My Way Guy- Guy Tavor - Recipes for everything:Stocks, Technology, web2.0 and Cooking

Current News cloud - Google News Tags by NEWZingo

2006-01-05T08:26:00.000-08:00

Current News cloud - Google News Tags by NEWZingo

Stocks: CTCH - Sometime you got a lucky card! - Stock Market for Amateurs

2005-12-28T02:48:00.000-08:00

CTCH - Sometime you got a lucky card! - Stock Market for Amateurs

Stocks: CTCH - Commtouch - Stock Market for Amateurs

2005-12-28T02:47:00.001-08:00

CTCH - Commtouch - Stock Market for Amateurs

Introducing: Buzzingo.com - Guy Tavor - MyWayGuy - Recipes for Everything

2005-12-28T02:47:00.000-08:00

How Ruby on Rails is really a time tunnel, and how A.I is here with a twist: H.I - Hybrid intelligence.

Hot Buzz on Buzzingo

2005-12-25T08:55:00.000-08:00

Performancing, Flock, and Google's web browser - Web 2.0 Thoughts

2005-12-22T03:16:00.000-08:00

Bibli.ca – publish and share your text creations

2005-12-14T08:04:00.000-08:00

Bibli.ca – publish and share your text creations

Tags: publish, share, creations, flickr, text, tags, web2.0, short stories, poems, papers, scripts, plays

Stock analysis - JDSU - Stock Market for Amateurs

2005-12-13T03:57:00.000-08:00

Stock analysis - JDSU - Stock Market for Amateurs

Yahoo buys Del.icio.us

2005-12-11T09:02:00.000-08:00

Amoomoo has finally settled down

2005-12-11T09:01:00.000-08:00

Beef Bourguignon - French recipe - recipes & cooking tips

2005-12-04T03:57:00.000-08:00

Beef Bourguignon - French recipe - recipes & cooking tips

IMPORTANT: change of web site address, RSS feed and multiple blogs

2005-12-02T01:31:00.000-08:00

I have decided to split this blog into 4 different seperate blogs:

In addition, I write some Ruby On Rails snippets on Bill & Guy on Rails

all future posting will be done to the blogs above, please update your RSS feeds and bookmarks

Some people like to read about my stock market endeavours, but can't stand my recipes. Others are interested in my Web 2.0 thoughts, but don't understand what's the point in stock market investing when you are as poor as myself.

Technology & Nostalgy

2005-11-25T12:30:00.000-08:00

Technology: Keeping Innovation Alive - The Hackathon

2005-11-23T05:27:00.000-08:00

Technology: Who needs tracking cookies and spyware? Not Google - they user Google analytics to track everything everywhere.

2005-11-15T06:39:00.000-08:00

Recipe: Egg – sunny side up – with a twist (of lemon)

2005-11-13T13:31:00.000-08:00

Technology: Guest appearance on "Bill & Guy on rails"

2005-11-03T22:53:00.000-08:00

Google web accelerator – accelerating my anger levels.

2005-10-31T02:48:00.000-08:00

Technology: MacOSx and Microsoft

2005-10-24T16:28:00.000-07:00

Technology: Flock

2005-10-23T14:23:00.000-07:00

Technology: MacOSX – When the Tiger bites- Linux+Windows=MacOSX

2005-10-21T04:18:00.000-07:00

Microsoft, Yahoo Instant-Message cross talk

2005-10-13T04:56:00.000-07:00

happy happy happy

2005-10-08T16:56:00.000-07:00

happy happy happy
Originally uploaded by GuyTv.

taken in japantown, SF

Stocks: Portfolio update - Tenaris

2005-10-05T13:42:00.000-07:00

The past two days – Tenaris has gone from almost $145 to $130, hitting on my stop loss mark of 10%. Others would hold it 5% more. Remember: "In Wall Street - Pigs get slaughtered".
Still much more difficuly for me to know when to sell, rather than when to buy.

Overall – it was a great ride. From $69 to $130 in exactly 5 months (to the day).

Tags: stock market, portfolio , TS

Stocks: Tenaris (TS) climbs on

2005-09-28T07:31:00.000-07:00

You might have read here, that I bought Tenaris (TS) on May 5th, at $69.
Today, TS has reached $138.
Now, if you follow rational or growth investing techniques, you might want to take some money off the table - reduce your total holding back to its value about 50%-60% ago.

But, if you’re following Nicolas Darvas’ strategy, you might want to buy MORE of this stock just about now.

