domdavis.com

Yesterday, during a particularly relaxing piece of lounging around just before heading to Tai Chi I had the crazy idea that perhaps I didn’t need to find a new job. You see, I write applications for investment banks. These applications then go on to allow them to make oodles of money. They, in turn pay me oodles of money (until they go and loose it all on some stupid scheme and fire everyone, but that’s beside the point). Why not cut out the middle man and write applications for myself. In short, why not become an Algo Trader at home?

In theory the whole scheme is disgustingly simple. You take live, realtime market data, run it through a set of algorithms and have the program buy and sell trades for you. Provided the algorithm is sound you make money. Of course the devil is in the detail. How do I get a real time market feed that I can access programatically rather than using someone else’s software? How much does it cost? Do any brokers provide direct access to their trading systems?

I know it can be done in theory, hell, I’ve written large chunks of an Interest Rate Swap electronic trading platform before I just need to find out what it’s like in practice. Anyway, today I’m doing some research into it and hopefully I’ll have some books on the subject arriving tomorrow.

I’ve finally got round to setting up the Mac Mini again It had been bought to play DVD’s, watch TV and play music but had been made somewhat redundant with the laptop, sky box and PS3. Anyway, I’ve copied my iTunes library to it and will probably use it to play tunes purchased from ITMS, noodle about with Google Earth and show people piccies when they visit.

So having bought shed loads of glowsticks, glow bracelets, glow pendents and the like to buy my way into CBT’s good books I then proceeded to distribute 100 glow bracelets round the place. At one point I decided to do a real life version of Facebook in glow by creating a long poking stick out of glow bracelets and poke people with it. This got a little out of hand, and pretty soon 80 or so glow bracelets were put end to end and fed out of one window and in through another. More photo’s will be added when people email them, but for now here are two rubbish ones from my iPhone.

What did make me laugh is some chav came in asking if he could buy some glowsticks off me. So I sold him 2 for a quid each (he suggested the price) which had the rest of us in hysterics as I was just giving them out (the glow bracelets are less than 1p each, the glow sticks are 30odd pence. Anyway, fun night, met some more people and got a hug. All good

This whole gardening leave is tiring. Up till the wee hours of the morning having a small stress about money (since resolved as I know how much I’m getting and I’m not going to starve just yet) and doing my CV. Up quite early, shower, read through the paperwork I got yesterday, finish CV. Head to Canary Wharf for lunch (yes, I’m a Gentleman What Lunches now, it’s great ), head back to Colchester and collect my camera, after all I’m about to become a ‘professional photographer’ since it sounds so much better than ‘I’m unemployed’. OK, so I’ll be paying myself out of my redundancy until such point as I get a job, wont actually have a photography company and wont actually be selling anything, but that’s not the point. Got home, moved my mobile tariff to a cheaper one and sorted a few other things out saving myself a few pennies each month. Now it’s shower, head off to Tai Chi. Tomorrow I’ve got a workshop on CV writing and interview technique. I’m Doing Lunch again, pick up my Sedition t-shirt, home, rest, change, London, hit the town. My life is just so tough at the moment. Bwhahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

Stunningly attractive, petite girl, 27-35, GSOH with own home and six figure salary who wants to keep a jaded, long haired miserable old git in the lifestyle he’s become accustomed to. Must be happy with me going clubbing regularly. Please apply below.

(Hey, I’m at a crossroads in my life here, I need to explore all opportunities, including that of being a kept man )

I caught sight of myself in the train window this morning while it pulled in and thought ‘hmm, I wonder if I should go blond’. I’m not talking bleached blond here, just a couple of shades lighter so I end up looking something like blokey from Apocalyptica (guy on the left). Anyway, I mulled it over and thought what the hell, why not. So I got out my card for Toni and Guy and was just about to call them when I saw how much it’s going to cost. What with a haircut and all we’re looking well over a ton, possibly a ton fifty and given my current state of poorness* and the need to pay for camera repairs I think I’ll wait until I’m less poor. Of course, feel free to tell my what a wonderfully good/bad idea it is in the mean time.

*poorness is a relative term. Poor for me is when I worry about spending over £100 on something. That said, I am owed some £700 from various places which would help pay for it. Must get onto the electric people and ask them if they can’t give me the £250 I’m in credit (after only a year!). Someone remind me tomorrow. Oh, and if anyone reads this tonight remind me I need to take in some more teabags into work. Text or comment will work (I’ll get an email from a comment and I check email when I wake up).

Will the idiot 99% of the population* please try and force their way into my flat armed with keys and threatening to gouge my eyes out. According to this I then have legitimate recourse to ‘defend my home’ with extreme prejudice With just a few tens of million deft flicks with a sharp implement the country will be a better place. Bwahahahahahaha!

*You know who you are.

Ladies and Jellyspoons,

Turns out a friend of a friend is doing some kind of research thingy doodad for her dissertation thingy and wants loads of people to go here and choose which one out of each pair of images they prefer.

Go! Do!

That will be all.

Right, theme for Sedition next month is “Fantasies and Fables”. As per previous months I’m getting a tshirt printed specially. So we’re going for:

“There is no happily ever after” [front]
“See?” [back]

However, I am opening up the floor to suggestions. Let’s hear your ideas and, if I like it, your text could be going to sedition on a shiny new tshirt

I’ve relaunched somewhere random as a place to show all my photographs. notes from… is now a photography blog, images from… a gallery of my photos and somewhererandom.com a portal to the two. I’ll be adding photographs at quite a pace for the first few weeks as I’ve got a fair few old ones to upload, after that I’d just add it to your RSS reader as updates will really depend on how often I get my camera out and take good photographs (could be a while as the camera done quench at the moment).

As promised pictures from my recent holiday can be found in the cromer zoo section and in this blog post.

Enjoy