Lisa shot pictures of Bill Bushnell and other cyclists who were hanging around near our tandem. 
Saturday, February 11, 2006
Riding along the farmlands of Morgan Hill/Gilroy
Lisa shot pictures of Bill Bushnell and other cyclists who were hanging around near our tandem.
Route-Sheet Bingo
Route sheets were in short supply at the Morgan Hill LDT today, so Mark Marc handed out pen and paper and the Western Wheelers played "Route Sheet Bingo".
Thursday, February 09, 2006
The Merchant Princes Trilogy (parts 1 & 2)
I seem to be reading a lot of Charles Stross lately, and complaining that I didn't like his character development. I also have to stop reading book series where the entire series haven't been published yet (George R. R. Martin, I'm looking at you).
That said, The Family Trade and The Hidden Family demonstrate significant improvements over his earlier works. Stross openly acknowledges his inspiration by Roger Zelazny's Amber Chronicles, which feature a family of world-walkers, people who can travel between parallel Earths through the use of a pattern.
Stross does Zelazny one step better, however, by extrapolating what would happen if a family which didn't have supernatural powers actually did exist, and set out to exploit this ability to gain secular power and wealth. He uses the trick of having the heroine of the story be someone who was unaware of her family's existence stumbling into her heritage as a Duchess, and executed a very well-done play on the "adopted princess" fantasy trope, complete with the "princess" realizing that being stuck in a medieval world just isn't very much fun.
The action in the novels move fast and furiously, with little pieces of exposition thrown in that aren't too awkward. The heroine, unlike many fantasy heroines, isn't one of those people whom you just want to grab by the scruff of their collars and shake, is sensible and intelligent, and does what a smart, well-educated person would do in her position (she's just a little bit tougher than your average person, but not any more unbelievable than Veronica Mars was).
Once the action starts, I found the books hard to put down, and to be fair to Stross, even though its a trilogy, you won't come to the end of the second book feeling cheated even though the ending is yet to be written.
Recommended.
That said, The Family Trade and The Hidden Family demonstrate significant improvements over his earlier works. Stross openly acknowledges his inspiration by Roger Zelazny's Amber Chronicles, which feature a family of world-walkers, people who can travel between parallel Earths through the use of a pattern.
Stross does Zelazny one step better, however, by extrapolating what would happen if a family which didn't have supernatural powers actually did exist, and set out to exploit this ability to gain secular power and wealth. He uses the trick of having the heroine of the story be someone who was unaware of her family's existence stumbling into her heritage as a Duchess, and executed a very well-done play on the "adopted princess" fantasy trope, complete with the "princess" realizing that being stuck in a medieval world just isn't very much fun.
The action in the novels move fast and furiously, with little pieces of exposition thrown in that aren't too awkward. The heroine, unlike many fantasy heroines, isn't one of those people whom you just want to grab by the scruff of their collars and shake, is sensible and intelligent, and does what a smart, well-educated person would do in her position (she's just a little bit tougher than your average person, but not any more unbelievable than Veronica Mars was).
Once the action starts, I found the books hard to put down, and to be fair to Stross, even though its a trilogy, you won't come to the end of the second book feeling cheated even though the ending is yet to be written.
Recommended.
Monday, February 06, 2006
West Old La Honda Road on Saturday
Winter riding in the Bay Area: lush green hills, beautiful weather, and lovely lovely roads. Photo Credit: Roberto Peon
Sunday, February 05, 2006
Saturday, February 04, 2006
Review: Coraline
Scarlet considers this one of her two best books of 2005, so I checked it out of the library and read it. It's not a bad book by any means, but I don't think it's anything special. It's definitely not even in the same class as StarDust, which I consider to be the best of Gaiman's prose works (by the way, buy the one with Charles Vess illustrations, which is the way the book was published --- the "words only" version are for snotty people who don't think that comic books can't be considered literature).
The horror I find to be rather pedestrian, but then again, I don't think I was ever the kind of kid (or now, adult) who could be horrified or scared by words on a page --- visual horror can terrify me, but not novels or books. The real horror in the book, for me, is the portrait of a child thoroughly neglected by her parents. I guess I can be grateful that my parents always found time to play with me, and gave me such imaginative tools and toys in my mind that I was never ever bored, either as an adult or as a child.
