Category: Business

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Business Technology

iTrainedToday Tech

The technology behind iTrainedToday is a nice mix. In fact, the chosen technology has enabled it to finally come to life.

For a web application with persistence, you need basic moving parts: UI, backend persistence (ie. database), server-side middleware to translate the communication between the UI and the persistence. Straightforward for the most part except that things are really straightforward once you dive into the belly- except of course if you live in belly in which case everything’s straightforward but just takes time.

UI: html standards, css standards, javascript and all the various frameworks available and then there’s browser issues. iTrainedToday chose jQuery with jQueryUI as much as possible to lift all the UI interaction. Simile is the only other major JavaScript component but a crucial one. It’s what displays your recent data in one consolidated view.

Server: this is where things can get expensive. ASP.NET, Rails, Django, PHP and more all need to be hosted *somewhere*. And hosting costs money. In addition to the hosting costs there are bandwidth limitations/costs involved. A minefield (unless of course, you play in minefields all day long in which case it’s just a field). Hello, Google AppEngine. Love it or hate it; it’s still pretty sweet to get going with. And whenever someone says “it’s pretty sweet to get going with” they mean “it’s great for prototyping”. I don’t mean that. It’s serving athletes nicely (and simply) and ticking along… prime-time? I’ll let you know when it starts paying for itself in a big way.

Persistence: Google AppEngine handles that for me too. I don’t really need to grok the ins and outs of what that tech is in the tiniest detail. It’s interesting to know, but it’s more important for me to know that: a) it works and b) how to work with it. Storage techies get their hands dirty in the detail ‘cos well, that’s what they do. It’s not really what I do (most of the time).

And then beyond all the moving parts is the brain behind it. Can the brain handle mixing strongly typed dynamic scripting languages with the weakly typed variety and hurdle UI intricacies with usability issues while keeping an eye on security, optimizing the bottleneck (database calls) all the while focusing on the problem domain at hand? Mostly 🙂

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Business Technology

>_bodyFit

What started out as a simple utility project soon turned into geek nectar. bodyFit for the BlackBerry is born to the world of software.

Now, body fat percentages and body mass indices along with waist-hip ratios and daily “am-i-getting-fat” questions in general tend to irritate me. Just get on with training hard and having fun doing what you do and the results will be there; don’t major in the minors. At least, that’s my attitude. That said, there still *is* space for trending/tracking your body shape and that’s where >_bodyFit comes in.

iTrainedToday has a vision to make tracking your training as simple and as unobtrusive as possible- sticking to the basics, without falling for the hype of fashionable health trends which really don’t last more than a 3-4 months. For example, back in the 70’s experts were advocating a balanced diet of carbs, protein and greens (70/20/10- or thereabouts) and guess what: it’s still the simplest, healthiest and least complicated way forward. But this is not a health blog…. 🙂

Body fat percentage equations is where this geek got curious and stayed motivated in producing >_bodyFit.

Besides the all-famous Jackson-Pollock equations, I soon discovered equations for the young, the old, the plump, the athletic, the sedentary and the normal (whatever that means). They all use different combinations of skinfold measurements, tape measurements, weight, height and age and are all varingly (in)accurate. The goal of >_bodyFit was to use as many of the equations as is possible and applicable based on the data input. Then, according to my reasoning, you have at least 3 different results which should correlate closely with one another in order to provide you with a more comfortable picture than just a single absolute number based on one formula that’s also being used on someone with a completely different profile to you.

And it’s not the actual number that matters so much as the trend in that same process, with the same tools using the same technique. By consistently recording your measurements using the same calipers, by the same person at the same time of day you get a more accurate reflection of progress. Weigh yourself in the morning after waking up and then just after lunch. Don’t be too shocked if you picked up a kilo or even 2. It doesn’t mean you need to go on a diet straightaway. Tomorrow morning, you’ll be right back down again. Point is, the body fluctuates- a lot. Again, don’t major on the minor changes- but keep your focus on the bigger picture *over time* in order to create an authentic strategy. >_bodyFit will help you do exactly that.

