There's been a lot of news lately about rising oil prices. However, these prices are always listed in US Dollars. Giving the sinking value of the dollar, I decide to see how much this is affecting the rise in oil prices. Using monthly averages, between January and October of this year, the price of oil against the US Dollar rose 36%, rising from $59.95 to $81.45 per barrel. I then set out to find the fastest appreciating major currency, which turned out to be the Canadian Dollar. In the same time period, the Canadian Dollar rose 21% against the US Dollar. This means that in Canadian Dollars, the price of oil has risen 13%, or 70.49 to 79.43 Canadian Dollars. So while the price of a barrel in the US has gone up $21.50, the price in Canada has only gone up $8.94.
While searching for the fastest appreciating currency, I discovered that the Korean Won is one of the weaker currencies, having only risen 2% against the US Dollar since January. The changes in its value just seem more sever when it's going from 930 to 900 won to a dollar. So it seems I won't be doing as well here as I had hoped.
Monday, November 19, 2007
Thursday, November 15, 2007
I'm a Korean Millionaire!
I just got my first paycheck for 1,843,150 Won (after taxes and so forth). I also earned a rather questionable sum of 70,000 Won by practicing with a guy that had an English job interview coming up. So I've decided to try keeping track of how much money I make and spend here, to kind of get an idea of my living expenses. So expenses yet, but I'm starting now with 1,913,150 Won. At the current exchange rate that's $2,090.19. It's currently 915.30 Won to the US Dollar. Hopefully the US Dollar will drop in value, giving me a few extra bucks when I get home.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Top 500 is Awesome!
Top 500
Another six months, another post about the Top 500 list. The current list was pretty exciting. While BlueGene remains the top computer, its speed was greatly increased from 280.6 GFLOPS to 478.2 GFLOPS. For the last two years there as been little increase in the speed of the top 10 computers, however, this update saw a bunch of new entrants, pushing the former 2nd place computer down to 7th. This six months saw total FLOPS of the top 500 increase by 41%, the best result in two years.
Other tidbits, BlueGene now does as many FLOPS as the entire top 500 list from June 2003. The current 500th computer does as many FLOPS as the entire top 500 list from June 1996. The current results do not change my estimate that the average top 10 computer will do 1 PentaFLOPS by June 2011.
Another six months, another post about the Top 500 list. The current list was pretty exciting. While BlueGene remains the top computer, its speed was greatly increased from 280.6 GFLOPS to 478.2 GFLOPS. For the last two years there as been little increase in the speed of the top 10 computers, however, this update saw a bunch of new entrants, pushing the former 2nd place computer down to 7th. This six months saw total FLOPS of the top 500 increase by 41%, the best result in two years.
Other tidbits, BlueGene now does as many FLOPS as the entire top 500 list from June 2003. The current 500th computer does as many FLOPS as the entire top 500 list from June 1996. The current results do not change my estimate that the average top 10 computer will do 1 PentaFLOPS by June 2011.
Thursday, November 08, 2007
The US Dollar is Sinking!
BBC
I've been thinking of making this post once I gained internet access in my apartment. So I found it kind of funny that the first thing I saw when I opened Mozilla was this BBC article. This article is like a little conglomeration of my interests. It has currency issues, feminism, and South Korea.
Anyway, the main intention of this post was to detail how much the US Dollar has changed. I'm doing this by looking at when various world currencies passed certain benchmarks (based on monthly average value) against the dollar.
Nov. 2002: 1 Euro > $1 US
May. 2003: 8 Swedish Kroner > $1 US
Nov. 2004: 1100 Korean Won > $1 US
Jan. 2006: 1000 Korean Won > $1 US
Jul. 2006: 8 Chinese Yuan > $1 US
May. 2007: 2 Brazilian Real > $1 US
Jul. 2007: 1 British Pound > $2 US
Oct. 2007: 6.5 Swedish Kroner > $1 US
Oct. 2007: $1 Canadian > $1 US
Oct. 2007: 40 Indian Rupees > $1 US
My estimates for future values (monthly averages):
Jul. 2008: 1 Euro > $1.50 US
Sep. 2008: 900 Korean Won > $1 US
Oct. 2008: $1 Aussie > $1 US
Oct. 2008: 6 Swedish Kroner > $1 US
Jan. 2009: 7 Chinese Yuan > $1 US
Apr. 2009: 30 Indian Rupees > $1 US
Jan. 2010: $1 Canadian > $1.50 US
These dates might seem far off, but the decline of the US Dollar has accelerated the last few months, so these rates might come much sooner than expected.
I've been thinking of making this post once I gained internet access in my apartment. So I found it kind of funny that the first thing I saw when I opened Mozilla was this BBC article. This article is like a little conglomeration of my interests. It has currency issues, feminism, and South Korea.
Anyway, the main intention of this post was to detail how much the US Dollar has changed. I'm doing this by looking at when various world currencies passed certain benchmarks (based on monthly average value) against the dollar.
Nov. 2002: 1 Euro > $1 US
May. 2003: 8 Swedish Kroner > $1 US
Nov. 2004: 1100 Korean Won > $1 US
Jan. 2006: 1000 Korean Won > $1 US
Jul. 2006: 8 Chinese Yuan > $1 US
May. 2007: 2 Brazilian Real > $1 US
Jul. 2007: 1 British Pound > $2 US
Oct. 2007: 6.5 Swedish Kroner > $1 US
Oct. 2007: $1 Canadian > $1 US
Oct. 2007: 40 Indian Rupees > $1 US
My estimates for future values (monthly averages):
Jul. 2008: 1 Euro > $1.50 US
Sep. 2008: 900 Korean Won > $1 US
Oct. 2008: $1 Aussie > $1 US
Oct. 2008: 6 Swedish Kroner > $1 US
Jan. 2009: 7 Chinese Yuan > $1 US
Apr. 2009: 30 Indian Rupees > $1 US
Jan. 2010: $1 Canadian > $1.50 US
These dates might seem far off, but the decline of the US Dollar has accelerated the last few months, so these rates might come much sooner than expected.
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