15 July 2007
84 square foot home
Filed in: Ed's blog spot
Ed the Editor's personal blog corner
In this day and age of bigger is better, a woman has turned a glorified garden shed into a livable space measuring a massive 84 square foot. The utility bill in particular beggars belief, weighing in at a mere $6 a month. This must be due to a combination of solar panels (costing a hidden $100 a month), a weekly shower (whether she needs a wash or not) and no electrical appliances. Sounds like the good life.
Under 70 square foot
Another even smaller living space, a grand 12.5 x 5 foot apartment was featured in a documentary about comedian Seth Herzog. Smack bang in Manhattan, the prolific funny guy writer and reader crams a library full of inspiration into every cubic inch of space. The photographer must have wondered where he was going to stand, and in the end decided to get in the spirit and did a batman job, suspending himself from the ceiling. The moral of this story is that you don't need to be rich or extravagant to live in the heart of the metropolitan action, but you do need to be immune to claustrophobia.
Thousands of square feet, 2 square heads
At the other extreme, the Beckhams have taken on a $22m mansion with enough space for a brace of indoor soccer pitches. When you consider that Becks came from a simple abode in London, he must feel like a duck out of water delving through a $500,000 wardrobe the size of a small semi-detached house. I suppose the only upside to such gluttony is that it makes a few bucks for destitute realtors. Long live King David and Queen Victoria's money-making machine.
We are thinking of living on a boat, and as practice we are living in a single room. Unfortunately it is nothing noteworthy to blog about because, compared to the above tiny homes, it is a big room. If we could get the boat we want, I think the mast is tall enough to dwarf the Beckhams' pad, but the boat itself will fit comfortably in their jacuzzi.
Got any small / starter home stories for us to sympathise with?
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. MyBlogLog Sunday returns
Filed in: MBL sunday
The rules!!! If you are one of the 10 bloggers that appear in the MyBlogLog widget sometime around 10am Sunday, AND you leave a link to your best post of the week in the comments section of this post, you will get a mini review of scintillating proportions. Easy money.
Funny comment of the week will get a mention too. For an idea of what to expect overall, check out past MyBlogLog Sunday episodes.
Bonus full review and gummi bears. I have fallen out of sync with this mighty fine award for the mini reviewee sending the most traffic to the Pisstakers in the week after their review. I need an address from Claire so I can send in her stale gummi bears.
I will do a full review for Larry. and if he could forward a customs pass too, that would be cool. (I fear the gummi bears will get a full body search at the Canadian border unless all paperwork is in order.)
And Territerri was the number one trafficker last time out, so a review and gummis are hers too. Let Ed know where to send stuff.
See you tomorrow.
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Wall Street headless chickens
Filed in: Ed's blog spot
Ed the Editor's personal blog corner
Considering the sophistication of the technology at their disposal and the supposed perfection of the free market in which they operate, why do I get the impression that the traders on Wall Street are like headless chickens?
If the wind blows 2mph slower than expected on Tuesday, by Wednesday the traders sell sell sell their stocks in windmills and stack up on oil - and then complain that demand for oil is raising prices and stunting growth.
If Bernanke says inflation is fine, suddenly those blue chip companies that weighed down the whole economy and couldn't change with the times, even if you paid them, are suddenly the engine for growth in the stock market.
When the DJI reaches 14000, it is like party time and the bulls gird themselves for DJI 15000 parties, while bears growl and downgrade their estimates to below 13000.
In one day, steel goes from sexy to over-priced. Suddenly it doesn't matter what the big guns on Friday were saying about unlimited demand for steel by the Chinese and Indians and Eastern Europeans. On Monday, the retail sales figures are out and nobody is going shopping any more for sneakers, so best get out of steel before the down cycle kicks in again. Uh?
It would be quite funny, if it weren't for the fact that these traders, investors and financial gurus are playing numbers, and almost never worry about the human aspect of their actions. They glibly talk about bad debt subprime mortgages ONLY putting 7% of the country out on the streets, so let's get into Aluminium which ONLY leaves hundreds of thousands of acres of our planet barren.
Apparently even China has a conscience and 10% of their fuel consumption has to be enviro friendly by 2012. Some of the burnt-out Wall Street wrecks high on options are human and say that solar power companies in China are "green" and also represent a good bet for investors. So, one side of the Wall Street floor rushes to sell corn futures (the corn used for methanol not tortillas and bread) and invest in solar stocks before they become expensive. Meanwhile, the other half, so up to their ears in Chinese fossil fuels that they can't breathe without an oxygen mask, sell their speculative holdings in solar. They think they are logical, because once it gets to winter in 4 months' time, there won't be so much sun, which means less solar power and the demand for oil and coal will be up.
The trouble is, half those traders don't even know which months winter falls in China. They assume it is the same as ours, and assume it will be rainy and cloudy. But when they look up in Wikipedia and learn that the sun always shines in China, because they have a machine to blow away rain clouds, the headless syndrome kicks back in, they tap a few numbers into their tablets and shoot off again in a different direction.
I would like to believe that at the end of the day, everyone won as a result of the headless chicken syndrome. But somehow, I don't subscribe to the point of view that if you run around in enough circles, you see the light. That is why I wouldn't recommend watching too much CNBC Business news, and I would recommend any would-be investors read The Motley Fool at leisure. At least the Fools aren't headless, and they are honest enough to say that if you are a chicken when it comes to risk, stick your money and your head in a safe place and look forward to your retirement in a mud hut seniors complex in Guatemala.
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Don't stop blogging
Filed in: Ed's blog spot
Ed the Editor's personal blog corner
Never let anyone tell you Macs are indestructible; never let it be said that back-ups always get you out of trouble, and never forget that good always comes from bad. Yes, I am ever the optimist!
The flow of visitors to the site hasn't quite shriveled up and died, but no thanks to me in my disconnected, broken down state! Thanks, therefore, to all those who have been calling by. Sorry, nothing new to show the regulars, no MyBlogLog Sunday either, and no visits to my fave blogs. (I am grateful for the sporadic access to my wife's dependable Dell - until it too died a couple of days back - but I wasn't exactly set up for surfing anything except the TV.)
And what a load of crap there is on the box these days. If it wasn't for the agony on the faces of riders in the Tour de France, and the unbounded bullish ecstasy on the face of money-grabbers while Wall Street goes through the roof, what is there to capture the attention?
Anyway, I am sure the satirical juices will flow soon enough. Hey, talk of the devil, I am back blogging, starting this morning with a tech piece about the help available to us non-techies faced with a failed hard drive. Awwwwwwww, aren't people helpful.
Content is king
Looking at stats, I am rubbing my eyes and wondering if my posts actually contribute anything worthwhile to the visitors' experience!! The Funny Quote of the Day widget is the most popular page, (and on page 1 of google searches too, I think). Believe it or not, the number of searches via the Swicki tag cloud has been rising steadily too. It is quite interesting how the least work appears to produce the most return.
This is an illusion of course, because I suspect if I never wrote anything, bloggers wouldn't be installing the widget on their sidebars. And if there were no content, what would be the point of people searching the site for articles on Pantone and obscure Japanese URLs? That is a rhetorical question by a bemused blogger, because I have not written about either of those search terms?! See, content is king - you just can't always predict how it becomes king!
Now, with my flashy fast hard drive, it is on with the show, and slowly but surely The Pisstakers may re-flourish. Having had time off, I have been able to work out some more ideas - coming your way soon as I ride the wobbly pisstakers bike to online popularity and riches.
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Genius or not so smart afterall?
Filed in: Ed's blog spot
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