Jim Milbery's Blog

RazorSQL 6.0 – I’m buying

James Milbery — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 13:50:15 +0000

Richardson software recently released a major new edition of RazorSQL — one of my favorite tools. This is a paid upgrade ($49), but well worth the money. Checkout the additions and fixes here. This is a product that I use EVERY day, well worth the money. I compel you to buy it ;o)

Hypercritical is ending it’s run BWAHHHHHH!!!

James Milbery — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 17:34:23 +0000

I used to listen to Sirius Radio in my car during my weekly commutes to the airport. VW didn’t offer Satellite radio as an option on my new Beetle, so I switched over to listening to podcasts while driving. I jumped around between a few of the usual suspects, Ted Talks and Freakonomics and the occasional Bill Simmons B.S. Report. When I finally landed on the 5by5 network I felt like I had finally found my “go to” podcast home. In particular, I’m a big fan of John Siracusa’s Hypercritical podcast. The basic premise of the show is as follows:

A weekly talk show ruminating on exactly what is wrong in the world of Apple and related technologies and businesses. Nothing is so perfect that it can’t be complained about.

If you have the opportunity, I’d highly recommend that you take a listen to an episode of Hypercritical. If you would allow me to make a suggestion, then start with episode 94. For my money, Shrink! Shrink! Shrink! offers one of the best descriptions of CISC vs. RISC computing out there. Siracusa breaks down the Intel vs. ARM argument in a simple, easy-to-understand fashion. At it’s heart, it’s an example of Hypercritical at its best. Funny, but also informative. When it comes to Hypercritical, here’s one way to think of it — “come for the ranting but stay for the knowledge”. Hypercritical has been my Friday treat for the past year or so. I was off the grid over Thanksgiving, so I hadn’t heard that Siracusa was pulling the plug as of episode 100 until I listened to episode 95 on Saturday. BWAHHHHH!!!!! What a crappy Black Friday surprise. No more Hypercritical. If you haven’t yet tuned into Hypercritical then the world is your oyster — as many of the episodes are timeless. I have every confidence that Dan Benjamin will keep the back catalog online at 5by5 for awhile yet.

iPad Mini, et al

James Milbery — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 12:45:09 +0000

I ordered an iPad mini on the first Friday that it was released. I’ve owned several iPad models, the original iPad, and the “New iPad” (i.e. the third model). In the interim, I’ve also tried out the Google Nexus 7, which I liked a lot. I still have my original iPad, but I sold the “new iPad” to MacOfAllTrades last week so that I could order the iPad mini — since I don’t really need both. MacOfAllTrades is a terrific outfit. I’ve sold a number of my old Macs to them, great prices and great service. Try them out. The iPad mini is the perfect size tablet for my needs — but it may not work for you. Here’s why it works for me. I moved over to the Mac platform when Apple released the first Intel-based Mac. My wife is a painter and she uses a Mac for drafting her paintings, so it made sense for me to be on the same platform. Since then I’ve bought a ton of music, movies and television shows and a couple of AppleTVs. My iPad is purely an entertainment device. I use an iPhone as my cell phone and as my mobile email/twitter/facebook device. I carry a MacBook Air as my primary work machine. There isn’t a tablet on the market (iPad, Surface, Android) that is big enough or strong enough to serve as my primary work platform — and I travel 80%+ of the time. I need a real computer to get work done (RazorSQL, Visual Studio (via Parallels), Sublime Text 2, Balsamiq Mockups, iBooks Author, Eclipse, OpenBlueDragon, etc.). Just can’t survive on a tablet — even with a keyboard . However, I REALLY liked the size of the Google Nexus 7 as an entertainment device (Kindle App, Movies, TV). The problem with the Nexus 7 is that I have a ton of content that I purchased via iTunes with Apple DRM (Music, Movies and TV Shows), and I have some content (NetFlix) that I buy through iTunes as well. The process of trying to remove DRM from a bunch of movies (100s of them) and music (1000s of them) is just too much work. My content mostly hails from the Apple universe. It is what it is. (One of my tech friends is stuck in the same position with Amazon — which is why he’s a Kindle Fire man). Could I get the content out? Yes. Is it worth the effort for me? No. Thus, the iPad mini is the best device for ME — not necessarily for you. I don’t depend on it as my main device, and I like the smaller footprint for books, movies, music and games. It works for me. The Google Nexus 7 is a fine device, and I’ve heard good things about the new Microsoft Surface tablet – but neither device will work for me. You should buy what works for you — don’t listen to the fanboys and the haters — their opinion should not matter to you. Buy what works for you.

