Drop Foreseen in Median Price of U.S. Homes – New York Times

Drop Foreseen in Median Price of U.S. Homes – New York Times

Perhaps the most prominent housing booster was David Lereah, the chief economist at the National Association of Realtors until April. In 2005, he published a book titled, “Are You Missing the Real Estate Boom?” In 2006, it was updated and rereleased as “Why the Real Estate Boom Will Not Bust.” This year, Mr. Lereah published a new book, “All Real Estate Is Local.”

In an interview, Mr. Lereah, now an executive at Move Inc., which operates a real estate Web site, acknowledged he had gotten it wrong, saying he did not fully realize how loose lending standards had become and how quickly they would tighten up again this summer. But he argued that many of his critics have also been proved wrong, because they were bearish as early as 2002.

“The bears were bears way too early, and the bulls were bulls too late,” he said. “You need to know when you are straying from fundamentals. It’s hard, when you are in the middle of the storm, to know.”

f’ing A! CSS Positioning sux

Every time I try to use CSS for positioning, I hit the wall. Gradually, this wall has been getting further and further, but I still always hit it. First I couldn’t get things to lay out correctly at all. Now I can get them to lay out, but only on three of the four browsers at any one time. Then I read this and it makes me feel better:
jwz – CSS is BS

I have learned or in some cases reconfirmed a few other things about CSS, too:

  • Web designers, and especially blogging web designers, are self-important fuckheads. This might be tolerable if they were right, but by and large theyre also dumbasses.
  • Everybody who fancies themself a CSS expert uses pixel-based layout for everything. Their shining examples of elegance always include boxes that are exactly 400 pixels wide, and that specify font sizes in pixels not even points This is better than auto-flowing auto-sizing table layout… why?
  • Most of the time, these examples look like ass on my screen, presumably because Im not running Windows and dont have the same fonts that they do. Or maybe because theyre all using 50-inch monitors and sit with their noses on the glass, the only way those miniscule fonts could actually look readable to someone.
  • They never measure in “em” units, so that their boxes might have at least some relation to the size of the text inside them.
  • This may or may not be because “em” doesnt work consistently across various browsers.
  • Oh, “em”, a term from the world of physical typesetting, is supposed to be the width of a capital letter M, and used only for horizontal measure; the vertical measures are ascent, descent, leading, and sometimes “ex” height of a lower case “x”. CSS defines “em” as being the height of an M instead making it synonymous with “ascent”, which makes it generally about twice as big as youd expect if you know anything about this stuff. Nice. Thats like redefining “centimeter” because it seemed more convenient at the time. Except sillier, since “em” is an older unit of measure than centimeter is.

Is Second Life over yet?

How Madison Avenue Is Wasting Millions on a Deserted Second Life

Ever since BusinessWeek ran a breathless cover story titled “My Virtual Life” more than a year ago, reporters have been heralding Second Life as the here-and-now incarnation of the fictional Metaverse that Neal Stephenson conjured up 15 years ago in Snow Crash. Wired created a 12-page “Travel Guide” last fall. Unfortunately, the reality doesnt justify the excitement.

Second Life partisans claim meteoric growth, with the number of “residents,” or avatars created, surpassing 7 million in June. Theres no question that more and more people are trying Second Life, but that figure turns out to be wildly misleading. For starters, many people make more than one avatar. According to Linden Lab, the company behind Second Life, the number of avatars created by distinct individuals was closer to 4 million. Of those, only about 1 million had logged on in the previous 30 days the standard measure of Internet traffic, and barely a third of that total had bothered to drop by in the previous week. Most of those who did were from Europe or Asia, leaving a little more than 100,000 Americans per week to be targeted by US marketers.

Bank Failure in Second Life Leads to Calls for Regulation

Last week, Ginko Financial — an unregulated bank that promised investors astronomical returns (in excess of 40 percent) and was run by a faceless owner whose identity is still a mystery — announced it would no longer exist as a financial entity.

The declared insolvency meant the bank would be unable to repay approximately 200,000,000 Lindens (U.S. $750,000) to Second Life residents who had invested their money with the bank over the course of its three and a half years of existence.

