rjpotts.com

I bought my Yaris almost a year ago on Jan 31, 2008. In one year’s time I’ve been keeping a log of my milage, gallons of gas consumed, and the cost to fill it up. This is a summary of my data.

For kicks I decided to compare this to the 2002 Oldsmobile Intrigue that my Yaris replaced, and my wife’s 2000 Ford Explorer 4×4.

Your cost savings will very depending on your vehicle. Things to take into consideration with my calculations:

• I used the manufactures’ city MPG numbers because I do most of my driving in the city, but there were times when I drove both highway and city
• I subtracted 1 gallon from each of the tank capacities because most people do not pull up to the pump on an empty tank (My Yaris has an 11 gallon tank and I fill it up when it gets down to the 1 gallon mark)
• The estimated number of fill ups was calculated by dividing the total miles I drove in the Yaris by the range someone can drive in the city for each respective vehicle
• The estimated fuel consumed was calculated by multiplying the estimated number of fill ups by tank capacity
• The average price per gal was determined by taking the price per gallon I recorded each time I filled up the Yaris, and averaging those prices together
• The estimated cost to fuel was calculated by multiplying the estimated fuel consumed by the average price per gallon
• The estimated cost savings was calculated by subtracting the actual total cost to fill the Yaris from the estimated cost of fueling the other vehicle

Cars, Economics gas, milage

After writing my last post about FileMaker 10.0 and reviewing a couple early reviews of FileMaker 10 on Macworld’s web site that I have to comment on the void of Mac desktop databases.

(See: “Expo: FileMaker turns 10 with database update” and “First Look: FileMaker Pro 10“)

First let me say that there are plenty of desktop databases available for Mac if you are looking for just a database. Fore example there is MySQL, SQLite (comes with 10.5), PostgreSQL, and Firebird, to name just a few. And these are fine if all you are looking for is a database and you don’t mind writing scripts to manipulate your data. There are some tools out there for managing tables.

If you are a developer like me you can write your own applications for data entry and reports. These can be desktop applications written in Java, Objective-C, Real Basic, or some other language and window frame work suitable for building desktop applications. You can also develop Web applications that you run only on your computer using PHP, Ruby, Perl, Python, etc… All these languages come pre installed on your Mac as well. There is a variety of IDEs (Integrated Development Environments) that you could use to manage the development of your applications that you build to manage your data such as Xcode, Eclipse and RealBasic. But even I, a veteran developer, having made a career out of developing applications this way gets tired when I want something quick and easy.

So what are your other choices? If you run MS Windows you can use MS Access. If you can install OpenOffice you have Base, and finally there is FileMaker.

There use to be other choices out there a long time ago — such as dBase, FoxPro, and Clipper. Sybase still produces PowerBuilder and I believe that you can still purchase a personal desktop edition. Oracle had some personal desktop database products, so did IBM/Lotus… But most of these products ran on Windows and to use any of these you need to have some programming skills.

So what about Mac. There is nothing, its a black hole, a void. The folks at FileMaker know this and yet they still refuse to add in usable features such as:

• Pivot Tables
• Graph Objects
• Views
• Programable Form Objects
• Embedded Subforms
• Stored Procedures and Functions
• A real IDE for advanced development

The Mac community needs MS Access or something just as equivalent in functionality for OS X. We need a self contained solution for creating tables, views, forms and reports. The ability to export the results of the data to PDF, HTML, XML, and CSV. We need a way to develop solutions that can easily be packaged up distributed to users using Mac, Windows, and Linux. It needs to be easy enough that an administrative assistant can figure it out, but powerful enough that a developer could take what the administrative assistant started and turn it into an enterprise application. FileMaker in general is a great concept but it needs to be rewritten from the ground up. Forget Bento that POS just needs to die. Its user interface is prettier than FileMaker but its functionality blows. The other alternative is for MS to release Access for the Mac. I would love to know if they have tried porting it at one time or another.

The first person or company that can truly fill this need is going to make a boat load of money. Lets face it not everything belongs on the web.

Apple, Databases Apple, Database, FileMaker, Microsoft, MS Access

Today FileMaker unleashed version 10 of its database at Macworld ‘09. Being part of the developers program I’ve had a copy of it for about a mounth now. Yes it sports a new interface, a few new bells and whisles, but there are quite a few things that it needs in order for it replace MS Access as my prefered desktop database.