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Business Technology

iTrainedToday

Today is a good day ™ iTrainedToday has been released for early adoption and community testing/feedback. Built on Google’s app-engine, iTrainedToday is a free service for athletes wanting a simple yet informative site to record their training data. It uses Simile for displaying your training data in a easy-to-peruse fashion which, hopefully, encourages you to keep training when you start seeing massive blanks in your efforts 🙂

iTrainedToday is useful for part-time athletes, experienced athletes who just need to keep the recording habit up, weekend gym warriors and even the more dedicated fitness enthusiast. This is alpha, but your data will be preserved as we move the application into newer versions so feel free to start using and giving feedback.

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Business Technology

Catchit

There is the popular coding challenge whereby the developer/hacker/gunslinger/coder has to create a piece of usable software in less than N hours (usually 24). You may have heard about it, read about it or actually even done it. There’s usually pizza, coke, coffee, energy drink and loud music involved and also cleverly disguised as an all-night party for binary miners. Nonetheless, if hosted to your linking, the challenge is a great way to flex some brain and skill. And it’s exactly how >_catchit was born.

The mission: create a usable, as shelf-ready-as-possible BlackBerry application within one working day: typically 6-8 hours of productive coding. The only absolute minimum requirements are: source control and an automated build process. Mission accomplished.

Remember when cellphones first came out and they suffered multiple personality order? Couldn’t decide if it was a mobile phone for communicating, an anti-mugging personal protection unit or a military grade close-quarter offensive device (I’m referring of course to it’s 2 foot aerial and 4kg of rugged manufacture). Yes, they’ve come a long way since then. But the thing I most remember about the early days of mobile phones was how they nurtured and flourished your rudeness.

You’d be talking live, face-to-face, in person when all of a sudden a phone would ring. No matter how deep the conversation or how mid-sentence you were, that was it. Conversation abandoned. Code Red! Pick up the phone! Yes, we’ve come a long way too since then (well, some of us at least). So >_catchit has been designed to help you catch those badly-timed calls when you don’t have to leave your caller hanging and you also don’t want to interrupt the “now”.

When activated, if you choose to ignore an incoming call, a screen will present you with an option to send a pre-populated text back to the caller immediately. You can alter the standard text if you like, or just send as is. Neat. In automagic mode, it’s even less obtrusive. Your caller automatically gets a text. Deactivate it, and there’s no more >_catchit. It also works with missed calls, if you want it to.

And that’s >_catchit complete. One full working day, one working product including user documentation (this post). And yes, you can safely download it from here by pointing your BlackBerry at this link.

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Business Technology

zaFin Statistics Update

zaFinTools has been updated with a new function: the statistics calculator. Given a dataset, zaFinTools will give you a descriptive breakdown of the numbers, statistically speaking, by working out and displaying the following information in one go:

Length, Median, Mean, Sum, Sum of Squares, Minimum, Maximum, Range, Variance, Standard Deviation, Co-variance, Mean Absolute Variation, and then the 3 quartile positions and values.

Shew.

Download zaFin for BlackBerry.

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Business

zaFin for BlackBerry

At last, a version for the BlackBerry has been released and ready for general public consumption. Make some good decisions this year- based on numbers and data- not just emotional “got-to-have-x” or even more dangerous hype-based “woohoo-the-recession-is-over-we-can-spend-now” motivations. take the time to think it over a little… or use zaFin.

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Business

ZaFin Genesis

ZaFin is the finally born with the first feature arrived: PAYE. (Hey. It’s a start and a natural one at that given it’s history). Now, ZaFin is a long-term project and has been a goal to get going for a long time now. Essentially, it’s the place to post tools which help you reach numbers you need to make informed decisions for yourselves. Given the state of the world economics at the moment, give me one good reason why would I want to get financial advice from “the system”? It’s track record speaks for itself. Neh. Have the courage to think for yourself, right?

