var Bar,QClose,QOpen:integer;
var gap,Qgap:float;
QClose:=GetExternalSeries(’QQQQ’,#Close);
QOpen:=GetExternalSeries(’QQQQ’,#Open);

for Bar:=2 to BarCount-1 do
begin
Qgap:=100*(@QClose[Bar-1]-@QOpen[Bar])/@QClose
[Bar-1];
gap:= 100*(PriceClose(Bar-1)-PriceOpen(Bar))/
PriceClose(Bar-1);

if not LastPositionActive then
if (gap > 5) and (Qgap > 0.5) then
if PriceClose(Bar-1) BuyAtMarket(Bar,'');

if LastPositionActive then
SellAtStop(Bar+1,PriceClose(Bar),LastPosition,
'');
end;

The above script (code) encodes the following rules:

“Buy a stock when the stock is down the day before, QQQ is gapping down more than half a percent, and the stock is gapping down more than 5 percent.”

“Hold the stock at least until the next morning.”

“Sell when the stock goes lower than the prior day’s close.”

Without examining this language and the whole site in great detail (which I assure you gentle reader, I will be looking into this…) I gather that this script is run at the start and end of each trade day to determine what action should take place for a given stock. This is fantastic, it takes the emotional element out of stock trades. As anybody who has ridden a stock all the way to it being delisted just hoping that it will turn around, you know how important it is to have specific rational trading rules for when to sell and when to buy. ]]> http://www.evilsoft.org/2005/12/09/wealth-lab/feed 0 http://www.evilsoft.org/2005/05/31/on-surviving-p2p-usage http://www.evilsoft.org/2005/05/31/on-surviving-p2p-usage#comments Tue, 31 May 2005 18:37:25 +0000 metauser http://www.evilsoft.org/?p=14 Now I am not saying I use or advocate using P2P tools/networks for downloading anything other than say…Porn. But if you do perhaps indulge in a bit of the downloading… well check out PeerGuardian2. It blocks IP address for known monitoring agencies of P2P networks. Once agains the arms race heats up. Then again you could just use Waste and stop using the public networks all together.

• Easy to install (if like me you have a web server running linux. Gentoo makes installing mediawiki a breeze)
• You have access to it from anywhere, using anyone’s computer
• You don’t have to worry as much about losing your data. A server is easy to keep backed up. When is the last time *you* backed up your thumb drive?
• Rock solid – this is after all the software that runs the gigantic Wikipedia.
• Support for media – so I can upload related photos/drawings/other media and attach that to my notes.
• Lots of good patches are available, like the one I installed that lets you make pages private.
• Running this on a webserver means it’s simple to make any part of it accessible to other people – and you can give them accounts if you want to collaborate with people on an idea.

Course, now the software engineer in me wants to do all sorts of stuff with it, which is always dangerous. Ideas so far include finding a way to integrate it with Gallery, and writing a wiki that allows Game information to be stored in a wiki – with privledged accounts for referees/GMs, and accounts with lower permissions for players.

Hrm… Wonder if I can write a plugin for PCGen.

This strategy needed to meet the following criteria:

1. Quick and as easy as leaving the mail in a pile on one of my horizontal shit catchers.
2. Must be easy to find stuff if I need it in the future.
3. Needs to highlight action items

So after some thinking, I came up with a strategy that seems to be working pretty well a month later. You need the following items:

• A file box, preferably with a little container on the top to hold a sharpie and the file folder labels. Make sure it’s large enough to hold all your mail for a year – count on getting a new one every January
• Hanging file folders
• 1-2 Hanging file pockets
• A Magazine holder

Take the file folder, and set it somewhere that is easy to get to, preferably on the surface you currently toss your mail onto, so that you can leverage the existing habit. Set the magazine holder next to the file box. In the file box, you want a folder for each important subject, plus 1 hanging pocket for misc mail, and one more for receipts (if you want to store receipts as well). When you get home, toss any mail that you don’t want to deal with on top of the file box. When you are ready to deal with it, grab the mail and the file box, and then sort through the mail. You will likely want to file things related to certain subjects on their own (for me it’s mortgage, home owners association, and retirement accounts). All other mail either goes in the hanging pouch or gets thrown away when you are done with it. Many letters get tossed in unopened, but really, you should try to at least *look* at most of the mail that goes in the random mail pouch. Any things that are action items you toss into the magazine holder. If you want to keep receipts, toss them in their own hanging pouch.

The end result is that you have a box for each year with essentially everything that is important to that year in it, and you have no snail mail trails on your horizontal shit catchers.

• Clasp Envelopes
• A Sharpie
• Some sort of filing cabinet

I suspect the solution is fairly obvious based on the list of materials. With every item you purchase that has more then one related item (receipt, cables, instructions, etc) whip out a clasp envelope, write the name of the object on the face of the envelope, and then stick the whole thing in your filing cabinet/file box. This has a number of benefits. First off, it keeps everything that is related together, and these envelopes can normally fit everything that comes with most gadgets. Second, they are just over 8 1/2 x 11, so they can pretty much fit in any filing cabinet either as their own files, or in a thicker handing folder. Third, do you really need to fill your CD cases with a bunch of driver CDs that you use at most what? *maybe* two, three times….*ever*. Fourth when you are done with the object, this makes it really easy to sell/give it away/freecycle it.