Pivot Tables
In my opinion one of MS Access’s strongest features over FileMaker is its ability to perform piviot tables. Yes you can export your data from FileMaker into MS Excel and perform piviot tables but why? I want to make self contained desktop database applications.

Views/Queries
In real SQL RDBMSs (ORACLE, MS SQL Server, Sybase, MySQL) they are called Views. In reality it is a stored query that looks and behaves just like a table (for the most part). In MS Access its called a Query. I want to be able to create views from a subset of a table, or multiple tables. Use them to make other views, forms, or reports. I’ve been asking for this since I started using FileMaker Pro 7.0. That’s almost eight years.

Graphs
Sure there are third party plugins that one can buy to give them the ability to build grafts into their forms and reports. But if you ust spent $300 – $500 dollars for a desktop database system why should you have to go spend extra to have the ability to add graphs to your forms and reports? Again something that I’ve been asking for since version 7.0.

A True Programming Environment
In Oracle you have PL/SQL, in MS SQL and Sybase you have T-SQL, in MS Access they are called modules (or something like that). The ability to create stored procedures and functions, the raw power to make your database perform amazing things. I’ve simplified this a little but any database developer worth their weight in gold knows what I’m talking about. For everyone else there is the ability to create those little things FileMaker calls “scripts”, MS Access calls them Macros. I want an editor that uses syntax highlighting, where I can actually type in what I want the database to do. Not this find the macro on the left, double click, and fill-in-the blank crap. Its to limiting. While I’m at it how about some good tutorials on how to write plugins. I’ve yet to find one of those.

These are just a few things that I think would make FileMaker database products shine. Personally if I had been the person put in charge of their developers this is what I would have focused on vs. Bento. Bento isn’t even cross platform, but that’s another story for another time.

Databases FileMaker, Macworld '09, MS Access

I did a search yesterday to find more information about hard drive forensics after the drive goes bad. I came across this presentation on YouTube from Defcon 14. The presenter’s web site is “My Hard Drive Died!“. It has lots of useful information, links to tools, and other things if you every find yourself having to rebuild a hard drive.

Hard Drive Recovery – Part 1

Hard Drive Recovery – Part 2

Hard Drive Recovery – Part 3

Hard Drive Recovery – Part 4

Hard Drive Recovery – Part 5

Hard Drive Recovery – Part 6

Hard Drive Recovery – Part 7

Digital Forensics Computers, Digital Forensics, Hard Drives

I started reading “Hacking for Dummies 2nd Edition” (Amazon Link) a few days ago. This book is a treasure trove of information for the beginning Ethical Hacker. It talks about the defferences between Ethical Hackers and non-Ethical Hackers. It provides a solid list of software both commercial and open source to get you started in learning how to perform “Attack and Pen” testing.

It discusses what you need to start looking for to determin if your environment is being compromised and the countermeasures to take to lock it down. It provides a good overview in terms of Information Security for Social Engineering, Physical Security, War Dialing, Networks, Operating Systems, and Applications.

The goal of the book is to give the reader a broader understanding of what “Hacking” is all about, introduce them to terminology, and get them to think about security. Its a good desktop reference for the home user and the Chief Information Security Office (CISO). I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I have.

Books, Work Cracking, Dummies, Hacking, InfoSec, Social Engineering, War Dialing

ADC—Developing Cocoa Applications Using MacRuby:

Ruby is a dynamic programming language that, over the last few years, has enjoyed enormous popularity, thanks in part to the Rails web framework. Now with MacRuby, you can create Mac OS X applications with Ruby while maintaining the peformance benefits of a fully fledged Cocoa application. This article will show you how to get started with MacRuby and build your first sample application.

Apple, Ruby Cocoa, Programming, Ruby

I was looking today to see if there were any desktop tools that would allow me to post to my blog. A search on Google turned up MarsEdit.

Step 1 Setup:
Setup was easy. I pointed it at my website. MarsEdit figured out that I was using WordPress on the back end, prompted me for my username and password and then it downloaded all my publicly posted entries.

Step 2 Adding an Entry:
This was easy too. Select “New Post” from the toolbar. Select a category, add a new category, start typing. MarsEdit has an auto preview window that allows you to see what your entry is going to look like as you type it. If you know HTML you can add HTML tags around your text to format it.

Step 3 Posting an Entery:
When you are done click on the “Send to Weblog” button to finish up.