So ZaFin is supposed to be that kind of place. A spot where you can, armed with a bunch of quick little nifty calculators, reach and juggle numbers to come up with a reasonable conclusion. You don’t need an advisor for that. I believe, armed with the right information (ie. numbers) most reasonable folk can come make up their own minds. And make pretty good decisions on their own too (and maybe also check in with an honest friend to bounce some ideas off).

There will be more to come, slowly, over time, as time allows; baby steps. Hope you find the first tool useful, and more importantly, simple to use and to the point giving all you need, and only what you need.

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Business Technology

Playground Update

The playground has got a new update: stats-related. We covered the sections where you can uncover a bunch of numerical descriptions on a dataset, which is useful for a quick overall summary of the data. I’ve used this tool a couple of times myself preparing for exams and checking manual calculations (yes, sometimes i need to do this type of thing manually) and of course, it’s much easier than using my Sharp or Casio calculator.
And then there are times when you need to examine the relationship between two variables…

The “Applied” Stats Calculator helps with that quite a bit by giving you a fairly (or so i’d like to think) easy way of inputting your data and then calculating and displaying the relationship through a least-squares attempt on the data provided. There are two motivations for this development:
a) linear relationships are more meaningful than just describing a dataset on its own
b) a showcase in extending the javascript library, complete, as always, with tests.

statsbi

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Business

Refinancing Model

While explaining Morty, I left with a parting shot: Be careful about consolidating your debt. And before I continue, i will make the disclaimer that I’m not a financial advisor, just a curious number cruncher. So not entirely satisfied about not giving an example, I’ve now had the time to consider the model more carefully to present you with some numbers. So here goes…

Scenario: 2 loans exist, one for a house taken out in May 2004 for 800K at 14%, and one for a car in May 2006 for 160K at 16%. Come May 2009, you decide to consolidate your debt (for whatever reason).  Note, I will purposefully line up the dates and use nice round numbers to get the point across. Also, the interest rates used reasonably reflect the situation in South Africa at the time (as my memory serves).  But regardless of the actual numbers, the same maths (and hence lessons) apply. The math follows:

Home Loan:

  • 800K at 14% over 20 years = 9.9K repayment
  • You will end up paying 2.4M for the house over 20 years
  • That’s 1.6M in interest alone
  • After 5 years, you have paid off 600K, but have only 54K in equity

Car Loan:

  • 160K at 16% over 5 years = 3.8K repayment
  • You will end up paying 230K for the car over 5 years
  • That’s 73K in interest alone
  • After 3 years, you have paid off 140K, but only have 83K in equity

Now you want to consolidate your outstanding debt under one loan. And, we’ll assume you’re refinancing under more favourable interest rates- else why would you even reconsider it? So what you actually owe at this stage will be the sum of the settlement values on each loan, which will largely depend on the agreements you have in place. Let’s assume everyone plays nice and they let you off with the original loan less your current equity. It could be a lot worse! You now owe a total of approx 840K which you need to refinance, and because one of them is a house, you might end up reasonably re-mortgaging over 20 years again:

New Loan:

  • 840K at 11% over 20 years = 9.2K repayment
  • You will end up paying 2.2M for the combined loan over 20 years
  • That’s 1.4M in interest alone

So, where do you stand at this point?

You’ve definitely made a short-term saving in terms of your monthly repayments (10+4 vs 9). Your cash flow is a lot smoother! But with 2 seperate loans though, you would have paid a grand total of 2.6M (2.4M + 230k) over the lifetime of those loans. With a consolidated loan, you would have paid a grand total of 2.9M (2.2M for new loan plus payments already made on previous loans of 740K). Plus, your cash flow potentially deteriorates over the medium term. Once the car loan would have matured, you’re paying almost the same repayment (especially if by this time the interest rates have dropped) anyway. And then in the long term, you’ve got an extra 5 years of repayments to cover which is worth 0.5M of cash flow in the future.

