****Arduino / Processing Tutorials!!

**New Added! - Arduino/Processing Serial LED Blink Tutorial (03/01/10)




Visit http://arduinotutorials.blogspot.com/ for more details!


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DIY Hands Free Magnifier!












Build a stand to hold your magnifying glass with scrap materials...






Materials Required:
1) Magnifying Glass
2) 4x1.2V batteries
3) 4x3v LEDs
4) 100 ohm resistor
5) swtich (hidden in pic)
6) scrap materials to build stand

Use hot glue to construct stand according to picture. The batteries are used as weight to keep the stand upright as well. Connect the batteries in series, link it to the 100 ohm resistor and switch, and then to the 4 white LEDs which are in a parallel configuration.


Check out http://www.instructables.com/id/Hands-Free-Magnifier-with-LEDs/ for an alternate explanation of the above project.

Please email your comments/suggestions to lazymanacc@gmail.com !



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DIY Helping Hands for Soldering

Recycle your empty fish food container and put it to good use! From one hobby to another!

Also on: http://www.instructables.com/member/c0ffeepowder/




Materials needed:
- empty fish food container
- stiff wires
- 4 self-tapping screws
- 4 washers
- 4 alligator clips






Instructions:
- cut the container into two
- twist 2 or more wires together and connect the two alligator clips at each end
- screw them onto the cut container!

Note:
- use metal alligator clips as this is for soldering! metallic ones grip onto the electrical components better and act as a heat sink as well, minimising the risk of you frying them if while applying solder heat.
- no need to drill any holes prior to screwing the wires onto the container! you just need to use abit of force intially


Conclusion:
- you might wana add a magnifying glass or a fume extracter too! (hopefully i will make them too!)


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**Types of Financial Markets (quick introduction)

1) Physical vs Financial assets Markets
-Physical assets means "real" or "tangibles, therefore refers to products such as wheat, real estate and machinery, etc.
-financial assets deals with stocks, bonds, notes, mortgages and others that claims on real assets.

2) Spot vs Futures Market
- In spot markets, assets are bought "on the spot" and are bought/sold within days of transaction.
- In futures markers, an agreement is made to between individuals to buy or sell an asset at some future date.
- eg. A farmer may enter into a futures contract in an agreement to sell 5000 bushels of soybeans 6mths from now at $5/bushel. On the other hand, an international food producer may enter into a futures contract in which it agrees to buy soyabeans 6mths from now.

3) Money vs Capital Markets
- Money markets deals with short term highly liquid debt securities (The New York, London, and Tokyo money markets are among the world's largest)
- Capital markets on the other hand are for intermediate/long term debt or coporate stocks. (The New York Stock exchange is a prime example of capital market)
- There is no hard and fast rule to describe debt markets, but generally, long term refers to >10years, intermediate refers to 1 to 10 years, and short term refers to less than 1year

4) Primary vs Secondary Markets
- Primary markets are the place where coporations raise new capital. If a coporation were to sell a new issue of common stock to raise capital, this would be a primary market transaction. The coporation selling the newly created stock would receive the proceeds from the sale in a primary market transcation.
- Secondary markets are markets in which existing and already outstanding securites are traded among investors. The New York Stock Exchange is a secondary market because it deals with in outstanding stocks and bonds, as opposed to newly issued stocks. Secondary markets also exists for mortgages and other various types of loans and financial assets. The coporation whose securites are being traded is not involved in a secondary market transcation, and thus does not receive any funds from such transactions.

5) Private vs Public Markets
- Private market transactions are worked out directly between two parties. Eg. bank loans and private debt placements with insurance companies. As they are private transactions, they may be structured in any way that appeals between the two parties.
- Public market transactions are standardized contracts traded on organized exchanges. By contrast they are traded on public markets and ultimately held by large number of individuals. As such they must have fairly standardized contractual features to appeal to a broad range of investors and also because public investors usually do not have the time and expertise to study each unique and non-standardized contracts.
- Therefore private market securites are more tailor-made and less liquid than publicly traded securites which are subjected to greater standardization.

6) Derivatives
- Any financial asset whole vaule is derived from the value of some "underlying" asset.
- eg. An option to buy IBM stock (the value of IBM option depends on the price of IBM's stock)
- eg. A contract to buy Japanese yen six months from now ( the value of Japanese's yen "future" depends on exchange rate between yen and dollars)
- Derivatives can be used to either reduce risks or to speculate.
- eg. Suppose an importer's cost rises and its net income falls when the dollar falls relative to the yen. That company could then reduce its risk by purchasing derivates that increase in values when the dollar declines. This is a hedging operation that reduces risk exposure.
- Speculation on the other hand is done in the hope of high returns but at the expense of increased risk exposure.


Footnote:
A healthy economy is dependent on efficient transfers of funds from people who are net savers to firms and indivuals who need capital. Without efficient transfers, the economy simply could not function. For example, and electrical company could not raise capital. The citizens of that area would have no electricity and adequate housing. An individual would have no place to invest her savings and so on. The level of employment and productivity, hence our standard of living would be affected and lowered.

(more to be updated soon..........)


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