Christophe Maximin Blog

Stewart / Cramer and the role the Financial News Networks

christophe@kolibria.com (Christophe Maximin) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 11:35:00 +0000

This is the last episode of a very funny and informative saga a lot of people have been waiting for, enjoy (3 parts):

While I almost agree with Stewart on everything he said here, there was something that struck me; something that was missing, something that I think Cramer wanted to say; something that almost nobody with a career can say on American television:
Even if 90% of financial advisors told to NOT invest in this "fast money making scheme", a big chunk of the public would rush to the advices of the 10% who are saying how to make that quick buck. American, and for that matter, almost everyone on this planet, is somewhat interested into "how to make money quickly".
So what the CNBC can do ? Put itself in a corner where nobody will look at, and say boring stuff like "well, real money is created by work; so you should probably invest into companies which do real work. It is slow, and doesn't make the 30% of the other guy, but in 10 years, you will be happy".
Like Cramer almost said, how can you ask somebody to ask reasonably for years and years when they see people making 5 times what they are making with the same amount invested ?

Michael J. Nelson is now Bacon Man

christophe@kolibria.com (Christophe Maximin) — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 06:17:00 +0000

Are you ready to eat bacon, only bacon, nothing but bacon, for a month ?
No condiments allowed. No syrups, or hot sauces, or pureed vegetables in the form of ketchup. No sauces at all.
Beverages: No juices, no V8, nothing that could be construed as “healthy”. Only water, wine and beer.

Well, this guy is ready. Actually he almost did it, for the month of February:

My hero. More info here.

The crisis will end on November 8th at 3:30 pm

christophe@kolibria.com (Christophe Maximin) — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 15:04:00 +0000

President Clinton just said it.

Okay, it was meant as a joke, but his ABC news interview is worth listening to. Actually, it's always worth listening to him.

Another quote from the interview:
"It's worth reminding the American people, that for more than 230 years, everyone who bet against America lost money. It's a mistake to bet against this country over the long run."

"It is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish W3C specs from Onion articles"

christophe@kolibria.com (Christophe Maximin) — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 20:22:00 +0000

Mark Pilgrim:

SMIL is a W3C standard; the most recent revision, SMIL 3.0, was just published in December 2008. If you printed out the SMIL 3.0 specification on US-Letter-sized paper, it would weigh in at 395 pages. So don’t do that.

Also:

apparently, a group of interested parties has converted smilies to XML. it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish W3C specs from Onion articles. <emotionml xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2008/11/emotionml"><emotion><category set="humaneDatabaseLabels" name="Amusement"/><intensity value="0.7"/></emotion></emotionml>

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME ?

[Via Aristotle Pagaltzis : He's not making this up]

The atheist bus journey

christophe@kolibria.com (Christophe Maximin) — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 05:10:00 +0000

They did it!

Congratulations to all the donors of course, to Ariane for being so cute and effective (she's not taken yet!), and to Richard for his support.

Oh, and Happy new year and stuff.

Happy Birthday Geoffrey !

christophe@kolibria.com (Christophe Maximin) — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 23:22:00 +0000

And thanks again for everything... see you (and everyone else) next time !

Youtube LIVE's best performance

christophe@kolibria.com (Christophe Maximin) — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 07:23:00 +0000

I guess it was Esmee Denters, performing Follow My Lead... That was easy, she's so lovely.

I liked DJ Mike Relm and The League of Extraordinary Dancers too.

That was very good for a premiere, I hope the Youtube LIVE 2009 will be interesting too :)

Ruby: sprintf surprise

christophe@kolibria.com (Christophe Maximin) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 00:24:00 +0000

Who said weird ?

irb(main):010:0> '%.2f' % (270*1.175)*0.3
=> ""
irb(main):011:0> '%.2f' % ((270*1.175)*0.3)
=> "95.17"

Thank youuuuuuu America !

christophe@kolibria.com (Christophe Maximin) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 09:49:00 +0000

You have made history again, you can really be proud.
I have been waiting for this for twenty months, all stressed up, and I'm sooo delighted to see that all the polls and projections were right... you have no idea :-)

No seriously, you guys rock.

Almost two years ago / Less than 5 days left

christophe@kolibria.com (Christophe Maximin) — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 01:00:00 +0000

Synchronism.

Almost two years ago, around February 2007, I left school to have more time to improve my skills in rails, system administration, ... skills that will be useful once I would have opened my company.For as far as I can remember, I've always wanted to run a Web Applications Oriented company, instead of just creating websites for other companies.
Last month, I was joined, in London, by my good friend and now colleague Manu, who is (among others) a very talented graphic designer and PHP developer.
Last week, we released our first web application: Monitoria, a website uptime monitoring service. It has been running for 10 days now, without any major bumps, so, in less than five days, we will begin a large scale promotional campaign, and just see what happens next.

Yes, this has been, and is still, financially very tough for me (and now us), and of course the recession is not helping right now... but still, this is what I've been waiting for many many years now, so I'm really over excited.

Synchronism.

Almost two years ago, on February 10 of 2007, Barack Obama officially launched his presidential campaign, in his home state of Illinois.

Okay, first of all, I'm a political nerd since my childhood, so I've always been interested in big elections in my countries (USA, France, UK): I can still remember the 2000 election! (I was 13!). I'm especially fond of the game of political strategy, probably because I love History. So when History, big or small, is in the making, I have to listen, watch, read and understand.

The first time I really heard about him was in September 2006, on television, and I really started to pay attention with this cover from the Time magazine, of October 23rd 2006.
After 8 years of the anti-intellectual and religious right bringing the country to his knees, it was time for some change. Not a revolution, just heading the country in a slightly better direction.
I understood that, with that guy, this could be the most interesting and exciting election in a generation. I was not mistaken.

Record amounts of money raised, record turnouts, broken barriers, ... It has also been the funniest election in a while, thanks to candidates themselves and the madness of their campaign staff, thanks to the media, and thanks to Stewart, Colbert and Letterman of course. In less than five days, according to all polls and projections, he will be elected president.

Now, just combine the pre-election anxiety and the entrepreneurship stress... Yeah, this is how I feel right now.