The new guy

We weren't sure what would happen when we brought the hound home. He had been surrendered as a stray last month at a shelter in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of East Liberty, so little was known about his past. But the terrier/hound they called Cheetah has been a great gift for our household.

After my girlfriend, Tiffany, started a new job Downtown that made a few extra bucks, we decided to adopt a shelter dog. While celebrating her first day on the job last week, we came across some mutts outside the Texas Roadhouse where we dined. We asked questions and got plenty of information on the dogs the shelter workers cared for. We had talked for months about bringing a dog into the home, but only recently decided that the time was right to adopt.

So we went to the Animal Rescue League of Western Pennsylvania on Saturday and met the litany of mutts they have in kennels.

I tried to pet each one to give them human interaction, although the volunteers at the Rescue League take great care of the animals and walk them frequently. Then we came upon a shivering hound who pushed his nose to the front of the cage. We met him in a small greeting room, took him for a walk and unleashed him in a fenced-in yard. There was something about him that told us he was the right dog for our house.

We brought him home on Sunday and renamed him Riley.

We have had no trouble teaching the 13-month old how to go outside when needed and behave in our modest home. But it's the volunteers and workers of the Animal Rescue League whom we should thank for bringing us such a well-tempered and loving animal. Still, we wonder where he came from and how we were so fortunate to bring him to our home.

After serendipitously finding Riley, I would strongly encourage anyone looking for a four-legged companion to adopt from one of the various shelters in the area.

Western Pennsylvania Humane Society
Animal Friends of Pittsburgh
Washington County Humane Society
Animal Rescue League of Western Pennsylvania

I'm not Muhammad Ali

I neither float like a butterfly nor sting like a bee, but with the markets I do like to think that I can stay on my feet.

Trading is all about making money by buying and selling or selling and buying. That's it. Period! Neither the market nor I care how my trading accounts increase. All I care about is that it does.

The characteristics of my discretionary trading include: high win rate, medium amount of trades, lots of time in front of the workstation, continual training and practice, adapting to market conditions, and small drawdowns.

The characteristics of the Flobot's trading include: average win rate, larger amount of trades, almost no time in front of the workstation (I can remote control my trading PC via an iPad and am able to go anywhere there is a mobile signal), no training required, Flo adapts to the market although I have to re-optimise monthly (this is a big contentious subject worthy of a book on it's own), larger drawdowns than a discretionary trader.

The two have one main common feature: they both make money almost every month.

As someone who trades as both as a discretionary trader as well as an automated trader, I can see that many people will not want to do both. Becoming a discretionary trader requires an enormous amount of work to be profitable, but for most of us it is a passion and a pleasure. There are some who will not put in the effort for many reasons, both good and not so good.

Why do I trade both algos and discretionary? So I can be several places at once. I just want to leverage the skills I have developed over the years and trade more markets at the same time.  Not just for the diversification, but because I have reached a comfortable trade size and while I am pushing it further, Flo is still making my capital work. I see this as a continuous process. Also, it's a pretty good feeling to only work a couple of hours in the morning, yet have Flo (My middleweight champ) still earning me money all day. And, she doesn't get tired.

With the fantastic advance of technology, trading futures as a source of income is available to anyone with the capital, even though they don't have the skills. As Mr. Ali said "... your hands can't hit what your eyes don't see", so with a pair of discretionary eyes and a set of electronic eyes. It's a TKO for the markets.













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Tanks the other hard part

The Rocket Equation has a term that is the rocket motor efficiency and a term that is the mass ratio. In a pressure fed system the biggest component of that mass ratio is the tank.
If I could make a tank identical to a 2L soda bottle only 5 to 10 times bigger that would be almost ideal. I could probably find a mechanism, to join a bunch 2L soda bottles and I may pursue that, but I'm also going to try my hand at composite tanks. Toward that end I made mold forms for a 6" diameter cylindrical test tank mold. I heated it up and waxed it with mold release and setup the vacuum bag etc.. got ready for my first composite test part.

I have something non-rocket to do tonight, but tomorrow I hope to try making my first composite part since the solar plane project.

The first tanks will have glued Mylar liners that are not H2O2 safe, but the flight tanks will have mylar/PET liners with no glue. The jury is still out if the tanks will be seamed via vacuum heat, sonic welding, or RF welding.In addition to the liner I also want the tank to be chemically resistant to the H2O2. I want any liner failures to not be immediately catastrophic.

