Democratic win for the election based on data posted at the intrade website. Assuming a Democratic party win in the US the stock market may start to rise with confidence in the Democratic nominee, Barak Obama, but that will not occur to next year.

Looking at the data posted at the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, the data there indicates that the US GDP grew by 2.8% in the second quarter of 2008 and personal income grew by 0.5%. The data here indicates to me that the average American is going further into debt because the GDP generally represents how much people are spending... and they are spending more than their earnings are increasing. I should note that the GDP represents spending by businesses and individuals but I am running on the assumption that the increased spending between businesses and individuals is approximately the same.

The next report on the economy will be on Oct 31 and it will be interesting to see the GDP growth number. If the numbers are negative this quarter, it could send the stock market down somewhat, though I am willing to bet that the numbers will be doctored to be positive. Over the past year, the GDP has been positive despite the sub-prime crisis. But it could be possible for the GDP to turn negative this quarter.

How will I play this?

I will play the current market by buying into a few positions now and holding them till after October and then selling those positions off as I do not have confidence in the current world/US economic situation. I believe that poor economic results will be posted over the winter season and probably to atleast the beginning of next year.

When the market rebounds over the next month or so, I am expecting the price of gold which is a hedge against bad economic conditions to fall as confidence in the market grows. When gold (and possibly silver prices) look attractive, I will move into take a small or medium position in the metals and keep approximately 50% of my portfolio in cash and move the money out of USD. The USD rallied recently against the CAD recently and it would be nice to take advantage of this. I believe that the USD may drop in value over the coming 6 months due to continued deficit spending and the weak economy.

I may decide on keeping small or medium positions in companies with good dividend yields while waiting for the economy to recover. During this time, I will be on the look out for good bargains in the market. I may hold some good dividend paying companies after the bounce as these companies will be paying out their dividends fairly soon in the 3rd quarter of this year.

Edit:

This was posted before the market opened on Oct 15th... the bad play I made yesterday, by jumping into taking some positions too early materialized as the market dropped today... silly me for not taking my own advice. I bought into some more positions and will be waiting (hoping?) for the market to bounce somewhat over the next few weeks.

Stock market watch: Local Bottom hit, on Rebound

In terms of the market, I believe that we have hit the bottom on Oct 10th. Looking at some of the stocks right now, some of them are trading below or at their book value, meaning that further decline in prices represent excellent buying opportunities, especially for companies that have positive net cash flow for the past 5 years.

The market rallied today and yesterday and I expect a small drop tomorrow or the day after with some profit taking going on. I believe that over the course of the next month that we will likely see a 30%~40% increase in stock value as the market rebounds.

For the past few days, I have been skimming small profits on volatility in prices over a period of a few days (and no! I am not doing intra-day trading).

I will now be changing my strategy to pick up some stocks that I think are undervalued starting tomorrow and hold them for the next month and then pull out of the market after gunning for a 30%~35% appreciation in capital value. During the whole financial meltdown, I have not gone on margin (I abhor loans!) however in this case, I believe that I am willing to go on margin for about 50%~75% of my equity (ie. a debt:equity of 0.5:1 ~ 0.75:1) for a short period of time.

Fortunate for me, amount of capital I have at stake, though a moderate sum, will not put me into financial danger in the worse case scenario. This next month will be interesting.

The reason I write this is to prevent myself from getting caught up in the day to day movements in stock prices (as watching the numbers is quite addictive!) and focus on a medium/short term plan.

I will post more later on.

Wish me luck.

North American TV programming is obnoxious

I have just returned to Japan after staying in Canada for a week to attend a good friend's wedding and doing some relaxing at home. While at home, I had plenty of spare time that I decided to watch some TV to see what kind of programs there are since I haven't seen much North American programming in a long time. What I did manage to see was rather disappointing.

The first thing about North American TV programming, after living in Japan without a TV for 4 years, was that the characters on most programs were obnoxious, petty and incredibly loud mouthed. I also think that compared to last the last time I was home, I also found that people in general tended to be far more loud mouthed. But first, I should illustrate this with a few examples.

Reality TV

I think Reality TV is probably one of the worst culprits when it comes to obnoxiousness, and this is a result of the design of TV program itself-- the program is based around the drama and conflict between characters, if there was none, there'd really be no content.

I saw a program called I want to work for Diddy while I was back; it was basically was a rip off of Donald Trumps "Apprentice," where the contestants were competing to be the main assistant to Puff Daddy, a rapper. Like the Apprentice, the show was about focusing on the conflict between the contestants, for example how they would argue against each other about who didn't do their job, who did their job the best and etc. But the things they would argue about were so incredibly petty, things such as who was working properly at some event, about how they didn't agree about the kind of food they would order and so on.

The whole show was like taking an ordinary uneventful grocery shopping event and turning it into a drama over 2 people arguing apples vs oranges and then having some kind meltdown occur because they couldn't agree. It's as ludicrous as that.

I could even talk about another show called Say yes to the Dress, which is a bridal TV reality show where brides bring their family and friends to help them out to pick a wedding dress. The portion of the episode I watched had a picky and somewhat demanding bride trying to choose a dress with the husband and and their respective families. The whole show would basically be a semi-drama about the bride trying to pick a dress that would appease herself and the family. The show would go on about where some people didn't like how bride's but stuck out in one dress or the bride not liking the amount of cleavage showing in another dress or whatever, but the thing that bothered me the most about this show was how they some how they turned the act of simply choosing a wedding dress into some drama.

Our society has become more obnoxious

As a result of the abundance of TV programs like these increasing over the years, I personally feel that our society is becoming more and more obnoxious and judgemental from the conversations I've overheard while being back home.

I'd be hearing conversations like how some person might not like Indian food and then make sweeping disapproval about "how could they like such spicy and pungent spices" or how something arbitrary sounding is better than some other arbitrary thing. A mode of thought like this breeds contention and conflict instead of acceptance and understanding.

