Asa @ 22 OffThis is the blog of E. Asa Bour. I add items to my blog that I find entertaining or informative. Sometimes it is a story, poem, quote, or recent event in my life. Many times I am busy and don't record anything. Enjoy my ramblings... In case you didn't figure it out, 22 off refers to slalom skiing a course.Ethanol Demand Is Boosting Food Prices Worldwide- May 23, 2007 "The rising demand for corn as a source of ethanol-blended fuel is largely to blame for increasing food costs around the world, the CBC reports. Increased prices for ethanol have already led to bigger grocery bills for the average American an increase of $47 US compared to July 2006. In Mexico last year, corn tortillas, a crucial source of calories for 50 million poor people, doubled in price; the increase forced the government to introduce price controls. The move to ethanol-blended fuel is...http://www.schemer.com/bourea/journal/archives/000302.html Jason and the Trophy Carp- May 23, 2007 Jason smoked this carp going around a buoy on the slalom course at 32MPH. When Jason's ski fin hit the 32" fish it tripped him causing Jason to flip over and crash. Since the fish was killed by the incident I guess you could say the fish won the battle but Jason won the war. Jason 1, Fish 0.http://www.schemer.com/bourea/journal/archives/000301.html Investing in a Sustainable Future Webcast- May 22, 2007 Watched Investing in a Sustainable Future Webcast (by E&Y). Notable quotes: "In the past 18 months high oil prices, fears over fuel security and global warming concerns have resulted in rapid growth for the biofuels industry with over US$400m invested in 2006 and analysts predicting a compound annual growth rate for the industry of 30% in the medium term." Ethanol "The US produced more ethanol than Brazil during 2006, for the first time and research continues in second generation, or...http://www.schemer.com/bourea/journal/archives/000299.html Ruby on Rails Gruff Graphs II- May 20, 2007 Several of my non-geek friends had trouble discerning my last post. I am currently working on stock charts for my trailing stop software (which is currently undergoing alpha testing). These stock charts were produced using gruff and they allow easily visualization of a stock relative to your exit strategy. Below are the charts that I generated for Anglo American aka AAUK with a 15% trailing stop: theme_37signals theme_keynote theme_odeo theme_rails_keynote What is your favorite...http://www.schemer.com/bourea/journal/archives/000298.html Ruby on Rails Gruff Graphs- May 13, 2007 Gruff is a nice tool to build graphs using Ruby. I kept receiving an unusual permissions error (associated with RMagick.so file) when installing gruff on my win32 box. It turned out that I just needed to close all my command windows (cmd.exe processes) and start with a fresh command prompt and the gem install worked perfectly: gem install rmagick-1.14.1-win32.gem --local Successfully installed rmagick, version 1.14.1 I did a quick test of gruff via fruit code sample and it worked as...http://www.schemer.com/bourea/journal/archives/000296.html Corn Based Ethanol- May 11, 2007 "Measured over its lifecycle -- taking into consideration the energy needed to plant, cultivate and transport corn, and then refine it into ethanol -- a British thermal unit (Btu) of energy from corn-based ethanol has equal or greater carbon emissions than a Btu of gasoline. Until a better biofuel is invented -- cellulosic ethanol or even butanol from corn and switchgrass seem the most likely successes -- biofuels are not a panacea." Strategic Forecasting, Inc.http://www.schemer.com/bourea/journal/archives/000294.html |