Anyway, it's a short book, so it's not a waste of time.
The horror I find to be rather pedestrian, but then again, I don't think I was ever the kind of kid (or now, adult) who could be horrified or scared by words on a page --- visual horror can terrify me, but not novels or books. The real horror in the book, for me, is the portrait of a child thoroughly neglected by her parents. I guess I can be grateful that my parents always found time to play with me, and gave me such imaginative tools and toys in my mind that I was never ever bored, either as an adult or as a child.
Anyway, it's a short book, so it's not a waste of time.
Friday, February 03, 2006
Two interesting articles in this week's New Yorker
First, there's a Book Review of The Man Who Knew Too Much, a biography of Alan Turing that doesn't sound like it's worth reading. However, the review provides a nice, condensed summary of Turing's life that's very much worth reading. The definitive book on Turing is Alan Turing: Enigma, which I read a while ago and remember as being quite good.
The second great article is an article by Malcolm Gladwell about Profiling. It busts the typical myths about profiling, and uses excellent journalistic technique to illustrate his point. I subscribed to The New Yorker on the basis of Gladwell's visit to Google, and if only every issue was like this one I'd feel like I got my money's worth.
Of course, what annoys me is that we don't have a magazine even half as good as The New Yorker here in the Bay Area. We get crappy stuff like Gentry Magazine, a magazine for people who worship wealth and its privileges, and Sunset Magazine, a vapid lifestyle magazine with no depth. Ah well. In exchange we get good weather and a fabulous outdoor life. Now, if only my copy of the Rivendell Reader would just show up! Now that's a magazine I'm proud to have contributed to, and one that could only exist in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The second great article is an article by Malcolm Gladwell about Profiling. It busts the typical myths about profiling, and uses excellent journalistic technique to illustrate his point. I subscribed to The New Yorker on the basis of Gladwell's visit to Google, and if only every issue was like this one I'd feel like I got my money's worth.
Of course, what annoys me is that we don't have a magazine even half as good as The New Yorker here in the Bay Area. We get crappy stuff like Gentry Magazine, a magazine for people who worship wealth and its privileges, and Sunset Magazine, a vapid lifestyle magazine with no depth. Ah well. In exchange we get good weather and a fabulous outdoor life. Now, if only my copy of the Rivendell Reader would just show up! Now that's a magazine I'm proud to have contributed to, and one that could only exist in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Review: Singularity Sky
This was Charles Stross's first novel. An information war is being waged on Rochard's World, a colony of the New Republic, an authoritarian regime. The regime's response is typically militaristic, but two representative of external agencies attempt to intervene, resulting in a spy story set in a science fiction universe where time travel is possible. Stross was a computer scientist, so at least he attempts to get his physics right, and make references to John Conway's Game of Life, which a lot of software engineers and mathematicians are familiar with.
The characters, alas, are not very developed, and one gets the idea that they exist for the sole purpose of the plot, rather than being real people you could meet and like. In this, at least, Stross has the same problems as other hard science writers like Greg Egan and Stephen Baxter. Just because you're a real scientist/mathematician of some sort doesn't guarantee poor characters, as Vernor Vinge aptly demonstrates.
The sequel to this novel is Iron Sunrise.
The characters, alas, are not very developed, and one gets the idea that they exist for the sole purpose of the plot, rather than being real people you could meet and like. In this, at least, Stross has the same problems as other hard science writers like Greg Egan and Stephen Baxter. Just because you're a real scientist/mathematician of some sort doesn't guarantee poor characters, as Vernor Vinge aptly demonstrates.
The sequel to this novel is Iron Sunrise.
Monday, January 30, 2006
Review: Unconventional Success
It's unfortunate that investment books that have sensible advice rarely reach the right audience --- the sophisticated individual investor already knows most of what they have to offer, if they've even read one of the classics, such as A Random Walk Down Wall Street, while the naive investor is unlikely to read the book, since that's the reason why they are naive.