Often I find myself with having a hard time relating to such people because I simply do not have an interest in participating in an intense, inconsequential discussion. Actually, when involved in such discussions, I usually have very little to say.

When is comes to an argument about the superiority of oranges versus apples, I would much rather say that I like apples and don't really mind at all which fruit you like best, because I would much rather be doing something enjoyable/important instead.

It's more about controversy/drama and less about consensus

I am not a huge fan of the mainstream media. The news in general is usually depressing, stories about car crashes, accidents, scandals, wars and about the kinds of mischief the celebrities are up to. Most of the news reported on TV is utter garbage. The only redeeming thing about the news is that sometimes, something important get reported on (like the crashing and burning US economy), but after that, you're better off on your own doing research to figure out what is really going on.

But for all controversies or crisis', the one thing I hate the most about the way current news is being reported is all of these so called "analysts" that come onto the show and have some kind of contrived debate for all of 5 to 10 minutes where the reporter pretends to ask superficially important seeming questions and have the analysts bash their heads against each other. The segment ends with no sort of consensus or any conclusion.

I would say that the whole point of the whole exercise is to "stir shit up." Complete and utter garbage in my not so humble opinion.

But this is pretty much what the whole news business is all about.

A Conflict of Interest

If there is anything good for news ratings, it all about controversy. The news could give less of a damn about coming to sound conclusions or justly educating their viewers.

The current US election cycle is a prime example of this phenomenon. I will disclose that I have positive bias to Obama, the Democratic candidate. Before the beginning of the election cycle and the exceptionally low approval ratings of the current administration (dipping to the 28% range!) it simply baffles me as to how can the current opinion polls between the Democrats and the Republicans sit fairly close to tied (with Obama with a slight lead).

The answer is simple-- the more dramatic and controversal the political news, the more views the news programs are going to have. If one of the candidates are 70%-30% in the opinion polls I can most certainly guarantee you that there is going to be far less intensity in the interest in political news as compared to a close 50%-50% split.

Current mainstream news reporting is not interested in thorough analysis or looking at information in an even handed manner. For example, looking back at the big controversy over Obama's "flag pin" issue during his run as Democratic party's presidential candidate, I would like to ask you as readers, was that controversy truly significant in the big scheme of things? I would answer that that the whole "flag pin" debaccle was irrelevant and neither Obama nor McCain wore a flag pin during their first debate last Friday. Yet, CNN and other news outlets actually went so far as to have "analysts" to come on to their show to actually debate whether if wearing or not wearing a flag pin on their suit is a sign of their patriotism for the country.

Seriously, what is the world coming to?

Perhaps I can illustrate my point using a different example.

Here's a billion (trillion) dollar question for you

What do you know about the sub-prime crisis? What are the terms of the bad mortgages that these people signed (general interest precenteges)? How many people took out these morgages? For the given interest rates, why were they too high?

Being honest, how many of these questions were you able to answer without looking anything up? If you're lucky, you might be able to answer 1 of them on the spot. But I highly doubt that any other questions can be answered without doing some real research.

The news has been spewing out to the general public for more than a year now about the sub-prime loan crisis and yet I find it particulaly hard to believe the general public does not have any tangible knowledge about the problem. I'll be honest myself, even I don't know how many people took out these loans off the top of my head from what I've seen from the news... over the past year!

I think this is utterly pathetic.

Why I've stopped caring about debates

I used to enjoy debating, but not anymore, especially after studying science and engineering.

Debating is less about coming to a consensus and far more about appearing to be "right" about whatever position that you're arguing for. This is the fundamental thing I dislike (ie. hate with a passion) about debates.

Debating automatically puts people into a defensive/offensive posture, where victory is making the most convincing argument. So what about the case if your position was wrong? Would you still try and argue that you are/were "right" to the ground? It is the nature of a debate that prevents people to admit that they were wrong and build a consensus.

Engineers and scientists don't debate. They may have unproven ideas and hypothesis', but the proof of everything comes out of the experiment, where everyone can do the experiment and everyone can come to the same result. I doesn't matter how right or wrong your idea seemed at the time, the only real thing that matters is if the results match up with your ideas.

The real recipe for progress in my humble opinion is far less about who does what, but rather about what gets done and I am afraid that this is a key point that few, if any politician understands. Compare the number of "political achievements" versus the number of "scientific/technological achievements" and their pervasive impacts on society, science and technology would win hands down. I believe that ought to say something about the difference between the "political vs scientific" process (and yes, I will admit that there is some "politics" in the scientific process, but far less compared to "normal" politics)... but I digress. So where were we... ah yes... about debates and the farce called the news.

So let me ask you, after all the debates you have seen on TV, whether be it the presidential debates or the "analysts" on the news shows you might have seen, how much more well informed have you become? What concrete conclusions have you drawn from what you've seen? If you can't answer these question now or can't ever make use of what use of what you've seen on the news in your life, then what you've seen was complete and utter waste of time.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled program.

The Tanking US Econonmy

It should be apparent that the US stock markets are taking, something that I have since long been expecting since last year. Debt owed by the individual is still far too high and the banks are laden with bad sub-prime loans which they still need to sort out.

With dropping housing prices, people walking away from their loans, the financial institutions that thought to buy these sketchy collateralized loans are getting bit in the ass when they cannot recover the money loaned. Expect the financial crisis to continue throughout the year, and as the US government and the Federal Reserve continually have to pump money into the financial markets, expect the US dollar to devalue further.

As large financial institutions, especially those that bought these sub-prime loan packages on margin (ie. a loan) are forced to write down their bad investments, they are likely to sell off stocks or other financial devices to make up for their losses to stay capitalized. There is a significant amount of volatility in the stock markets right now as a result of large sell offs which depress prices and people buying in to take advantage of cheap stock prices, driving the prices back up.

In short, expect a significant amount of volatility in the markets for atleast the next few months due to uncertainty of the financial institutions and how the government will respond.

