Month: March 2009

Old people, Sweeden, and Dollars.

As I mentioned, I was at this investment meeting last week. They gave us a bunch of papers, and being a giant nerd, I actually read the stuff. (Hey, I do want to retire, and sooner rather than later)

There were a few things I read that I think are interesting for the long term.

According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute and the US Bureau of the Census, we’re gonna have a lot of old people soon. Yeah, big surprise. Well, let’s put some numbers to it. Here’s the number of people over 65.

  • 1990 – 31.2 million
  • 2000 – 35.0 million
  • 2010 – 40.2 million
  • 2020 – 54.6 million
  • 2030 – 71.5 million

We’re going to nearly double the number of old people in the next 20 years. Buy stock in Ensure. No, really. Buy stock in companies that make stuff for old people. That’s one of the big reasons people are freaking out about health-care. We’re going to need lots more doctors & medical technology, and the price is going up. Apparently, health-care costs are currently increasing 3x faster than the Consumer Price Index.

Oh also, old people? Thanks for taking care of Social Security. And by “taking care”, I mean “can we get some health-care to replace Social Security’s kneecaps after that cool thing you did with the crowbar?” You people just can’t handle credit, can you?

In the early 90s, Sweden had a financial crisis. In the 80s, they had a credit boom which produced high consumer spending and real estate prices. They had a currency crisis, in the 90s, and the boom was reversed. Sounds a bit like now. I think this is what the US is looking to as a model for our current crisis, because Sweden was able to solve their problem in only a few years. They nationalized 22% of banking assets, and then created some private companies to help come  up with values for, and sell off the bad assets. I hope it works in our case.

Buy my album!

I’m proud to announce the release of promotional packages for my upcoming album. Some of you may have heard of Josh Freese, who has drummed with more groups than I care to list, including NIN, Devo, and A Perfect Circle. He has a line of packages to accompany his album. I figure since I’m (almost) a drummer, I should take inspiration from him.

One note: based on my currently limited drumming skills, and reduced access to famous people, I figure I’m about 10% as cool as Josh Freese, so I’m going adjust the package costs accordingly. There are even bonus items that Josh won’t or can’t give you. This will definitely be a way more affordable deal than Mr. Fancy Pants “I’m actually a talented drummer” is offering.

A second note: I have not recorded an album, nor written a song, ever.  But I will eventually. It might even be about you.

Email me, tim [at] timrosenblatt.com with the package you’re interested in.

70 cents (Josh’s $7 package)


  • You will get a digital copy of my upcoming album. I promise to keep a list and send you a digital copy when I eventually release it.

$1.50 (Josh’s $15 package)


  • You will get a digital copy of my upcoming album, as well as a physical CD/DVD.

$5 (Josh’s $50 package)


  • Signed CD/DVD and digital download.
  • T-shirt. I don’t have an official design yet, but I’m handy with Sharpie markers and will do something custom.
  • THANK YOU phone call, from me, for buying. You can tell me what you like, or what you thought sucked…Ask whatever you like” Is maynard really that weird?”or”Which of Stings mansions has the comfiest bed?” or ” Are DEVO really suburban robots who monitor Reality, or just a bunch of Dads from Ohio?” or “Why don’t the Vandals play more stuff off the first record?” Honestly, I’ve never hung out with any of these people, so my answers will be best guesses. Questions that you’re likely to get good answers to are things like “What is a NP-complete problem?”, “What data should be stored on an association table for a Rails project?”, and “What do you consider the best way to cook a steak?”. Alternately, you can save up this call for a future date, when I’m able to hook up some better answers.But, it is your five minutes to yack it up- Talk about whatever you want!

$25 (Josh’s $250 package)


  • Signed CD/DVD and digital download.
  • T-shirt. I don’t have an official design yet, but I’m handy with Sharpie markers
  • Signed drum head and drumsticks
  • We have lunch together at Winter Park Village’s PF Chang’s or The Cheesecake Factory

$50 (Josh’s $500 package)


  • Signed CD/DVD and digital download.
  • T-shirt. Still no design, but I’ll buy a fresh pack of Sharpies, both colored and metallic, and make you one.
  • Signed Cymbal and sticks.
  • Meet me in Orlando, FL, and I’ll sneak you into the YMCA where I work out & swim. It will help if you look like me, so I can get you in with my ID. Otherwise, there’s a good chance we’ll be jumping a big fence/wall. For a slight upgrade fee, I will get you a day pass and you can walk in the front door. We will float in the pool with our eyes closed, which will get filmed and posted on YouTube. Alternately, you can upgrade (at cost) to meet me in Venice, CA and we go floating in a Sensory Deprivation Tank (filmed and posted on youtube).
  • Dinner at Sizzler (get your $8.99 Steak and “all you can eat” Shrimp on).