My gut feeling tells me that I need to buy more of this stock - but - I have no funds left - I am all in-the market.

Tags: stock market, portfolio , TS

Journal: Pictures from Sri-Lanka and India

2005-09-27T04:12:00.000-07:00

Some pictures from better times, when Lilach and myself were travelling in India and Sri-Lanka. I get the travelling itch twice a year, every year: autumn and spring.

Tags: Pictures, Journal entry

Recipe: Romanian Lebanese fusion of Baba Ghanush – eggplant salad

2005-09-25T13:37:00.000-07:00

Take two mid-sized egg plants – just put them on the stove’s open fire. Make sure you turn them around every once in a while. After about 5-7 minutes, they will tare and smell the whole house of wonderful roasting eggplant. Give them more time, until their peel is all cracked up.

Let the eggplants cool off.

Peel the eggplants.

Put them (without the thorn) into a big plate, where you’re going to made the Baba-Ghanush. To the plate, add 2-3 tablespoons of Tahini, salt, pepper, Squeeze in 2 big juicy lemons, 4-6 crushed garlic tooth.

Using a fork, mice the eggplants, mix them well with all other ingredients. You’ll have the salad ready in 1 minute of good mixing.

Now is the “West meets East” part of the dish, the twist. Romanians make their eggplant salad with Mayonnaise while in the mid-east, it is being done with Tahini.
Being a offspring of fusion of Romania and Lebanon, I now add a good tablespoon of Mayonnaise into the ball, and mix well. See how the color changes to be lighter.

Put the ball in the fridge, let it cool, and let all the ingredients love each other.

Tags: Cooking, recipes, vegetarian, salad

Recipe: End-of-Summer Salad

2005-09-22T13:52:00.000-07:00

The summer is officialy over. From my window to the Jaffa sea, I can smell the winds of autumn, hear the waves breaking on the old port's wall. The sun's path is lower. The birds are different. My neighbours are preparing their houses to the furious sea-borne winds and rain that winter shall surely bring.

This salad has it all: the colors and tastes of summer, along with the darker wetter feel of the forthcoming winter. Just the salad to go with your autumn mood. I first made it in Lilach’s old house in Neve-Zedek, about two-three years ago.

Ingredients

Lettuce leaves – torn by hands

2 cucumbers (small American, regular Mediterranean) cut to thin sticks

Pecan nuts - crushed. easy crush tip: put them in a plastic baggy, and pound them with whatever you want (a glass?).

Rockford cheese - grounded

Steamed Asparagus, cut in rings

2 slices of mango cut in small cubes

1 small avocado cut to cubes

Dressing
Lemon, vinegar, sesame seeds, Za'atar (Majorana syriaca) (if you can’t get the real thing – don’t use a substitute), salt, ground black pepper, sesame oil

Nature has so many textures tastes and colors. The less you touch it, the tastier the dish gets. Handle everything lightly.

Tags: recipes, salad, vegetarian

Stocks: SFCC downgraded by Robert Baird

2005-09-21T07:19:00.000-07:00

SFCC downgraded today by analyst Robert W. Baird from outperform to neutral. Stock weakened 4% on early trading today, but still above breakout price. As always, I am going to keep my position unless it dives below 7%. This “feel the water” buy might prove a false breakout. Or maybe not?

Tags: stock market, portfolio , SFCC

Journal: My Music station

2005-09-21T06:07:00.000-07:00

Next time you feel like listening to some good electronics big beat with touches of 90` check out my radio station. It’s a cool listening experience while you work with your computer, you geek.

Other than that, you can start your own radio station using Yahoo! LaunchCast. You rate a number of albums / genres / artists. The radio plays, and you rate the music you hear. (I use yahoo messenger to listen to my station). As you rate the music the radio station brings more relevant songs for you to hear. I have already rated about 640 songs, albums and artists. Here is my station’s home-page.
Enjoy.

Tags: journal, music, web2.0

Mink Coat anyone?

2005-09-21T01:07:00.000-07:00

Daddy, daddy, where does mink coats come from?

ATTENTION: The video is very difficult to watch. don’t play it if you have low tolerance to violence. You might end up loosing sleep over it.
http://www.strasbourgcurieux.com/fourrure/

The video did not play on my Firefox, but only on MS-IE.

M.F. Flicker picture

2005-09-17T02:08:00.000-07:00

M.F.
Originally uploaded by Babsi Jones.

