Google to big to fail?

I did something today that I found very interesting. Interesting to me I am sure, but I do measure by bemusement against my own experiences and expectations and now against what others might generally accept.

Having recovered from an operation I am well enough now to only need be seen by the fine doctors that saw to me twice a year. So last Friday I set the appointment for 6 months hence. Today I got the letter, proving that the top heavy administration that is crippling our healthcare system is at least doing its job.

Then I set about the task of reminding myself. This is where my fascination set in. I was about to set my appointment in Google Calendar. Six months time. Interesting really isn't it. I had conversation about a week ago about a company that is too big to fail. Funnily, I can't even remember what I argued! Did I argue that Google is too big to fail? Or did I argue that Google was bound to eventually fall from grace like every other big company before it, lets face it - Microsoft is not what is once was. Apple fell and came back - but it fell. IBM once owned the market. Dell had a good byte (lols) of the cherry. But all these companies are clearly still here. What about Commodore, Atari, Amstrad.

Now someone could come back at me with every example I give and argue the toss. Excellent go on.

But think also of Yahoo! who fell (big time) and is back. Blackberry, Nokia. There clearly are examples of what I am talking about. And this is why it is good what I can't remember what I argued. It makes the conversation objective. It helps me remember that a lot of big, and I am really only talking about the BIG companies here, do at least fall. And when they fall the next giant either fumbles or falls strategically into its place.

The interesting example here is IBM who lost their superpower status to Microsoft in the eighties with the operating system wars and Yahoo who lost their superpower status to Google in the search market in the 90's.

All things come and go, all things. Period. Everything is in a constant state of flux. Mountains, time, physics, even Google. So when will Google change, and how suddenly and how much and for how long? Well, I hope they around for the next six months so I can remember my appointment!

:)

Ubuntu Linux and my family

We have a Dell laptop... a Latitude E5420. It has a regular hard drive in it, that is, platters, slowness, not being an SSD (Solid Sate Drive). It was good in its day, and is by all mean still a great laptop it needed a rebuild. I wanted to make a dedicated laptop espiceally for the television, you know for things like Steam TV, Netflix, Youtube etc. A million reasons exist why I would want a good laptop plugged up with a HMDI cable to our TV.

Now on purpose I have NOT researched Linux. I say this because there are two other huge parameters the family laptop beside the TV has to meet. It HAS to be able to very easily play movies. This will be done with previously mentioned Netflix, but it also has to be able to torrent films! We torrent alot of stuff. So I have to be able to look up a torrent, download it, and watch it - easily. Very very easily. I have done this on my phone yesterday. On my Samsung S5 I torrented an episode of Modern Family on my mobile phone. It was extremely handy and clear and obvious what I had to do.

The second parameter that the Ubuntu Linux laptop has to meet is to be able to play Minecraft! Not some older hacked version that is made to fix Linux, I mean version 8.2 comes out on the PC (Windows) and I want to be able to play it straight away. It would also be great if I could play Minecraft on the little LAN my kids set up on the two Windows 7 computers and be a third computer, but Linux.

So why did I not research any of this, I could have of course, but if Linux is going to be taken seriously but the average home user it simply has to be able to do everything that Windows can do.

So here I go.... first step is to get a laptop that I will install Linux onto. As I said, I have a Latitude E5420 but I also had a 60 gigabyte SSD hard drive laying around. So I installed the hard drive instead of the regular one that was in Dell in the first place, albeit the HD in the Dell was around 160 gig I think, basically, I am loosing alot of real estate.

So I downloaded a program from http://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal-usb-installer-easy-as-1-2-3/#button and that will make an installer for me so I can make my USB stick into a bootable device.

I don't know what a persistent file size is so I left it alone

Still learning Git, but getting there

Ahh git! It is strangely nice to get something working in computers. Git is one of them. Still slowly getting my head around it.

Share and share alike...

Gordon Gekko said "The point is ladies and gentlemen that greed, for lack of a better word, is good". So all my life, well the last 20 years anyway, I have always wanted to deal in shares. Not that I wanted to become Gordon Gekko. I just know that there is money out there. Floating around. I believe that all I have to do is reach out and take it. Money is a flowing river, I just wanted to have a drink. 

Greed is good.