$100 (Josh’s $1,000 package)


  • Signed CD/DVD and digital download.
  • T-shirt. See above note.
  • Signed Cymbal, Drum head and Drumsticks.
  • Tim washes your car OR does your laundry….or you can wash his car.
  • Have dinner with Tim at the Lobster Feast on I-Drive. We will audibly make fun of the tourists.
  • Get drunk and cut each other’s hair in the parking lot of the Orange County (that’s Orlando) courthouse (filmed and posted on youtube of course). Dustin will probably come to town for this and help. Honestly, I hope you go for at least this level of package. I might throw this one in for the higher packages too.
  • We will watch some drum videos on youtube. Also some snowboarding vids.

$250 (Josh’s $2,500 package)


  • Signed CD/DVD and digital download.
  • T-shirt
  • I give you a drum lesson. Honestly, I’m still learning this whole drumming thing, but I’m pretty sure I’ve got at least 300 hours of practice, so I can teach you about paradiddles, flams, and some limb coordination. So as to not totally rip you off, I will have an actual drummer friend join for the lesson, and teach us some shit. Or (for all you non-drummers) I’ll give you a back and foot massage (couples welcome).
  • Pick any 1 member of the Vandals or DEVO (subject to availability) to accompany you and I to one of Orlando’s attractions. Keep in mind, I’ve never actually met any of them, so basically, I’m going to be writing them a nice letter and asking them to come and chill. I’m somewhat of a cool person, and hopefully you are too, so I think if they’re in the area, there’s a good chance this will work. If there’s another person you’d like to meet instead, I’ll work on hooking that up.
  • A signed snare drum. Given the ultra discount that you’re getting, the snare drum may not be in great condition.
  • Take 3 items of your choice out of my closet (first come, first serve). If it’s a box, you must empty it out before you take it. No cheating by claiming a full box is a single item.
  • Change cat litter with Tim. At your option, we can also water my plants and feed my fish.
  • I will buy a TV and we (you, Dustin, and myself) will take turns throwing it off the roof of Dustin’s vehicle. Alternately, Caleb (multi-time burn-out champion) will show you how to correctly body slam a car, and do 180s with the parking brake.

$500 (Josh’s $5,000 package)


  • Signed CD/DVD and digital download
  • T-shirt
  • I write a song entirely about you and put it up on iTunes (also on upcoming record that I’m working on now). I’ve never put a song on iTunes, but I’ll figure it out. Also, I’ve never written a song before, so maybe you’d prefer I write a song about someone you don’t like.
  • Then you and I “co-direct” a video for the song I write and throw it on youtube
  • I give you and a friend a private tour of Disney World.
  • Get drunk together. If you don’t drink we can go to Lake Eola and look at/talk to homeless people.
  • Stone from Pearl Jam might you a letter telling you about his favorite song that Tim has listened to. Again, I’ve never met him, but I’ll work something out.
  • If you play drums (or want to), we will attend a private drum lesson from the drummer for the Blue Man Group.

$1000 (Josh’s $10,000 package)


  • Signed CD/DVD and digital download.
  • T-shirt
  • I will get you on the radio one way or another. It might be ClearChannel, it might be UCF radio. But, you’ll get airtime. We’ll also see how much of my music we can have them play before kicking us out. Alternatively, I’ll bring some music that I didn’t create, but do like. They’ll probably play some of that.
  • I will get you a picture from A Perfect Circle’s 2000-2001 tour. I will sign it. I’ll see if I can get you a piece of music equipment from their tour, which I will also sign.
  • I will get you a ringtone of my friend Greg laughing. It’s a seriously infectious laugh.
  • Drum lesson or his and hers foot/back massage.
  • We go to lunch at a Disney restaurant. It might be a super exclusive, private restaurant at Disney World, or it might not be. We will hit a couple rides afterwards, preferably the Tower Of Terror, Rock ‘n Roller Coaster, The Tiki Room and The Haunted Mansion.
  • At the end of the day at Disney, I will let you drive away in my Hyundai. You do not get to keep it. You will drive away with me in it. It’s got a few years — I’ve driven over 140k miles — on it, but I’ve taken really good care of it, and is definitely worth more than $1000. We can negotiate a deal if you’re interested though.
  • We will take kite surfing lessons in Miami. It will be filmed and posted on youtube.