I'm getting a bunch of samples and setting up to do compatibility testing next weekend out at FAR. I'm testing glass, kevlar and carbon fibers with normal epoxy, vinyl ester and special chemically resistant vinyl ester resins. My gut says that plain E glass with the chem compatible resin will be fine, I'm almost certain that carbon with epoxy won't be. I hope the Kevlar and chem resistant resin also work as the kevlar is a bunch stronger than the glass.

Its a multi part test, start with 30% and work your way up to heated 85 or 90%. Anything past 50% really has to be done remotely. I'm planning to soak samples in PET soda bottle bottoms. sitting in hot water on a hot plate. The sample will have a string and pulley so I can pull the sample out of the solution remotely and shoot it with the 243. I could set up some kind of hammer and anvil test, but I worry that if it goes bang, the hammer becomes a projectile.

I figure I'll get the preliminary screening done this weekend and the samples that pass will get the hotplate test in two weeks.

Custom shoes made possible with custom AdWords campaigns

Mike Knapp and Michael Fox had always dreamed of founding a start-up. Jodie Fox (Michael’s wife) had always loved custom-made shoes. When her friends started asking her to design shoes for them and to bring these handmade shoes back from her travels, she, Mike and Michael saw a business opportunity. The trio founded their online custom shoe design company Shoes of Prey to share the design experience with the rest of the world.

The business first took flight in Australia, where the founders live and their company is headquartered. Their first customers were trusted friends, who tested the online creation tool and proudly wore their personalized designs. The ability to create custom shoes quickly went viral. It seemed that with each step they took, the initial testers received questions about where they found their fabulous footwear. Soon strangers began making purchases, and when the website spread to overseas locations, the team began offering different currencies to allow for international sales.

The team had already created an AdWords account to promote Shoes of Prey to online customers in Australia. As they expanded internationally, they created new AdWords campaigns targeted at English-speaking countries with currencies they could process. They used AdWords location-targeting to show ads in new locations: Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the U.K. and the U.S. Michael says, “Despite being based in Australia, it took only a matter of days for our first orders to start coming in from the other side of the world. It was exciting to see!”

Currently, about 10 percent of Shoes of Prey’s shoe sales come from AdWords customers—and about 40 percent of those sales are from international buyers. One of the main reasons they’ve been successful in reaching international audiences is the ease with which they can edit ad texts for each location. “Gift certificates have been really popular on our site,” Michael says. “So we use AdWords to promote our gift certificates. Key events for us are Mother's Day, Valentine's Day and Christmas.”

Michael then uses Google Insights for Search to identify each country’s peak search traffic dates for these occasions. “We time specific AdWords campaigns to target each of these events. Mother's Day is on a different day in different countries, so AdWords lets us run ads at different times of the year for the various countries, and edit the ads so they speak to users in those countries. For example, we’ll mention the price of our shoes in euro in Ireland and in dollars in the U.S.”

After only a year of operation, the founders have hired three new employees and have formed partnerships with local firms in Japan and Russia to localize their offering in those markets. “Early on in the life of our business, AdWords showed us the potential our business has for growth outside Australia, so we now offer Japanese and Russian versions of our website, complete with local marketing and customer support in those markets,” says Michael.

With AdWords, Michael, Jodie and Mike have been able to share their passion for custom shoes with international customers who share their love for customization. Their next step is to inspire all shoe lovers to design their own footwear. Michael tells us: “We're starting to experiment with the Google Display Network to help us find those first customers while they're browsing the web.” And they’ll continue to use AdWords location targeting and ad text customization to reach new international customers who might not know just how much fun designing shoes can be!

Posted by Maren Bean, Sr. Associate, Ads Communications

Mont Blanc

I'm down at my place in France for a few days.

I had to bring a car back and drove down on Sunday. It's about a 9 hour drive including going under the English Channel by train. You drive onto the carriage in your car and sit in it for the 40 minutes or so and then drive off the carriage in France and continue your journey.

I'm usually in the car with Sammy, my dog. She is not a fan of the train because she remembers going with the ferry where she had to stay in the car while I had to sit upstairs in the lounge. The car burglar alarms used to go off with the motion. Now, as we  drive into the train carriage she ducks her head and starts shivering for 5 minutes. A food treat and then she's back to normal.

