Shopping time

I keep a wish list of things i desire :). However with the coming shopping season and Black Friday i thought this is the opportunity to make a comprehensive list of things we need to buy for everyone and make up for Diwali and not doing household chores in general.

Trusting the future

I was looking at some personal finance website in India, like this one and this one. Its appalling to see no worth-while content in the Indian scene vs great tools like Mint and Wiki-Invest on this side of pacific.

Anyways i think that this is a great time to take stock of one's financial health. The stock market and various other financial instituions around the world are facing a grim crisis. If you are a believer magic free market even in face of un-controlled and bottomless stock markets, then its a really great time to invest. However the big question is where to invest? Which stocks to pick and oh yes do you make up your portfolio in these times. Over the next few weeks i plan to address this very issue.

To make a modest start I'm ruling out any form of option trading, as the markets are really volatile, and i'm also going to rule out any chance of investing more that 40% of my savings in the cheap stocks.

Now once we rule out that. With a modest budget of $800 per month what can one do? The strategy i want to pick is buy stocks which were ridiculously high at one point and are dirt cheap (prefarably $1) now. However i'll only pick companies how have _real_ assets and a _positive_ revenue in this mix. So what are these companies? F?

View the full F chart at Wikinvest

What do I do with rest 60% well, the dollar to rupee conversion rates are substantially high these days (possibly highest in last 3 years), so i'm going to try and send that money back home to India. I'm not sure though if i want my father to invest that in stocks. He is stock broken full time and has tendencies to over do it. So i'm going to cap that may to 20% stocks and rest as cash. Lets see though, it has to work THE man.

Nurturing entrepreneurship in India’s villages - The McKinsey Quarterly - Nurturing entrepreneurship in India’villages - Strategy - Globalization

Nurturing entrepreneurship in India’s villages - The McKinsey Quarterly - Nurturing entrepreneurship in India’villages - Strategy - Globalization

"In general, villagers, particularly in the emerging world, have benefitted less from globalization than urbanites have."

"Rural development is crucial for the overall development of a nation’s economy."

"India should seek to empower its villagers and nurture entrepreneurial activity, while also taking advantage of its strengths in the private sector."

Now wait a minute, what do you think of the following one -
"Outright foreign direct investment, by Düsseldorf-based Metro AG, for example, should be welcome, as should joint ventures, like the one between Bharti Enterprises and Wal-Mart Stores. Such businesses"

Fixing my aging Canon S400 camera

I vividly remember buying a pretty expensive ($450, if i remember correctly) 3 Megapixel Canon S400 camera from circuit city back in 2004! and now for less than half the price you get twice a better camera.

Anyhoo - my aging camera has begun to limp. Just after few minutes of use the batter dies. I have two lithium ion batteries and its the same with both. Also once in a while i do get memory card error. Its unlikely that my battery is dead, but it might be something which this post points. So i'm going to try and reset the internal battery for the camera, if that fails my default plan is to contact Canon.

Non-voters cast your vote!

I have been meaning to setup something for those who cant vote - one category being us the immigrants! Well here it is a way for you to cast your vote, wish this had the ability to set a date for voting and also ask couple of more bill related questions:



May be someone will create a bill relating voting widget, may be use the VoteSmart API.

Ice Climbing Newb!

Image via WikipediaOn Saturday I had a great time chomping on the Serac's in the lower Coleman glacier on Mt.Baker! Rob was helping me learn the basics of Ice Climbing. Well both of us forgot our camera's so no pictures. But truly the weather was way better than we expected and we had good view of Mt. Baker and the high meadows were really pretty.

So what all did I learn? The one main thing to learn about crampons is what ever you do try to get the most points in. What this implies is if you are coming downhill then do freaking edge (you will trip!), but try to roll your ankle towards the downhill side and get more points in, and better is dont edge at all!

One trick of the trade of secret I learn from Rob is how to position and balance myself. The idea is to swing the tool, hand from it with your wrist and then then move your legs up such that one leg is on either side of the tool. Once you are in balance and have three point of contact just stand up and swing the other tool. This way one doesn't barn door and uses much of legs.

I over used by hands, had a very tight grip and was very sloppy with my footwork. Well the result is i gotjavascript:void(0) a little sore and ran out of gas much earlier than i expected.

I have a lot to learn, but meanwhile just for shits and giggle check out this nice beginner video on ice climbing. And yep! thanks to Rob for hauling me in and introducing to Ice Climbing!:

Daily Dashboard - do you have one?

My experimentation with Camtasia studio and an attempt to idea-shake to improve my daily dashboard. Suggestion? Ideas??