David Swensen comes from managing one of the most successful college endowment investment programs, the one at Yale University (one reason why I can't imagine donating money to a private university is that they have the resources to do well even without charging exorbitant fees, but they do so anyway). Large college endowments can do many things that individual investors cannot --- for instance, they can hold entire office buildings for many years in a diversified porfolio and have it still be only 10 to 20% of their assets. Most individual investors by contrast, can afford to own just their own homes, and for most such investors, that home comprises upwards of 50% of their assets (hence the phrase, "house rich, cash poor"). Bereft of such tools, Swensen does not offer much advice and insight that other, more pedestrain authors haven't already written.
Here are the interesting titbits in the book:
All in all, while I'm glad I read the book, the practical advice I got from Brad DeLong last year from a 15 minute conversation while he was at the Google campus did more for my portfolio. On the other hand, his comments about corporate bonds and municipal bonds were very much worth reading, so I'm glad I checked this book out of the Santa Clara County Library.
Economic theory teaches the law of one price, viz., that in freely competitive markets identical goods or services trade at identical prices. In the case of index-fund management, the portfolio management fees charged by various service providers should be identical, or nearly so. Otherwise, rational consumers transfer funds from high-cost providers to low-cost providers, thereby driving the greedy (or inefficient) fund-management companies to reduce prices or exit the business.
Economic theroy fails. In a 2002 study, Morningstar identified fifty-seven S&P 500 index funds that charged more than Vanguard's market-leading 0.18 percent annual fee. The average yearly expense ratio of the non-Vanguard index managers amounted to an over-the-top 0.82 percent...
Had the expensive index funds emanated from a disreputable bunch of bucket shops, investors might conclude that thee poor saps who chose the high-cost funds deserved the consequences of paying active-management fees for less than passive-management results. In fact, the roster of high-fee index fund managers include two of the investment management world's most venerable names --- Morgan Stanley Funds and Scudder Investments.
David Swensen comes from managing one of the most successful college endowment investment programs, the one at Yale University (one reason why I can't imagine donating money to a private university is that they have the resources to do well even without charging exorbitant fees, but they do so anyway). Large college endowments can do many things that individual investors cannot --- for instance, they can hold entire office buildings for many years in a diversified porfolio and have it still be only 10 to 20% of their assets. Most individual investors by contrast, can afford to own just their own homes, and for most such investors, that home comprises upwards of 50% of their assets (hence the phrase, "house rich, cash poor"). Bereft of such tools, Swensen does not offer much advice and insight that other, more pedestrain authors haven't already written.
Here are the interesting titbits in the book:
- Core Asset classes include: Domestic Stocks, Foreign Stocks (divided into Developed Markets and Emerging Markets), Treasury Bonds, Tips, and Real Estate. Allocating your money amongst these classes will provide reasonably good opporunity for growth. Swensen does provide a sample allocation, but does not provide any data (or advise) about adjusting the allocation for your particular position in the life cycle.
- Corporate bonds do not provide any diversity, and are much worse than Treasuries from an asset-allocation point of view.
- Foreign bonds provide currency risk without the high returns of foreign equity. Since currency speculation is a zero-sum game, foreign bonds are best avoided.
- Venture Capital provides surprisingly low returns, mostly because high management fees kill the returns from mediocre VCs, while excellent VCs have such high minimums that most individual investors are locked out.
- Hedge funds also have a poor record, because survivorship bias means that only high performing ones are not shut down after a short time.
- Tax-Exempt bonds are surprisingly dangerous for individual investors.
- Rebalancing is important, since it enforces a "buy low sell high" discipline. When Swensen ran the Yale portfolio, they rebalanced every day! Obviously, due to transaction costs, this should not be attempted by individual investors.
- Mutual funds are extremely poor in performance. In fact, honest mutual fund companies are so rare that Swensen names the one honest one. (It's Long Leaf Partners Funds, managed by SouthWestern Asset Management, a privately held company whose employees and management are co-invested in the funds to an incredibly high degree --- naturally, all of Long Leaf's funds are now closed to new investors!) All the others (Fidelity, Putnam, to just name a few) have been involved in so many financial scandals that their commitment to their "customers" (really, victims) is suspect. Page after page was devoted to various mutual fund scandals.
- ETFs can vary in quality, so it really makes sense to do your research!
- Vanguard and TIAA-Cref, the two non-profit companies that operate mostly indexed funds (and a few actively managed ones), are the only places where it makes sense to park your money long term. (If you don't already know this, you're probably not reading this blog anyway!)
