I came across a great "article" (is that the right term for an audio segment which is also available online?) on David Swensen.  Swensen manages Yale's endowment, and has managed success even during these trying bear markets, realizing an average annual return of 17.8 percent over the last 10 years.

David Swensen's book, Unconventional Success, has received complaints for being a very dry read.  That's unfortunate, because the message seems to be a good one:

• invest broadly in index funds (avoiding other mutual funds due to their built-in cost structure)
• rebalance your portfolio to match your goals as often as you can while still avoiding fees
• do it yourself, avoiding costs associated with account managers

Swenson suggests the following portfolio:

30% Domestic Equity (VTSMX, TINRX)
20% Real Estate (VGSIX, TCREX)
15% US T-Bonds (VFISX, TCTRX, VFITX, TIORX, VUSTX)
15% US Treasury Inflation Protected Securities "TIPS" (VIPSX, TCILX)
15% Foreign Developed Equity (VGTSX, TIERX)
5% Emerging Market Equity (VEIEX)

The only challenge (that I'm reviewing) is the above portfolio requires an initial investment of ~$60k, since the minimum buy in for VEIEX is $3,000.  Doing the math the rest of the way up yields a starting investment of $60k.

The folks at The Motley Fool agree in general terms.  They say, simply, "Buy an index fund."

GeekDad produced another gem today, FontStruct, a free webservice that allows you to create and distribute fonts.  For free.

I'm going to need to practice building fonts, but it's great fun to work with fonts if you're into that sort of thing.  For starters, you can always take an existing font, "clone" and modify it to get the feel for how they work.  The tool appears to give you a product akin to what you paid for it, so don't expect miracles.

If you'd rather just buy a good font, FontStruct is associated with FontShop, an online font retailer.  FontShop also has an interesting RSS feed, again, if you're into that sort of thing.  It seems to be fairly low volume, so it might be worth dropping into your reader of choice.

OT, Geekdad is quickly becoming one of my favorite RSS feeds to read.  As a geek and a dad, they speak to my soul. 

Pecha Kucha is coming to Phoenix!  What's Pecha Kucha, you ask? 

Pecha Kucha Night (pronounced pee-chack-shaw is Japanese for the sound of conversation or chatter) [was] devised by Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham... in 2003 as a place for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public.

 

But as we all know, give a mike to a designer (especially an architect) and you’ll be trapped for hours. The key to Pecha Kucha Night is its patented system for avoiding this fate. Each presenter is allowed 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds... giving 6 minutes 40 seconds of fame before the next presenter is up. This keeps presentations concise, the interest level up, and gives more people the chance to show.

 

(From Pecha-Kucha.org)

The basic idea is that it is a night of presentations by local artists of all flavors.  Think musicians, sculptors, architects, knitters, poets, etc., who are given exactly 6 minutes and 40 seconds to talk about their passion.  It's a great way for artists to meet artists and to be introduced to local philanthropists and art lovers alike.

As of this writing, 119 cities across the world are running Pecha Kucha events, and Phoenix, AZ is finally getting it's own chapter.  If all goes well, the first event should be within the first half of the year.  Stay tuned.

More reading:

• Pecha Kucha in Wired magazine (and example 20x20 format)
• http://www.pecha-kucha.org
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pecha_Kucha
• http://www.pecha-kucha.org/cities/phoenix

My son is reaching the LEGO age.  Certainly, he's been playing with blocks since he could manipulate his hands correctly, but DUPLOs don't hold a candle to LEGOs.  LEGOs present two problems: what's the easiest way to store them, and how can you cut cleanup time to a minimum?

Wired's GeekDad found a great solution called the Box 4 Blox.  The idea is simple; once all your pieces are free, just dump them into the top of four stacked boxes.  The biggest pieces will stay at the top, but the smaller pieces will fall through each level, with the smallest finding their way to the bottom once you give the whole stack a good shake. 

I haven't laid hands on the product, but my only complaints are that it's not big enough for some LEGO collections (you should see my nephew's case), and it doesn't have a place to put your "in progress" builds.  I mean, when you're constructing the LEGO Death Star, you need to stop for sleep.

Dear NVIDIA,

I own and work primarily on a Dell Inspiron 9400 laptop, which is equipped with your GeForce Go 7800 display adapter.  I am running Vista SP1 and am patched with the latest NVIDIA video driver available from Dell.  At work, where this issue occurs, I attach and run a second external Dell 21" LCD monitor.

If I lock my computer and the computer goes into screen saver mode, I can most certainly guarantee the following error after logging in to the computer:

Please fix this bug.  Please consider that you last officially released a driver to Dell over 16 months ago today, before Vista was publicly available let alone Vista SP1.  Please also note that the public is under the assumption that your company's products are the cause of nearly 30% of the unhandled crashes in Vista.  You could earn yourself some public good will if you acknowledge the err of your ways.

If I can sum it up, please stop sucking.

Sincerely,
Matt

P.S. I'm not the only one having these issues:
SteveX Compiled
Repair Your PC Now
NVIDIA Forums