Smoke up, people of the world!
Smoke up

Pictures, Journal Entry

Analysts moving the market (BIDU)

2005-09-15T01:15:00.000-07:00

For those of you who have read previous post about BAIDU, might remember I said it is a “Very risky, gamble like position” because there's not enough accessible information (technical or fundamental).
Well, apparently – when there’s not enough information – people tend to listen to analysts.

Baidu has soared 36% in the previous three trading days, following a Morgan Stanley coverage of the stock. The night before last, Goldman Sachs and Piper Jaffray started coverage of BAIDU with “underperform” – the stock plummeted a wowing 28% yesterday, and pre-market trading indicates this trend might persist today.

My position on BIDU is still in the OK zone, and I am going to hold to it, unless it’s going to dip below -7%.

Tags: stock market, portfolio, BIDU

Google Blog Search Released

2005-09-14T05:59:00.000-07:00

Google has publicly released blogsearch.google.com today a search facility for blog postings.

As always the search is fast, and provide high quality results. Interestingly enough, indexing is done by reading the blog’s RSS feeds every time a ping is sent to weblogs.com, and not by conventional web crawling.

User’s can also use this search through search.blogger.com and through the blogger dashboard (for people with blogger.com accout).

Subscribe to search results with RSS
Also one can use RSS to subscribe for specific search results! Your RSS reader will inform you everytime someone has used the “search term” you are subscribed to, within their blog post.

Neat.

Blogger.com going portal?
On the same lines, the new blogger.com homepage includes a scrolling window of updated blogs, a "blog of the day". Is google trying to kill technorati? why shouldn't it - it will probably do a better job at it as it is. When will they introduce tagsearch.google.com - a search engine to search everything that is tags? flickr, 43place, 43things, RawSugar, delicious, yummy, MyTube, etc... ?

Tags: Google, Blogs, technology

BUY SFCC Feel the water

2005-09-12T12:42:00.000-07:00

SFCC (homepage) has broken its cup-with-handle base that formed end of February.
A clinical research / drug company.

Fundumental:
A reasonable growth stock, operating in a medium sector (3% over the index in past month). – 77% 3 years sales rate, 3 years EPS as 42%. Solid. No PR / news.

Techincal
Its breakout point was 42.24 which broke on Sep/9 (Friday) with a big volume – as needed. I am buying a “feel the water” lot – to start seeing if it behaves as expected.
If it does, I’ll increase my hold at around +5%, if it does not, I’ll cover my losses at -7%.

Gut feeling: none. Wait and see what happens. The market is hot – there were no distribution days for over a week now, why not go into a new position?

Tags: stock market, investing, SFCC

BAIDU (BIDU) Chinese stock of the day

2005-09-12T07:29:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Shay asked me of my opinion of Baidu – a Chinese company that has recently gone public and created a lot of buzz as it takes Google’s market share in China.
A brief research of this company got me to a conclusion that I can’t say anything interesting about it since it has a very short market track-record.

During the last couple of weeks, there was a big fuss about Google snatching Microsoft’s ex-VP in charge of Chinese related strategy. If you read the buzz, two things become clear:

both Google and Microsoft are eager to get into the Chinese market (surprise surprise)

Microsoft has troubles getting into the Chinese market.

Google might have troubles getting into the Chinese market.

These convinced me to take a gamble, and buy a bit of BIDU stock. Four days later, BIDU rallied, and I was +5%, and decided to double my holding, realizing that this is a blind bet, and I was to monitor this position closely, and cut my losses at first sign of trouble. It’s a very risky, gamble-like position.

Today, BAIDU has jumped over +12% (at the time of writing).

Here are my past BIDU transactions.
In the future, if you would like me to post whenever I go into a new position, or out of an existing position, please drop me a line, or leave a comment to this post.

Old BIDU transactions:

08/26/2005 Bought 10 BIDU @ 80.23
08/30/2005 Bought 15 BIDU @ 82.99 -
09/09/2005 Bought 25 BIDU @ 88.88

Current BIDU price: 109.20 (~ +27%)

Tags: stock market, investing, guide, howto, BIDU

Ruby on Rails – a real gem

2005-09-09T01:24:00.000-07:00

Last night I got back from a friend’s bachelor’s party only to discover my better half performing a topological improbable feat: with all of her 1.59m (5.2foot) she managed to somehow place her perfect body on our 2.10m by 1.60m bed in such a way that I would not have any place to lie down where all my body parts are placed on the mattress. I bet Dijkstra would love to see that in action.

