Yes, I have been selected for the Master Asset Management in Dauphine, so, I guess that's what I am going to do next year.
Hence, I will spend the summer reading books such as these:
Above all the last one, since I think I will specialize in Alternative Investments like Hedge Funds.
Yes, since I have decided to give my future career a less theoretical and more practical direction, I have applied to two masters: one in "Financial Engineering" and one in "Asset Management".
I have been selected for an interview for both masters, and the first one takes place on Wednesday.
Hence, I am quite busy reading financial economics, corporate finance, asset management...books since my knowledge on these topics is pretty limited: indeed, when I look back at my formation in economics, I was a bit surprised to see that it was very weak in finance. I have never delve into the specifics of financial markets, options, derivatives and the likes. Luckily, the literature on these topics is quite vast so that I expect to be able to learn what I didn't during my previous studies. Of course, there is a lot of information to be digested, but I think I can do it!
See you soon for the results!
Hi!
So, you have a new laptop with Vista pre-installed, you are quite happy, then you check
this little icon in the system tray that says "100% battery : 1 hour 48 minutes left"!
Quite disappointing!
Fortunately for you, there are a few ways to increase your battery life with third-party programs.
First, Vista Battery Saver : this is a nice little program that allows you to disable both Aero and the sidebar while in battery mode. What is more, you can even tell the program at what point you want to disable them: for instance, you can set Aero to be disabled when there is 70% battery left and the sidebar when there is 40% battery left. This is all very easy to do and quite intuitive.
My advice would be to remove Aero as soon as possible because it uses A LOT of power.
On my U1, disabling Aero would allow me to gain around 15 minutes out of the 2 hours of battery life of the 3-cell battery. I can't tell about the sideboard 'cos I automatically remove it when i install Vista: it uses too many ressources for my liking!
As a conclusion, I can say that it is a nice app, even though it uses 9 Mb of you RAM which is a bit high I think. It is still improving though; for instance it seems that it was not working with Vista Home Premium, but it has been fixed.
2. RmClock: this is an open source project that allows you to adjust your CPU performance on-the-fly and create different profiles depending on your utilisation. For instance, you can use "ondemand" so that your CPU switches between full power (100% CPU) when, say, you work on a picture with Photoshop, and 50% CPU power when you are browsing the web.
Also, quite importantly, you can undervolt the CPU: it means that you can decrease the voltage allocated to each setting of your CPU. For instance, let's say that at full power, your CPU uses 1.35V; with RMclock, you can decrease that amount to 1.2 V for instance. This cools the system down and reduces power consumption which, in turn, increases battery life. Of course, you have to be careful in your settings: you cannot set 0.95 V for the "full power" setting: in that case, your computer will certainly freeze. One drawback of Rmclock is that you can't test each setting whereas with
3. NHC you can! The thing is, you need to have Microsoft's .NET Framework Version 2.0 for NHC to work. I think it comes pre-installed with Vista however. NHC is a bit slower on boot than RMclock and it uses more resources but it might be a bit more user-friendly than RMclock, so it is up to you. With NHC, you might even be able to control the speed of your fan, but it depends on your laptop. On mine, it soes not work.
To conclude, I can say that using Vista Battery Saver and either RMclock or NHC, you can definitely reclaim quite a bit of battery life under Vista.
However, Vista is still slow as hell (in my opinion!), so that I prefer Linux. Moreover, Beryl is waaaaaaaaay better than Aero. Hence, in another message I will talk about Ubuntu Linux on my U1F.
Hi everybody! Long time no see! Well, I have been pretty busy lately trying to find what to do with my life, but more on that in another message.
Today, I want to talk about two young and very promising Serbian tennis players: Ana Ivanovic and Novak Djokovic.
While I was finishing a dissertation, I had the pleasure to watch the game between Ana Ivanovic and Svetlana Kuznetsova. The first time I had seen Ivanovic was already in Roland Garros two years ago when she beat our Amélie Mauresmo (who, by the way, lost early this year also...) and she was only 17.
I haven't had the opportunity to see her much since that time, and I really think that she has matured quite a bit. She still has a very powerful serve and a powerful forehand, but she also looks more patient and more focused. In any case, her first set today was quite awesome. She also looks a bit thinner and athletic than she used to. I am sure she will have a bright future as a tennis player. I am looking forward to seeing her game against Maria Sharapova on Thursday. Arguably, they are the two most beautiful female players even though they are very different: Ivanovis is even sometimes called the "brune Sharapova". However, unlike Anna Kournikova who never won any tournaments, these two are going to win a lot of tournaments since they are awesome players. I know a lot of people dislike Maria, but she's such a great fighter on the court, she never gives up as her game against Schnyder shows (even though she is injured). However much I like Maria, I think Ana is going to win this game. Well, it is certainly going to be tough.
On to Novak. Djokovic is ranked 6th in the world at only 19 and is certainly the best player of the new generation, behind Rafael Nadal. I would love Richard Gasquet to earn this title, but despite all his raw talent, he is still too unstable.
Djokovic looks more mature, and in his game against Olivier Patience he showed an oncredible will to win. As he admitted later on, Patience was the better player on the court (yes, Djokovic is also very classy!) but he fought hard in the fourth and in the fifth and finally Patience made a few mistakes that allowed Djokovic to win the game.
I also predict him a bright future, even though the competition is very tough.
Finally, it is worth recalling that Jelena Jankovic is 22 and is ranked 4th in the world and also comes from Serbia: what an achievement for such a small (and formerly ravaged) country!
We, in France, are still waiting for such a generation of players.