$2000 (Josh’s $20,000 package)


  • Signed CD/DVD and digital download.
  • T-shirt
  • I will get you a picture from the 2008 NIN tour. I will sign it. I’ll see if I can get you a piece of music equipment from their tour, which I will also sign.
  • Maynard James Keenan, Mark Mothersbaugh from DEVO and I take you miniature golfing and then drop you off on the side of the freeway (all filmed and posted on youtube of course). Again, I don’t know these guys and they don’t know me. I will still put my best efforts into getting us hooked up. If this falls through, I will substitute some very cool friends of mine, and we’ll throw down.If you don’t like miniature golf, we will get some beers and hit balls at the driving range with Rex (aka “drunk driving”).
  • I give you a tour of Orlando. I’ll show ya my first apartment, the cannon we fired on the UCF campus, the house I rented (entertaining you with appropriate stories), and the place we went off-roading in Dustin’s jeep during a hurricane. I’ll take you out for some really great tacos. Also, Josh Freese is from Orlando. If you go for this package, I will buy the $50 Josh Freese package, ask him where he was born, and show you it.
  • For an extra $5, the tour will be on the back of my motorcycle. For another $2.50, I’ll show you the section of the park that the homeless people have taken over.
  • We will spend the night camping in Ocala National Forest with some of my friends. There’s a sweet place that no one else knows about. Separate sleeping bags, of course…no spooning. There could be bears. We’ll tie the food up in a tree.
  • I write 2 songs about you (or if you want 1 can be about you and the other one can be about whatever or whomever you’d like) and it goes on my next record (you can sing back up on them, clap, play the drums, triangle solo…whatever you want). Given that I’ve never released a record, this “next record” will be my debut record. Again, I’ll let you evaluate my talent before we record, and give you the option to have them be songs about people you don’t like.
  • Drum lesson OR foot and back massage (once again…..couples welcome).
  • Pick any 3 items out of my closet. Full boxes don’t count. I have some cool shirts.
  • I will train for a triathalon and complete in it with you. If you aren’t inclined to move under your own power, while swimming I will tow you in an inflatable chair; while biking, pedal a 2-person bike; and while running, pull you in some kind of rickshaw.

$7500 (Josh’s $75,000 package)


  • Signed CD/DVD and digital download.
  • T-shirt
  • Come out on tour with me for a few days. Strictly speaking, I don’t have an actual touring schedule. But, I’ll put one together for a few days. We may end up jamming in the park on one of these days, but I will get us playing in a bar/club at least once.
  • I write, record and market a 5 song EP about you and your life story.
  • I will let you take my cat to the mall. He will have a lion cut, and will wear his leash. He is irresistable, and will help you pick up a member of the opposite sex. Or the same. Whatever you’re into.
  • Take home any of my drums or cymbals.
  • Take shrooms and cruise Hollywood in Danny from TOOL’s Lamborgini OR we play “quarters” and then hop on the Ouija board for a while. Again, I don’t know Danny Carey, but I’ll do my best. Honestly though, if you go for this package, you should practice your quarter bouncing. It’s like beer pong, except cooler, and you don’t have to wear a trucker hat or pop your collar(s).
  • If you have a band, I’ll join it for a month, or until you kick me out….play shows, record a CD together, have a swim party, etc…. or none of the above. We could also just sit in yer basement and jam old Van Halen.If you don’t have a band I’ll be your personal assistant for a month (4 day work weeks….5:30 pm to around midnight). After this, we’ll take a limo down to Miami, or around Vegas if possible. I’ll figure out some awesome stuff for us to do. I don’t know what it will be exactly, but it will be both dangerous and fun. If you go for this package, I will buy the $50 Josh Freese package, and use my five minute call to get some ideas from him for Tijuana. If he’s not bullshitting and actually has some rockstar-awesome ideas, we still might do the Tijuana thing. If you don’t live in Orlando but are in the USA I will come to you and be your personal assistant/cabana boy for 2 weeks
  • We will go sky diving together. We’ll get the full video package too, which will be posted on youtube. Then, I’ll get some lasagna from a great Italian place (Goodfellas), and we will listen to NIN music, and watch NIN DVDs with my friends. On second thought, one of my friends might actually be able to get me in touch with Robin from NIN’s wife, and I will get her recipe for lasagna. If I think it’s good, I’ll make it. Still, Goodfellas makes some awesome food, so that might be the best option.