Since I have started doing this, it’s really helped tame my office, hope it helps tame yours.

1. I happen to be a member of the camp of people who believe that Windows really should be re-installed ever 6-12 months. It frankly just gets to crufty, performance drops, errors increase, in general it just sucks after it’s been used for to long.
2. As a half and half Linux/XP user, windows in it’s default install is barely usable. I need at least Cygwin, Firefox, Putty and a handful of other apps; lest I tear open the case, snap the motherboard in half, and gouge out my eyes like a half crazed King Lear.
3. I like to run current software on the 3 XP pcs I use on a regular basis: Work, Home and Laptop – but if I install an update on one, I have a tendency to forget to install it on the others.

One piece of software has stepped in to fill much of the void waiting to be filled for these three issues: Subversion. Now, I realize it’s nothing new to check files into a version control repository, but Subverion is the first piece of free (as in beer, as well as in the Open Source meaning) software that doesn’t suck when applied to the problem of keeping track of one’s installers.

Setup of a server for subversion is fairly easy if you already have an apache server, but it can also run using the apache portable runtime, in pretty much any environment apache can run on, including windows. O’Reilly has even made it’s excellent book on configuring and using Subversion available for free on the web.

After getting the server set up on a system that you can access from most, if not all the computers you have to use, you will want to install TortoiseSVN. This app integrates with explorer, and it makes it bloody simple to check in files, update them, and pull them down elsewhere.

Figure 1: Subversion

So what I tend to do is I keep a directory tree of various types of software. Networking, Programming, Applications, Multimedia, etc. When I realize that an app is something I will want to keep installed (or when I download an update to something I already keep installed on all my boxen), I make a directory for it in my New Install folder, under the appropriate type, and then check it in. When I switch to a different computer, hit update, and bam – all my installers are updated to the current version with the added benefit that I can see what all I need to update on that computer based on which files TortoiseSVN says got updated. If I decide I no longer want to use a particular package, removal is easy, as is moving files around the directory structure (since Subversion actually supports renaming directories and files.)

Now, my three computers all basically keep the same environment, so I can sit down at any one of them and feel confident that I will have the tools I need.

Well, here is what you do:

1. You’re carrying a pen, right? If not, ask the waiter for one.
2. On the back of the reciept, write down each person’s credit card, and the total amount of cash put in.
3. Hand the waitperson the credit cards, and show them the receipt with the values for each card on them.
4. Ask them to bring that receipt back with the credit card slips so you can make sure the bill is totaled correctly.

The bills won’t get screwed up, the server will really appreciate it as it makes their job a little easier.

So first off, if you are not using Thunderbird for mail, you really should be. If you don’t have it, go out and download
it. Even if you don’t want to do that, you can still use it for RSS feeds. So first thing is first, you want to subscribe to a number of deal websites. So far the ones I have found that use RSS are:

• SlickDeals.net: http://slickdeals.net/rss.php
• Techbargains.com: http://www.techbargains.com/rss.xml
• eDealinfo.com: http://www.edealinfo.com/ddrss.xml
• dealnews.com (Thanks Rob): http://content.dealnews.com/dealnews/rss/todays-edition.xml
• Bensbargains.net (Thanks Jason): http://bensbargains.net/rss.xml
• Dealcatcher.com (Thanks Jason): http://www.dealcatcher.com/rss.asp
• xpBargains.com: http://www.xpbargains.com/rss.php
• Woot.com: http://rss.woot.com/feed.aspx
• passwird.com (Thanks Patrick): http://www.roosster.com/rstr/f/passwird/rss.xml
• Roosster.com (Thanks Ryan): (Tons of rss feeds, go there)
• Cheap Stingy Bastard (Thanks Jared): http://cheap.typepad.com/cheapster/index.rdf
• If you know of more that have RSS feeds, mail me and I’ll post them.

Finally, you will want to create a separate folder to filter the deals to. I called mine “Watched for deals”.

Figure 1: Thunderbird

After you have subscribed to these in Thunderbird, we are now going to set up some mail filters. This is the root of getting this to work for you. See Thunderbird lets you use the full power of it’s mail filtering on the blogs you subscribe to. So, go to Tools->Message Filters.

Figure 2: Thunderbird Filters

For each type of thing you are interested for, you will need to create one filter for each deal site you are subscribed to (unless you don’t use Thunderbird for other RSS feeds, then you only need one rule per ‘thing’) This is so that you don’t accidentally catch messages unrelated to deals in the filters. Inside the filter, you will want to do the following:

• Determining the text you are searching for. In the case of Figure 3, I’m looking for Dell deals.
• Hit the more button, and in the second filter, you want to select “Sender”. the text should be set to whatever is listed in the “Sender” column in the normal Thunderbird view (See Figure 1).
• Set the “For incoming messages that: radio button to “Match all of the following”
• Finally, you want to check the Move to folder checkbox, and then use the drop down to select your “watched for deals” folder

Figure 3: Editing a Filter

Now, instead of spending a bunch of time watching these sites, you only have to keep an eye on the “watched for deals” folder. If it’s ever bold, then it means there is something in the folder that is of interest to you.

Happy deal hunting.

April 22: Reader Billy noted: You could also use Thunderbird’s “Saved Searches” for this. Type in your search terms, tell it where to search, then click the “Save Search” button and create a virtual folder with your search results in it.