The Black Bottle

In Brief: Uneven food, ok service, atmosphere not for everyone

The Black Bottle has been on our list of places to try for quite some time. There was a short period of time before it quickly became so popular that there was always a wait. We finally tried it tonight. The service wasn’t fast, but our server was attentive when she did come and was quite nice.

We ordered three items: the smoked chicken and sun-dried cherry flatbread; the saffron risotto cakes with pomodoro; and the potato and prosciutto wheels. Given that is sort of a small-plates/tapas style place, I was surprised how generous the portions were. These three dishes were more than the two of us could finish. The flatbread and potato and prosciutto wheels were quite good, the risotto cakes were somewhat bland and the pomodoro sauce didn’t really help. So the food was overall on the plus side, but not a gaurantee.

The environment is downtown chic: steel, concrete and exposed brick. I actually dig these kinds of places, however we were stuck in the back room where it 10 degrees warmer than the front room and 20 degrees hotter than it was outside. So warm that it became unbearable quickly and we had to leave prematurely.

The crowd in the restaurant was extremely skewed toward the 20 something hipster set. Again, not usually a problem, but the noise level quickly got out of control and being surrounded by bored youngsters talking on their cellphones gets old quickly.

I think this place might be a good late lunch or early dinner kind of place, but if you are over the age of 30 or married, you might want to give it a pass during peak hours.

Black Bottle in Seattle

Correcting the record on Microsoft’s foray into Open Source

Microsoft is making big headlines in their announcement that they are releasing some technology as Open Source…

Why Microsoft Is Going Open Source | Linux Journal

No one would have believed me if I had said five years ago that Microsoft would have a page on its Web site called “Open Source at Microsoft” with the following remarkably sane and reasonable statement on the subject:

Microsoft is focused on helping customers and partners succeed in a heterogeneous technology world. This starts with participating and contributing to a broad range of choices for developing and deploying software, including open source approaches and applications. From thousands of lines of code and scripts on MSDN and TechNet, to open source applications like IronPython, ASP.NET AJAX, SharePoint Learning Kit, and WiX on CodePlex and SourceForge, Microsoft is continually growing the number of products released with open source access.

Thats right: Microsoft has released not one but several pieces of code as open source. Moreover, its submitting some of its home-grown licences to the Open Source Initiative for approval. So what is going on here?

Very few remember Microsoft’s first release of Open Source code: The Microsoft Virtual Worlds Platform. I worked on that platform from 1994-1999. It was originally designed to be a Microsoft product, but for various reasons it became clear that it wasn’t to be. So rather than just kill it, the team decided to release it as open source, very quietly. So, of course, very few have heard of it and no one remembers that it was Microsoft’s first open source release (to my knowledge).

Interesting side note, it turns out that some grad student in China submitted MS Virtual Worlds platform as part of his thesis claiming he wrote it. heh.

Unfortunately, the source code wasn’t hosted on Microsoft.com and I can’t find it anywhere easily. I’m sure someone has it archived somewhere.

My Dearest Wired

We’ve been together a long time. Back since issue #1. Back then, we were both crazy kids, I was just a year or two out of college, starting my career in technology and you were the inside-outsider watching the whole thing happen and feeding me juicy bits of info. I thought it could last forever, but things change. As the industry you documented outgrew you, you started to seem a bit anachronistic. You couldn’t keep up. The juicy news you purveyed was old hat by the time your issues arrived. Then you shacked up with Conde Nast, and all of the sudden you were filled with more advertisements than the websites you covered. I started to check out of our relationship, I couldn’t help myself. I went from devouring you each time you showed up at my door to skimming you and reading only things that seemed interesting. Over time that was less and less. Now, there is a stack of unread copies of you sitting on my nightstand.

Your siren song, your low-priced subscription renewal beckons, but this time it is really over. I’d like to say that it’s me, not you, but really, it’s you. You’re running with a different crowd now, a crowd more concerned with lifestyle then technology. I hardly know you anymore. I’ve got to move on.

arctic ice shrinks, countries react short-sightedly

So, this summer, the arctic ice has retreated farther than usual, a strong signal of global warming and possible problems for the future. And the world’s response? Well, start to argue over who gets jurisdiction over the newly exposed resources, of course.

