MacResearch

The importance of High Resolution PFG-NMR data for mixture analysis is steadily increasing but there is no single way to process such data.

Author: Drew McCormack
Company: The Mental Faculty

For the last week I’ve been attending NSConference US. If you’re a Mac or iPhone developer, and didn’t attend, I’m afraid you missed out big time. It was a great conference, with great speakers, and great attendees. In short: great.

This year I was also presenting at the conference. In fact, somehow I was convinced to talk more than anyone else, at least in hourly terms. I think my talks went well. I’m not as funny as the Lee twins — Graham and Mike — nor as experienced as Jonathan ‘Wolf’ Rentzsch, Aaron Hillegass, or any of the other great speakers who I risk insulting by not naming, but — at the risk of sounding conceited — I like to think I held my own in very esteemed company, and that the audience got something out of my talks.

The first time I had to present anything substantial in public was in my honors year at university. I had to do a 15 minute practice run before my peers for a presentation on my applied math project.

It was one of the worst moments of my life. The information was confusing and convoluted, I was nervous as hell, tripping over words, and running way over time. The lecturer didn’t even have to tell me how bad it was — I already knew.

It was such a shock that I vowed it would never happen again. I went home, rewrote the talk to be simple and more entertaining, and then I practiced it out loud. Four days later, I gave the presentation in front of hundreds of mathematicians, and although it wasn’t the best presentation in the world, the contrast to the original practice run was quite astounding.

At that moment, I realized presenting was a skill like any other, one that you can practice and even perfect. It doesn’t matter if you are naturally shy or not funny, you can still make captivating presentations, and deliver them well, entertaining your audience, and hopefully imparting a bit of knowledge at the same time.

While the experience of NSConference is still fresh in my mind, I thought I would write down the things I have learned over the 15 years or so that I have been writing and delivering presentations (mostly in the scientific realm). In the process of doing so, I have had to analyze what it is that I actually do, because it has become somewhat automatic and instinctive. But it is a skill I have developed, not a natural talent. Every time I have to deliver a presentation, I work quite hard to get it right, and then to practice it. I cannot speak well off-the-cuff — that’s a whole other skill.

Jeff Phillips over at Macworld has a review of the Mental Case flashcard application by The Mental Faculty*. For those of you not familiar with Mental Case:

Mental Case is the ultimate study tool for Mac OS X and iPhone, combining traditional flashcards with the latest learning techniques. Use it to learn a language, memorize trivia, or study for an exam. Enter your information directly, or import it from online sources like The Flashcard Exchange. Mental Case automatically generates lessons for you, syncs them to your iPhone or iPod touch, and even tells you when to study.

*Disclaimer: Drew McCormack, the founder of The Mental Faculty is a member of the MacResearch.org board of directors. However, this posting was inspired by a user of the program (me), trying to learn Spanish.

Hora de salida Mental Case, que es en realidad un ayudante de gran estudio :)

^^^ I'm still learning... give me a break. ^^^

On Tuesday February 16, at 10:00 am pacific time, MacEnterprise will host a webcast featuring Apple's Sal Sogohian. Sal is the product manager for Apple's automation products, including AppleScript and Automator, and is the author of AppleScript 1-2-3. The webcast info:

Webcast URL: http://webcast.training.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/WebCastViewer.woa
Webcast ID: MacEnterprise
Passcode: 805613

WebGL has been quickly progressing, and we have been hard at work building our 3D ChemDoodle Web Components. I present the release of ChemDoodle Web Components 3.0, which contain the alpha development versions of the 3D ChemDoodle Web Components. I also discuss some of the programmatic details involved with WebGL and how to obtain the development browsers required to use WebGL technologies. Lastly, I give a brief review of the current events releated to HTML5/Canvas technology since my last article.

In 'Showcase' reviews, the reviewer is the developer. No claim of objectivity is made, but it’s a chance for the developer to show off his/her app. Here, Daniel Alm discusses the new visualization package, PocketCAS.

Author: Daniel Alm
Position: Developer
Affiliation: Thomas Osthege and Daniel Alm Software

On the occasion of its recent 2.0 release, I'd like to present my application PocketCAS, a computer algebra system (CAS) for the iPhone and iPod touch, in this article.

Just a quick note. Some of you may find Intego's report on Mac/iPhone security interesting. From their analysis, it seems like jailbroken iPhones are particularly susceptible. There were a few proof-of-concept trojans, as well as real world exploits on Mac OS X. Many of the exploits seem to be geared toward taking advantage of user behavior and actions.

Common sense computing practices would address most, if not all, of the known exploits reported here. Although there doesn't seem to be an abundance of common sense these days*. I kid...sort of. And keep in mind that Intego is a software security product manufacturer (but that doesn't mean that what they are saying is necessarily invalid).

Intego 2009 Report (PDF)

Both Apple and the NSA provide documentation on securing Mac OS X based computers and servers. I could only find documentation up to 10.5:

Mac OS X Security Guidance (NSA)
Mac OS X Server Security Configuration 10.5 (Apple)

Apple also provides a set of Common Criteria Tools (again up through version 10.5 of the operating system) and a configuration guide. Common Criteria are a set of internationally approved security standards:

Common Criteria Tools (Apple)

An interesting wiki page on MacShadows KB I came across recently, also describes some additional ways to secure your system and understanding common attack vectors. There is even a section of ideas for the "Truly Paranoid" :)

Hardening Mac OS X - MacShadows KB Article

If someone knows of newer documentation or additional resources, please feel free to post some links in the comments.

*Perhaps it should be referred to as uncommon sense?

In 'Showcase' reviews, the reviewer is the developer. No claim of objectivity is made, but it’s a chance for the developer to show off his/her app. Here, software developer Pierre-Henri Jondot talks about his plotting/graphing application TouchPlot for iPhone and iPod touch.

Just a note. The developer has posted that there is a new version of touchplot out (Version 4.0) and he's created a Youtube channel to show some of the features.

TouchPlot is a grapher application for the iPhone and iPod touch, which can be bought at the appstore since late july. As the developer of TouchPlot, my intention in this review is to give an idea of what can be done with TouchPlot, as well as to explain some of the design decisions I've made while developing this application.

In case some of you missed it, I am presenting a 6 hour workshop on concurrency at both the UK and US NSConference meetings in the coming months. The workshop will cover Snow Leopard technologies like Grand Central and OpenCL, and touch on other options for parallel computing. I'm just finishing the preparation now, and it should be a fun and educational gathering for performance geeks.

Ticket sales for the US conference, which is to be held at Georgia Tech in Atlanta from February 22nd until February 24th, are well underway, but I am pretty sure there is still room.

If you want more than just a hand waving introduction to GCD and OpenCL, this might be a good meeting for you.