Gas is expense in the US, but still double in Europe, so quit whining!

1 liter = 0.264 US gallons. So About 4 liters per gallon.

In Europe gas is about $2 USD per liter which is about $8 per gallon. So what are we really complaining about with our $4 to $5 cost per gallon! You don’t see to many big SUV’s in Europe. The car went rented on our month long trip through Spain was a gutless small compact that struggled up the hills. However, it still cost $100 to fill up. Now some of this can be blamed on the pathetic power of the dollar against the Euro and our good pal George Bush. But that’s another story. Don’t get me started. For fun, let’s run some comparisons….

At home I drive one of the worst gas guzzling offenders. A Range Rover HSE. At current gas prices it costs me just over $100 to fill it up at home in Los Angeles. Let’s see what it would cost to run this beast in Europe…

25 (Gallon Tank) * 4 (liters per gallon) * $2 (USD per liter) = $200 fill-up.

Damm, at those price it would really be cheaper to fly. Now we know why the airlines are in so much trouble. I’m willing to guess that Jet Fuel is even more expensive than super unleaded.

Our large country depends on energy to move everything, people, goods, and even information. My money is on inflation creeping up quickly.

Part of this equation is higher energy demand from a developing world driving up prices and part of it is the lame ass stregth of the dollar (thanks for the war George).

On a lighter note I thought you all would get a kick out of this Spanish Gas Station chain. Gas is Europe is “A Real Gip”. Ha Ha. Enjoy.

Why can’t the Spanish cook?

Me and my fiance Cami are at the beginning of our 1 month trip through Spain. So far it’s been amazing. Madrid was really cool with lots of energy and glamorous folks. The locals like to eat dinner at about 11pm and then party until 6am. Most bars are still empty midnight. No last call, mas fiesta grande. However, don’t expect to find any quality food over here. Here’s my observations on Spanish Cuisine.

Food in Spain is similar in quality to what is found in a hospital cafeteria. It is bland, often undercooked, and presented poorly. Photos like this are commonly displayed outside of restaurants. Does this make you hungry? Not me. Don’t think we didn’t search high and wide for good restaurants. We searched one night for 2 hours and could not find a good restaurant.

Do you like undercooked Eggs (borderline raw) with fat infused, greasy, unchewable chorizo sausage? or perhaps a “Mystery meat breakfast buffet”, then you will love Spanish cuisine.

They way they prepare bacon is laughable. They don’t even bother to cook it, I think they just heat it up. Don’t expect to find any nice crispy bacon here. If you compare a grand slam at Denny’s to the finest restaurant in Spain, Denny’s will win hands down.

Which brings us to their meat. Meat in Spain has triple the fat content of any meat I’ve seen in the USA. To make matters worse they seem to have an aversion to cooking it. After being frustrated with all other menu optins I ordered a Hamburger which was delivered as raw hamburger meat in a stale bun. All this for 50 Euros!

Salads in Spain use the worst quality iceburg lettuce topped with squeeze bottle style thousand island dressing of the type normally found right next to the catsup in a supermarket.

The Spanish aren’t into spices. They don’t even dig salt. You have to ask for salt/pepper on your table.

Cole slaw is also big in Spain. Who the fuck likes cole slaw? Seems to me like something only prisoners are forced to eat.

They also have some very interesting combinations of vegetables here. For example, asparagus served with mayonnaise and olives filled with anchovies.

If you are planning a trip to Spain our advice is to stick to ethnic food such as Argentinean, Mexican (if available), Italian (hard to fuck up a pizza or pasta), Middle Eastern (Dohners, Kebobs).

Panning For Gold in Domain Names

Each day thousands of domain names that have been previously registered expire and become available again. The drop catchers like SnapNames.com and Pool.com publish lists of the names set to drop in the next few days. Being new to the domaining business but an old veteran database developer I decided to build a cool little application to “pan for gold”. Here’s how it works. I created an SSIS package on my database server that wakes up each morning at 5am, downloads the list of expiring domains, and pumps them into a database table. The list is then automatically compared to a group of databases to find the “gems”.

It scans for matches in a semantic English dictionary, a list of all common first and last names from the 1990 US Census, a list of famous people (spidered from Wikipedia), a large database of all populated cities/towns/places around the world, popular product keywords (spidered from a shopping search engine), and a set of keywords that I’m interested in (like Costa Rica). The daily drop file usually contains between 50,000 and 80,000 domain names. My little application has already turned up some great names snatched for the minimum bid on SnapNames and Pool. Keep an eye on my blog for updates on how it’s going. From time to time I’ll post some of the great names I’ve snatched with this tool. I’d love to see some comments from readers on how they sift through the list and find the gems.

The Best Quote Ever…Peter Fonda in Wild Angels

This is one of the greatest movie quotes of all time. Peter Fonda playing the leader of the Hell’s Angels chapter from Venice, California in “The Wild Angeles (1966)”.

“We wanna be free! We wanna be free to do what we wanna do. We wanna be free to ride. We wanna be free to ride our machines without being hassled by The Man! … And we wanna get loaded. And we wanna have a good time. And that’s what we are gonna do. We are gonna have a good time… We are gonna have a party”

Commodities Trading, Web Development, and Mexico

Cami and I have spent the last six weeks down here in Mexico house sitting for my dad and step mom while they’re off tripping around Thailand. They retired and moved to San Miguel de Allende Mexico about 8 years ago. San Miguel is about 9 hours south by car from Laredo Texas and 4 hours north of Mexico City. The first time I came for a visit I was shocked at not only how beautiful and cool this town is but also how many expatriate gringos have made it their permanent home. At first older retired gringos started moving down here to enjoy the cheap living, perfect climate, and rich artistic scene.

