Essence
I like to joke that this blog is an extended exercise in
"information/assertions communicated in a way where you can clearly see
the structure of the information/assertions"; JUST LOOK AT ALL THE
STRUCTURE. Also, sometimes humor is present; slightly-relevant pictures are frequently present, so the reader is not bored to tears.
Purposes
- To provide information to people, taking advantage of the public and revisable nature of blogs. For instance, the Steps To Set Up KeePass post exists so I can point people to the blog, and they'll always have easy access to up-to-date instructions, which they can also easily share with others. Previously, I had a KeePass Setup email that I kept on revising and fowarding to people. The blog is much better for spreading the information.
- Important subcategory: if there's some info/thesis you keep on referencing in conversation, it is really nice when you can direct your friend to your blog which has it all laid out. That really improves the conversation. Example: Stock Market Index Reference.
- To provide information to my future self and have it be accessible anywhere I have an internet connection.
- To host some of my attempts to entertain my friends, such as the Sam Soundar Biweekly Newsletter. The newsletter used to be distributed via email, but much like the KeePass emails, this blog has much better logistics than email.
- To put forth assertions in writing so that they may be more effectively understood and critiqued by others. For instance, I originally wrote the Bonds And Interest Rate Risk post so that I could have people read my examples -- examples that are hard for me to articulate and hard for others to fully understand when made verbally. Conversations about interest rate risk made progress where before they were stuck. Writing is just better at precision, which I value.
- The critique part is important to me, as I would love for this blog to be a tool by which people see my thoughts and are able to correct my mistaken ones.
- The exercise of writing blog posts forces me to refine and process my ideas more than if I never wrote on the matters. Also, "the weakest ink lasts longer than the strongest memory", so these posts are helpful for my future self who can't remember all of my previous thoughts and recollections of facts.
Conceptual Tree View Of Blog Posts
- Humor
- Games
- Computer Security
- Instructional
- Steps To Set Up KeePass (KeePass is a free, open-source password manager).
- Suggestions For Creating Passwords:
guidance on how long your passwords should be, when to use passphrases,
and why you should use lowercase letters as much as possible. Good to
read if you've switched to using a password manager but are unsure what
password generator settings to use.
- Editorials
- Account Security Risks, which makes some recommendations (use password manager and 2FA), but mostly tries to describe the main risks for people's accounts so we can make an informed evaluation of why password managers are good.
- Password Managers Versus the Alternatives, which makes the main arguments for using a password manager, with special emphasis about how a password manager might not be perfect, but it measures up against the major account security risks better than anything else we have. Relies upon background information from Account Security Risks post.
- Account Recovery, Insecure and Uncertain: why account recovery can be weak link in account security and why it is hard to come up with good advice for users for what to do about it.
- Password Strength In Dollars: for thinking about password strength, why it is better to think in terms of money-to-crack rather than time-to-crack, and I propose a model/equation for money-to-crack.
- Programming
- Notes On 'Visual Basic For Applications' (VBA) In Excel, a combination of notes for myself and Excel users that have never programmed before. Tries to cover topics in a good order.
- Unsigned Integers Are Dangerous, why you should use unsigned integers only for very particular cases, and surprising issues that arise from unsigned integers. Slanted towards C/C++ but many points apply to other languages.
- Royal Road To Async/Await, intro to how async/await has a special execution flow, tries to get you to your asynchronous epiphany as quickly as possible, then gives ordered tour of good C# async/await/Task resources.
- Xamarin Pipeline Demo: mirror of my XamarinPipeline GitHub repo
readme. Shows how to do common Azure DevOps tasks for a Xamarin app,
like build-based versioning, APK signing, unit testing, UI testing, and
artifact publishing.
- GreaseMonkey Journey Notes, some notes as I learned Greasemonkey/Javascript/XPath/CSS/HTML/FirefoxWebDevTools.
- Git Fast-Forward: goes over the 4 equivalent properties of git's fast-forward merges and gives an example of a fast-forward merge that exposes a common misunderstanding of fast-forward merges.
- Git Notes: a continual work-in-progress for examples and conceptual explanations that I'm going to be glad I wrote down.
- Talon Voice And Cursorless Notes, every time I encounter something I wish I knew earlier or couldn't immediately figure out how to do in Talon/Cursorless (they help you control your computer with your voice), I try to write it down here.
- Adding Rust And WebAssembly To A Web App Hosted On GitHub Pages.
- Finance/Investing
- Introductory educational materials for people with minimal interest in finance/investing
- Starting Point For Saving and Investing, which is long and points to a lot of other resources; meant for people who want to start their journey of educating themselves.
- Oversimplified Conversations About Portfolios, which is short, silly, and meant for people who don't want to spend much time educating themselves about this stuff.
- Steps To Buy An ETF At Fidelity, a very practical click-by-click set of illustrated instructions on how to transfer money into Fidelity and then buy an ETF.
- Reasonable Prioritizations Of Accounts, which covers questions like "should I max out my Traditional 401k or my Roth IRA first?" and "should I participate in my Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP)?".
- ETF vs Mutual Fund (ITOT vs FZROX), tries to help inform people about whether they should go with ITOT or FZROX, and more generally ETFs or mutual funds.
- Dollar Cost Averaging Is Ill Founded And Overrated, argues that Dollar Cost Averaging, where you deliberately delay investing money, is an ill-founded and logically inconsistent approach to risk management.
- Reference materials that are not for people with minimal interest
- Editorials/commentary that are not for people with minimal interest
- Bonds and the Upsides/Downsides of Interest Rate Changes, mostly written to show that bondholders often benefit when interest rates increase, even though their old bond holdings decrease in nominal market value.
- Mechanics Of How Stock Prices Change, in response to people asking me "how do stock prices change?"; also explains exchanges and various types of prices.
- Thoughts And Articles On REITs, perpetual work-in-progress of article snippets and commentary; current conclusion is "a total stock market index fund gives you the right amount".
- Dividends Vs Share Buybacks, perpetual work-in-progress of article snippets and commentary; current conclusion is "most arguments in favor of dividends are fatally flawed or apply to share buybacks as well; share buybacks are more tax efficient for individual investors".
- Notes On How Modern Financial Markets Work, perpetual work-in-progress of article snippets and commentary on exchanges, market makers, dark pools, etc.
- Math
- Reference
- Misc Math, a combination of some math things that are hard to find via google, or heavy distillations to some useful pieces; heavy slant to statistics.
- Pareto Principle Gives Extreme Results: the 80/20 rule is often true at one scale, but if applied at all scales, could also be called the 40/0.1 rule.
- Misc
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