Barring any catastrophic news in the next month or so, I believe that the stock market will recover temporarily. If there is a bounce in the next month or so, I will likely sell off some of my positions in the market and wait to figure out my next steps.

As of current, I find it rather hard to find any reliable sources of information because most financial sites are filled with plenty of headlines and very little analysis. Most news sources have been painting very optimistic outlooks of the economy (especially press releases from the US government) to prevent sellout fear/panic. In a sense, I do believe this behavior to be rather dishonest.

The US will not be recovering any time soon. I think it is rather likely for the US will stagnate for the coming years. High personal debt, increasing prices and a weakened production base from outsourcing will prevent a quick recovery in the economy.

Looking globally, I think that the Euro will continue to get stronger and there is a high chance that the Euro will take over the USD as the global reserve currency. Should that happen, the value of the Euro may increase somewhat as other counries buy into the Euro.

Developing nations with a strong production base will likely be the least impacted by the financial crisis as their economies should be able to produce for themselves and other markets even if the US economy continues to falter. The US, on the other hand is highly vulnerable as it is very reliant on other countries for production.

I wish I had more time to back up my comments with links, but as of recent, I haven't had much time to summarize my thoughts or keep track of what I have been reading due to being rather busy from work and havnig fun on the weekends.

For those in the stock market, good luck.

A lull in writing

It's been a while since the last time I've done any serious writing. I was working on a complicated post just up until now but I simply could not bring my self to finish it because of all the different points I wanted to make and going everywhere with the post. In short, I've gotten rusty when it comes to writing.

It's what happens when you start slacking off on anything. Eventually, I do want to get back into writing well thought out articles. I am just going to have to make time and motivate myself to do.

I'll be back, later on.

And this is why I don't watch the news anymore

Fair and balanced my ass.

Countering Laser Weapons: Some Screwed up Logic

I am still in the programming class and bored out of my mind so I am spending most of my time surfing the net.

I was just reading on Wired about the US and Israel working on defensive technologies against laser based weapons. What they are currently developing is the obvious solution, spray-on reflective or diffusive coatings for their missiles to prevent them from being shot down when other countries finally develop laser based weapons. I think the idea of developing new counter measures against new weapons to be an incredibly silly game of cat and mouse.

The article closes with the comment:

'In the end, the service suggests, it won't just be the military who benefits. The spray-on laser defense could protect "commercial airliners against worldwide terrorism and proliferation of ground-based laser weapon threats."'

So the people that go out to develop laser weaponry technology that has "worldwide terrorism" implication is supposed to heralded as the good guys for developing counter-measures for their own weapons. That's some seriously screwed up logic or some crazy spin.

Seriously, I wish these guys were honest with their intent. Something to the lines of "we want to be able to kick your asses with our weapons and have total impunity from whatever you have." At least that would be honest.

The programming course I am taking is a joke

This is the second day of a 5 day C programming course at my company. There are 3 levels of programming starting from the very introductory level, intermediate and advanced level. Supposedly at this level, by the end of the program we are supposed to write our own fprint program.

This is day 2 and about 11 hours into the program... I have programmed for all of about 30 minutes on a microprocessor connected to a little robot that runs around a track painted on a board. I did this kind of stuff in second year university... almost 5 years ago. I am ridiculously annoyed with this course. A complete, utter, waste of time.

The other things is that some how the teacher for this course has gotten into the guts of assembly language without a good primer into the subject. I am quite certain that most of the other students in the course have no idea what is going on when it comes to the inner workings of assembly or how a microprocessor works. This is terrible!

The people that are teaching these courses, internally at the company are former employees that have started their own education company to teach the new recruits some basic skills. They charge about $600/week/person. There are about 20 people in the class. Doing the math, that yields, $12,000 per week or $48,000 per month! And I only paid $250 for a microcontroller course at UBC which is sufficient to dance circles around this class.

Hell, I have learned way more about programming on my own compared to what these people teach. I've found ways of interfacing programs directly into the Windows memory system, written automation programs, data analysis, a 2D differential equation solver and a monte-carlo robot position tracking system (a real simple one, albeit) over the past few years and I am some how in a class which is reviewing how to use *pointers.* And we have been doing this for the entire morning. If this were UBC, we'd probably have covered the topic in about 1.5 hours with far better depth.

In a sense, I am really happy to have gone to UBC, especially graduating out of the Engineering Physics program. I honestly have to say that surviving Eng Phys was a miracle. Even for me, I took more than the average course load and some how managed to graduate on time. There were tons of stuff I was learning at the time that I really never understood, until I started seeing their applications in research while in grad school. Simulation techniques that was in my head from a Electro-statics course was perfect for me to model electric fields for my research project as a grad student. The 2D differential equation calculus was rather useful for application to a multi-variable robotics course... where people were using complicated math packages to simulate an equation, where I did some really simple calculations in excel and was done in half the time it took everyone else... and yes, I even did find a use for my quantum mechanics (which I did rather poorly the first time around when I took the course) for an electron beam emission project.

I see application to the knowledge I learned everywhere and think the mathematics and physics I've learned is incredibly applicable, especially from the project experience I've had. I honestly have to say that there is nothing I have seen in Japan so far that comes remotely close to the educational experience I've had in Canada. Though I would no go far as to say that I learned nothing while in Japan, most of my learning came from the self-study I've done while working on research and project opportunities while over here.

I will have to remind myself that taking courses are not a real good use of time. The only problem is that I wonder if they wouldn't mind me taking a week out of work time to do some self-study to find new/better techniques of getting the job done.

The problem with people pushing their religon around

For the most part, I don't mind it if people are religious, if they believe in things like a God or have certain customs passed down because of their beliefs. Sometime is it the psyche of a people. I still remember the time I was in Thailand, where I made a wonderful friend that showed me around Bangkok.

