I thought this was a really interesting take on a declining share market:

Stocks are crashing, so you turn on the television to catch the latest market news. But instead of CNBC or CNN, imagine that you can tune into the Benjamin Graham Financial Network. On BGFN, the audio doesn’t capture that famous sour clang of the market’s closing bell; the video doesn’t home in on brokers scurrying across the floor of the stock exchange like angry rodents. Nor does BGFN run any footage of investors gasping on frozen sidewalks as red arrows whiz overhead on electronic stock tickers.

Instead, the image that fills your TV screen is the facade of the New York Stock Exchange, festooned with a huge banner reading: “SALE! 50% OFF!” As intro music, Bachman-Turner Overdrive can be heard blaring a few bars of their old barnburner, “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet.” Then the anchorman announces brightly, “Stocks became more attractive yet again today, as the Dow dropped another 2.5% on heavy volume – the fourth day in a row that stocks have gotten cheaper. Tech investors fared even better, as leading companies like Microsoft lost nearly 5% on the day, making them even more affordable. That comes on top of the good news of the past year, in which stocks have already lost 50%, putting them at bargain levels not seen in years. And some prominent analysts are optimistic that prices may drop still further in the weeks and months to come.”

The newscast cuts over to market strategist Ignatz Anderson of the Wall Street firm of Ketchum & Skinner, who says, “My forecast is for stocks to lose another 15% by June. I’m cautiously optimistic that if everything goes well, stocks could lose 25%, maybe more.”

“Let’s hope Ignatz Anderson is right,” the anchor says cheerily. “Falling stock prices would be fabulous news for any investor with a very long horizon. And now over to Wally Wood for our exclusive AccuWeather forecast.”

Taken from The Intelligent Investor revised edition, by Benjamin Graham with added commentary by Jason Zweig.

For a long time I had written Twitter off as a pointless concept, designed to allow people with nothing better to do to express themselves with boring phrases such as “I am going to bed now” and “I’m watching TV”.

Chris and I got talking about Twitter a couple of weeks ago for some reason or another and I decided I’d register to see if I would use it.

I gained a new appreciation quite quickly once I realised that Twitter is, more or less, an abbreviated blog.

For someone that doesn’t have a desire to dedicate too much time to writing, Twitter is a great compliment to this blog. I can post summarised random thoughts (hoping that they are interesting) that I would never usually bother to write about in full because the effort required by me exceeds the reward to the reader.

So, follow me on Twitter – you’ll find that I’m alive after all.

As I alluded to at the end of last year, I’ve bought a Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS fitness watch which has now been in possession for a couple of dozen workouts. The thing is brilliant. Combined with a heart rate monitor (included), it will log every important facet of your running, cycling, or other distance-vs-time workouts.

Here’s some assorted statistics from my workouts so far:

Running:

• Workouts: 15
• Total distance: 89.36km
• Average distance: 5.96km
• Average speed: 11.27km/h
• Maximum speed: 24.9km/h
• Average heart rate: 156.33 beats per minute
• Total elevation gain: 3484 metres
• Average elevation gain: 232.27 metres

Cycling:

• Workouts: 7
• Total distance: 93.6km
• Average distance: 13.37km
• Average speed: 21.66km/h
• Maximum speed: 53.1km/h
• Average heart rate: 151.43 beats per minute
• Total elevation gain: 2051 metres
• Average elevation gain: 293 metres

From an individual workout point-of-view, here’s a few examples of the data yielded from one of my cycles a few weeks ago.

As you can see, the data is reasonably comprehensive, including things like heart rate, elevation changes, pace, distance and time. The watch records this information every four seconds I believe, which results in some really good data.

It’s all quite intriguing stuff, because as well as tracking progress with real statistical accuracy, you can use it to identify weaknesses. Comparing speed, distance and elevation may illustrate a specific difficulty with hills of a certain grade or length, for example, and you could use this information to make training decisions.

I’m not quite serious enough to worry about any in-depth analysis, however, but I am definitely enjoying the logging functionality. It’s going to be interesting to compare workouts this time next year.

If you’re after one of these watches in New Zealand, they are available online from Bay Marine Electronics amongst other places. The price at time of writing is a rather hefty $439; but if you’re a regular runner with a mind for statistics, I don’t think you’ll regret it.