That served as a perfectly sound excuse for sitting at the computer at 2am, wading through the endless picture stream of flickr. Since I wasn’t drunk enough - I developed the urge to write a little web program that will use flickr API to search through flickr for all pictures tagged with a specific term, and then post the set of pictures results to a blog using the Blogger API .

I then came across flickr.rb – a ruby interface to Flickr. One thing led to another, with a little help from RawSugar search I have found this great ruby on rails tutorial from the wonderful people of ONLamp.

Now, I’ve seen a framework or two in my life, but it has been quite a while since I found myself laughing at loud with great joy seeing how easy it could be to develop a web based applications. It was even more pleasant to see that an “inherently complex” problem is solved in such an elegant way just by keeping the number of problem variables to the minimum by using convention over configuration.

The same principals that make UNIX an incredible operation system for programmers are used by Rails to make it an incredible framework for web application developers: Connecting many small & simple components through a convention-based scheme to create a powerful, flexible, extensible and timeless system. KISS and all that jazz.

It reminded me of the MAGIC application generator. By using it one can develop a database application quickly and bug free. The secret is that the program flow is fixed (predefined) allowing well defined extension points. That’s the approach with Rails also – everything is nailed down for you – from the file structure up to database interaction, you just write the real important stuff. It is easy, fast, rewarding, and produces higher quality code.

It felt like being 9 years old again, discovering the power of the Plot and Draw commands in legendary ZX Spectrum’s genius basic.

Let me finish off with a couple of Dijkstra's quotes that appear in Wikipedia’s article referred above:

"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim."

"Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes."

Tags: programming, ruby, rails

Microsoft web search vs Google - download plugin for mozilla firefox

2005-09-08T04:19:00.000-07:00

Recently, whenever Google fails to find what I look for, I try the same search on MSN search. In many cases, I found the latter to provide better, more suitable results.
That’s right. MSN search providea better results than Google.
Yet, converting the masses from Google to MSN using just a “sometimes slightly better search” is not enough. Microsoft will have to come with something much better than that.

For a more accessible comparison with MSN, go here to install the MSN Web search pluging for firefox and mozilla.

You are using Firefox, right?

Tags: Google, Microsoft, search engines, Mozilla , Firefox, plugins, comparison

Pictures for Bella's afternoon walk

2005-09-05T14:31:00.000-07:00

Here are a couple of photographs I tool today when I went out with Bella for her daily walk in the Jaffa old port.

Tags: jaffa, pictures

RECIPE – stock fundamentals – investing in companies providing services to a booming industry – how-to guide

2005-09-04T08:56:00.000-07:00

All companies operate in markets. Every company has supplier companies, facilitator-companies and service companies feeding on its ability to grow its business.
When you identify a company with extraordinary growth, it sometime may be too late for you to buy stock, as its stock technical analysis might not reveal any good pivot points and sound bases. When confronted with this – try looking for companies that “feed off” the success.

I first encountered this with synaptics (SYNA), a company that manufacturers touch pads for laptops and hand-held devices. The important thing to note, is that this company had a contract with Apple, to supply the successful iPods touch-pads. Naturally, the booming iPod sales had drove Synaptics stock price to the roof.

A lesson learnt, and, to be honest – later applied by me without intent.

SYNA (blue) and AAPL (olive) Jul 03 -Dec 2004 - both price grow over 200%.

During the last year, the oil prices sky rocket. There are many quoted reasons for that – although I must say none of them strike me as being the real reason for the oil prices jump. Personally, I feel that somehow, the surging oil prices are the way in which gulf region oil producing countries get back at the all mighty US. That’s my take on the matter, although – it might be hindered by my prolonged existence in the Middle-East.

I first got acquainted with Tenaris (NYSE:TS) through MSN’s strategy lab’s Viviam Lewis. Tenaris is a foreign company manufacturing pipes for the gas and oil industry. The two key points are: Foreign, and oil-industry.

Here is a chart for the crewed oil prices 2004 to date:

Source: http://futures.tradingcharts.com/chart/CO/W

Being a foreign company, Tanaris is conceived as a company less likely to get affected by events in Iraq or the U.S and is based in a fast-growing market – definitive strong points.

The war in Iraq, along with the surging oil prices, has driven expedited development of oil-fields and the need for transferring oil to, from and within fields has grown extensively.
Tenaris to Oil like Synaptics to Apple.

I bought TS on May 05, 2005 for 69.00, purchased a same lot (doubled my holdings) on 20 June 2005 @ 77.85, summing up to a total price of 73.42 a pop. Here is the graph of the stock from that time on.