Working with MonoDevelop — and I don’t hate it.

James Milbery — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 18:07:25 +0000

Working with MonoDevelop on the Mono Platform in parallel with a C# course and a I don’t hate it. We have portfolio companies that develop on .Net and it is very nice to be able to work on .Net code without having to resort to running Parallels or RDPing into a Windows Box.

Got a new MacBook Air

James Milbery — Sat, 06 Oct 2012 18:40:39 +0000

Bought a new MacBook Air last week — it got delivered on Thursday. Connected the two machines on Friday night. The Mac Migration Assistant really works like a charm, with the exception of VPN settings and Microsoft Office. You basically have to re-install those two by hand after the migration. Connected the old MacBook Air and the new one via WiFi, took about 5 hours to transfer and configure 160 GB worth of stuff. The real time bandit for me was the 7 hours that I spent tinkering with the machine all day — totally unncessary, but I just couldn’t help myself.

mySQL Hack (aka Jim’s Friday Stupidity)

James Milbery — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 20:10:38 +0000

Made a classic, classic rookie mistake today. Actually, what I did was galactically stupid. Was converting/scrubbing data from a marketing list and loading it into Salesforce.com (SFDC). The SFDC part isn’t really relevant, but that’s the reason that I was doing it. One of my partners was in charge of loading data into SFDC and spitting out reports and I was in charge of scrubbing and creating the XLS files for loading. SFDC does not allow duplicates and this data file had lots of potential duplicates. So, we agreed on a process of using a series of columns in the source XLS as the “compare” columns in order to decide which rows were unique. We would likely still be ending up adding “duplicate” records — cases where a company might be entered into the database with slightly different spelling of the name, and/or a slightly different address. The plan was to load the raw data into a mySQL database locally on my Mac using RazorSQL and then write some clever CFML with OpenBD to “clean up” the data. Each raw data record had a mix of both company (SFDC: ACCOUNT) data and people (SFDC: CONTACT) data. That meant that I would need to split contact information off from company information. I planned to use an auto-generated RowId (identity) column to keep track of every original row. That way we could add the data into SFDC with the RowId as a custom column and then export it back out into mySQL in order to associate contacts with accounts. (When the data is exported by SFDC I get the ACCOUNTID guid — which gives me the primary key in SFDC-land. I have the RowId that I generated for each row as part of the record as well, which is “my” primary key.) This way I can upload contacts info SFDC and associate them with the correct ACCOUNT. Clever, but we ran into a few snags. Although SFDC adds ACCOUNTID to the table, the “ACCOUNT” itself (i.e. the Account Name), must also be unique. So, after standardizing the data, fixing proper names and addresses to have mixed-case lettering as appropriate (data came to me as all uppercase), we import it into SFDC and get about 25% rejections. We started a process of exporting from SFDC back into a new table in mySQL and then comparing RowIds, looking for dupes that might-not-really-be-dupes. Worked like a charm, we simply added a trailing suffix (-A, -B, … -Z) to each account to make them unique, but leaving the descriptive name “as is”. Perfect. This is exactly where I started making my ghastly series of mistakes. Queries started to run slowly on my Mac. I rebooted, no joy. My brain freezes in its entirety and I elect to install a new version of mySQL, moving from mysql-5.5.11-osx10.6-x86 (32-bit) to mysql-5.5.27-osx10.6-x86_64 (64 bit). Installs and starts just fine. Here comes the Homer Simpson “DOH!” part… wait for it … wait for it… None of my databases are there. Of course not, I installed a new version — with nothing but the default databases. Since the mySQL databases on my laptop are just “scratch” databases, I did not have any backups. Epic fail. Why am I telling you all this? In case you make the same mistake. Here’s what I did to recover. It’s not the best way, it is simply “a” way.