She showed me all the beautiful temples and taught me all about the lives of the Buddhist monks. She invited me into a temple, where I had the chance to sit in prayer with the ordinary Thai people. I asked her what she would usually pray for, and she told me that she would pray for good health for her family and good luck for her friends. I was all good natured and I had a lot of respect for the kindness I found in the Thai culture. They never told me that their beliefs were the right way to life or anything but they were quite happy with their way of life nor were they threatened by the beliefs of others. It was incredibly pleasant learning about the culture of the Thai people.

Months later since I came back to Japan, I've lived a peaceful life, doing my own thing, minding my own business. But if there is something that annoys me, it would always be some western missionary in the street. "Free English lessons" they'd say, or they'd be even be more direct and tell me that "God loves you" and that I should come to their Church. The part that bothers me the most about all this beneath the surface, they are trying to push their beliefs on to other people, whether they want it or not. I think that's deceitful. Wasn't there a commandment in the bible that said "thou shalt not lie?" Well, I guess, the technicality is that they're not lying, par se, but they aren't really honest.

But the burning question that I have to ask, is what right do these people have to come in and try and change the beliefs of a culture and what right do they have to get offended when other people have beliefs different from them? I really do get quite agitated when people, especially Evangelicals, come out on to the streets to profess that believing in their religion will send you to a place of eternal happiness after death, where as otherwise, you are sent to a place of eternal hell. A friendly bunch of people, wouldn't you say?

I don't care what you believe in, as long as it doesn't infringe on the freedoms of others

There are states in the US that explicitly require people to be a practicing Christian to get into an elected office. I ask, then, what about the others whom follow a different faith? What right do these people have to tell others that they cannot hold an elected office unless they be a Christian? There are other parts in the US where Christians are battling against the Education system to have scientific theories like Evolution thrown out of the curriculum, or at least have it watered down and have "intelligent design" taught with the same level of footing that evolution has. If that was the case, I would think it would be equally fair to have the Muslim and Buddhist ideas of life taught in the same classroom. But to do so, would entice outrage and anger. Since when did religious tolerance get redefined to "You must tolerate our religion and we have the right to reject yours?" Somebody is trying to have their cake and eat it too.

But it goes further than this. Personally, I don't really mind what you believe in, so long as you don't infringe in the lives of other people (so long as they don't do likewise to you). I draw the line when people believe they have the the right to deny people of different faith into an elected position, or people of the same gender to get married or the decision use birth-control should they choose to. That, frankly, is none of their business.

The results of science are independent of religion

There are people out there who chose to not realize that the experimental results and conclusions that come out of the field of science has nothing to do with religion. The most important part of science is that the experiments are repeatable no matter who conducts them. Thus it shouldn't matter if a Muslim, a Christian, a Buddist or a wiccan decides to conduct the same scientific experiment-- they should all get the same result.

But the problem is, that for some religions, the results that come out of the scientific process is that it may contradict what they believe in and for that sin, those ideas are to be quashed. A man by the name of Galileo one thought that the Earth revolved around the sun. For that idea, he was held in house arrest by the church until his death. So I ask, is that right? Is that fair? For those think that was right, don't complain if others decide that it is fair to persecute others in the same manner for having different ideas. And yet still, the laws which govern the motion of the planets remain unchallenged. For those that do disagree, I suggest you throw out your satellite TV dishes and GPS systems and walk the walk.

The concept of the scientific method is to eliminate human bias to come down to objective conclusions.

Let's Be fair

I don't come down on other people about if their beliefs are different than mine. If my friends are Muslim, Buddhist or Christian and they don't get in the way of other people minding their own business or cause general unpleasantness then I completely don't mind. But cross that line, then don't start complaining when other people take issue.

Accepted to the Journal of Nanotechnology

2 years of study and experimentation was first written into an 80 page document which became my graduation thesis. I would make my first research conference debut at the 2007 Micro and Nano Engineering conference held in Denmark coveting an oral presentation slot where my research was presented to an international audience of professors and students.

Now finally, after 6 months of review and editing, my research paper has been accepted to the Journal of Nanotechnology; 2 years of work summarized into 6 pages. As of current, the last device I fabricated as a grad student has the lowest turn on voltage for an electron emission device (5V) in the world. I wasn't aiming for such a result, but as luck would have it, it's what I ended up with.

Not many masters students are able to have a research paper accepted into a research publication as the principle author, but I am quite happy to say that I did manage to get out of my masters degree with some tangible result.

Got money and want to leave the US? Prepare to Pay!

There is no doubt right now that the US is having serious debt problem. According to the US national debt clock as of July 5th 2008, the US stands to be in $9.45 trillion in debt. With an estimated population of about 300 million people, that's $31,000 per person. In other words, a family of4 carries a debt of $120,000. Imagine trying to pay off that kind of debt? For the average American I think that would be close to impossible.

There are many people in the US whom are dismayed with the current state of affairs, particularly with the currently rising debt and deteriorating economy (not to mention the low support with the current administration having an approval rate of about 27%). Suffice to say, the US as it stands right now is incredibly screwed and even if the general public didn't support the actions of the administration, the US government's debt and the economic catastrophe they cause is still the responsible of the average American citizen.

The question to ask is if this is fair for the average person to pick up the tab for the debt they didn't want or responsible for in the first place. The answer for most people is a resounding 'No.' So even if the current Bush administration draws to a cataclysmic end, the legacy of it's debt will continue for atleast a generation or few. For those that don't want anything more to do with this debt, there is a way out and that way is through renouncing their US citizenship.

The most common method of renouncing a US citizenship is simply by leaving the country and writing out the appropriate forms at an US embassy abroad. But for the most average US citizen, most people do not have any experience living abroad nor are most people readily in a position to take up a foreign citizenship. The people most likely able to do this are the most affluent, who do a lot of traveling or working abroad (this assumes that they are skilled to be in demand in an international market).

