Yahoo web hosting, Analog web log parser, and LOGFORMAT

For those of you who use Yahoo web hosting and want a good web log parser that's free, and don't want to pay the $75 dollars for the parser they recommend, Analog has been the free industry standard for a long time. I spent 15 minutes searching around for the LOGFORMAT string to interpret their logs but never found it so I finally took the 5 minutes to figure it out for myself. Here are the fruits of my labor:

LOGFORMAT (%S - %u - [%d/%M/%Y:%h:%n:%t %j] "%j %r %j" %c %b "%f" "%B" "%v"

Hopefully someone finds this useful and if you do please leave me a comment telling me so.

International Markets vs. S&P 500

http://stockcharts.com/webcgi/perf.html?EWJ,EWC,FXI,DVY

View Cached Chart taken from stockcharts.com

The above link shows that international funds focused on Japan, Canada, and China are outperforming the successful dividend paying fund DVY which is a fund that perennially outperforms the S&P 500 by 12%. It shows growth upwards of 40% in the case of Japan further supporting my previous posts. Japan's economy is rebounding fueled by consumers preferences for Japanese vehicles, replacing flat screen TV's, and job growth in the small nation. Canada's economy is booming based on its central role as a leading provider of commodities to the world such as lumber and other raw materials. Other countries in this category include Australia and Brazil. Canada may get a further boon if the focus on nuclear power is increased since Canada is a major provider of Uranium. China, well China is China, is there more to say about that Juggernaut?

There's probably another 20% if not more room to grow this year in all of these stock picks except for DVY.

Gambling Losses are deductible

It's tax season and I wanted to share some tax tips.

Hold on to all those losing megamillion stubs! Gambling losses are deductible, but send them along with your tax return so you don't get audited!

Don't forget to give to IRS recognized charities and get the receipt

Contribute to your own 401k via pre-tax contributions from your employer

Student Loan interest is tax deductible

Contribute to your IRA, the maximum nowadays is $4000k, pick a good fund to invest in once you've made your contributions