Turns out, on the Mac, mySQL installs into the /usr/local path. (You can’t simpy copy FRM files around, that does not work, particularly in moving between 32-bit and 64-bit versions). However, mySQL installs into a unique path every time ala:

/usr/local/mysql-5.5.11-osx10.6-x86

and

/usr/local/mysql-5.5.27-osx10.6-x86_64

The install creates a mysql symbolic link at:

/usr/local/mysql

This link points mySQL to the proper directory. I tried editing the symbolic link (i.e. sudo ln -sf …) — but that did not work, it seemed to be related to a bug on the MacOS side — but I can’t be sure. However, here’s what DID work.

Shut down mySQL

Rename the NEW mySQL directory tree into something else:

/usr/local/mysql-5.5.27-osx10.6-x86_64 ->/usr/local/NEW-mysql-5.5.27-osx10.6-x86_64

Rename the OLD mySQL directory tree to the NEW directory tree

/usr/local/mysql-5.5.11-osx10.6-x86 -> /usr/local/mysql-5.5.27-osx10.6-x86_64

This makes the symbolic link point to the old code and data with a new root path name.

Restart mySQL

Bob’s Yer Uncle.

Workout and Diet Updates

James Milbery — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 18:33:23 +0000

Haven’t updated this page in a good long while. I’ve been working on an iOS Karate application (which I released in March). Almost all of my workout posts are at my wabi sabi kumite site. So click here for future workout posts.

It’s a miracle (albeit a small one)

James Milbery — Thu, 17 May 2012 18:00:13 +0000

The Wabi Sabi Kumite User’s guide FINALLY got released on the iTunes Bookstore. A miracle of fatima. ;o)

Mobile devices have essentially destroyed manners in this country.

James Milbery — Mon, 14 May 2012 15:12:30 +0000

Was in line at Starbucks this morning per usual. (Always a different city each week — but always a Starbucks). Woman in line in front of me was playing a game on her iPhone right up until the time that she ordered her drink. The cashier rang her up — THEN THE WOMAN SPENT THE NEXT 30 SECONDS SAVING HER GAME STATUS SO THAT SHE COULD USE HER STARBUCKS IPHONE APP TO PAY FOR HER DRINK. Are you kidding me? Really? Sure, it’s only 30 seconds, but it’s MY 30 SECONDS. She was kind enough to set her purse on the condiments counter while she spent an ETERNITY stirring cream and sugar into her coffee. That way none of the rest of us could get at the cream. And of course she was BACK TO PLAYING HER STUPID GAME all the while.

Waiting and waiting for iTunes Bookstore approval

James Milbery — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 17:29:55 +0000

I built an iPhone app called “Wabi Sabi Kumite“. (Ok, I had some help — but I designed it). While we were working out the kinks in the software I started working on a User’s Guide. You need an iPhone, iPad or iPod to run the software, so it made sense to put the user’s guide the Apple iTunes Bookstore. I dutifully downloaded the iBooks Author software and went to work. I have to say that I liked iBooks Author. It was pretty simple and easy to build a very sexy user’s guide that included high resolution photos and an embedded iMovie clip. Why I agree with @siracusa that iBooks Author is not a platform for multi-platform eBooks authoring – it was a reasonable choice for me. I built a pretty nice user’s guide in about a week. Porting it to the Kindle would likely be a bit of a mini-nightmare, but it’s also probably unnecessary. If you want to use Wabi Sabi Kumite you have to have some sort of iOS device. So having the user’s guide only be available on the iTunes Bookstore is not a problem. I hit a few roadblocks getting my book uploaded into the iTunes Bookstore – mostly because I did not know exactly what I was doing.
(But that’s a story for another day — I plan a more detailed description of my authoring process). Despite my uploading and configuration problems the overall process was relatively easy and painless (probably would have been alot more painful if I was NOT a technie). My biggest gripe is that it is taking FOREVER to get the book through the approval process. My iPhone app got approved in short order — about 48 hours. I’m at two months and counting for iBookstore approval for a FREE book that’s a user’s guide for an app that is already for sale in the iTunes app store. I did have a problem with portrait mode on a couple of pages, which the Apple folks flagged in a support email to my iTunesConnect account. I resolved the problem in short order, but ANY error seems to drop you to the bottom of the queue. Apple can’t even tell me when I am likely to get approved — it is just sitting in the “quality assurance” queue. In the meantime, you can get the user’s guide in PDF format on the Wabi Sabi Kumite web site. Quel Nightmare.