Binding Programs Together - The Best Software For Your
. Client Portals: If you are an affluent or high net worth investor, you probably work with either a financial advisor or an asset management group directly.
These days, it is common for them to have online portals for clients that allow the client to track his or her entire financial life, including so-called 'held away' assets at different firms. These portals are powerful tools that make life much easier and are often covered by the investment advisory fees you pay your professional. Personal Capital: For investors not working with a more traditional, has become one of the most popular ways to track investments. It currently has more than 19,000 clients and $8.5 billion in assets under management. The software-as-a-service creates charts and graphs mapping out income, spending and portfolio holdings.
It can compare to your preferred and analyze your assets to give you an idea of your true exposure to certain companies across multiple accounts and institutions. Microsoft Excel: Though its ability to import real-time stock quotes is woefully inadequate for the average investor, Microsoft Excel can be used to track the cost basis for taxes on individual lots, as well as calculate aggregate dividend income or map it out on a dividend schedule, including warning you about an. Google Spreadsheets: Google's free online spreadsheet program isn't as powerful as Excel, but it does make it easier to have your documents automatically update with information taken from public finance such as Yahoo. In addition, because it's an Internet-based program, you can log into your Google account anywhere in the world to access your Google spreadsheets. Quicken: If you purchase the investment version of Quicken the typical retail investor will largely find that it meets most of his or her needs.
QuickBooks: Accountants or sophisticated investors who are comfortable with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) will like the flexibility of using a traditional accounting software program to manage their investment holdings. Personally, I use a mixture of spreadsheets and QuickBooks Pro to monitor my estate's assets. These days, Intuit is working hard to push everyone to their online based platform, QuickBooks Online, which is available in multiple tiers and at multiple price points.
Fund Manager: There is a software program called. It's the closest thing to professional investment tracking for retail investors.
It can be very powerful, especially for those who invest in or, tracking things such as interest accrued, the next date, and yield to maturity.
Printing and binding your own books and manualsPrinting and binding your own books and manualsDespite the wealth of on-screen documentation available, like manypeople I still feel the need to print things out for reference orstudy. For most people, printing out a manual means putting up with abunch of A4 or Letter-sized pages with a staple through the corner,which doesn't seem much good to me. Instead I used to print documentstwo-up onto A4 to create an A5 booklet by stapling and folding it.However, this never worked well for more than a handful of pages.
So,I was very happy when I came across techniques for do-it-yourselfbookbinding.I don't approach bookbinding as an art form, rather simply as apractical way of getting documentation into a form which I can enjoyusing. Once you've got the hang of the technique, it doesn't take toolong to get something printed up and bound. In fact the biggestproblem (for me, anyway) is resisting reading the book before the gluehas finished drying! I've modified the original techniques quite abit, so I thought I'd get it all properly documented on this page formy own benefit as well as everyone else's. Things you will need.
Computer, printer, printing software. A5-sized paper (or similar) to print on. A bookbinding press (easy to build, see below). Contact adhesive (also called 'contact cement'). Tissue, scissors, optional coloured A4 paper, etcPrintingThe first thing to do is to get the document formatted in thecomputer and printed out. This depends on your operating system andthe format that the document arrived in. I use Linux, and find thesetools invaluable: GhostScript ( gs/ pdf2ps),gv, xpdf ( pdftops), and psutils( psselect/etc).
Most documents to print come in PS(PostScript) format, or as a PDF file which I convert to PS withpdftops or pdf2ps.For HTML documents I've tried various methods to convert to PS,including using html2ps, printing to PS directly from Linuxbrowsers, printing via a PS printer driver to a file using IE/Windows,and so on. None of these solutions for HTML is perfect, but you canget some usable output at least.I print directly onto A5-sized paper, which saves any extra cuttingor folding later on. For those who don't know European paper sizes,A5 paper (149mm x 210mm) is the size of A4 paper (297mm x 210mm)folded in half.
You can buy it in reams in some places (includingOsborne Office in the UK), and some places will cut A4 reams in halffor you. One of the great things about printing to A5 is that as soonas it has come out of the printer, it is already starting to look likea book:I have written my own script for printing that resizes the originalA4 or Letter-sized documents down to A5 size to fit onto the printedA5 pages. The script reorders the pages for printing and sends themout in batches to avoid having to reprint too much if you make amistake or something goes wrong. The script also helps withreprinting certain pages if you need to. The page-reordering part iscustomized for the way that my Brother HL-760 printer handles thepaper, but it probably wouldn't be too hard to adjust this for otherprinters with some trial and error.
The script is.Since the printing part depends so much on the OS you're using, andyour specific printer and so on, I'm not going to spend any more timeon that, and I'll assume from here on that you've managed to get oneor more documents printed out onto A5 paper as pictured above. The pressThe next thing you will need is some kind of a bookbinding press.Mine was made for me by my grandfather out of some odd bits ofhardwood he had left over. Originally I made myself one out ofsoftwood, but I found that the wood bent too much and didn't give aneven pressure over the spine when the nuts were tightened down. So, adense wood is useful, at least for the part of the press that holdsthe spine of the book.