All, in all, the simple summary of it that is you end up losing approximately 300K in the long run.

But it’s not all that bad- it can actually be to your advantage too. If the difference between the original financing rates and the new financing rates are large enough, you can actually save yourself a lot of money in the short, medium and long term too. But that requires approximately a 5% difference _at least_.

So think twice before you jump fall for the debt consolidation marketing trap. Make sure whoever is advising and structuring it for you that they go through all the numbers and look at it long-term. Obviously the refinancing will always benefit the lender which is expected and acknowledged, but just how much is fair and reasonable? We all have the right to make informed choices- and we should insist on that right- and just because it might sound technical or complicated or involve a lot of numbers, doesn’t mean it can’t be explained in a way that makes sense to you.

Hope that helps to at least think a little more deeply about the choices out there….

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Business Technology

Morty

Morty is a pet project i been working on here and there which spills out an amortization schedule for you, based on your loan attributes. I’ve been incubating it at Heroku since it is quite a fascinating concept and tool. Their online console is pretty geeky but easy to use and deploying rails apps is straightforward really. Anyhow…. Morty.

Say you considering a loan for (in any currency) $150000 at an annual interest rate of 12%, compounded monthly over 5 years (or 60 compounding periods). Immediately you get an idea of how much your repayments are going to be.

In this case, 3336.67 per month. The schedule part is the interesting bit; if you are indeed interested. First, you can see, at a glance, how your equity in the loan grows and how quickly (slowly) the loan capital is repaid over time.

As you can see, it’s only just after halfway that you start to owe less than you’ve repaid. You will notice slight curves due to the nature of amortization. Experiment with bigger loans and interest rates to see just how the curve is affected.

You can also see how much total interest you end up paying, versus how much of the interest you’ve paid off so far.

Here, the curves are slightly more pronounced. Of the ±50k interest you’re going to pay back in total, most of it is paid off quite early. Which makes sense. The more you owe in the beginning, the more interest you pay. So if you really want to make a difference on the interest on your loan, over time, make the biggest impact you can as early on as possible. You can see that towards the end of the loan, how flat the curve is. If you start making advanced payments at this stage, you’ll still save, but not nearly as much as you could have if you were even one or two months earlier with that payment…

The schedule…

Numbers number numbers. All it is is numbers. The numbers tell you that when you make your first payment of R3336.67, almost half of that payment is paying back the interest. R1500, in this case. So, in effect, you’ve only paid back R1836.67 of the capital (R150k) back after actually paying R3336.67. That starting to make sense now? Sucks, eh? So you make another payment, through enforced religiosity (ie. debit order). This time, you’re _only_ paying back R1481 interest. The balance pays off the capital. And so it goes until eventually you reach a stage where you’re paying off more capital than interest with each payment.

Now take a look at your home loan. An average value in current property markets might be something like R800k at 14% over 20 years (or 240 compounding periods). You’re paying back almost R10k every month but your first 42 payments don’t even dent the capital by more than R1000 at a time. Effectively, after 3.5 years, you’ve paid over R420k back, but still have R767k out of the original R800k owing.

Eish. That’s why credit is so expensive and not everybody can afford to jump into the property game.

Which also brings me to another point… a parting shot, if you like. Think _very_ carefully about the impact of renegotiating your outstanding debt. Imagine: 3.5 years later, and almost half a million out of pocket, you get a generous offer an opportunity to renegotiate your existing debt. In essence, you start all over again. Remember the curve! Another 3.5 years later, another R400k out of pocket, and you’ve only managed to claw back R35k, give or take. Sound like a smart move?

**NOTE: Different institutions structure fees into their loans, so the actual repayments may vary if you ask them for quotes and compare to this calculator. Query the fees. Always.