Graph generated from marketwatch.com using their java based charting tool.

Interesting enough, this was a “by the book” position, as the technical analysis was just right: on May 05, TS broke out from a “cup with handle” base, on an extremely large volume.

These days, I am +60% (price @ 118) in the money – trying to decide weather I should try and sit out the 10-15% pullback which I expect to develop, or just move to cash right now.

Any suggestions?

Tags: stock market, investing, guide, howto

Frankfurt airport

2005-09-03T11:58:00.000-07:00

well, well well,
the flight from hell.

Departed San Francisco on Friday 2pm yesterday - a long time ago. Flew to Chicago with Universal Airlines. I have two words for you: "don't fly with them". After a considerable delay, got to Chiacgo, fly to Frankfurt with Lufthansa. I've got two words for you "why can't Universal be like Lufthansa?".
Anyway, got to Frankfurt at around 13:30, My flight to Tel-Aviv only leaving at 22:35. I was tired, and did not feel good. The flight somehow messed with my ear-based balance system - which had some bugs lately.
I just needed to put my head somewhere - and sleep.
The only hotel accessible was the in-airport Sheraton - which was over priced, and kicked me out of the room at 19:30, or they double my charge.
I've got two words for them "I wish for the Sheraton CEO to need desperate sleep and only have Sheraton to help him out".
Here I am in the airport, talking to Lilach on Skype.
Just wanted to share.

TechCrunch on RawSugar

2005-08-28T23:24:00.000-07:00

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

2005-08-28T20:20:00.000-07:00

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

2005-08-28T08:47:00.000-07:00

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

2005-08-27T20:43:00.000-07:00

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

RECIPE - Nantes butter cream sauce

2005-08-21T11:20:00.000-07:00

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

2005-08-18T16:21:00.000-07:00

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

2005-08-14T02:25:00.000-07:00

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

2005-08-14T02:20:00.000-07:00

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 naÃ¯ve. 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 clichÃ© - those who stand still - go backwards.

Visual Recipes - Community of Cooking Enthusiasts

2005-07-15T23:02:00.000-07:00

Now that's an idea.

Ajax resources - tutorial, reference, howto, index

2005-07-15T07:35:00.000-07:00

My Ajax resources page, published using RawSugar collections.

The return of animated GIFs

2005-07-15T07:22:00.000-07:00

Back in 1996, there was this new invention that allowed using animation is web sites. Those were the days were the default website background was gray. Now its white. There were a couple of years that black really was the backgroun color to have on your site - but that was soon changed. Microsoft Explorer has taken the browser wars, and with it - the non-white background web dies.

It's funny, as animated gifs were forgotten, stored away on dusty hard drives in all corners of cyber-space.

The MSN messenger 6 allows defining shortcuts to display animated gifs. These gifs, when recieved as messages, can be added to the recipient "emoticons list", and then sent to others.
Most people do not know they can add any animated gif to their emoticons list, so they relay on others to send them over, and pass them on.

Recent couple of months - I am witnessing the rivaval of animated gifs, as those are being sent to me (and from me) to all, as a form of virus. They spread quick. Especially the fat laughing kid, which to tell you the truth is a bit sad. Not to mention the "sexy" sometime pornographic ones that I often get from a gay friend of mine.

Funny how things have their day in the sun, then forgot forever, and suddenly, with no forseeable reason, make their return with vengence.

Take the letter 'w' on your keyboard for instance. How often was it used before the web came on? rarely. and now? it is being clicked by millions of people around the world, www this and www that. The letter 'w' is now a proud member of the popular kids on the keyboard. So in @ which, when growing up, seemed to me so odd, placed on the keyboard, with no apparent reason to use it. I used to have a "british pound" sign on my old Sinclair spectrum. It did not make the cut. @ survived, while the pound sign is dead. They now call the # character pound. Sir claive sinclair is probably pissed off.

a pissed off Sir.

BillSaysThis

2005-07-14T21:08:00.000-07:00

I have just added the technorati embed code to this blog, and found that a co-worker in RawSugar found this blog and posted a link to it.
So - I do the same here, let's see if he finds out about it.

WTG, kemosabe!

RawSugar - Social Search

2005-07-14T02:43:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, RawSugar introduced a preview version of its new "Social Search" site.
as this becomes a rapidly growing market nitch, with many players, RawSugar has some significant winning features on site, and many in store for next releases.

This version is still rough, and probably not usable by the average "internet joe", but by "internet savvy" people.