The US government is realizing through their poor management is that rich people want to leave, taking their money to greener pastures. So, just recently, the US has instigated a special tax (called HEART) to hit people emigrating out of the US (for both foreigners and US citizens) taking bringing out more than $600,000 in wealth (while the first $600k being tax free, the rest being taxed). If you lived debt free, sold your house and all your belongings (total assets more than $600k), be prepared to pay this new "exit fee" out of the US.

So if you became rich in the US, don't expect to get out with all of your wealth intact. If you don't have much money and don't want anything to do with the ballooning US debt, get out while you still can.

Books vs the Internet

I am starting to find it quite hard to get a hold of quality information worth reading, recently through the internet. As I sift through a variety of social bookmarking sites, either I keep finding more and more garbage (which might be entertaining for the first little while but largely a waste of time) or news information which I highly doubt to be anything close to reliable.

If you want really unreliable information, go read the commentaries at yahoo finance, where by is it clearly impossible to have any idea about where the economy might really be going by reading most of the garbage put out by the pundits. Some people were going on for the past 3 months that the US economy is in perfect shape (minus the "little financial troubles" it was facing with the sub-prime loans and the faltering industrial base).

Reading the news is also another sore spot for me. There used to be a time where the news was about reporting important events or things that were genuinely relevant to the general public. Gone are those days to be replaced by 24 hour news channels that love to make a big deal about insignificant events. I could not give any less of a damn about Britney Spears checking into rehab or pundits on politically biased TV "News" shows having an axe to grind about some political or idealogical agenda, or etc. None of the information being broadcasted is nourishing information that provides to the well being of the general human being and therefore I find it largely useless.

So instead of the mainstream media, I look elsewhere where perhaps real or thoughtful information might be had. I look for essays or thought provoking ideas backed up with significant data or well constructed articles. Unfortunately, as of late, I am having trouble finding anything worth reading and I've broken down to buying a book to read... for the first time in a long time, which just arrived today.

There is something nice about reading a book. The ideas are far more complete compared to reading a 1-2 page article online. Short articles hardly provide for any depth of understanding. How am I supposed to understand anything about international relations in a 1 page article summarized by say "Saudi's promise to raise oil output to reduce oil prices." Surely the issues at hand are far more complicated then that and yet the general population is supposed to judge the actions of a nation based on a simple sliver of information. We have TV pundits and online pundits putting bits and pieces of these tid-bits of garbage to make one grand picture of garbage. As the saying goes, "garbage in, garbage out." But I digress...

The book I am reading is "Out of our minds: How to be Creative" by Sir Ken Robinson. Admittedly, the title does sound a little cheesy ("How to be Creative!?"), but Ken Robinson (I highly recommend watching his TED talk which is quite fascinating) writes about the current shortage of "creative" workers to further propel us into the future. He has a very good understanding of the problems in the current education system and it is worth a read. I have so far gone through 50 pages of the book and have been quite satisfied with most of the ideas and the background information he presents. Nothing of the sort that you'd find easily on the internet.

I think that is the new problem that the internet will face in the future. With access to countless billions (trillions??) of webpages, it will become harder and harder to find information worth reading now that anyone and their dog can post to the cloud that is the internet. Social bookmarking, which I thought were the wave of the future for democratically aggregating pieces of information worthy of reading, had now been replaced by the frivolity of the masses with continual up voting of trivial matters. I once used to love these sites as the density of well educated people that used to frequent them led to a higher density of good quality articles being posted. Perhaps it is time for me to look for smaller and better communities to find reading material from.

Dealing with uncertainty

For the last 3 days, starting on Wednesday, I was on an orientation retreat; the HR team at Sony wanted to imbue the new employees with a sense of "character" of what Sony is. If there was one thing that I took away from the orientation was that the company was "unconventional," which might be a good thing for a Japanese company.

Sony does face some serious challenges right now. My opinion is that the company is stagnating and the current environment doesn't really breed creativity, nor does it seem like it gives opportunities for new ideas (from what I've seen so far), though the upper management people keep telling this is exactly what they want, but I some what digress from the title of this article.

Many of the new grads coming into the company, after this retreat seemed to have a lot of anxiety about their jobs. From one of the promotional videos we saw describing the company as having a long history of innovation, the new grads seemed to feel like they had big shoes to fill. I wouldn't blame them, especially coming out of the Japanese educational system, where encouraging creativity not is one of it's strong points.

For the majority of these new grads, working at Sony will be their first job and most of them are quite worried if the jobs they are given is something suited for them. I for one had a very crappy first job doing incredibly boring work, cutting clouds out of satellite images (I studied how long for a boring job like this!?) after my undergrad in Canada. On top of this, most of them aren't really sure about the kinds of jobs they would be really be suited to since they don't really have any working experience.

Personally, there's been a lot of uncertainty in my life. I would never have imaged that I would come to Japan to study nanotech, then getting hired off by Sony after graduating after considering that I started off with a really pathetic first job. In the future, I really have no idea what kind of work I will be doing and where I'll be working. But I think the most important thing is developing the skills to deal with whatever comes up. Say if you got fired tomorrow and knew that you could just setup your own little company or just hop ship to do other things, I think that most people would have very little worries.

Will rent prices go down?

Given the current foreclosures in the US housing market and the state of the US economy, more and more people are looking toward renting as an alternative to owning a home. it would be interesting to see if rent prices in the US will go down, which is something that I've never really seen happen before.

Logically speaking, with falling housing prices, it becomes cheaper to buy a house and if one was a landowner, then it would be possible to rent a home for less money to encourage people to move in. Given this line of thinking, I would think that rent prices in the future to go down, which would be a good thing for most renters out there, though I would expect that it would require a move out of your current residence or a negotiation with your current land lord to get a reduction in rent prices.

