Understanding Bitcoin Market Depth (by alaric)

A central part of the Bitcoin economy has been the formation of foreign currency exchange markets, where you can trade your bitcoins for US dollars, Euros, pounds Sterling, or many other currencies.

These things are important, because:

1. They let people transfer their money from the fiat economy into the Bitcoin economy, allowing it to grow.
2. They let people transfer their money out again, making Bitcoin a safer store of value; you're not stuck with it when you want to buy something that can't be bought with bitcoins.
3. They let us measure the "current value" of a bitcoin (to some approximation), thus making it easier to price things in bitcoins
4. They provide endless pretty graphs and statistics to look at.

However, one particular aspect of "the markets" that is commonly not understood is what is known as "market depth", so I'm going to give a quick introduction to how the markets work to lay the foundations, then dive into what the market depth is all about.

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Red Nose Day 2013 (by sarah)

Catching up on all my photos again 🙂

We had a three fold Red Nose Day spanning several days!

I made cakes for the Cubs. Red nose cake pops, cherry scone things which were diary and wheat free along with the dinosaurs, and cupcakes in red cake cases.

I made up games and craft activities such as get the red noses in the hoops, draw the red nose on Alaric, make a fluffy red nose and so on.

Then Friday Mary had to go to Nursery in red spotty clothing - Al whisked her away before I could take a photo 🙁 But I did manage to get Jeany and her Wacky Hair 🙂

The it was off to Centre Arts who were doing Red Nose Day stuff in the shopping centre in Cheltenham. there was a cake competition which I had forgotten all about!

The Giant Cupcake was baked by Vanilla Pod Bakery and was raffled off for £45. The Red Nose was made by one of the ladies at the centre and was actioned for £20.

Recipes for my bakes will be appearing on Salaric Cooking.

Lojbani Chicken or jbojipci (by sarah)

Just before we moved to the new house I came up with the idea of Lojbani Chicken, a character who would help Jean or anybody else understand and learn Lojban but I wanted it to be more than that. I wanted some sort of all languages web-comic thing which is obviously very complex and so it never happened - there were some biro sketches in the back of a note book and that was that.

Then I saw this year is Lojban's 25th and so I sat down and revisited the idea of my chicken. The result was more biro sketches and Mother Lang and her two daughters Coni and Nat, they live on a farm where Lojbani chicken is one of the animals.

A full first story will hopefully be appearing on Wiggly Pets soon 🙂

Once the image above is digitally edited (this is just what I russeled up using my new birthday pens and colouring pencils.) there will be speech bubbles saying such things as fi'i - meaning welcome.

Other existing characters include Esperanto Cat and Toki Pona kitten. I haven't decided yet what creatures should represent any of the natural languages - mainly due to worrying about offending people :/ I might do something like have made up creatures for natural languages and real animals for the constructed languages - suggestions welcome 🙂

I am hoping to produce some more of the characters as part of the 100 birds in 100 days challenge I am currently doing over on Orange Monster.

A Birthday Surprise (by sarah)

Today is Alaric's birthday so he took the day off work to potter around tidying his workshop. Not all went to plan as there was a baby poo incident in the bath she was sharing with Jean and a lot of bath toys - it took both of us to shower children and clean both and toys ups.

He was just having a break and debating when to go our for lunch when there was a knock at the door. Three kids trying to rehome their kitten as they are having to downsize and have only just been told that it's no cats at the new place. Al explained we have too many cats already and that they should try and find someone else. Which they did - I was over at the neighbours and watched them try house after house.

Eventually they came back back to our house and Alaric took the kitten. I was still over at the neighbours when Jean appeared very excited - so excited she didn't want to stop for the chocolate the lady next door was offering her!

The kids mum appeared a bit later with all the kitten suplies. They were very sad and very desperate - we were first choice as we already have cats and kids. The kitten has been well looked after and loves kids!

So we now have a little kitten.

I may have gotten a little over excited over it - and indeed the first thing Alaric did was take a photo of me with a kitten sticking out of my jumper and post it on Twitter with the words 'Sarah in her natural element'.

I personally reckon that everybody should just call me Crazy Cat Lady from now on.

Broodiness issue solved for now!

Mary was so excited babbling about 'abee ca!'

Jean took her responsibility of kitten stroking very seriously.

She is so in love with the little thing - I've never seen anything like it. She loves the rabbit and things but this is a level up - I think it is because she's that bit older and it is smaller and more interactive. The baby bunny was still big enough you could see it looking after itself - Fluffy was a sub-adult when we rescued him were as this kitten is oly just old enough to be away from mum.

She automatically went into protection mode - worrying about it falling off of things and forgiving it if it bit her etc... (which is does a lot as it is a playful little thing unlike Hydrogen and Helium who have always kept their distance and would occasionally come over for snugs - this one loves being snugged with humans).

Once it as settled we went out for lunch were the girls both pretended they were She-Ra and then wizards with bread sticks. 🙂

The kitten had been called Kitty but we felt that as it was so young and that is more a description we could use our naming pattern we had started when we got the two girls. So the new cat was to be Lithium however Jean wanted to keep the kitty bit so we went through a few variations such as Hello Lith and so forth but in the end the poor things name is Lithium Hello Kitty.

We all wanted to get back to the kitten and even Jean shrugged at the suggestion of ice cream factory.

Jean, Mary and the kitten bounced around all afternoon whilst Alaric pottered in the workshop and I attempted to make him easter chicks for his birthday cake. When I checked all three were crashed out on the sofa!

Jean just kept saying how she hadn't realised how cute kittens were and how sweet it was that Mary was trying to look after the kitten 'it's a baby looking look after a baby!' with Jean supervising - almost made me cry with cuteness. Alaric didn't stop grinning.

So it looks like the Snell-Pym Zoo has a new member - also it turns out that Alaric shares his birthday with Grumpy cat 🙂 Lith is not grumpy at all! Though it's mews to be picked up heart Jean's heart she says so she just has to pick it up.

A Snowy Spring (by sarah)

I went out and took more photos of snow - mainly as the sun was now shining.

I have always loved sun beams 🙂

The sun seemed to exist in a strip highlighting some lovely buildings in the distance - I liked the contrast as it makes some of the buildings appear to glow.

I found a ruin at the side of the road - I think I was in Leckhampton.

Earlier on in another area I found pig stys that look almost apocolyptic.

I photoed snowy crags using max zoom.

And the best bit was I found woolly pigs! If anyone knows the bred I would be greatful if you would let me know!