Innately Index Me

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This morning Andy Parkinson pointed to his Innate Index project. And since narcissism is the perfect way to start a Monday, I indexed myself.

That’s the graph above.

“The Innate Index is a brief personality inventory based on the five factor personality model that has been shown to be associated with a variety of school, life, career and relationship success outcomes. The Innate Index is intended to provide you with information about key aspects of your personality and style.”

That’s nice and while self-reporting can provide satisfying results – it’s one of the least accurate methods of reporting. So, I’m very pleased to see Innate Index make it easy for others to index you.

Yes – Innate Index makes it easy for your friends and fans to rate your personality, with a simple link to 45 multiple choice questions.

I’m intrigued. If you are as well – innately index me.

Please Exit the Silo in a Calm and Orderly Fashion

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In my world – Twitter and Facebook streams seem to be slowing down, while I’m hearing rumors of more people “using” both services – it’s not translating to me seeing new faces. Hell, I’m even seeing fewer familiar faces.

And half expecting to hear Whit Stillman‘s next project is titled “Social Network”.

Not a bad thing. Scenes change. The exciting pieces turn bland.

We know that. One of the first social networks – Geocities, launche in 1994, recently closed down. Five years from now it could easily be – Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, FourSquare, or Tumblr.

“I can’t blame Myspace, YouTube, Facebook or any of these sites for creating such a genius trap. I mostly blame myself for relying on these things like everyone else has for so long.” – Brian, musician

“But we don’t have NEA1 with Twitter, and that’s why tweeting is starting to stagnate, and developers like Dave are working on getting past it.” – Doc Searls

1. Nobody owns them, Everybody can use them and Anybody can improve them

Mental Exercise: Armored Trucks

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Sitting in traffic yesterday, an armored Dunbar truck drove by in the other lane – not unlike the one in the photo above.

All I know about armored trucks is that carry cash. Everything I know about cash is that it’s going digital (debit cards / automated deposits & withdrawals, etc). At some point I suspect the demand for armored trucks to transport cash will be nearly non-existent.

In that world – what would they transport?

Best I could come up with: database servers loaded terabytes of archival financial data.

Then it struck me: servers only have value when plugged in and turned on.

Disconnect something from the internet – and it’s value inherently falls, say, 90%.

If the inverse is true – put an asset on the internet and its value increases 10x – I’m even less concerned about a shrinking manufacturing sector.

I am however still searching for how armored trucks could serve us when all currency goes digital.

Any ideas?

New$$

I grabbed a coffee with Matt Thompson last week to catch up.

Since then – something he said about the challenges of financing news organizations kept rolling through my head. I’m paraphrasing: ‘pick the website of a major news organization – look at the headlines and stories – which ones will you pay for?’

That’s the problem.

He expands on the idea in this transcript from his talk at the Twin Cities Media Alliance.

“…of course people pay four bucks for a cup of coffee. They can’t imagine getting through a day without it. The product is that valuable to them. When [news organizations are] producing something so consistently valuable our communities can’t imagine going a day without it, I suspect we’ll be able to feed ourselves.” – Matt Thompson

Prediction: Dow 12k By End of Year

The Dow hit a 13-month high today closing at 10,226.94.

A 200+ point rally today.

While I’m still concerned about the 100+ point fluctuations in Dow’s daily closings, I’m confident we’ll close 2009 by recovering the ground lost in October 2008.

That’s 1800 points in 7 weeks, ~30 trading days, an average of 60 points per day.

It’ll take work and – given the volatility of the market these past couple weeks – the absence of any slightly unfortunate news1. As I mentioned in my last prediction – I see the Dow undervalued below 12k.

1. While I’m confident we’ll hit 12k in the next few weeks, I’m not confident that everything to guarantee it is currently priced in. That’s why this is a prediction. 🙂

2010: The Great Restart

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I could stare at this image all day. Continually riding its roller coaster in my head – watching geo-political events, holidays, elections, and family gatherings, all unfold.

Whether we call it the Great Recession or the Great Nominal Spending Crash1 – I don’t think we’ve seen the interesting part yet. I predict a dramatic recovery & acceleration. The Restart.

A couple recent graphs I’m using as the basis for this prediction:

Dow Jones Industrial Average Nov. 2008 – Nov. 2009
DJIA Nov 2008 - 2009

10 Year Nominal-Real Treasury Spread Now at 2%
ISM Index: Strong V-Shaped Recovery Underway

My interest in economics was sparked by Black Monday, 1987. Back when the Dow shed 800 points in 2 days – falling below 1800.

The 20 years since have brought some of the most significant advances in technology, communications, and overall quality of life (yes, pat yourself on the back). I fully expect the same looking forward.

1. Thanks to Alex Tabarrok @ Marginal Revolution for the tip.

Fitness Crossroad Group Fitness Calendar for iCal & Google Calendar

I rejoined the Fitness Crossroad, the neighborhood gym about a month ago and have yet to make it a regular part of my schedule.

In hopes of more quickly getting in a comfortable rhythm1 I’ve ported their Group Fitness Schedule PDF into a subscribe-able calendar (for iCal or Google Calendar).

If you’re in the area and have the same need – here’s the link for your calendar: Fitness Crossroad Group Fitness Calendar

1. As an additional incentive – I’ve committed to burning >1300 calories each week between now and January.

Sphinx Config Problem on OS X Leopard 10.5.8

I bumped into a very strange bug trying to compile Sphinx on OS X Leopard today.

After running ./configure for Sphinx 0.9.8-rc2, things looked good until:

configure: error: cannot run C compiled programs. .

Then nothing.

Now, I’m positive that my computer is advanced enough to run C compile programs. So I peaked into the resulting config.log and noticed:

...Bad CPU type in executable...

Turns out Sphinx defaults to compiling for 64bit machines and, well, my MacBook Pro isn’t.

Changing the configure flags to 32bit mode fixed it:

./configure CFLAGS="-O -arch i386" CXXFLAGS="-O -arch i386" LDFLAGS="-arch i386" --disable-dependency-tracking

Thanks to schmeeve over at d27n for the tip.

After running: make; sudo make install, remember to create a sphinx.conf file:

cd cd /usr/local/etc
sudo cp sphinx.conf.dist sphinx.conf

Then run sudo searchd to run Sphinx or for ThinkingSphinx:

ts:config
ts:index
ts:start

My Bread (Year 2)

Over the weekend, I tried out a new bread book – My Bread: The Revolutionary No-Work, No-Knead Method, by Jim Lahey.

Lahey’s basic recipe is very similar to the basic Artisan Bread 5 Minutes a Day recipe in I’ve been working with for a year now.

The biggest difference is the cooking method – in a pre-heated covered dish at a slightly higher temp vs. placing a small dish of water in the oven and cooking at a slightly lower temp.

Same ‘baking with steam’ concept, without the loaf shaping.

The result is a gorgeous loaf with a fantastically crunchy crust and a slightly less custardy interior.

My Bread