I do better when I don't pay attention in class

I am in a microprocessor class right now; a course setup for the new employees that got into Sony to learn a little about microprocessor programming. The class level is more introductory than I was expecting so I am ending up having a lot of free time. As a result, I've brought a spare laptop and currently surfing the web and doing some misc reading while the teacher blabbers on about the fundamentals of electronics and microprocessor programming.

The interesting thing about this experience is that I fare better than the rest of the student that pay attention. I'm really just half listening to the teacher, just catching the main points about what he's talking about and then when it comes to doing an assignment, I just look at what needs to be done and go about doing it on my own. The good thing about not paying attention to everything is that it forces me to think on my own to solve the assignment instead of following some contrived program the teacher has setup to solve the problem. The fun part about thinking on my own is that I'm usually thinking a few steps ahead of the class and finding some bugs in the example code (which I've caught the teacher on).

The other good thing about thinking on my own in class is that I tend to be more creative than just listening to what the teacher has to say. I've been plugging the outputs of the microprocessor to a LED light display while making the lights dance around instead of just at the data through an oscilloscope. Apparently, I've gained some notoriety for not paying attention and going my own way at doing my own things.

On an interesting side note, I do believe that people become more creative when they do more thinking on their own instead of being told what to do, as that shuts down the creative process and hence I think the idea of managers telling employees to be "more creative" to be somewhat paradoxical in this sense. My 2 cents. I'd elaborate on it more but the lecturer just gave us a new circuit to build and I'm off to go build it.

A short hiatus from writing

I've been quite busy recently with work, participating in activities, exercising, reading and resting that I haven't had much time or energy left over to do much to keep this blog up-to-date. I will return to posting more frequently later on.

As of current, I have been somewhat tired and have not been in much of a mood for human interaction. As a result, I haven't been logging into any of the social network sites I used to frequent or any of my internet messengers as of late. Actually, I've started to find more solace in reading than I used to find in chatting online for some strange reason.

I attribute this to the many interesting and well thought out articles I've been reading online, offering compelling and well thought out ideas. I am starting to find normal conversation to be somewhat boring now that I can't seem to find conversations that "go anywhere." Perhaps my character is taking a somewhat of a shift towards "less talking and more action" but this requires some more exploration.

Anyways, I will probably have more to say (well, I have plenty) after I have some time to kick back and relax. But for the time being, posting might be a little bit sparse.

Knowing how to capitalize on a down market

The US economy is going into a recession. It's been pretty evident that things have been on the down turn for the last 6 months. First with the sub-prime loans, then the soaring gas prices and food prices (much as a result of the US inflating their money supply). What I should have been thinking about since the beginning of all of this is "what sectors are going to be hit in a recession?" and the answers would have been obvious. Anything and every industry that is has anything to do with "disposable income."

Starbucks is tanking, so is the auto industry. Airline stocks are falling and the tourism industry is taking a hit. I think upper end restaurant chains are going to tank, jewelry sales are going to plummet, consumer electronics sales are probably going to go down and more. If you know what you are doing, then shorting these stocks is the right move. Things aren't going to get better until the bad loans are cleared and banks have the confidence to lend money again. You should know that you're playing in a down market and the way to make money is by being a few steps ahead of the market.

The reason why you should go into business for yourself

Enough said!

Like Poker, Investing is about *Not Losing*

On and off, I go through my bookmarks of the web to see how some notable people are doing after their moment of fame. One stock market trader that posts at High Probability Trading blog became exceptionally famous after a tirade of cursing after losing over $30k on a bad trade when the stock market tanked.

I have a mild-interest in watching people day trade, simply to see if there are people out there that are able read into the tea-leaves of the daily market to make a few quick bucks here and there with the ebbing tides of the stock market. It seems that the man at this blog can't seem to eek out consistent gains, though he consistently mentions that he has a "solid plan" to make money on the market and that some trades on the open market are "easy" to make money on.

If that were the case, why not stick to the trades that you are almost certain to make money on?

TV and the movies are horrible places to learn about anything that is a combination of luck and skill. They have this strange idea that the path to success can be summarized into a series of short episodes or a 2 hour feature film. Sure, they make it look like the main character goes through a lot, works hard and in the end gets a few almost impossible lucky breaks and lives happily ever after, but the reality of the matter is that life doesn't work like that-- you just can't expect to take wild swings at things expecting to eventually make a hit (you'll throw your arms out eventually)... but I digress...

Every risk you take should be calculated

The idea that continually taking risks without weighing the costs, hoping to make a hit is not a bright idea; it's also a cardinal rule in poker which few understand. Every risk that you take should be calculated-- weigh what the risk costs to take the chance and the consequences of you losing vs the rewards and the probability of you winning.

There is something in the world of probability called the "expectation value," which basically means that if you had a 60% chance of winning $100, then the expectation value of the outcome is $60. If someone told you that it would cost you $50 for you to have a 60% chance of winning $100 would you take it? I would! Over and over again, simply because the expectation value is greater than the risk I would have to bare. In the long run, I will also win out on the game.

The interesting thing about the mechanics of making decisions depends on the reliability of your data. In the case of the day trading guy, he seems to be able to pick out a few "good trades." If I were him, I'd stick to those trades and take the easy money if that is the case. I would be far more happier to know that I'm consistent at making money instead of having a string of good runs, then getting hammered by a series of bad runs-- the emotional roller coaster isn't worth
it. I'd be far happier to make 8 wins out of 10 versus 40 out of 100. That is the name of the game, especially when you've got money on the line.

Don't get the wrong idea that it isn't worth taking the risk to learn something new; because I highly recommend taking a chance on something new whenever you can. Just make sure that you're not risking more than you can handle.

Machine Learning, Information Filtering and People

There is a lot of information on the internet now; billions upon billions of webpages. Some of the information out there is trivial but there is plenty of useful information out there. All that one needs to do it have a topic of interest and go off searching the internet to summarize the important details of a topic they need to know.

