HD1s Personal weblog

I strongly believe that the devil (or God -- no not Alan Shearer) lies in details. Details like a changed word in a speech can give a clue as to true desires. This is true, especially for politicians. Obama's recent reversal of words from "insurance reform" to "healthcare reform", so fellow readers, fear not, the American variety of NHS is not yet dead.

About time, the People's History of the United States is now online at History is a Weapon. Will read and review it, sometime in the not-so-near future. :)

Lifehacker tells us how to pick locks. Apparently, the most trivial approach is "The easiest approach is to grab a paperclip and tension wrench. If you don't have a tension wrench handy, a very small hex key (roughly the same diameter as the paperclip) will do in a pinch". You can get your own hex key at Amazon for $10~$20.

According to our mayor, the great Boris Johnson:

BSME event at City Hall last night still makes me laugh. Boris on why London is better than NYC: it doesn't need a fruit as a brand. Genius.

When I first moved to San Francisco, my aunt insisted I get a rice cooker (apparently, it's a requirement of all South Asians in America, which she is and assumed I would be as well). So I did, and it currently lives on top of my refrigerator and hasn't been used since purchase. This may soon change, as lifehacker and the New York Times have conspired to make me use it. When I do, I fully intend to thank my aunt, but that would mean calling her, and I lost her number, oh well.

Lifehacker announces that uTorrent has been upgraded to version 2.0. I found the upgrade a little tricky though. The application is running while my netbook is on, and so whenever I clicked on it, the app would pop up. Apparently, you need to explicitly quit the app and then run the installer after.

Dumb Little Man writes a few ways to improve your mood. This is a rather long bit, so my summary does not do it justice. I do recommend clicking through. Regardless, I know some of you are too busy to read anything more than a numbered list, so here you are:

1. Indulge in a 15-minute massage
2. Cancel an engagement that troubles you
3. Spend 10 minutes doing something you've always loved
4. Book a treat for yourself
5. Write a 5-point business plan for your pet idea
6. Get outdoors

Len Edgerly, on the 80^th episode of his podcast, was musing on Wall Street reacted to Steve Jobs' announcement of the iPad. I wanted to offer my own analysis of both Amazon and Apple's stock price on the day.

Before I start, though, I must issue a disclaimer. I own neither Amazon or Apple stock. I do own a 1^st edition Kindle and an iPod Touch, along with a Macbook Pro. Neither stock is in my team's portfolio and I don't analyse either.

First, Amazon, which according to Google Finance, was up almost 3%. The next day, it was to announce quarterly earnings, which were up 71% year-over-year. Earnings periods traditionally feature a run-up before the announcement with a drop following it. So I'm thinking that a large part of the gain is the pre-earnings runup and not due to this announcement. Given that the previous quarter earnings report featured a 1% gain in the price and gain of just under 3% in the final day of the year on year quarter from last year (4Q, 2008). Again, approximately the same amount. So I'm tempted to conclude that the effect of the iPad on Amazon's stock was negligible.

Now we'll examine Apple, which was up approximately 1.1% on January 24. Apple's earnings aren't due till March, so the earnings impact can be assumed to be nonexistent. It wasn't triple-witching either, nor were options expiring and 1% up or down is not that big a move. An hour-by-hour examination of the stock chart shows that it shot up approximately 2% the minute that Steve Jobs announced the iPad, before resuming its normal pattern, of tracking the market index.

I'm tempted to conclude that traders do not think the iPad is going to threaten Amazon very much, at least at first glance. What would be a more interesting study to conduct is what happens when the iPad with 3G actually ships in April, just in time for Apple's earnings.

I could have sworn that I saw Idiocracy on Netflix's Instant watch queue, but it disappeared soon as I added it. Fail on you, Netflix!