So I think I am going to do that now. I am by no means going to jump into the river. I don't have enough money to dive into the river.

So in that light I have got two stock exchange emails. One is Goodbody Stockbrokers and the other is Davy Stockbrokers. I am going to look into the whole thing and see if I can make money. I should be able to in theory. The problem is that there is a fee on transactions usually. So if I buy 100 shares "Company X" @ 1.50 a share then my shares will cost me:

100 * 1.50 is 150 euro. 

So lets say that the shares gains some value. It gains .04 cent so now my shares are worth 1.54 euro. 

100 * 1.54 is 154 euro. 

Great I have just made 4 euro. 

But now for the trading fees. Hmm, if the trading fees are 15 euro, then I have just lost 11 euro. Great. However, lets say I bought 1000 shares of Company X.

1000 * 1.50 is 1500 euro. 

So lets say that the shares gains some value. It gains .04 cent so now my shares are worth 1.54 euro. 

1000 * 1.54 is 1540 euro. 

Great I have just made 40 euro! So okay, lets say that I have my 15 euro fees, I have just made 25 euro. So that is the secret. If I have a trickle of water it will barely move a leaf sitting aloft its meager course. But if I have a gushing river I have move mountains with it. Money is a force. Money is alot of things. but when it comes to shares and if you want to have alot of money, you have to MOVE it. Force it. Work it. 

The Pretty Reckless

So I am starting to work more and more at the computer, and when I sit down to work properly I usually get something done.

The Pretty Reckless - Good to drown the world out to. 

But the best way to work is to block out the rest of the world, put on my Hesh 2 Skullcandy headphones and look for some music on Youtube.

I started listening to this band called The Pretty Reckless. I like them, nice to listen to. The chick on vocals is nice and screamy. That is all I look for in music sometimes.

The morning after git.

It was something like 4am when I went to bed last night and then I had to get up this morning and take my daughter to mass. I ended up getting around 5 hours sleep. I am not complaining at all however. It was cool working out how git worked.

So this morning I sat down to my computer and looked over what I had done last night (becuase you know the way it is, last night it seemed brilliant but in the cold light of day and what have you). It turns out that I had not done everything correctly. One of the repositories were working perfect but the repository for my Oscars 2015 website was not.

It turned out that when I was setting up the repository that I navigated to C:/wamp/www/oscars and then told git to start there and I named the repository OscarWebsite. I was meant to have navigated to c:/wamp/www and then named the repository oscars and then git would realize that the directory was already there and would add its gitignore and gitattributes files there.

So I did that and boom, the whole thing works. I needed git to simply accept that the folder already existed because I use the c:/wamp/www folder setup for wamp.  Wamp creates a web server on your computer and you can use it to test code as you go.

It is all brilliant, and of course...

all free!

Git Hub

So I created a git account today.

No, I created a git account long time ago, years ago to be precise. However it is today that I have actually used git in any meaningful way at all which makes me personally think that it is today that I have FIRST used git.

ergo... I might as well have just set it up for the first time today.

Github - where I plan on making a lot of mistakes, safely!

I was a long day today, we were in Galway nice and early, did some shopping with the kids, looked at Tinkerbell and the legend of the Neverbeast. Then had food in Milanos. Now, wow, did we have food in Milanos. I got a calzone. My god it was goooood.

Seriously tasty. When it was finished I was thinking that I could have easily eaten another one. But when around 5 minutes was gone I was feeling satisfied.

But what does this all have to do with git. Nothing of course, just thought I would tell ya'll about that tasty pizza. So git. I am working on a little project with a friend. It is a game that we will eventually put up on the google Play store for free. But I want to be able to work on certain aspect of the game while my friend is doing his part of the game. Now we could email files together definitely but why bother. I have git.

I have a copy of the games project on my computer. I also, through git have a replica on github.com. This service is, like most of the best things on the Internet, free. So if my friend want to get a file that i have in the project all he needs to do is copy the file down from git and upload it again when he is finished. To tell the truth I do not know how he is going to upload it exactly when he is finished but I presume that it is not all a one way traffic system. I might have to give him some admin privileges or something.

I have just realised that I have run out of info on git now actually, I will keep you posted on my git knowledge as the game goes on and we delete and remove files and all other things by mistake.

Talk later.