Dawn of the Geeks

Yahoo! probably has the best financial site on the net for gathering stock information. The goal of indie-stocks is to be an excellent free resource for portfolio tracking. At first I was pulling data directly from Yahoo! into the indie-stocks database. That worked for about a day. Data is now being downloaded directly to a local daily file. At the end of the day all the data points will then be pushed into the local database at once.

Once I get that process running efficiently I may have the database being updated as the day progresses. But, indie-stocks is not intended for day trading anyway. It’s for portfolio tracking. As such, fast time updates aren’t necessary. If you want to track the value of your stocks throughout the day, there are other services that can do that.

Currently indie-stocks is not doing database updates, but all the data is being collected. Hopefully I will have some time soon to make the site more useful.

indie-stocks is a brand new (and hence ugly) site which will be used to allow users to create and track portfolios and perform other functions. Yes it will get better looking. For now the front end is just there for the sake of having a front end. In the background the data for nearly 6000 stock symbols is being pulled from Yahoo! every 30 minutes during trading hours and put into a database. Anyone can submit stock symbols to be tracked. You can also view all the symbols currently being tracked and the last 100 values stored for them.

I can’t believe how hard it is to find a list of current stock symbols. My list actually started out at nearly 7000 symbols but a number of them are no longer being traded. And when I finally found a sizeable list, my prize stock AVN wasn’t even listed. So, I’d really appreciate it, if people would visit the site and check to see if their favorite companies are being tracked.

In time this site will allow users to create and track portfolios, screen stocks and generate charts. For now though it’s mainly there to collect data. The sooner ticker symbols are added, the faster the site will be useful for traders.

Some 21 year-old came up with a rediculous idea to sell one million pixels for $1 each in blocks of 10×10. What’s even more rediculous is that he actually sold them all and ended up with more than 1 million dollars.

Immitation is the sincerest form of lamery when it comes to the internet. But, no shock here, a number of immitation sites are popping up trying to cash in on this lucrative pixel market. There are literally trillions of ad free pixels out there. Surely each and every one of them is worth $1. Maybe some enterprising young chap will offer a discount pixel farm and cash in on the discount pixel market niche.

For whatever reason I decided to see if there was an adventure game written in PHP that I could throw up on my site. Adventure is a PHP clone of the 1970’s classic that introduced a new genre of game. You just have to pick a name that hasn’t been chosen yet to play. You can’t resume your game at a later date. Or, at least I havn’t figure out how to yet. In other words, it needs a bit of work. But it is a neat little novelty to have.

I’ve been using Google Adsense since March of 2004. As time goes on the amount of revenue goes up but I’ve never had a month where I didn’t bring in at least some money. If you have a web-site that’s bringing in visitors and you’re looking to see how much money you can make with your site, look no further than Google AdSense. It’s free to sign up, no subscription fees and chances are you’ll start making some money the day you put your first ad up.

Give it a try. You have nothing to lose. I’ll also be writing some articles on what I’ve learned about maximizing the amount of money I make with AdSense at a later date. You may be surprised just how subtle and simple changes can be that make a big difference in the amount of money you make.

TV Psychic Misses Mark on Miners

Controversial TV psychic Sylvia Browne made a major mistake about the West Virginia miners tragedy on a Tuesday night radio show.
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Browne, who had just announced that John McCain would run against John Kerry in the next presidential campaign, was relieved to hear from Noory that all but one of the miners was alive.

Noory: “Had you been on the program today, would [you] have felt if — because they heard no sound — that this was a very gloomy moment — and that they might have all died?”

Browne: “No. I knew they were going to be found. I hate people that say something after the fact. It’s just like I knew when the pope was dead. Thank God I was on Montel’s show. I said, according to the time, it was 9-something and whatever Rome time was. And I said he was gone, and he was.”

But the situation was fluid, something Browne — ahem! — obviously didn’t sense despite her claims of being able to speak to the dead, among other things. She couldn’t have imagined that within a short time, the entire story of the miners would change completely — and make her look very foolish indeed.

Anything less than 100% accuracy is no prophet at all. Or maybe since she’s a “psychic” the standards are lower which would make a genuine psychic a “genuine fake prophet.” Since many people ask her about personal issues I’d say she’s more of an overpaid, underqualified psychiatrist.

Complete Wellness Massage is a site being put together by a trained massage therapist. There you will find a variety of information about the benefits of massage, various massage techniques and other interesting information.

Check it out!