To get a taste, check out my restaurants collection. This is a search/browse collectino of restaurants, click on the "all..." menu to see all of my different tagged categories for various restaurants.

Also interesting point of browsing, is the "recently tagged pages" list, which can provide a good starting point for a recreational search session, where you want to find things that you're didn't know you're looking for.

Enjoy.
Post suggestions, rants and raves to the forum

PORTFOLIO update

2005-07-11T07:44:00.000-07:00

well, it certainly been the best weeks I had in the market for months.

My current portfolio status:

BSTE	-8.32%
CNC	+11.62%
FCBP	+2.44%
SIRI	+22.56%
TS	+21.92%

defenately nice gains for many of the stocks.

One thing I miss is buying HANS @ $67 on May 5th, and selling it for 72.88 on June 3. True - I had a +8.8% on it, but HANS is now $92.75.

well, you know what they say: "In Wall Street, pigs get slaughtered"

recipe - pad thai w/ tofu

2005-07-11T00:37:00.000-07:00

tags: tofu recipe cooking vegetarian

this a a very good pad thai recipe, I prepared yesterday, when Lilach was hungry and wanted to thai food.
My Recipe in intended for people with some culinary creativity sense. I don't give any exact quantities (unless its for baking and deserts, where its a must).

Ingredients

3-4 tablespoons of dried shripms
4 dried or fresh thai chillies (the small red ones or (second choice) small green ones
about 250grams medium or hard tofu
4 Kfir lime dried leaves
2 little stalks of lemon grass
about a tablespoon full of shrip paste
a handful of nuts
3 lemons
salt
sweet chilli sauce (I use Mae Ploy brand)
soy sauce (kikoman is the preffered brand)
sweet plum sauce
1 pack of rice noodles
1 big carrot
some seseame or other oil (not olive oil this time, love)
a tablespoon (a bit more, actually) of pal sugar
6-7 chives
coriander leaves

Preparation

The goodies

put the dried shrimps, shrip paste, chllies, palm sugar, kfir lime, lemon grass into a container, squeeze about 1/2 of lemon inside (a big shaker is the best for this purpose)
pour some boiling water into the container, and steer well, to get the palm sugar melting, the dried ingredients suck some juices in.
Cut the tofu into small (1cmx1cm) cubes, and put them into the container
add some salt, pour in a good amount of soy sauce
cut the chives into small rings.
grater the carrot

The Rice noodles

boil some water in a pot wide enough to put the rice noodles inside without breaking them.
after the water are boiling, take the pot off the fire, put the rice noodles inside
steer gently, and taste periodically. after about 3 minutes the rice noodles will become "al dante" - they won't have the "ricey" taste to them anymore, but still have a hard bite to them. don't let them get too soft! when they're ready, drain them out of the pot, and rinse them under running water to take all rice starch out - and prevent them of becoming sticky.

Wokking everything together

heat up a wok on large flame
put a genearous amoung of seaseme oil inside
put the carrot slices inside, and steer breifly
put the noodles inside, but not in one batch, but taking a handful at a time, to "air them up" and make some room for all the goodies you are about to add.
pour in all of the goodies - a nice sauce with all those great goodies inside.
toss all the ingredients in the Wok for a couple of minutes
add some more sweet chillli sauce
add some sweet plum sauce (really just a touch - about 2-3 tea spoons)
squeeze an additional big lemon into this great smelling wok.
as you fry everything up - add some more soy sauce - the noodles should not be white, but have a brownish color to them.
after about 5-7 minutes of frying (depends on the size of your Wok and the heat of your fire), turn the flame off

Garnish and Serving (for two)

put a mount of the delicious pad-thai on two plates
sprinkle a very very genearous amount of chopped coriander leaves on top of each plate
sprinke a very very ver ygenearous amount of ground peanuts on top of each plate. you can't really go overboard with the coriander and peanuts - they have to be abound.
cut a slice of lemon, and put on the side of the plate for further appling of lemon by the happy bastard who's gonna eat this dish.
Serve
smile
make love
do the dishes
take the garbage out

First POST

2005-07-08T07:35:00.000-07:00

Stock market fun

I have been playing the market since the beggining of the year, after a long period of time I was involved in writing and implementing day-trading models for Radial LLC.

I found that to be a successful trader (yes - I know I am not - but still I am not doing bad) - one needs to have character attributes of the same kind that might help one being a successful enterpraneur.
* Presaverence
* Being passionate about what you do but keep your mind cool
* Continuing learning and curiousity.