EDIT: I wanted to add that Djokovic was supposed to have a tough game against Andreev, but I had some internet connection problems yesterday morning. Actually, he beat him quite easily and played very well. Andreev has the most powerful forehand off all players, but he is a bit limited whereas Djokovic did many different things on the court and had a good match plan against Andreev that worked perfectly!
I am looking forward to his match against Nadal, even though I don't think he can win. I hope he will at least tire him a bit before the final, hopefully against Federer. Then, who knows?
That's it, I didn't get the job at my university (see previous topic)!
What is more, my two friends didn't either! No locals were selected.
It is a very disappointing ending for us, above all after seeing that other universities had no qualms about selecting their locals. Well, at our university, it seems that it does not work like this anymore (because it used to!)
Now, I have to think about what I will do in the next few months and in a more distant future. For the moment, the disappointment is sill overwhelming!
Here, I am going to talk about the ongoing process of finding a job as an assistant professor in Economics here in France. This is a very long, gruesome and costly process that started back in December. Let me explain (briefly) for those who are blissfully unaware of our wonderful university system.
One could think that actually completing the PhD is the hardest part. Well, it is, but things do not get easier once you are a doctor. Indeed, after completing my PhD (at the beginning of December), I had to collect an incredible amount of documents before the 14th of December, the dreaded deadline for the famous "qualification". What's the qualification you might ask? Well, basically, if you don't have it, you can't even apply for a job as a lecturer at a university.
Hence, you have to send (by mail...I mean snail mail!) those administrative documents as well as a copy of your PhD thesis (weighting 1.2 Kgs in my case, such that it costed around 9 euros per shipment) and your research papers to two "rapporteurs", whose role is to decide whether you are good enough or not. Around mid-february, you get the desired answer. In my case, I got the qualification, such that I was allowed to continue the process. Then, you have to wait a few more weeks to know to which university you can apply: this information is given in the very french JO, i.e. "Journal Officiel de la République Française (of the French Republic)", as well as the guidelines for submitting your dossier. Basically, you need still more administrative documents as well as some research ones (like a list of your publications, a detailed CV...). Then, for a single application to a given University, every single document must be put in 3 different envelops where you have written your name, your adress and the exact label of the job (as well as the University...as if it wasn't obvious!). And this for every single application!. Oh, and I forget, you have to join an empty envelop (with your name, adress...) so that they can answer you. Hence, in my case, I had to write my name, adress...140 times (4 times the number of applications, that is 35)!!! Moreover, I also had to sign and date 3 documents in each envelop, that is I had to put my signature 315 times (3x3x35)!!!
Then, at last, your dossiers are complete, you only need to mail them which costs you 2.61 euros per dossier, which amounted to 80 euros in my case.
A few months later, that is, around the beginning of May, you start getting some answers and you know where and when you are to be interviewed. Well, actually the "when" part is still a bit random: for instance, I was asked in for an interview in Nantes at 9 a.m, as was one of my friend; it turned out that 5 people had been summoned at 9 a.m! Hence, I finally got interviewed at 10.30 and my friend at 11. The problem was that, thinking we were supposed to be interviewed early, we had a reservation (non cancellable, non reimbursable) for a train at noon. We had to take a taxi to arrive just in time! Moreover, my friend had arrived the day before to be sure to be on time, so she also had to pay for the hotel. Had she known that she was going to be interviewed at 11 a.m., she could have arrived by the first train in the morning, as I did.
In Bordeaux, we were all summoned at 8 a.m.! Yes, all of us: that is, at least 15 persons! Fortunately, we were able to say that we had a train at 11.30 and we were among the first to be interviewed. But I guess that some of our colleagues only got interviewed at noon or even in the afternoon!
I also went to Nice (a nice city in the South of France by the seaside) and everything went fine there. Except for a not-too helpful bus driver; indeed, I had to take a bus from the train station to the University. Beforehand, I had found one stop called "Clair de Lune" which seemed to be close to the University. As I climbed into the bus, I asked the bus driver : "You do stop at Clair de Lune don't you?". His answer, in his typical southern accent, was : " I don't know, I don't recall the names of the bus stops". Well, I almost asked him if he was a real bus driver, but I decided to remain polite, and I asked him whether he was going close to the Faculty of Law and Economics. Once again, he was not so sure. Despite all this, I made it in time for the interview which went rather well.
However, as well as the interviews might go, one must always be aware of the dreaded "local guy (or girl)"! What's a local guy you might ask? Well, it is simply the PhD student who has done his thesis in the university you are being interviewed. The problem is, at most small universities in provincial France there is only one job (at most) each year. Since there is also almost always a local guy, and since the local guy tends to be chosen for the job, it is not untypical to end in 2nd place in many universities! It didn't happen to me, but it happened to some persons I know. At least, when you are third or fourth, the pill is easier to swallow! Indeed, paying between 80 and 150 euros per interview (for the train and the hotel) and being beaten each time by the local guy must be really disappointing.
Well, as for me, I am interviewed tomorrow in my university and it is my last chance to get the job. You might think that, as I am the local guy, I must not worry. Above all since there are 3 assistant professor jobs! However, since my university is rather big, there are also 3 local girls; moreover, it seems that they won't select 3 locals (basically because it sends a bad signal to the market). Hence, I guess my future will be determined by a coin flip (I will certainly be up against my friend, and she deserves the job as much as I do!) like when you hold Ace-King in Texas Hold'em and you are up against an underpair.
Lately, I have not won many of these coin flips. I hope tomorrow it will change!
See you tomorrow then for the results.
