TechCrunch on RawSugar

Michael Arrington author of TechChurch wrote a
review on RawSugar. Some points were missed, but Hey, we got only ourselves to blame...



tags: RawSugar

boared mouse-potato posting some pictures

As bill pointed out, I became a "mouse potato" - sitting at the hotel all day, TV on (just for the audio), typing away on my laptop. At the beginning, I tried fighting it - but now I am all sucummed to the all mighty mouse!
here are some photos I have recently uploaded to flickr.

The following were taken in New-york exactly 2 years ago, when I was writing black-boxing stock market day-trading models, back in Wall Street:







and finally, Lilach and myself in a party, at wonderful wonderful Tel-Aviv. The city no other city is like, well, except,..emmm.. Manhattan. This was taken by atraf.co.il, a Tel-Aviv nightlife magazine.






tags: pictures, newyork

RECIPE how to make money in stocks - lessons learnt

When I first started out investing, I set a list of rules that would hopefully guarantee I continue to improve my portfolio performance, here are the rules I have set:

• Monitor the market pulse closely. You’ll get the feel for the market –which is the most important input for gut feeling position closing.


• Write down all of your transactions. Write down the reasons that drove you to enter or exit a position.


• When you have the time, and the market is slow, take the time and analyze all of your past decision. Write down the new conclusions you get to, sharpen you tools.


• If you feel anxious to make a trade, don’t. You are not equanimous, and probably on your way to make a costly mistake.


• Don’t trade positions below $2,000 – commissions will kill your profit.


• If everybody’s talking about a stock performance, it’s too late.


• In a bear market – sell on 10% loss, no matter what. In a bull – 7% will do it.


• In a bull market – don’t set stop-loss orders, unless you are away and you have to.


• Make a test buy. Buy a small lot, buy more at 3%, and the rest at 5%.

Recently, my portfolio was doing great. Being lazy as I am, I stopped monitoring the market as close as I should. I have also stopped researching new stocks. Almost half of my funds are in cash, while the market was doing just great. Money management was neglected. My TS stock is more than 40% in the money. However, during the past two weeks I made some terrible buys. I did not research the stocks well enough, I got all excited about my recent performance, that I have neglected all of the lessons I have learnt when the market was bearish. I paid the price. I made some bad purchases with CPTV, SIRI – buying way beyond their breakout point, without going over their fundamentals, without waiting for a buying pattern to emerge from graphs. I got too confident.

Current portfolio
BIDU          -1.68%
SIRI          +12.79%
TS          +47.25%


tags: stock market

RECIPE - how to loose your friend to the world

well - Amit and Polina are going away - check out their BLOG.

RECIPE - Nantes butter cream sauce

Nantes - a port city in western France on the Loire estuary - famous white cream.

this sauce is splendid for serving along with fish dishes.
its a robichon recipe.

ingredients
4 challots
100 cc white muscat wine
20 cc red wine vinegar
150 cc butter - diced and very cold (keep it in the fridge until preperation)

preperation
fine cut 4 challots
add them into a pot
add the white wine and vinegar
and salt and pepper
simmer until almost no fluids remain
add two tablespoon of water
take the butter out of the fridge, add the butter cubes slowly while mixing

if this sauce is waiting for the main dish, keep it on very small heat source, but it must not get to a boiling poiint.


tags: cooking, recipes, french cuisine

tavor DOT tk

The people of Tokelau are giving away their .tk domain. What does this mean? It means that you can register your own .tk domain (checkout www.tavor.tk) which will redirect wherever you want. They run an ad just prior to redirecting to your site, all for the benefit of the poor people of Tokelau.

RECIPE - appetizer - baked pears filled with goat cheese

Oh my my. This Recipe is a perfect 10 minutes appetizer. Easy to make, delicious vegetarian dish. Who said that vegetarians have to be stuck with boaring dishes?

Stuffed Pears - feeds 4 (or 2 hungry ones)

Ingredients
2 mid-sized pears
sugar
salt
parmesan cheese
balsamic vinegar (red)
goat cheese spread (fat) - very common here in the mediterranean. If you have trouble getting it in the US, replace with any white cream cheese, but expect sub-optimal results.

Preperation
1. cut each pear in half, driving the knife from the top of the pear to its wider bottom.
2. with a spoon, gently remove the pear's seeds and hard stuff that run from its head to bottom, make room for the cheese filling.
3. spread some salt and sugar on the space you have just created with the spoon.
4. with the spoon, fill the space with the cream goat cheese. The chees should fill the space, and should not be filled more than the pears hieght.
5. with a peeler, peel four very thin slices of parmesan cheese. place a slice on each pear.
6. sparkle some sugar over the parmesan
7. sparkle 3 drops of fine olive oil over the sparkeled sugar.
8. place in a pre-heated over (180 celsius - 356 farenheit) for about 10 minutes, until the cheese form boils on top.
9. remove from oven, sparkle 3 drops of balsamic vinegar on each pair.
10. serve on a green leaves bedding.

You will enjoy!.




tags: cooking, recipes, french cuisine

Using the XMLHttpRequest Object and AJAX to Spy On You

My colleague, Bill Lazar, sent me this link: Using the XMLHttpRequest Object and AJAX to Spy On You

He was asking whether I think this is FUD or not.
here is what I answered:

When Ford invented the car, many people said its a tool from the devil, and that people will die by using it. They were right - people die everyday in car crashes - but the benefit cars give us, is obviously worth the risk.

The author is naïve. TheSpywaree developers and "marketers" have such sophisticated ways to collect personal / behavioral information and study our online patterns, that AJAX could prove just another tool for their trade, a bigger shovel in the sandbox, but still WITHIN the sandbox. So - if you want to be completely safe from such attempts - disable cookies altogether (or at least authorize them manually), use annonymizers while doing "sensitive" stuff on the web, or just tell your personal firewall, to block any transmission that includes sensitive information about yourself.

The law of nature is such, that every good thing has its bad. If you don't like to get the "Bad" stuff, you'll have to waive the good stuff as well.

And to finish up with another cliché - those who stand still - go backwards.