This is definitely behind the times, but for all those people who like me have been living under a rock, check out the new Nintendo Wii. Its so cool that it redefines cool! If you know me, you'd know that I hate normal controllers, as I'm just completely unco at them. However this thing appears to be far more easier to use and understand.
And you can use it as a sword and beat people with it! (At least in the game). This is what I was thinking. And theres a little add on which you connect to the controller and it turns it into basically a numchuck... awesome!
But seriously, what bright apple in marketing thought of using a name like Wii for the console. Like I know Revolution doesn't have a snappy 3 letter acronym like the PS3 or 360, but surely you can do better than that. Maybe the GC2 :D
Sunday, April 30, 2006
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Excel or How crunch the numbers to suit your needs
I've been playing a lot with Excel lately. And by a lot I mean, it seems suck about 2 hours of my day every day for 3 days. And its nothing really constructive or impressive. I'm number crunching how I'm going to survive the next year or two given my questionable cash flow problems.
I do this via what I like to call a monthly cost schedule. On the vertical, I place the months-years. The first column after that is the events (for example build house, get renter, get salary increase. The next few are opening bank balance, salary, rental, tax, repayments and expenses. Finishes with net income and the closing cash balance. Sounds reasonable right? Seems to cover what I need to know...right?
The problem is I don't necessarily know whats correct or not, and whats reasonable and whats not. The great thing is Excel can tell me exactly what I want to believe based on the information I give it. The house will be built EXACTLY in six months like they say. Sure lets bring the rental and tax relief forward a few months. The car will cause 150$ in tax relief, sure lets cut tax by that much. I love it! I WANT to believe I can afford this, and this plan won't leave me scraping for the remaining out of a can of spam spam spammity spam spam
SHUTUP!
Diversion aside, the reality is this seriously a pile of crock. The reality of things is never that straight forward. When one is living on the bread-line as it maybe, its a dangerous game. I could be always solvent and on several grand by Oct 08, or be on -13,000$ by Oct 08, all depending on what happens. The latter isn't really that impossible to envisage. All you need is shitty tax relief and a bad renter and you've got an situation where there isn't really an easy way out.
However... using sensitivity analysis which I ALSO did in Excel, I should be perfectly right due to the relative spread of probabilities. After all, excel doesn't lie...
I do this via what I like to call a monthly cost schedule. On the vertical, I place the months-years. The first column after that is the events (for example build house, get renter, get salary increase. The next few are opening bank balance, salary, rental, tax, repayments and expenses. Finishes with net income and the closing cash balance. Sounds reasonable right? Seems to cover what I need to know...right?
The problem is I don't necessarily know whats correct or not, and whats reasonable and whats not. The great thing is Excel can tell me exactly what I want to believe based on the information I give it. The house will be built EXACTLY in six months like they say. Sure lets bring the rental and tax relief forward a few months. The car will cause 150$ in tax relief, sure lets cut tax by that much. I love it! I WANT to believe I can afford this, and this plan won't leave me scraping for the remaining out of a can of spam spam spammity spam spam
SHUTUP!
Diversion aside, the reality is this seriously a pile of crock. The reality of things is never that straight forward. When one is living on the bread-line as it maybe, its a dangerous game. I could be always solvent and on several grand by Oct 08, or be on -13,000$ by Oct 08, all depending on what happens. The latter isn't really that impossible to envisage. All you need is shitty tax relief and a bad renter and you've got an situation where there isn't really an easy way out.
However... using sensitivity analysis which I ALSO did in Excel, I should be perfectly right due to the relative spread of probabilities. After all, excel doesn't lie...
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
The beginning of another beginning...
"The blog was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of the InterWeb. But it was a beginning"
You can tell a lot about anything from just first impressions. Judging by the cheap Robert Jordan WoT rip off there, you can tell this site will start well, then start to pad out to thousands of pages of tripe where you will want to kill everyone on this site. All in the sake of profit!
In theory this site is designed specificially for the purpose of pushing me to reflect on my progress on a personal and a technical level. And as with all blogs, it will be filled with enough rants and angst to fit several episodes of Daria . But come gentle reader as we hopefully start what will be a beautiful lasting relationship, or at the least a passioniate crazed romp in the backseat of the Internet.
You can tell a lot about anything from just first impressions. Judging by the cheap Robert Jordan WoT rip off there, you can tell this site will start well, then start to pad out to thousands of pages of tripe where you will want to kill everyone on this site. All in the sake of profit!
In theory this site is designed specificially for the purpose of pushing me to reflect on my progress on a personal and a technical level. And as with all blogs, it will be filled with enough rants and angst to fit several episodes of Daria . But come gentle reader as we hopefully start what will be a beautiful lasting relationship, or at the least a passioniate crazed romp in the backseat of the Internet.
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