Analysts See ‘Simply Incredible’ Shrinking of Floating Ice in the Arctic – New York Times

The area of floating ice in the Arctic has shrunk more this summer than in any other summer since satellite tracking began in 1979.

The progressive summertime opening of the Arctic has intensified a longstanding international tug of war over shipping routes and possible oil and gas deposits beneath the Arctic Ocean seabed.

Last week, Russians planted a flag on the seabed at the North Pole. On Wednesday, Stephen Harper, the Canadian prime minister, began a tour of Canada’s Arctic holdings, pledging “to vigorously protect our Arctic sovereignty as international interest in the region increases.”

The Oceanaire Seafood Room, San Diego

I’ve just returned from a conference in San Diego. Overall, it was a pretty dismal experience, food-wise. Rubber convention center chicken burgers, a rat in the dining room of the not-very-good Indian restaurant we tried. The restaurants in the Gaslamp quarter are there for the tourists and they don’t bother with anything more than a pretense at quality (although they don’t worry about overcharging for their pitiful fare).

When we decided to arrange a large dinner, I let the most food-quality-conscious person involved pick the restaurant. When I found out that the choice was the Oceanaire, I was excited: we had been meaning to try their Seattle location and one of their chefs is a contestant on Top Chef, a tv show we enjoy. Also, by this point, I was getting tired of really bad food. The best meals I’d had in San Diego were catered meeting food and that is not a good thing.

The Oceanaire seems to be a bit more of the style-over-substance kind of place. From the decor to the food presentations: Our appetizer platters were delivered as 2 foot tall ice mountains with various pieces of seafood stuck to the side. These were fairly good. Of course, there was no cooking involved, but at least they seemed to have gotten quality seafood.

My main course was a disappointment. I had a piece of Alaskan Halibut that was overcooked and had very little flavor. The potato/asparagus mixture sitting underneath the fish was quite good, but I had a bit of a hard time finishing the fish. At the conclusion of the main course, I noticed that several of my companions had not finished their main courses.

Desert was another over-the-top affair. We ordered several of the deserts for our party and split them amongst ourselves.  Each of these deserts was huge, suitable for 2-3 people and each of them they had the subtlety of an atom bomb. It wasn’t chocolate cake, it was CHOCOLATE CAKE!!!!! Most the of the desserts were ok, not outstanding. The New Yorkers at the table felt that the New York Cheesecake had the right flavors, but the wrong consistency. The bread pudding (usually one of my favorite items) was basely edible. Everything else was ok.

This meal with wine came to around $100/person. For me, I have to compare it to Seattle restaurants. I think that the food quality is a bit above Salty’s, Cutter’s or Palisade, but not by that much. It is also that kind of place, more for the tourists.

Let me put it this way: if I have $100/person to spend and I want seafood, I’ll go somewhere better. If I want to celebrate a special event, I’d probably do it at one of the view places I mentioned above. However, if friends wanted to go there, I’d probably go again just to see if I got them on an off night. If I was served the same meal I got this week, I probably would never return.

More on investors bouying the Seattle Real Estate Market

The Seattle Bubble blog pointed me at this article from Forbes listing Seattle as the best place in the US to flip a house. Anyone shopping for a house within twice the median price in Seattle isn’t surprised by this at all. I’d say at least 40% of the houses we looked at were houses that had been purchased within 12 months and had their prices multiplied between 1.5 and 2 when being re-listed. All praise be to RedFin for making it ever easier to find the flippers by actually listing sales history on their pages.

I won’t buy flipper houses on principle. Even if you like the flippers’ aesthetic, you can’t trust their commitment to quality. If you aren’t ever going to live in a home, you are going to be more than willing to cut any corners that a prospective buyer won’t notice immediately. I really didn’t feel like paying insane premiums for a fresh coat of paint and a cheap kitchen remodel.

Seattle Bubble has also pointed me at ReMuddle which takes joy at pointing out lame flipper houses. What is scary is how many of them we’ve toured or driven past in our searches.