Resurrection

About 6 months have passed since the last post on this blog. A lot of things have happened since, and I really mean a lot. These include

• Its a new year ...
  
• Federer has won another Grand Slam ... this time without dropping a set (he also won last year's Tennis Masters' Cup in Shanghai - giving James Blake a quickie tennis lesson)
• I had a two month long trip to India ...
  
• The BSE Sensex went up and down past 14000 a few times, the Dow has also had a few record breaking finishes
• Saddam Hussain executed
• Died - Milton Friedman, Rosa Parks,
  
• Google bought YouTube for $1.65B
• Rumsfeld is out of the Iraq situation
• Shane Warne retired
• Payton Manning actually won the Super Bowl
• A new Windows OS was released - Vista; not only that, Microsoft finally came out the with IE 7
  
• An iPhone was showcased by Jobs
• Blogger has improved, and the blogs at blogger can be assigned tags now!! hear hear ...
  

If there have been more interesting events, I don't deny it ... these are the ones that seemed interesting at first glance (source Wikipedia of course!). But suffices to say that I plan to post a bit more regularly now ... let's see how things actually pan out ... after all, there is many a slip between the cup and the lip!

How artful can Roger get?

I am starting to feel sorry for Roddick and all those hapless tennis players Federer beat on the way to winning the Australian, Wimbledon and the US Open ... at some point, folks have got to get exasperated and frustrated - we need more competition. In Formula 1, when Schumacher won so many in a row, they changed rules again and again till they ensured that competition got up to speed (literally) with him. But there is no such hope for the other players in tennis. They will have to figure out their own way to beat Federer. The blueprint is really quite straightforward really - hope for a miracle :) ... unfortunately, that happens only once a year (at the French Open, and only if you are named Nadal). Anyone else can take their place on the loser's list, there is no shame in that ... he is just that good. After a great third set, that was pretty close through the first 11 games, Federer figured he had had enough - pushed into overdrive and just like that , Federer had another slam to his belt. Federer is cocky, almost to the point of being arrogant:

[On the twelfth game of the third set] ...“He had a terrible game; I took advantage,” Federer said. “From then on, I didn’t look back. I started to feel better, play more freely, and in the end, I played unbelievable.”

... “It’s a feeling that you start to know where he’s going to serve,” Federer said. “You start to know you’re not going to miss the forehand winner, to know that he can’t attack you. It’s more those things that go on inside your head, and you know exactly what shot to hit when you serve. Those are very rare moments in sport, and I’m lucky to have them once in a while.” ....

It sounds incredibly pompous, but if you saw those last 8 games, you cannot help but nod your head ... its the facts, nothing else. It was a pleasure to see tennis like that ... enjoy it while it lasts. A generation from now, folks might will find it hard to believe that someone actually played like that on a tennis court. Its been a pleasure Roger ... but somehow my sympathy for Roddick has been climbing for a while now, and perhaps I may actually pull for him next time these two meet in a Grand Slam (mmm ... probably not!!).

Eras end very quickly - even Martina Navratilova finally retired for good (talk about going out on top). Agassi had a tearful farewell. Leander Paes won the Mens' Doubles with Martin Damm .. but he will fade soon ... and unfortunately, there is no Indian player in the wings who will come even close. But this is the era of the artful Roger - enjoy it while it lasts ...

Sell at your own peril ...

Interesting point from a Motley Fool column earlier today:

Consider this approach instead: Sell your stocks when you want to buy a house, furniture, or other major purchase. Sell when you have too much in stocks and you want to buy some bonds, gold, or collectibles. Sell when you have too much in any one stock. But sell a stock, or a dicey market like this one, on valuation alone, at your own peril.

Basically, what he says is buy and HOLD HOLD HOLD ... and if you do sell, make sure you really have a very very very very darn good reason to sell apart from just getting off the table ... easier said than done i'd say ... but then guys like Buffet have had so much success, there must be something to it !!

More stuff from Yahoo

After Yahoo Mail Beta, its the turn of Yahoo Finance to show something really cool. Check out the Yahoo Charts Beta - it seems to be built on the same engine as Yahoo Mail Beta, looks just as sleek, and seems very useful. seems designed for guys who do a lot of TA ...

but very polished ... more after checking it out further ....

AAPL v/s MSFT

Steve Jobs will showcase the new Mac OS X 5 (Leopard) at the Apple developers' conference later today. Maybe even give a sneak peak at the new products pipeline - perhaps Apple's long talked about Ipod phone.

Hopefully, his product demo will be better than the one by Microsoft - a live one featuring voice recognition software in Vista. Its a dream come true situation for all the Microsoft bashers, check it out (hopefully, Jobs's presentation will be glitch-free - if not, then Apple will be truly ready to run Windows on its Macs!)