Sunday, February 27, 2011
ItunesU
ItunesU in the Apple store is really starting to get pretty good. I just exploited my terrabyte hard drive and downloaded over 500 lectures. It still lacks many more boring subjects I would want such as graduate level electromagnetics. Still, it is getting better, I found hundreds of energy lectures from Stanford, MIT, and UC TV. I even found a full course on Nuclear Engineering!
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Aquarium
I finally gave in and got a little aquarium again. It is only 6 gallons, mostly because I am pretty sure I can convince anywhere I live that a 6 gallon aquarium is alright. In reality, buying the aquarium used it isn't a whole heck of a lot cheaper to get a 6 gallon aquarium than my old 29 gallon aquarium. Still, it might make me a bit more skilled with planted aquariums.
I am probably going to get one or two more plant varieties and just raise cherry shrimp and Amano shrimp, perhaps a few ottos if the algae is bad.
Right now it looks like crap though:
Hopefully after a week or two for the water to get less cloudy and the plants to grow it will look better. I may just get rid of most of the hornwort. More than likely I will wait until the tank is doing well though to do so. As a fast growing plant it should do wonders for water quality.
I am probably going to get one or two more plant varieties and just raise cherry shrimp and Amano shrimp, perhaps a few ottos if the algae is bad.
Right now it looks like crap though:
Hopefully after a week or two for the water to get less cloudy and the plants to grow it will look better. I may just get rid of most of the hornwort. More than likely I will wait until the tank is doing well though to do so. As a fast growing plant it should do wonders for water quality.
No more cards
I finally managed to dig my way out of credit cards. After something like three years where I could not pay off the full balance my tax return was finally enough to dig my way out of the last of the debt. I was even able to send a $2000 check to my student loans.
What to do with savings now is a bit less clear to me. I have 8k in student loans. However looking at their interest rates I am only paying 6.5% fixed or 2.2% variable rates. This is nothing like what the credit cards used to cost me. Total interest is under $500 a year. Still, an absolutely certain investment of even this return beats putting the money in a bank by quite a bit. I also have a strong phobia of debt and would much prefer to be paying absolutely none of it before I buy a house.
On the other hand, if I started saving now I am likely to get a pretty good down payment in time for the bottom of the Southern California real estate market. That really could save me more than paying off the student loans would.
What to do with savings now is a bit less clear to me. I have 8k in student loans. However looking at their interest rates I am only paying 6.5% fixed or 2.2% variable rates. This is nothing like what the credit cards used to cost me. Total interest is under $500 a year. Still, an absolutely certain investment of even this return beats putting the money in a bank by quite a bit. I also have a strong phobia of debt and would much prefer to be paying absolutely none of it before I buy a house.
On the other hand, if I started saving now I am likely to get a pretty good down payment in time for the bottom of the Southern California real estate market. That really could save me more than paying off the student loans would.
Job security
I just saw my first Chevy Volt the other day. That encourages me, at least someone is crazy enough to try it. Everything I have heard about this car says it is practical. Unlike the Leaf or Tesla it could fit into my life without trouble. Now it just needs to be cheap enough, or oil prices to be expensive enough, for it to make economic sense.
Speaking of oil prices, back up over $100 a barrel this week. In 2008, when oil was about $120 a barrel I predicted that in the next 5 years we would see both $50 a barrel oil and $200 a barrel oil. That prediction may yet prove crazy but since gas is this expensive in the winter I certainly wouldn't be surprised if it turns out to be correct by the end of summer.
In other news the California Senate voted to raise the renewable cap to 33% by 2020. This will be both difficult and expensive. It does have some real advantages if the price of fossil fuels goes up too much though. A big enough supply shock and we will really look like we knew what we are doing. Of course going the nuclear route would have been far more effective but this is California so that would be asking a bit much.
The conclusion I draw from these observations is there is quite a lot of job security in the electric power industry. We have to rebuild the electrical system built in the 60s and 70s while completely rearranging the system to use more renewable energy than has ever been used and complying with ever more stringent safety requirements. At the same time most of the experts are well past retirement age and very few good college programs exist anymore in power engineering.
Speaking of oil prices, back up over $100 a barrel this week. In 2008, when oil was about $120 a barrel I predicted that in the next 5 years we would see both $50 a barrel oil and $200 a barrel oil. That prediction may yet prove crazy but since gas is this expensive in the winter I certainly wouldn't be surprised if it turns out to be correct by the end of summer.
