One Hed Fits All. My thoughts exactly.
Month: December 2007 (page 2 of 9)
In the coming days, I plan to take up the idea of PHP for non-programmers, helping you tap the power of PHP’s dynamic text processing without learning (much) actual coding.
The problem is that illustrating HTML or PHP in WordPress is always a problem. Why? Because WordPress eats code for breakfast. Properly-formatted coding looks to WordPress like… properly-formatted coding. Instead of a code example, you get the executed code itself.
There are ways around this. I’ve used pictures in the past, or done elaborate searches to suss WordPress into showing the code sample as a code sample. But because I’m going to be showing a lot of code, and because I want for you to be able to copy and paste my examples into your own files, I built a tool (in PHP) to render PHP and HTML in a form that looks to WordPress like mere text, not code to be executed, but which will work just fine when you copy and paste it into your own files.
Like this, as a very simple example:
<html> <body> <p>Hello, World!</p> </body> </html>
I’ve made my little toy available to you, if you want to play with it. You can use it to show coded examples to your own readers. It’s not doing any kind of error-trapping, but it’s not doing very much of anything. Let me know if you can break it.
Building this was actually easier than talking about it, but there is a caveat. WordPress won’t love you if you try to go back and edit a published post that has one of these encoded examples in it. The second time through the WordPress parser, it will try to execute the code. The solution is either to write in and edit in an off-line editor like Ecto or to create your posts using coded examples in a text editor, editing your original files, rather than the published post. The point, either way, is to make sure that WordPress parses the coded examples only once before displaying them.
I’ll have more shortly, but if you want to get a jump on things, do this: Copy the example code above and paste Read more
Ever noticed nobody wants to know how you skinned the cat until they ascertain the cat was actually skinned? In baseball, they ask you if you won. Or if you got any hits. They ask about the details after they find out what matters — results.
These days so many in real estate tell whoever will listen what experts they are. Think Babe Ruth ever had to tell folks he was an expert home run hitter? Don’t answer, it’s a rhetorical question, and silly on its face.
In baseball the first pitch of any particular plate appearance has been analyzed to death. Ricky Henderson made a career of hitting first pitches. Ted Williams, arguably the best pure hitter every to hold a piece of wood in a batter’s box — watched first pitches go right by him about 95% of the time. Pitchers knew this, yet still threw an amazing amount of balls, not strikes on all those thousands of first pitches.
Was Ted Williams an expert? You bet. Were the pitchers he faced for more years than 99% of major league players experts? Some. Probably way less than half. Did most pitchers realize Ricky Henderson was literally hoping for a fat first pitch for immediate deposit into the left field bleachers? Absolutely.
Both Ted and Ricky were real life experts. They knew what folks thought they knew — and knew it better than anyone in their day. Ted was the last hitter to bat .400 for a season, hitting .406 in 1946. Ricky was, no debate, don’t even embarrass yourself, the best leadoff hitter of all time. I’m not sure there’s a #2. That’s how good he was.
He was an expert. Experts actually know what they’re doing, and better yet, know why they’re doing what they’re doing. They know what situations they’re in while it’s happening in real time. Sometimes they have to analyze more or less, but their expertise is what makes the difference.
Today there’s been an explosion of experts in every possible discipline. Real estate is no exception. In fact in real estate there seems to be an Read more
It started out innocently enough. I began to think at parties now and then — just to loosen up. 
Inevitably, though, one thought led to another, and soon I was more than just a social thinker.I began to think alone — “to relax,” I told myself — but I knew it wasn’t true. Thinking became more and more important to me, and finally I was thinking all the time.
That was when things began to sour at home. One evening I turned off the TV and asked my wife about the meaning of life. She spent that night at her mother’s.I began to think on the job. I knew that thinking and employment don’t mix, but I couldn’t help myself.
I began to avoid friends at lunchtime so I could read Thoreau, Muir, Confucius and Kafka. I would return to the office dizzied and confused, asking, “What is it exactly we are doing here?”One day the boss called me in. He said, “Listen, I like you, and it hurts me to say this, but your thinking has become a real problem. If you don’t stop thinking on the job, you’ll have to find another job.”
This gave me a lot to think about. I came home early after my conversation with the boss. “Honey,” I confessed, “I’ve been thinking…””I know you’ve been thinking,” she said, “and I want a divorce!”
“But Honey, surely it’s not that serious.” “It is serious,” she said, lower lip aquiver.”You think as much as college professors and college professors don’t make any money, so if you keep on thinking, we won’t have any money!”