As you can see, this is certainly a deal when compared to Mr. Freese’s offer. Order now. tim [at] timrosenblatt.com

Investmenting: up arrow good, down arrow bad.

Last night I went to this investment meeting, where a bunch of people in suits told me about the economy, and why they’re doing a good job. I took a few notes and wanted to share.

Oh, and in reference to the title, the first speaker, in one of his first slides, put up two graphics. One was an up arrow that essentially said “good”, and a down arrow that essentially said “bad”. Are you kidding? What’s your fee percentage, again?

Anyways…

Apparently, the Fed has backed 75% of the banking system. I think they’re really trying to bolster faith for the short term that the problems we’re having will be satisfactorially resolved.

A thought of my own: I know that the government can’t just print money to pad things out. If they do, inflation, or hyper-inflation is the consequence. But, even though market values have dropped wildly, the real tangible values are still there. Companies still have huge amounts of assets, both physical and knowledge. The underlying value of lots of these things are still there, they’re just wildly underpriced. As long as the government doesn’t issue more money than the real underlying value, then we won’t see insane-o inflation. I don’t know if this is true, but something sounds right about it.

They made the point that recovery comes way before the worst of the downturn. For example, the recession of 1973-1974 was already recovering by 1974, but unemployment (one of the big indicators that people look to) didn’t peak until 1975, at 12%.

Because of the tech bubble, as well as the current credit crisis, we are in the worst decade of the past 140 years. Some people are calling it a “lost decade”

An idea of mine, based off something they mentioned: just because the money economy is dropping doesn’t mean invention and scientific progress is stopping. Innovation continues & current progress keeps moving forward. Once the current bullshit stops, there’s going to be a big surge.

2008 inflation: .2% — that’s 2-tenths of a percent. Ridiculously low.

They look at investments with a worst-case mentality. They assume $25/barrel oil for oil companies; worst case unemployment for economically sensitive companies; failure of R&D for biotech companies. Right now they’re looking for cheap stocks that will benefit from high government spending.

Merck is one of the companies they look at. Even though some of their drugs are going off-patent soon, there’s still enough for them to be healthy. Existing drug lines will be able to supply 2/3 of their current market capitalization, even as far out as 2012, year-end. I like this, since it means they can have huge R&D failures, but still be very likely to be a safe bet for the longish term.

Martin Atkin made the point that they don’t do as well when the market does something weird, but that when things go back to normal, they position themselves so that they end up doing better than normal. I think this is interesting because there’s always reports/bitching of investment companies missing very successful black swans. I don’t think that is a real problem. Normally, things are normal. So, most of your strategy should be planning for normalcy. When something crazy happens, it is by definition, unusual. So, since you can’t predict it, you do a bit of planning for worst cases, and handle problems as they arise.

New Pi Day, June 28?

Check it, bitches. Pi is wrong! Since pi is so often used as 2pi, this guy argues that it should be redefined as 6.28! (PDF link). It’s a short read, non

Thanks to Emil Gilliam for the link, and for his very cool looking service, Noted. I’m checking it out as a replacement for Sandy. Ah, Twitter, you sure fucked that one up, didn’t you? Even if you’re going to roll out a replacement, leave it running for the meantime so you don’t lose the momentum!

Voxeo, Tropo, & ORUG

I went out to ORUG tonight. Voxeo was presenting a thing they’re working on, Tropo. Disclosure: they bought us dinner. Full disclosure: I think this thing is really tight.