In other news the California Senate voted to raise the renewable cap to 33% by 2020. This will be both difficult and expensive. It does have some real advantages if the price of fossil fuels goes up too much though. A big enough supply shock and we will really look like we knew what we are doing. Of course going the nuclear route would have been far more effective but this is California so that would be asking a bit much.
The conclusion I draw from these observations is there is quite a lot of job security in the electric power industry. We have to rebuild the electrical system built in the 60s and 70s while completely rearranging the system to use more renewable energy than has ever been used and complying with ever more stringent safety requirements. At the same time most of the experts are well past retirement age and very few good college programs exist anymore in power engineering.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Lemon batteries won't light up lights
The experimental method showed me something new today. Lemon batteries don't exist. Well, they do exist, but they suck. I am talking about the type of battery you can make by putting copper and zinc into a lemon than connecting them with wires to a lightbulb.
It turns out that this is close to being a myth. You can in fact make a battery this way, but it takes about 5,000 Lemons to light a flashlight bulb. Maybe I can get one to light an LED, but even that takes several lemons in series.
It turns out that this is close to being a myth. You can in fact make a battery this way, but it takes about 5,000 Lemons to light a flashlight bulb. Maybe I can get one to light an LED, but even that takes several lemons in series.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Did different houses cause it
Using straight up median prices as I have been can be misleading. If only cheaper homes were selling than it would overstate the drop in prices.
However that does not seem to be happening on a large scale. Not only are expensive homes in California selling better than they have for years, but the Case-Shiller price index, which follows the price of the same home over time, shows the same effect. Houses nationwide are near prebubble levels, while Southern California has some ways to fall.
Another blogger made up a good graph of inflation adjusted home prices showing this:
However that does not seem to be happening on a large scale. Not only are expensive homes in California selling better than they have for years, but the Case-Shiller price index, which follows the price of the same home over time, shows the same effect. Houses nationwide are near prebubble levels, while Southern California has some ways to fall.
Another blogger made up a good graph of inflation adjusted home prices showing this:
Did median income cause it?
My premise that housing prices in Orange county and LA counties are too high is based largely on the idea that median incomes have stagnated while median home prices have increased. This is true for the country as a whole, but I never bothered checking whether it was true here. Perhaps incomes have increased, driving up housing prices in this area despite the downturn elsewhere.
Median household income in Orange County in 2000: $58,820
Median home price in orange county in 2000: $270,000
Ratio of home prices to income: 4.6
Median household income in Orange County 2005-2009: $73,738
Median home price in Orange county today: 441,700
Ratio of home prices to income: 5.99
The income data isn't quite as new as I would like, but it is unlikely that it went up much during the recession so I consider this to be reasonable. By this measure I would expect the home price in orange county to fall by another 1.4 times the median income, or about $100,000
For comparison lets look at Riverside county, where I suspect that home prices have hit bottom:
Median household income in Riverside county in 2000: $42,887
Median home price in Riverside county in 2000: $146,500
Ratio of home prices to income: 3.4
Median household income in Riverside county 2005-2009: $58,155
Median home price in Riverside county today: 203,300
Ratio of home prices to income: 3.5
The end of the bubble neatly settling at pre-bubble prices. The future of Orange county
Median household income in Orange County in 2000: $58,820
Median home price in orange county in 2000: $270,000
Ratio of home prices to income: 4.6
Median household income in Orange County 2005-2009: $73,738
Median home price in Orange county today: 441,700
Ratio of home prices to income: 5.99
The income data isn't quite as new as I would like, but it is unlikely that it went up much during the recession so I consider this to be reasonable. By this measure I would expect the home price in orange county to fall by another 1.4 times the median income, or about $100,000
For comparison lets look at Riverside county, where I suspect that home prices have hit bottom:
Median household income in Riverside county in 2000: $42,887
Median home price in Riverside county in 2000: $146,500
Ratio of home prices to income: 3.4
Median household income in Riverside county 2005-2009: $58,155
Median home price in Riverside county today: 203,300
Ratio of home prices to income: 3.5
The end of the bubble neatly settling at pre-bubble prices. The future of Orange county
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)