During the first week in May, I considered myself quite thrifty. I bought a used magnifying glass from a thrift store, along with an ancient pair of studio headphones I plan to refurbish. Neither are produced by companies that still exist. Having not made a corporate purchase since the 1st, I was feeling fairly economical. On May 6th, that all changed.
Though it was a couple days before the official kick-off, I went ahead and started the investing week early. For the first time, starting Monday I followed the ‘Only Pay Yourself‘ investment and lifestyle strategy I created earlier this week. Any time I needed/wanted to make a purchase, I first had to acquire (at minimum) 1 stock from the company that makes/distributes/produces said product or service.
As of May 1st, 2013 I am undertaking a new financial endeavor. You can read all about it in this blog post. To summarize:
Long time readers will know that I had ads on the front page of this site for many years, but removed them a few years back in lieu of a ‘donations’ button. As I’ve not once received a donation (and frankly I miss the income); I’ve re-added the ads to the bottom of articles. That way you can get through the entirety of a front-page post (and half of a multi-part article) without being advertised to. Hopefully they are not too intrusive, and I think it strikes a fair balance.
I’ll be the first to admit it, I have not made the wisest of investments over the years. From cashing out my retirement to help fund my start-up, to keeping cash reserves in low-interest bearing accounts; over the years I’ve made about every investing mistake in the book. What I did invest, I invested cautiously. Mutual funds, index funds, foreign index funds. I gambled on some of the big internet companies that came up over the years, and sometimes it paid off, sometimes it didn’t. So I’m proposing an experiment, and I’ll be following through with it starting May 1st (coincidentally my birthday).
We like dogs too!
Textures are heavy. Bloat-y. They weigh down your apps, and consume memory. Sometimes you just want to efficiently animate something procedurally. One useful technique to have in your bag of tricks is that of basic skeletal animation. In this article series, I’ll run you though the basics of 2-d skeletal animation. I’ll be implementing this as part of a variant of the popular ‘run as far as you can’ games on the Android platform using AndEngine/OpenGL as the rendering back-end. Those more interested in reading code can follow along at the 5 Seconds GitHub commit history. At the end of this series, you’ll be able to implement basic skeletal animation in the language of your choice. I’ll be using Android/Java/*OpenGL as the pedagogical example, but the code should port easily to other platforms.
The economic potential of amateur pc computer resale has changed, almost completely disappearing since I wrote “Live For Free” (LFF), and is declining for apple computers steadily. This makes a direct sequel to LFF unlikely, as it would need to be about computer and electronics repair. I’ve had my current development laptop for about 2 years now, with no reason to think I won’t be using it in another 2, or 4, or maybe even 10 years. In the 2000’s and during the course of writing LFF, I probably went through 30 laptops, ever running to beat the elusive pricing curve. Now that I’ve beat it, what’s next?
First generation Android-on-a-stick PCs can be had for as low as 30$ now, and I routinely find old webcams available for 5$ everywhere. Now that Google+ users get free unlimited storage for their photos (up to a certain resolution), the time has never been better to build a home security system. Why? Because Google has thoughtfully enabled ‘instant upload’ for Google+. Using a few simple (and free) Android apps you can turn your old stick PC (or old Android phone) into a home security system with unlimited cloud storage.
