Annuties and the Credit Crunch

I never quite got to grips with annuities and pensions but since many of my friends and colleagues have a laugh at how old I am it is always worth reading about how to sustain an income when the twilight years are upon me. This article from the BBC really explains this concept quiet well and how the current market situation effects the return on annuities. For those seriously thinking of retiring it is worth a read:

Credit crunch impact on annuities.

Websites and applications to look out for in 2008

I came across this article about some applications and websites that are worth looking out for in 2008 that could potentially be goldmines or bought by the bigger fish e.g. Microsoft, Google etc

Websites and Applications to watch out in 2008

I am particularly interested in Kaazing for realtime data over http, and Skyfire- iPhone like mobile interface but for non-Apple products.

Lets see what happens in the news.

Take a million little steps to get where you want to – the Amazon story

I came across this article sent to me by a colleague at work during our lunch – it is a very good potted autobiography of Jeff Bezos and Amazon. It indicates what the company wants to get into – “one stop shop digital media services” via its Amazon Web Services product.

The article gives an explanation as to how Amazon avoided the DotCom crash and how a company needs to diversify to survive.

The Charmed Life of Jeff Bezos

PQR or I want to write a MultiCore Enterprise Solution

Here is a very good article on Dr Dobbs about writing a multi-core enterprise solution using the (P)rocess (Q)ueue (R)epertory design pattern. I have worked on systems which kind of implement the same thing always missing what the article says is a must: instrumentation. This is the first time I have seen it so well documented like this.

PQR – A Simple Design Pattern for Multicore Enterprise Applications

Handling DateTime between .NET and Java

I am working on a piece functionality at work to send data between Java and .NET – the latter is an application that is in production so am limited in changing the core transport layer. I have come across an interesting problem when sending dates between these 2 systems. To cut a long story short I am using the DateTime.Ticks property to represent the DateTime on the wire however Java cannot use this directly (or vice versa) as the Epoch in both languages is different. Java bases its calendar on January 1, 1970, 00:00:00 GMT (aka “the epoch”). In .Net the “the epoch” corresponds to 12:00 A.M., January 1, 0001 GMT.

Hence using the Tick value in both systems needs to take into account eh difference in these Epochs. The magical numberto use is 62135596800000L – this is the number of Ticks from the .NET Epoch to the Java Epoch which I get using the following code:

DateTime javaEpoch = new DateTime(1970,01,01,00,00,00);
Console.WriteLine(javaEpoch.ToUniversalTime().Ticks);

I use this number in Java accordingly – all times internally in Java are represented in UTC (Date and Time in Java) :
Calendar now = new GregorianCalendar();
long lTicksJavaEpochToNow = now.getTimeInMillis() * 10000;
long lTicksMSDotNetEpochToLocal = lTicksJavaEpochToNow + 62135596800000L;

This should then convert back into the right date in .NET – however ther are some caveats like Timezones etc buf if you work in UTC then you should be ok.

What date is it today? Converting dates from .Net to Java and vise versa.

I predict a riot – timing the market?

A well known strategist at Morgan Stanley is will known for his timing in the markets – Teun Draaisma thinks we are half way through the current turmoil in financial markets – as usual a picture is worth a thousand words so take a peek to know when to call your stock broker (if he/she has not been sacked already by their firm…)

Tuen Draaisma Market Timing

Show Me The Money!!!!!

If you work in the financial sector this latest salary survey shows the “What’s Hot and What’s Not” areas in finance. So if you want to buy that Ferrari or afford that big wedding that your partner wants then read this so you know where to get the bucks, that’s if there will be anything to trade in the next 12 months.

Napier Salary Survey

Eclipse IDE vs DevStudio

I have recently converted to Eclipse for a small Java project I am working on – and am getting to grips with the IDE. I have been using DevStudio 2003/2005 for the last 5-6 years so learning a new IDE is a challenge. Although there are some similarities and concepts there are times when there is something completely different.

I found this useful article on the web to give  DevStudio users an introduction to Eclipse – I found it to be quite good.

An introduction to Eclipse for Visual Studio users.

Telegraph – 110 Best Books

Looks like the Telegraph are doing a top 100 list week – here is one about the best 110 books to have in a library – some of them I have read – others I might pick up.

Telegraph – 110 Best books in a Library

The survival of quantitative hedge funds

In the current credit crisis what role can quantitative hedge funds play? This article presents a pretty good case why the time is ripe for such funds.

Alpha Magazine Quantitative Hedge Funds.

Computers replacing humans in Black Box Finance – not likely IMHO

An interesting article about Human vs Computers in the black box trading environment – I don’t think they ever will as you need accountability so eventually a human will always be taking the final decision.

I remember in my degree 15 odd years ago they were raging about the paper-less office and I think technology has created more paper than less – so this is the same analogy.

EC2 and Amazon Web Services – or I need 100 machines quickly

I recently attended a a talk given by Mike Culver of Amazon around their new EC2 service. My eyes were opened to so many possibilities that this technology could provide but Matt Davey of Lab49 summaries my thoughts just as well.

Here is one example of a service written on top of EC2 – a scalable server farm.

Telegraph 101 most useful websites

The Telegraph online has a really good article about the 101 most useful websites categorised by different areas. I seen a few of them and use many of them. Even WordPress is in there (as it should). Worth taking a look and having a look at the comments for some extra additions.

Telegraph 101 Useful Websites

Adding a RSS feed to your WordPress site

I wanted to add a RSS feed to this blog site so users could subscribe to updates in their reader of choice. I thought WordPress would provide me a widget to do this, but I could not find one until I figured out that you have to use a combination of a Text widget and have an FeedBurner account set-up.

The site is now free as it has been acquired by Google – and it is very simple – there are step-by-step instructions when you sign up – so if a novice like me can do it then so can you!!!

Online Tutorials

Being an application developer having to write in so many languages (though not at the same time) sometime you find yourself wanting to remember things that you did a while ago but need to jig your memory – the site below I found to be useful to find all the basic answers at your finger tips, and not just languages but how-to’s on Office Applications.

Online Tutorials : http://www.java2s.com

Team development – one way of doing it

I always find wherever I go that a project fails because of lack of good development practices set up – as always there a 100 ways to skin a cat but are you doing it right is a question that always presents itself. I cam across this interesting article which might help in setting up an agile development process. The “Agile” part I have not looked into as few investment banking organisations adopt such practices as get it fixed quick is usually what people end up doing.

But a development team should follow some best practice and make sure all your people work to the same beat.

Version Control the Agile Way

Eclipse IDE beyond Java – how about .NET and C++

I recently started using eclipse for some Java development work and have been impressed with its ease of use and features. Admittedly I am only writing a small application so yet to see how it will fair with a large development project but I can say it is a true “Integrated” Development Environment and DevStudio could nick a few ideas e.g the Perspective ideology the code spell checker, and plug-ins for JIRA and Subversion – it has been very easy ( so far) to

Having used DevStudio for the last few years I thought lets see how I can get on with using Eclipse with c# development environment, so I am going to have a go using:

http://www.improve-technologies.com/alpha/esharp

Perhaps it might fall over in some respects but no harm in trying.

I might also have a look at doing C++ in it and then come off Devstudio for anything but GUI development and MS specific technology solutions.

Setting up C++ development on Windows using Eclipse

Also eclipse integrates quite nicely with JIRA if you use it – I do and here is a link on how to do it – rock on Tommy!!!!

http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRAEXT/Mylyn