Unfortunately, there isn't a whole lot of good websites that summarize things very well. I usually end up finding myself surfing from wepbage to webpage looking for details, trying to confirm what I've learned. Quite often this ends up to be a very time consuming task. What if we could simplify this? What if we could find ways of going through large quantities of information very quickly, figure out what is reliable, what (seems to) make sense and then summarize it into a nice simple packet of information that we can digest quickly.

People as Information Filters

I've had a hypothesis for quite some time that people are information filters and the kind of information that is retained by the person is largely dependent on the character of the person. Now that I've mentioned the words information and character in the same sentence, I ought explain this relationship in more detail.

Though my experiences, I theorize that the character of a person is largely determined by the kind of information they find useful or interesting. As simple as this sounds, I think it is quite profound, as it isn't as stated often like this. If one were to think about it, the kinds of information that we find useful are the kinds of information that allow us to accomplish specific goals, albeit consciously or sub-consciously.

A person characterized as a thrill seeker will most likely find information about the latest scoup on cheap places for bungee jumping, white water rafting and the most exciting get-aways to be particularly useful. This person will obviously will have their eyes and ears peeled for information related to their interest, whether be it through magazines, clubs, newspapers or other forms of media. And I would be willing to go as far as to point out that the greatest source of information are other people with similar interests as it would be obvious that these people are also on the look out for similar information, digesting whatever pieces of data they get to summarize what they learn to actional pieces of data. You will often get the best information digest from other people that have done a fair amount of information and data collection, up to the point where they can anticipate the kinds of questions you will have and immediately fill you in on what you need/want to know.

I personally have to say that the best teachers I've ever had are the ones that know how to summarize information well, communicate it succinctly and be able to lead into the next important topic by anticipating the questions or the interesting points that arise from what was just presented.

I have found that dense exchange of well summarized useful and interesting knowledge to be rare and few. And I find this to be quite unfortunate, but this point is probably for a different essay at a different time, though I should point out that your best friends are likely to be the ones that share information that are the most relative with you... but anyways, I digress...

Machine: A man's best friend?

The old adage was that a dog is a man's best friend-- that you'd be able to send out your dog and have him fetch your shoes, slippers, a dead bird or the newspaper. But what if this time, instead of the newspaper, you had a dog that could surf the web and fetch you all the important things that you should/wanted to know. Imagine that.

Now, with the digitization of information, it has become easy for computers to digest digital representation of text-- in other words, you don't have to teach your computer have to read characters anymore (I still remember the first time I tried to read my elementary school teacher's handwritten comment on one of my assignments and I couldn't make heads or tails out of it)! Now with that problem out of the way, wouldn't it be interesting to see if we could give a computer some simple goals, have it go out into the internet and learn/find what you want to know and then summarize it for you.

What if you told your computer that you wanted to make gourmet food and have it come back at you and asked you what kind while providing a list of different ethnic cuisine. What if in addition to that, it went further to recommend certain dishes because of availability of ingredients based on your geographical region and the season. All of this relevant information would be nicely summarized into something that you can immediately act upon. This is what I believe to be the epitome of useful information (considering that most of information you get through the news and other sources are hardly actionable!).

Intelligence simply does not come from data!

Throughout my high school life, I realized something far more important than just learning what your teachers taught you, but rather more efficient ways of learning. In practice, I focused on finding more efficient ways of learning. I can tell you with certainty that effective learning does not result from wrote memorization. What is more important that just having information is developing relationships between pieces of information, like a puzzle, to create a coherent overview of the body of knowledge learned.

With the combination of having a wide breadth of knowledge and understanding how it fits together, it puts one in the desirable position of understanding the relevance of what they know to quickly understand how new information may fit into their knowledge or knowing how to respond to questions with the most relevant answers. After all, this is what tests are all about.

How do you teach someone/something to learn?

Now this is obviously the million (multi-billion?) dollar question (and if you know the answer, go start your own education company). There is no easy way to teach someone or something to learn. And I believe that the process of learning boils down to motive and objective. What I have found more important that instead of just teaching a subject, is to teach the underlying motivations behind why this body of knowledge was created because if a person could never find a purpose for what they learned, why bother learning it? I think that a topic should be as interesting as it is useful.

Motivating humans, I think, is a far easier task than motivating an inanimate object like a computer to do something. Humans have hard-coded biological objectives to survive and live a happy life. Obviously, by understanding the basic constructs of ourselves, it becomes easier to understand the relevance of information to ourselves. I should point out that the desire to be well informed is not just for survival, but also for entertainment. I don't know about you, but I find myself quite happy to discover or learn profound ideas (where I find myself running around to friends to tell them all about it... despite how little they may care sometimes :)

In order to develop an autonomous computer system capable of learning, it would be very necessary to hard code specific objectives into an artificial intelligence to give it the motivation to learn. Determining what those motivations should be will likely be a challenging topic, but I am sure that without them, a CPU made from silicon will have as much motivation to learn as a chunk of rock. And the same goes for students.

Sub-pixel interpolation throwing off my eyes

I spent about $210 getting a new 19" monitor to run on my Linux box. The monitor I got is a Benq FP93G series monitor. I have so far tested the monitor using output both from my laptop and the desktop computer to find that I have mixed feelings about thus monitor-- the images don't come out as crisp as the images on my monitor... it maybe due to the fact that the surface isn't glossy.

The other problem that has been plaguing me recently is that I have yet to find a good way to turn off sub-pixel interpolation of characters on all the software on my Ubuntu Linux installation. Simply put, sub-pixel interpolation attemptes to smooth the display text to make them look rounder and smoother than what your average monitor might be able to show by shading some pixels gray instead of just using white or black to draw a character.

Unfortunately for me (or fortunately for me) is that I have very sharp eyes and when I look at sub-pixel interpolated characters, it actually gives me eye strain and sometimes a headache... as I am facing right now. I much prefer the screen on my laptop compared to the flat panel screen I am working off of at the moment.