I used to help set up phone systems in high school, and phone trees have always seemed like kind of a mystery. Tropo lets you build whole phone apps, and it’s ridiculously easy. It’s basically a phone system DSL. They handle text-to-speech, speech-to-text, playing recorded sound files; there’s lots of convenience things for capturing different types of inputs, handling error cases, recording calls, transferring calls, etc. They give local phone numbers in different area codes, they’ve also got Skype integration, and a few other ways to connect to the system. The very cool part is that it’s all free to play around with, but once you start using it for commercial reasons, then you have to pay.

Ever hear of Google’s Grand Central? With this, you could easily make your own. I’ve been playing around with a few things using Tropo’s Ruby setup, and I’ve put the demo code on GitHub. Very cool stuff.

You can write apps in Ruby, PHP, Python, Javascript, and Groovy (“Java++”). There’s a bunch of example code on their site, and development is really easy to do. For example:

answer

digits = $currentCall.callerID.to_s.split('')

area_code = digits[0..2]
city_code = digits[3..5]
subscriber_number = digits[6..9]

# single dashes get spoken as 'dash', use doubles for a pause.
# Double commas don't work, neither do extra spaces
say "-- -- -- S-up. Your phone number is -- #{area_code.join(',')}--#{city_code.join(',')}--#{subscriber_number.join(',')}"

hangup

There is a debugger that you can print messages to. Right now there’s a *ton* of output to it, but you’ll find your messages in there.

One thing: I was getting a message that the caller was “not accepting calls at this time”. I realized this was a parse/compile error in my script. So, if you can’t get something to load, check it. The debugger doesn’t seem really helpful with this, I got a generic seeming Java Exception for a variable name typo. They use Java under the hood for tons of stuff, so even though I’m writing Ruby code, it gets interpreted in Java.

I did learn a cool fact about these phone trees. You know how a lot of phone trees suck when you try and talk to them? Well, for speech-to-text conversion, you can only get around an 80% success rate. The reason is that phones are only around 64kbps of data. There’s too much loss for the algorithms to work well. That’s why apps that run on the local computer/phone are able to do better — they embed part of the recognition algorithm in the client.

And, on a final note: skateboarding through downtown is awesome.

Ignite Orlando

Last night, we had Ignite Orlando. For those of you who don’t know, an Ignite event consists of presentations, 20 slides, 15 seconds per slide = 5 minute presentations.

I re-presented some of my AAC09 Oauth talk. It was a lot of fun — the presentation format is cool. Everyone seemed to dig the presentation, the XKCD rip off, and the picture of Angelina Jolie 😀 (You’ll have to see one of my presentations to find out.)

Adam Wiggall was on hand taking pictures, here’s the links:

Stereo effects

Before I got burglarized and subsequently moved, I kept my stereo on a shelf next to my drums. Great for practice.

Since I’ve moved, my drums are stored offsite. Not that bad of a deal, since I can still bring the laptop to listen & practice. So, now my stereo is back in my office. The left and right speakers are now in opposite corners of the room, roughly equal distance from my head. One is at sitting head level, one is higher up.

Why does this matter? I was listening to some music the other day, and noticed it was easier than normal to hear the panning, and the different mixes between left and right. I thought this was interesting, and did some Googling — stereo effect distance speakers — and a page talking about calibrating in anechoic chambers caught my eye. It was such a cool page, I wanted to share it. I realize it’s from a speaker manufacturer, but it still has good info.

It’s an article called “Stereo Effect” by William R. Dudleston. The section called “The Physiology of Localization” was especially interesting. It talks a bit about how our ears are separated by about 6 inches, which is the exact distance required for the waves hitting each ear to be exactly out of sync at the frequency our ears are sensitive to. This makes it really easy for us to hear which direction something is coming from. Then it describes a bit about how the shape of our ears mask different frequencies so that we can get more info than just left and right, but also up and down, and forward/back. Basically, the location and shape of our ears are tuned perfectly for us to hear in 3 dimensions. Not surprising, but the mechanics of the description are great.

After a while, the article starts selling you a bit on their hardware. But until then, it’s a solid read.

Actually, this reminds me of something I read a while ago; I think it came from a THX engineer. Apparently, when they calibrate their theaters and the speakers — yes they calibrate the theater itself — they don’t sit in the very middle of the room. Sitting slightly to the left or right makes a difference in the stereo effect, making it more pronounced. So, when you go to an action movie, sit slightly off-center. The movie may sound better.