“That’s a faulty syllogism,” I said impatiently.She exploded in tears of rage and frustration, but I was in no mood to deal with the emotional drama.
“I’m going to the library,” I snarled as I stomped out the door.I headed for the library, in the mood for some Nietzsche. I roared into the parking lot with NPR on the radio and ran up to the big glass doors.
They didn’t open. The library was closed.To this day, I believe that a Higher Power was looking out for me that Read more
The story of the year is the lending crisis, so it’s no accident that this week’s Odysseus Medal should go to Morgan Brown for Struggling in Quicksand – Why the Government Continues to Exacerbate the Problem:
So here’s the rub – all of these “do gooders” are making the situation exponentially worse. Their rash actions are actually making it HARDER to get financing. Witness the spreads in jumbo vs. conforming loan amounts. Witness the restriction of loan programs. Witness the increase in underwriting stipulations. Witness the interbank rates compared to the Fed. The fact is that all of these bail out programs (which they all are in one form or another) have added MORE uncertainty to the system. They have not improved the psyche of the people with the money. And those are the people that count right now. If the people who hold the cash don’t want to lend it because their return is unclear we’ll never see the calming of the mortgage market.
The idea is not to make Fannie and Freddie buy everything in sight; the idea is to make the mortgage market a transparent and friendly investing environment so that cash returns to the secondary markets (and debt markets in general). Will that take time to work out? Absolutely. Are any of these rash knee-jerk reactions improving the situation? Not at all. We shouldn’t be worrying about how to bail out responsible people. We should be looking at how to fix the credit and debt markets to provide transparency for investors. Transparency builds credibility. Credibility builds confidence. Confidence drives investment. Investment drives down costs of borrowing, increases program expansion and makes markets healthy.
Until we start fixing what is really wrong we’ll continue to struggle in quicksand.
Krista Baker takes this week’s Black Pearl Award with How To Create Your 2008 Business and Marketing Plan:
Identify the gaps. Now that you’ve documented where you are and where you want to be, where are the gaps? For instance, if you made $50,000 in 2007 and want to make $100,000 in 2008, what does that mean? First, $50,000/12 = approx $4200. If you want Read more
I made two changes to our About page, both of them to clear up potential ambiguities.
The first grew out of a comment from Cheryl Johnson concerning the content of BloodhoundBlog and the possible consequences of Realtors or lenders emulating our outspokenness on their own weblogs:
Verbum sapienti: A word to the wise, that is. We are a real estate industry weblog, and much of our content concerns real estate marketing tools, technologies and techniques that real estate professionals might use in their own businesses. But: We are not appealing for business here. We are not selling real estate or loans or investments, and we are not walking on our tip-toes to avoid offending potential clients. If you are building or hope to build a lead-attracting real estate weblog, BloodhoundBlog is not a model for you to follow. Many of our contributors have client-focused weblogs, and those can be good models to work from. In addition, we wrote a book called Real Estate Weblogging 101 that explains how to build a successful real estate weblog. But BloodhoundBlog is written to be controversial, and we do not — and should not — care whose toes we might step on.
The second is an amendment to our comments policy to clarify what kind of conduct results in a comment being deleted or a commenter being banned from BloodhoundBlog. In this paragraph, the added language is underlined:
Comments policy: Everyone disagrees with us about something, and we welcome this: It’s how we learn. We encourage a free and spirited debate about the issues we raise here. We police comments with a very light hand, deleting comments and banning commenters only for extreme obscenity, flaming or flame-baiting, plagiarism, spam, impersonation (sock-puppetry) or copyright infringement (a fair-use quotation with a link is fine). This warrants emphasis: We are all about ideas, and, because of that, we are very strict about bad behavior. If you get the notion that your fear or anger or rock-ribbed moral fire accords you the right to abuse or insult or brow-beat the other guests in our salon, you will be ejected with dispatch. Nota bene: Read more
This is my column for last week from the Arizona Republic (permanent link). Since I wrote this, Cathleen found a solar-powered flood light solution, which we’re testing now. At some point — ideally when there is more sunlight and when electrons aren’t quite as sluggish outdoors — I’ll let you know how it’s working out.
Time of the signs: Let there be light
We’ve been playing with sign lights.
Signs matter. If you’re trying to sell your home, the yard sign just might swing the balance. A whopping 63% of home buyers discover homes they’re interested in seeing from yard signs, and the sign can be the first “salesman” for the home in one out of every six home sales.
Our signs are custom-made for each home we list, with big photos of the interior of the home. The idea is to swing the balance toward our sellers by whatever means we can think of.