Tomorrow, I plan to talk about the differences between automated and discretionary trading and see the benefits of both, all from my point of view as I am doing both.

Going Google across the 50 States: Pharmacy Development Services communicating from Florida and beyond

[Cross-posted from the Google Enterprise Blog]

Editor’s note: Over 3 million businesses have adopted Google Apps. To share their stories, we've talked to businesses across the United States. Today we'll hear from Mat Silverstein, Research and Development Officer for Pharmacy Development Services based in Florida. To learn more about other organizations that have gone Google and share your story, visit our community map or test drive life in the cloud with the Go Google cloud calculator.

Based in Florida, Pharmacy Development Services (PDS) is a business coaching company that works specifically with independent pharmacies. Over the last 12 years, the company has helped hundreds of pharmacy owners build solid business plans and achieve success.

“As a small business with employees spread across the country, internal communications have always been a challenge. In the home office, we make hundreds of decisions a week that affect our customers and employees, and this, combined with rapidly changing information, makes it tough to keep up. Information is constantly flying back and forth between members of our team, so it only made sense to give it a home in the cloud. Life before Google Apps went something like this:

Me: Did you get my email?

Co-worker: No

Me: Check your spam folder.

Co-worker: There it is. Wait. This is the old version of the document. I updated the document and sent it to you yesterday.

Me: I know, but I couldn’t open it. I have an older version of the software you used.

This scenario was typical, and it wasn’t until we moved to Google Apps that our team saw a huge boost in productivity. Right now, we have a team of on-site and off-site employees planning the biggest event in the history of our company; they’re using Google Docs to share the latest conference plans, instant messaging, integrated in Gmail, for quick communication, and Google Calendar to schedule all their meetings.

The Gmail interface is light-years better than our old email system and we can access it anywhere. Some of us travel a lot, and accessing email from our iPhones, Android-powered phones, and Blackberry devices is essential — we couldn’t imagine it any other way. Information is ubiquitous; it shouldn’t be bound to a particular device.

As a company that is closely tied to the health industry, I can best put how Google Apps has helped us into medical terms — we’ve been cured of spam-itis, old-versions-of-documents-osis, and most importantly, missing-documents syndrome. We can spend less time searching for files and fixing scheduling mishaps, and more time helping our customers.”

Posted by Michelle Lisowski, Google Apps Team

I Love the smell of profits in the morning .... and the afternoon

Just when I thought that I could walk on water....I have been rebooting my main trading PC every morning when I wake up although I don't think that's really necessary. I have to go to my place in France on the week-end to resolve some internet issues there and I was getting some stuff together in preparation.

I looked over at Flo at about 9:18am (London) as the DAX pulled back on it's upward rise and started counting the Euros that I knew would be in my pocket if the pull back was followed by a thrust and Flo triggered a long. I then went about what I was doing.

I came back to Flo about half an hour later to count my gains.

BAM!!!!!!   No trade! My mouth dropped and I started digging into the code, and the connectivity everywhere.

Just as I was pulling the last of my few hairs out, I discovered the problem. Me!

After a re-boot, I need to reselect and reconnect AND TELL FLO THAT I DO NOT NEED TO MANUALLY CONFIRM ORDERS. I forgot.

It cost me a heap!

There are many banana skins along the way. Hopefully, this will be as bad as it gets. While it's annoying and while I question why it didn't miss a losing trade instead of a winning one, it will remind me all the next times not to rush my check list. I started check lists after I learnt to fly. Very useful and has saved my skin before. Pity I lost my discipline this time.

But I redeemed myself. At 10:44 Flo went short and lo and behold, almost an hour later, the market tanked. We are working on the EXITS still. There is a small difference in the code since yesterday. Exits, as I have written before, are as important as entries and most traders only concentrate on how to get it and place arbitrary stops and targets without letting the markets tell them. We are testing a number of automated exits based on a combination of volatility, parabolic, average true range, MomDots and the like. We have tested candle patterns and other price patterns but we can't make the computer see what I can see. With the right exit, the losses will be much smaller and hopefully, the profits unaffected. The search goes on but meanwhile, ching, ching.

Today's Flo trades are below. I did NOT trade the first one today due to the above.