But now something interesting is happening. In the past 3-4 years people in their 30′s and 40′s started moving down here. It just so happens that this coincides exactly with the arrival of high speed internet. On this trip I brought my laptop and was able to work with exactly ZERO difference than being in my office in Venice Beach California, in fact it’s been much more productive without all the interruptions of a normal office environment. If your job involves a computer it doesn’t matter where you’re physically located anymore. I’ve had conference calls with clients on Skype who had no clue where I was. I built web sites, did my banking, paid my bills, and got paid via direct deposit…all completely virtual. I pulled pesos out of the ATM machine and paid my dinner bill with my debit card. My iPhone works flawlessly (but still expensively) on the Mexican cell network.

A few days ago we met a couple in their early 40′s who live here in Mexico full time. He’s originally from Iowa and she’s from Canada. He has a commodities trading business that deals with managed futures. She runs a day spa that caters to the upscale tourists around town. From a little office next to his girlfriend’s spa he’s able to trade oil, gold, currencies, and live hogs EXACTLY as if he’s on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade. His Vonage phone keeps him in constant contact with his partners spread across the globe.

The world is changing and it’s changing quick. It really sinks in when you see firsthand how borders are almost meaningless. Money and information flow freely and instantly around the globe. In our lifetime I predict dramatic changes in the way people work and the types of work they do. I believe people will work about the same number of hours but their work will spread over whatever schedule suits their whim. Work will be flexible and weaved around personal lives and not tied to any single physical location. Happiness and productivity will increase. Money will flow around the globe and reach places that are currently poor and increase the standard of living for all in areas such as rural Mexico.

If I can earn the same amount of money regardless of where I live then I’m sure as hell not going to live in Southern California 100% of the time. I’m going to live in lots of places and move freely between them without worrying about asking any boss for a 2 week vacation! -Some Bloke

Domaining: My 3 pronged approach

I’m new to this business of domaining.  So far I’ve collected only 80 or so names.  After reading lots of blog posts and news articles it appears some folks are pure domain parkers and some like to develop their names into micro sites.  I played around a bit with Sedo.com parking and I got a bad feeling I was being ripped off.  The number of unique visitors vs the revenue just didn’t seem to add up…so I built my own parking system using a database, web templates, and Google AdSense.   My income increased by 1000%.  I’d love to hear from anyone with a similar experience.   Maybe someone can recommend a better parking system or share their general thoughts.

I’ve decided to take a 3 pronged approach to domaining.  The first prong is my parking system described above.  The second involves building what I call “traffic generators”.  These are sites with many pages of useful real data that will hopefully get indexed in the search engines and drive traffic to my network.  An example is my semantic dictionary reference site.  I’m hoping that by launching 1 site per month using this approach I can smooth out my income stream and hedge against my parking strategy.  The third strategy involves building more sophistcated parking tools using XML APIs like the eBay developer program, Shopping.com XML API, Amazon Web Services, etc.  The goal here is to be able to quickly deploy web sites for product related domain names and earn income through affiliate marketing.  Please leave comments and let me know your thoughs on above.  Cheers,  -Some Bloke

Nearer.com, a study in domain liquidity

Many newbies to the domaining business have a hard time figuring out what the true value of a domain name is.  People trying to sell domain names almost always ask for a ludicrous price in the hopes that some ill informed dummy will come along and buy it.  I’ve been a web developer for 10 years and just started to dabble in the domaining business a few months ago.  In a short time I learned the best way to gauge the value of domain names is to watch the expiring domain name auctions on SnapNames.com or Pool.com.

Most good domain names that expire will have more than 1 party on the waiting list and thus move into a 3 day auction after expiration.  You can learn a lot by getting in on these auctions with the intention of losing.  Yes, losing.  By joining the auctions you can watch the bidding and gauge the liquidity and see the price of the ultimate winning bidder.  These auctions have no reserve price and the bidding always starts at $59.  Since $59 is cheap, a good quality expiring domain name will attract lots of bidders.  A no reserve auction has true liquidity.  Meaning the high bidder will WIN and take ownership of the domain name, NO MATTER WHAT.   If you keep an eye on the auctions you’ll get a sense of the true value of a name.

Now let’s get to my point.  I just watched the auction of Nearer.com.  It attracted a handful of bidders who all waited until the final few hours and then bid it up to a modest price of $425.  This means that Nearer.com is worth exactly $425 dollars RIGHT NOW.  It’ll be worth more in the future, but the winning bidder knows he/she paid a fair price.  They can sell the name tomorrow and get their money back.

This is in stark contrast to most of the Sedo, Great Domains and other auctions that have reserve prices.  Most auctions have zero transparency and thus much, much less liquidity.  I’ve seen many names of comparable quality to Nearer.com with asking prices in the 5K – 10K range.  Maybe the new owner can flip-it and make a few grand.  If they do, then more power to them.

My Foray into the exciting world of blogging

I first heard about blogs in 1999 when some of my co-workers at now defunct FastTV.com and then later in 2000 at Business.com picked up the hobby.  I’ve been a professional web developer and database programmer for 10 years and finally decided to start blogging.  I know what you’re thinking…”Wow, how fucking boring is this guy’s blog going to be”, but I promise to keep it interesting by talking about cool topics such as.  “How to make lots of cash while you sleep”, or “What country should I visit next now that I’ve escaped peasantry and the burden of a regular day job”.

Anyway, I’ll talk about internet entrepreneurship, domaining, travel to strange places, and more.  I hope you enjoy.