The Pirate Bay
Some people also use presses made out ofsynthetic materials, which is an option I haven't tried.In the picture above, I've stuck a bottle top in there so you cansee how the press looks when it is open. The important features are:a flat base to rest the book on, two flat guides (below and to theright of the book) to allow you to jiggle and tap all the pages untilthey are all lined up together, and a bar on the left to press down onthe spine of the book to hold all the pages together so that you canglue them. A single A5 sheet placed in the press should touch theguides to the right and below, and meet the outside left edge beneaththe pressing bar. If you're going to use bolts to hold the bar, thenwing nuts are a good idea as they can be spun down quicker. Preparing the cover of the bookYou don't actually need to print a cover - you could just use someA4 paper with something scribbled on it, but I prefer to have a coverthat makes the book a little more recognisable. I have a script whichprints an A4 piece of paper with text positioned to cover the frontpage and the spine of the book.
The first thing to do is to put thepages into the press and measure the thickness of them:This can then be fed to the script along with the text to print inorder to generate the PS file, which I then print onto some colouredpaper. The script is very much a custom job , but you canprobably do something similar using your favourite DTP package.In any case, you need two sheets. One will form the front of thebook, the outside spine and an overlap onto the back of the book, andthe other will form the back of the book and a small flap over thespine on the inside. Notice how I've cut off some of the green sheetand all but a spine's-width to the right of the fold in the whitesheet to give the result below. (It is better to cut too much off thewhite sheet than too little, but I'm sure you'll discover this lateron anyway.)Gluing the spineNow you have the book contents and the front and back covers, youcan assemble the book in the press. It is a good idea to put the mainpart of the book in first, and make sure that you've tapped all thepages down so that they are all as even as they can be. This willgive a smooth outside edge and bottom edge to the book.
The spineedge may be quite uneven because of the slight variations in the papersize, but this doesn't matter much.Finally put in the front and back covers, make sure everything islined up together, and screw the pressing bar down to hold it all inplace. You should end up with something like this:The next thing to do is to apply glue to the spine.
Therecommended type of glue is a 'contact adhesive' or 'contact cement'.In the UK I've been buying 'Evostik IMPACT Instant Contact Adhesive',which works fine for me:Apply the glue to the exposed spine. The two covers make a channelwhich keeps the glue from spreading too far.
Also, there is no needto apply glue right to the ends of the spine and risk the glue goingover the edge. When you apply the glue, try to make sure that thewhole area of the spine is covered, including all the corners. Youshould end up with it looking like this:Now let the glue dry for a while.
You will need to prop the pressup so that the spine is kept level, or else all the glue will flow toone side/end of the spine. Leave it for 10-15 minutes. When the gluehas mostly dried, but is still a little wet, apply some very thinpieces of tissue on top of it. I use toilet tissue, just one of thetwo layers:Apply just one layer of the thin tissue to the whole length of thespine. Once the glue has dried a little more, gently use an implementor your finger nail to make sure that the tissue follows most of theups and downs of the paper-edges on the spine.
Using a layer oftissue like this isn't vital (I've forgotten it before now, and stillended up with quite usable books), but it does help to give the book astronger spine:Leave all this for a while to let the glue dry a bit more. Thenyou can fold the front and back cover edges over.
First the backcover is folded over, and then the front cover. (This is where youdiscover if you didn't cut the back cover overlap narrow enough.)Next release the pressure on the spine from the bar, and carefullyslide the book out a couple of inches before tightening the bar downagain. Contact adhesive can now be applied to the part of the frontcover that will overlap the back cover (using just thin stripes ofglue - no need to cover it), and the front cover can be folded overto stick to the back:Once this is in place, release the bar again, slide the book backin, and reapply pressure. You can now leave the book for a while likethis until the glue has all become a bit firmer:Actually, you can leave the book in the press like this until it isfully dry, but if you have other books to do, you can take it out andput it somewhere safe to finish its drying, perhaps under a pile ofother books if necessary.
According to my glue packaging, theadhesive takes 24 hours to achieve full strength. The end resultlooks like this:One very good thing about this type of glue and binding method isthat it is flexible as well as strong, which means that you can openthe book out flat without damaging the spine or weakening it. Here ismy 'serving suggestion', making full use of the props available at thephotography location:Outstanding issuesThere is just one outstanding issue I've found with this type ofglue, and that is that the solvent seeps into the pages as it driesand can cause print that is very close to the spine-edge of the page(within 10-20mm) to partially transfer to the opposite page. I thinkthis is worse if you try and encourage drying by putting the book inwarm place. Really, you want the solvent to dry off to the atmospherewithout going too far into the pages. This hasn't been a huge problemfor me, just a niggle.
ConclusionI hope this has been useful to you.