Evaluation Update
MarsEdit comes with a 30 day evaluation license. Its worked so well for me over the past 7 days, I’ve decided to take the plunge. The $30 price point is very reasonable and product support is excellent.

Blogging Blogging, MarsEdit

Now that people are starting to understand why Apple has removed FireWire from the MacBook they are finding new reasons to whine.  One gentleman from Australia commented on MacNN that most of his legacy equipment required FireWire which is forcing him to upgrade to the MacBook Pro.  His argument is that the new MacBook Pro is too big and two heavy for him and his fellow co-workers.

I looked up the specs of the old MacBook (pre Oct 14th) and compaired that with the new MacBook Pro.  In terms of weight the new MacBook Pro weighs .5 pounds (.22 kg) more than the old MacBook.  In terms of size the new MacBook Pro is 61.2 cubic inches (155.5 cubic cm) larger than the old MacBook.  Specifically the new MacBook Pros are 0.13 inches (0.34 cm) shorter, 1.6 inches (4.1 cm) wider, and 0.86 inches (2.2 cm) deeper than the old MacBook.

From a cost perspective a new MacBook (released Oct 14th) sells for $1,299 USD – $1,849 USD.  A new USB video camera sells for $400 USD – $1,300 USD (Best Buy prices).  If you are looking for an Apple solution to shoot and edit video that includes the new MacBook you are going to put out $1,699 – $3,149 USD.  In contrast if you are looking to reuse your existing FireWire video equipment and want to update your Apple video editing solution to the latest hardware you are going to spend at a minimum $2,000.

My advice.  If you don’t really need to update your equipment don’t.  Use your existing stuff for as long as it makes sense.  The first logical purchase should be the USB video camera.  You will be able to use that with the exiting MacBook and MacBook Pro provided they have USB 2.0.  The next logic purchase would be to replace your video editing platform.  At that point it won’t matter if you go with the MacBook or the MacBook Pro because you will have already made the transition to the USB video camera.

Apple Apple, MacBook, MacBook Pro, Video Editing

Earlier this month “electronista” posted a story about the recent leak of Amazon’s second-generation Kindle eBook reader. One of the things that I commented about was the lack of color, and of course some piped in wanting to know why it would need color when its purpose is to display text.

My theory is that is fine if you are reading a novel. But what about other kinds of books for example course books for high school and college. Those books often have color diagrams and pictures for the purpose of clarifying what you are reading.

How about newspapers and magazines. Maybe I would like to subscribe to an electronic version of MacWorld, Time, or National Geographic. Many of these documents have color pictures that acompany the stories. Don’t you want to read the publication the way the publisher intended it to look.

Another person commented on the fact that it had a keyboard, and why would you need a keyboard. I remember as a college student I would highlight text in my books and write margin notes. Obviously I can’t use post-its in my Kindle so it needs to support that kind of functionality.

If we are going to make an electronic replacement for paper and bound text we need to think about how people use these products today and duplicate it in the eBook readers of tomarrow.

Books Amazon, eBook, Kindle

The number of whiners out there complaining about Apple prices never ceases to amaze me. For years Apple has blazed the trail with their product design and attention to details. Other computer manufacturers take their design ques from Apple. Each year Apple raises the bar and each year the copycats continue to produce inferior products.

This year analysts predicted that on Nov. 14th we would see an $800 Apple laptop. All those people who secretly want a Mac but are too cheap to pony up the money for one are now whining about the design decisions Apple has made and using that as an excuse to not purchase the product they really want.

Its like complaining that a Rolls Royce is too expensive, and that you wouldn’t buy one becuase it doesn’t come with a casset palyer. Even if it did have a casset player you wouldn’t buy it becuase what you want is a Rolls Royce with a Chevy Mallabu price tag.

Apple is not Dell. They are not going to lower their quality standards just to produce a $500 laptop becuase of some whiner. Toyota will never sell a $10,000 car with a Lexus badge on it, just becuase some whiner can’t afford a $40,000 car.

No where in the US Constitution does it say you have the right to own an Apple computer. No where in the US Constitution does it say Apple must produce a $500 laptop so every Tom, Dick, and Harry can own one. If you think that there is a need for a $500 laptop that is identical to a $999 MacBook why don’t you go out and manufacture it yourself? Quit gripping about what you think you are entitled to have.

Apple Apple, MacBook