I have already tried hooking the monitor up to my laptop (which runs windows, and I have sub-pixel interpolation disabled) and the text I read from the laptop is much clearer to me (though I still prefer reading text directly from the laptop instead of the monitor). I think sub-pixel interpolation might be good for monitors with a glossy surface since the pixels may do a better job of blending through a glossy surface. Unfortunately for me, the monitor I have is just a standard monitor without a glossy surface... as I used to be able to work on a monitor without glossy surfaces.

I am quite annoyed that things turned out the way they did and will be looking for a way to work around this problem as I cannot stand blurry text.

I have tried watching videos on my monitor and found no problem at all with the display quality. It's only a problem when I have to look at high contrast images.

I type this from my Linux box

Back in my university days, I managed to salvage a 1 GHz computer from the dumpster. The PC box already had 512 MB ram and a video card. A few more weeks of checking out the dumpster later, I managed to find other scrapped computers to salvage a sound card, a network card and a 12 GB HD and I would have a fully working computer... which I ended up donating to a friend of mine that didn't have a computer at the time.

Well right before leaving university, he didn't need the computer anymore and I bought it with me to my new home where I bought a new 19" LCD to go with the system an installed Ubuntu (a very easy to setup Linux distribution) on the computer. The desktop looks something like this:


My Desktop while getting some music going.

The distribution comes complete with Open Office which is a suite complete with a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation preparation programs. All of this comes free with the operating system and can be easily installed into other systems as well. Linux comes complete with programming tools, program editors with the option to add a whole slew of software for free.

The desktop side of Linux is becoming very attractive, especially for those with good video cards to go with their computer (though most of it is just eye candy... it's also very pleasing eye candy). The desktop is managed by a piece of software developed from the Compiz Fusion project, which was a project to develop an incredibly beautiful/slick desktop environment. Check out the following link for a video demonstration. It just goes to say that you done necessarily need Windows for a decent working environment. The best part of it all is that all of this software, and more comes for free and all the code on how to write these programs are publicly available should you be interested in doing some programming of your own.

Windows and the together already costs atleast $200 or more, then throw in any other software that you might be interested in and you are probably looking at $1000 more in costs for installed software on the computer. If you want an image editor, programming environment, HTTP server or anything, all of this can be had for for free just by downloading the software you want from an online software repository. Simple as that and you'd be saving yourself $1200+ in software that easy.

Though, I think the biggest hang up of using Linux is that there might be one piece of software that might not be available on Linux. Well fear not, there exists a piece of software that can interpret Windows programs and have it run on a Linux OS. That piece of software is other wise known as "wine." All one needs to do is install it and have it run the program of your choice. Simple as that.

I do have to admit that I am still a little uncertain of gaming on a Linux box with the standard titles out there, but I have heard from some people that many usual Windows games are playable through the Wine emulator software (and I heard that it runs fast enough that there isn't any significant slowdown of the game).

Most likely, I will be upgrading this computer later on (or rather rebuilding the whole thing) with much slicker hardware to take play around with the Linux OS. So far, I am quite impressed.

The importance of a good keyboarding posture

It has nearly been about 3 years since the last time I really worked on a desktop computer. It wasn't until a while back where I recovered a desktop computer from the dumpster at the University garbage disposal area that I decided to build myself a Linux box running the Ubuntu distribution of Linux to give it a try.

I like the idea of free software which is just as good or even better than commercial applications that is out there right now. Spreadsheets? Word processing and etc? There's open office. Need to do programming but don't want to shell out for the expensive Microsoft IDE? Linux has several nice options all available for free. You just can't beat that and I have also decided to try and learn more about the Linux OS and play around with what they've got here.

A long while back, I got used to working on a laptop keyboard. I still remember getting wrist cramps the first time working on the laptop just because I wasn't used to working on a laptop keyboard, though I don't have a problem with it now. The problem is getting back to the traditional keyboard. I bought a really cheap one a while back that doesn't support my wrists and found that almost after 30 minutes of typing, I was getting some mild cramping. There is just absolutely no way that I want to develop wrist problems in the future so I've opted for a better keyboard and changed my typing posture actually, my wrists don't rest on the table below or on the keyboard and I find this the most comfortable typing position.

Suffice to say that most of our activities revolve around using a computer and it would be simply crippling (in more ways than one) should we not be able to use a computer due to wrist injuries.

Finally, Internet

Been a while since the last post. Not having internet in the room does tend to slow things down, but finally, that has changed.

Internet in Japan is vastly superior to what I used to work on in Canada. Most apartments are now equipped with fiber-optic connections (usually shared) allowing me to go up to about 800 kB/sec (I am talking about kilobytes here!) on peak (when I am really pushing it) or easily to 200 kB/sec on a few downloads. I used to share a connection with my roommates when I shared an apartment and it would only cost each of us $15/month ($45/month total).

Since relocating to the company dorm, I have opted for a shared internet connection going for about $15/month. This time, it being shared with about 100 other people, I think. I decided not to bother with a dedicated connection to my room since I don't have any plans on using my connection that heavily and large downloads can be completed with the computer running while at work.

The cell phone carriers in Japan are working on putting together full coverage of high speed internet to the cell phones here. We are looking at about 250kB/sec on bandwidth... though the packet charges are going to be insane if people really start downloading hoards of material onto their cell phones. Phone carriers here offer a $15/month unlimited packet service to the cell phones in addition to the basic package plan. If I had it my way, I'd opt or the cheapest cell phone package and see if I can hack Skype onto a cell phone to make phone calls over the net. I predict that full-blown high speed internet to mobile devices will eventually be available to hand-held devices in the near future.

Work so far, has been quite good. I have lots of freedom to do whatever kind of work want and the organizational structure for my research team is very flat, making getting access to superiors very easy (especially for Japan). I have so far been supplied with a brand-new Sony laptop since my first day in the company. I have a few thoughts about working in large corporations but I will leave those for later.

Time to enjoy the internet!