Since the launch of Mighty Ape last September I’ve been far more motivated to read books than I was previously… mostly thanks to them being within arms’ reach of me. Here’s what I’ve read in the last four months…

A Song of Ice and Fire ~ George R.R. Martin

This is actually four books (with part three being split into two volumes).

• A Game of Thrones
• A Clash of Kings
• A Storm of Swords: Steel and Snow
• A Storm of Swords: Blood and Gold
• A Feast for Crows

Well. I was more or less addicted to each of these volumes whilst reading them, and am very much looking forward to the next edition, A Dance with Dragons. I’d go so far as to say that this series is probably my all-time favourite book.

The books are written in a way that each chapter is devoted to a certain character and yet Martin has an uncanny ability to make every chapter and every character interesting in its own right. The story is epic in nature and the important characters number in the dozens and yet it all feels effortless.

I recommended this very, very highly. The only downfall is that there is still three unpublished volumes to come.

50 Marathons 50 Days ~ Dean Karnazes

Running 50 marathons on consecutive days caught my eye as a rather extreme thing to do. Turns out Dean Karnazes is a rare breed of runner, one who partitipates in severe endurance events ranging from 50 to 200 and more miles. 50 Marathons chronicles Karnazes’ successful attempt at running 50 marathons in 50 days in each of the U.S.A.’s 50 states. It’s an easy and inspirational read.

Watchmen ~ Alan Moore

I’ve never read a graphic novel before, so Watchmen seemed like a good place to start considering its status as one of Time Magazine’s “100 English-language Novels from 1923 to the present”. It’s a definite read, but it came across to me as something that may have felt a lot more like genius when it was first released in 1987. Reading it for the first time over 20 years later, some of the novel came across as a little predictable; but that may not be Watchmen’s fault.

Ultramarathon Man ~ Dean Karnazes

More from Karnazes; this is actually his first book, but I read it after I read 50 Marathons. Ultramarathon Man tells the story of some of the extreme distance events that Karnazes has survived, including running a 200 mile relay race by himself. Again, an easy and inspirational read.

It’s not about the bike ~ Lance Armstrong

True to its name, It’s not about the bike is about more than just cycling (although cycling is covered too, and it’s quite interesting). Lance Armstrong was diagnosed with testicular cancer in 1997 and this book goes into great detail on his cancer treatment and manages to tell the story of a truly inspirational comeback to the world of professional cycling without ever sounding like a fairy tale. I plan to read the follow-up book, Every Second Counts, in the near future.

The Children of Hurin ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

I’ve read various other books from J.R.R. Tolkien including classics The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, but also the more biblical and complicated The Silmarillion. The Children of Hurin is probably a little more along the lines of The Silmarillion, in that it’s more of a tale than an adventure, although it is certainly an easier read than The Silmarillion is. There’s a lot of history and lore mentioned that could have potentially made it difficult to follow, but that isn’t really the case. Certainly worth reading for fans of Tolkien’s other work, if only to get a taste of the the early age of the world, thousands of years before Bilbo and Frodo’s adventures.

A few weeks ago I purchased a brand new road bike – the first bike of any sort I’ve ridden in around eight or more years – with the intention of using it as a cross-training fitness tool to compliment my running.

Before getting the bike home, I entertained in my head the possibility of biking to work. It would save petrol, it would get me biking-fit pretty quickly, and the roads between home and work didn’t look that bad for cyclists.

It’s funny how quickly your perspective can change.

After spending about 10 minutes on the bike, I realised that there was no way I was ever going to ride to work. A space a few feet across on the side of the road, whilst reasonably suitable for running, is rather terrifying on a bike if the road is busy. I’ve also started noticing how non-existent the cycling infrastructure is wherever I go. For example, it didn’t occur to me until I started cycling that there is no possible way to get from Northcote to Auckland City (around 5km) by foot or by bike; unless, of course, you prefer to go the alternative route via West Auckland which is around 60km. Less dramatically, I’ve realised it is also quite risky just to cycle to the shops a few kilometres from home.

It’s quite disheartening to realise that in the midst of obesity crises, global warming and fluctuating petrol prices, it’s not feasible to choose a simple method of transportation that would solve it all.

Does anyone in Auckland really cycle to work?