All in all, while I'm glad I read the book, the practical advice I got from Brad DeLong last year from a 15 minute conversation while he was at the Google campus did more for my portfolio. On the other hand, his comments about corporate bonds and municipal bonds were very much worth reading, so I'm glad I checked this book out of the Santa Clara County Library.
Economic theory teaches the law of one price, viz., that in freely competitive markets identical goods or services trade at identical prices. In the case of index-fund management, the portfolio management fees charged by various service providers should be identical, or nearly so. Otherwise, rational consumers transfer funds from high-cost providers to low-cost providers, thereby driving the greedy (or inefficient) fund-management companies to reduce prices or exit the business.
Economic theroy fails. In a 2002 study, Morningstar identified fifty-seven S&P 500 index funds that charged more than Vanguard's market-leading 0.18 percent annual fee. The average yearly expense ratio of the non-Vanguard index managers amounted to an over-the-top 0.82 percent...
Had the expensive index funds emanated from a disreputable bunch of bucket shops, investors might conclude that thee poor saps who chose the high-cost funds deserved the consequences of paying active-management fees for less than passive-management results. In fact, the roster of high-fee index fund managers include two of the investment management world's most venerable names --- Morgan Stanley Funds and Scudder Investments.
Sunday, January 29, 2006
View of the Pacific from Windy Hill OSP
I've learnt not to expect too much from a point and shoot, even the 8 megapixel Canons. But sometimes, I get pleasantly surprised.
Friday, January 27, 2006
Movie Review: Brothers Grimm
Terry Gilliam presents a fantastic vision of the Brothers Grimm as a pair of con men who are finally faced with justice and sent to confront a truly fantastic situation where they truly have to become heroes. Gilliam manages to sneak in images of Hansel & Greta, the Gingerbread Man, Little Red Riding Hood, amongst others, but those stories while evoking the stories of the original Grimm brothers aren't central to the plot.
It being a Gilliam movie, I kept waiting for the horror or the twist, but it never happened. It truly is the only Gilliam movie I've seen that actually turns out to be what it claims to be, a straight-forward tale told competently. Unfortunately, we've expected more than simply competence from Gilliam, so it was a bit of a let-down.
It being a Gilliam movie, I kept waiting for the horror or the twist, but it never happened. It truly is the only Gilliam movie I've seen that actually turns out to be what it claims to be, a straight-forward tale told competently. Unfortunately, we've expected more than simply competence from Gilliam, so it was a bit of a let-down.
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
My other 20% project
Unlike Prophit, gtags will never make it into the New York Times. It is pretty cool to get onto the front page of code.google.com, though. But this is the project I spend most of my 20% time on, and we now have a full time intern working on it as well. There are a lot of obvious refinements possible, but I wanted to get it out there even in this rather raw form to see if there's any uptake at all in the open source community.
I don't think gtags is useful until you have about a million or so lines of source code (though I'd love to find out if I'm wrong!). But if your project has that much code and isn't susceptible to IDEs (C++/C code typically has this property), then I think that having something like gtags around can be a great help. I certainly wrote this tool when I was learning my way around the google sourcebase, and it was valuable enough for other engineers to start using it as well. "Next bench" projects are some of the more gratifying projects you can do, because your customers are other engineers, and those are people you work with every day!
Prospective interns: I've already filled the summer 2006 position, but if you're interested in an internship/co-op with Google in the fall or even winter, and would like to work on gtags, feel free to let the recruiter (or me) know!
I don't think gtags is useful until you have about a million or so lines of source code (though I'd love to find out if I'm wrong!). But if your project has that much code and isn't susceptible to IDEs (C++/C code typically has this property), then I think that having something like gtags around can be a great help. I certainly wrote this tool when I was learning my way around the google sourcebase, and it was valuable enough for other engineers to start using it as well. "Next bench" projects are some of the more gratifying projects you can do, because your customers are other engineers, and those are people you work with every day!
Prospective interns: I've already filled the summer 2006 position, but if you're interested in an internship/co-op with Google in the fall or even winter, and would like to work on gtags, feel free to let the recruiter (or me) know!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
