How to get your QR code onto Google Maps

Posted on 2011 October 5 by anewc2

Put it on your roof.
QR on a roof

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The Collatz | hailstone | 3n+1 problem

Posted on 2011 October 4 by anewc2

Inverted. Thanks to Jason Davies.Inverse Collatz Map by Jason Davies

A shout-out too to Mike Bostock for his d3.js, a library for Data-driven documents.

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Bohemian Rhapsody on a flatbed scanner

Posted on 2011 October 4 by anewc2

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Stock market order types

Posted on 2011 October 4 by anewc2

… and how to use them in a volatile market, when we may have another flash crash. Beware And Prepare For Mini Market Flash Crash. Avoid sell-stop orders because in a flash crash, prices drop to (some approximation of) zero, and bounce back within minutes. Your stop order becomes a market order at the stop price, and then you can be sold out at the bottom, only to see the price snap back to normal a few minutes later. Sucks to be you. Use a stop-limit sell order instead.

Then use a limit-buy order to be on the other side of that disastrous trade above.

The author uses “mini-flash crash” to describe the ~10% sell-off and recovery of early summer 2010 — a process that took several weeks. To me there is a fundamental difference between a decline and recovery that continues over more than one day, and a flash crash that is a glitch from high-frequency trading that rights itself within minutes.

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DELL

Posted on 2011 September 29 by anewc2

Today I have focused on DELL. It had two stories on the front page of Seeking Alpha:

Dell’s Transition Creates Buying Opp by Kedar Special Situations
Dell: Still Not For Growth Investors by Helix Investment Management

Seeking Alpha likes to do these dueling headlines together, but in this case the second one is misleading: the bulk of the article is about what a great turnaround story Dell has, it’s just not going to register in the stock price soon enough for growth investors.

The common element is that Dell has a good turnaround story. However it has gone nowhere in the last 2 years, after a strategic re-orientation that started almost 4 years ago. The problem is, non-Apple computers are a commodity business with low margins, and that historically has been its main business. So it’s having to scramble to diversify, but it’s doing a much better job than HP.

I’ll want to start watching it more closely when it gets to 17. I set up an alarm in Yahoo. (The actual recent high was 17.60 on 2011 July 20.)

UPDATE 2016 August 28

In 2013 Dell was taken private by its founder, and is no longer publicly traded.

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Ten Reasons You Need a Cast Iron Skillet | Macheesmo

Posted on 2010 July 7 by anewc2

Ten Reasons You Need a Cast Iron Skillet | Macheesmo.

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The Chess Master and the Computer – The New York Review of Books

Posted on 2010 February 1 by anewc2

The Chess Master and the Computer – The New York Review of Books.

Our best minds have gone into financial engineering instead of real engineering, with catastrophic results for both sectors

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Official Google Blog: A new approach to China

Posted on 2010 January 13 by anewc2

Official Google Blog: A new approach to China.

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A Handy CSS Debugging Snippet

Posted on 2009 November 21 by anewc2

A Handy CSS Debugging Snippet.

* { outline: 2px dotted red }
* * { outline: 2px dotted green }
* * * { outline: 2px dotted orange }
* * * * { outline: 2px dotted blue }
* * * * * { outline: 1px solid red }
* * * * * * { outline: 1px solid green }
* * * * * * * { outline: 1px solid orange }
* * * * * * * * { outline: 1px solid blue }

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Food insecurity

Posted on 2009 November 17 by anewc2

Another data visualization challenge, from the Guardian.

Hungry America: food insecurity, state by state | News | guardian.co.uk.

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