But I cannot imagine a more profound enemy of custom real estate signs than darkness. During the day, you can spot the signs, see the photos, read the copy. At night, our signs, like all real estate signs, are silhouettes against the void.
So we’ve been looking for lighting systems that will extend the hours our signs are visible — from twilight to 9 pm at least, although all night would be ideal.
Our first swing at the ball is a device called the Listing Light. It uses six C-cell batteries to set two light-emitting diodes ablaze. It actually works in the sense that the signs seem to be aglow from a distance, and they are completely readable up close. But the effect is a lot like reading by flash-light — doable, but not to be preferred.
My friend Teri Lussier, a Realtor in Dayton, Ohio, has set her husband loose on the problem of lighting signs. His first invention builds the lights into the underside of the crossbar of the sign post. By now, he’s playing with the idea of building a box composed of two translucent signs with fluorescent tubes inside, much like a commercial sign.
I like what ground-mounted flood lights do Read more
Teri Lussier celebrates exuberance with these Bob Fosse choreographed dance scenes set to Sing, sing, sing! by Benny Goodman:
Technorati Tags: blogging, disintermediation, real estate, real estate marketing, technology
Too bad Miss Cleo’s not famous anymore- predictions are left up to those with (as Jeff says) a “cracked crystal ball.”
So who has the fortune telling skills this year? Time shall tell! Get a leg up on ’08 by reading the full articles in the links below:
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Jeff Brown’s predictions include foretelling that the DOW will exceed 15,000. How’s that for ya? (Oh yeah, this is only his first Volume. Volume II will include something rude about me, I’m hoping.)
Pat Kitano brought us Economist’s predictions including widespread Open ID and bandwith slowdown.
Adam Ostrow notes that Facebook will go mainstream and newspapers won’t die but will creep into the blogiverse.
Drama 2.0 predicts that there won’t be much new innovation or new faces on the scene. Huh?
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DON’T FORGET- if people like Jeff and I turn you off of reading Bloodhound Blog, don’t leave! Simply subscribe only to your favorite authors in the sidebar!
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Trans-Siberian Orchestra is the most successful of the many attempts to marry classical music to rock, with Christmas Eve Sarajevo 12/24 being their breakthrough hit:
It ain’t Christmas without the Barenaked Ladies. This is their Christmas medley with Sarah MacLachlan:
Dan Fogelberg died on December 16th of this year. This is Same Auld Lang Syne, the all time best Christmas Eve song ever written:
Technorati Tags: blogging, disintermediation, real estate, real estate marketing, technology
I sincerely hope this proves that I have as much time to waste on nonsense as anyone else.
by Brian Brady
Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL
Lenders don’t love us no’ mo’. Want a vacation crib in Miami? How about an investment property in Orlando? Show up with 40%, no seller carry-backs allowed, thankyouverymuch.
This e-mail came in this morning from IndyMac Bank :
Florida Guideline Restrictions
Transactions securing properties located in the state of Florida are subject to the following restrictions/limitations:
For all Loan Programs:
- All loans are restricted to Full Documentation
- Primary Residence transactions:
- Second Home and Investment Property transactions are limited to a maximum 60% LTV / CLTV.
– The maximum LTV and CLTV otherwise available for the transaction type must be reduced by 5%.
– The Borrower’s current primary residence must be sold and closed prior to,
or concurrently with Indymac’s funding.
– If the to-be-secured property is a single family residence, condominium or planned unit development, it must be located within an established project. An established project is one in which 90% of the total project units have been sold, and the subject property has been previously occupied / owned by someone other than the developer.
Remember I said, back on April 1, 2007 that IndyMac was conservative? Every other lender followed suit. Today it’s Florida; the other three states will be next. This is why my outlook for housing in 2008 is bleak.
Do not despair, though. While this will virtually halt activity it will “right-price” (that’s my new phrase) the market…QUICKLY. Expect Florida prices to drop like a ball off a table, in February, when the rest of the lenders pucker.
…and then there will be buyers. Oh, there will be buyers.
PS: If I sound giddy it’s because the “muddy waters keep getting clearer” and I can see the bottom.
Thank you, Russell, for the gold you so generously share.
Was Brian the mortgage industry’s Clarence this year?
I think the difference between frankincense and myrrh is appropriate to this metaphor: Compilation and organization of the holy oil of Real Estate Weblogging came to us by way of the prickly shrub.
Merry Christmas to all!
Technorati Tags: arizona, arizona real estate, phoenix, phoenix real estate, real estate, real estate marketing