periapsis.org

Testing out Conquirere 0.1

2012-01-27T06:13:36Z

From Planet KDE, I saw a new KDE application mentioned, called Conquiere.

Conquirere allows you to add bibliographic data such as journals, books, proceedings papers, articles and many more to Nepomuk. Combine this data with the documents on your harddisk or some online storage and helps you to organize your data to quickly find some parts of your research again.

It sounds pretty neat. I gave it a shot tonight, and had to work out some compilation issues. I had a version mismatch between soprano and qt4, then I needed a newer version of kbibtex. At that point, Nepomuk blew up, which slammed my computer and made it freeze for several minutes. But eventually, I was able to get Conquiere running.

For being new software, there's a lot of functionality and polish! Jörg Ehrichs has done a great job of organizing things. The icons are colorful, the search is full-featured. I really look forward to seeing how it continues to develop.

Credit Card Rewards for 2011

2012-01-22T03:04:58Z

Like I did last January, I just finished tallying all of our credit card rewards for the previous year. I do that mainly out of academic curiosity, but also to have evidence to justify our approach to credit card usage to my wife!

As before, we do pay off our cards in full every month, so the interest rates on the cards are almost negligible. This year, we kept the same cards as last year - the Citi ThankYou Premier Mastercard, the PenFed Platinum Cash Rewards Visa, the Chase Freedom Visa, and the Costco TrueEarnings American Express. We also added the Chase British Airways Visa in order to get a 100,000 mile rewards bonus. And we pay our cell phone bill every month with an AT&T card just to get the 5% points there.

The Citi Premier card allows us to earn points for every mile we fly, and redeem those points at a rate of 1.33% for airfare. The PenFed card earns 5% cashback on gas purchases and 1% everywhere else. The Costco AmEx earns 3% cashback on restaurants, 2% on travel, and 1% everywhere else, and finally the Chase Freedom, which is our everyday usage card, earns 1.1% on everything, with quarterly 5% categories. We used the British Airways card to fulfill the spending requirement in the first 3 months and earned 100,000 additional points (which we're using for a Europe trip this spring!), but once we reached that threshold, we didn't use it anymore.

We're not tremendously picky about which card to use. Both the Citi Mastercard and the AmEx have great benefits for extended warranties and purchase guaranties. With all that, our spending is spread out a good deal over all the cards.

In addition to credit card rewards, I've been purchasing gift cards online for discounts at stores we frequently visit, primarily Target, Trader Joe's, and Home Depot. Gift Card Granny is my favorite place to find available discounted store cards. We bought a new stove this year and saved 7% at Sears, and also bought Jamba Juice cards (20% discount) and American Airlines cards (10% discount) at Costco. We've also taken advantage of periodic promotions from Chase's Ultimate Rewards program, the best of which was a 10% points bonus on purchases from Apple.

Running all those numbers show that, giftcards aside, we had an aggregate rewards basis of 3.5% this year, slightly better than last year's value! Including the gift cards, we saved close to 4.5%. Looking at the gift cards alone, we averaged a bit over 6% savings.

Included in the Citi number is a 3-month retention reward, a $20 bonus from Mastercard, and a 2500 point Facebook promotion. Included in the AmEx numbers are $25 from Small Business Saturday and$7 from an iTunes bonus.

Moving forward, the PenFed card is transitioning to a point rewards system so we'll be taking advantage of the $200 bonus for reaching a spending threshold this spring.

All in all, I'm satisfied that we're taking healthy advantage of the rewards being offered by the credit card companies, without adding spending that we wouldn't have made otherwise. And we can use the rewards for travel!

Thank You, American Express

2011-12-24T01:38:48Z

American Express just ran a promotion called The Gift Chain. I saw it referenced on several of the financial blogs that I read. Most of them noted that American Express was giving statement credits and gift cards if you made $25 purchases at several different online stores. But My Dollar Plan and Bargaineering noted that one could also enter the contest by mail, and one could enter up to 10 times.

So I wrote my name and address on 10 cards and mailed them near the first of the month, not really expecting to see anything back or thinking that I might miss the deadline, since I was mailing them late. But in the last couple of days, I've been receiving emails with my prizes, and here's my haul:

1x A 1-year ShopRunner membership (I think just about everyone who entered got this one first. It doesn't seem all that valuable.)
3x $2 statement credit
1x $4.50 statement credit
3x $5 statement credit
A $10 gift card, along with a $10 gift card to 3 friends on Facebook (I don't know how this works exactly, since it seemed to write on my friends wall when I picked them)
And finally, and most exciting for my wife, we got a $100 gift card to Pottery Barn

So just by mailing in 10 cards, we got $25.50 in statement credit and $110 in gift cards. Quite a deal! Thanks, American Express!

Credit Card Benefits

2011-10-10T03:04:00Z

For all the bad raps that credit card get, I think it's worth noting when they really provide extra benefits. I've had two such incidents within the past year.

First, I bought my wife a charm last year, using our American Express. While my wife was on a bus, the charm got caught on a hook and the charm was pulled off. She couldn't find it. I called American Express, and their Purchase Protection coverage applied, since the loss was within 90 days of the purchase. I gave all the details over the phone, signed the paper that AmEx mailed to me, and within 2 weeks, I had a full reimbursement on the card for the purchase. No hassle.

Just last month, we had to have a service call on our refrigerator from Sears. We've had the the fridge about 16 months, and the Sears warranty is only good for a year. As it turns out, we had purchased the fridge using our Citi credit card, and their Extended Warranty coverage applied. I faxed in copies of our statement (from 16 months ago, good thing we keep copies) and a copy of the receipt (good thing we keep receipts), along with the Sears warranty statement and service receipt. Within 10 days, we received a check in the mail to cover the full amount of the service call. No hassle.

Thank you, American Express and Citi. I'll never forget to check the extra benefits provided by the credit cards we use.

SQL or RDF? Thoughts on Tellico's Next Backend

2011-08-10T04:37:31Z

One of the main goals of Tellico's development has been to be a simple application. I wanted to be able to keep track of my books without having to configure an SQL database, or create a schema, or worry about system daemons. To that end, while I thought about SQLite at the time (several years ago), I ended up writing Tellico to just store all its data in memory. The images are stored on disk, but all the field values for each entry are maintained in simple object containers (vectors and hashes...). The XML format is used only for serializing the data to save and reload.

In practice, I believe that has worked rather well. While I have received emails from folks who try to store 10,000 books in their database and find the performance lacking, by and large, I've seen many reviews note favorably that Tellico is simple and flexible to use and can be useful for the majority of people.

I do want to expand Tellico's capabilities, however. One large goal is to get away from treating each collection as a flat list of entries. I want to be able to have books and movies in the same database, for example, and I want to be able to track TV episodes and seasons equally well. I want to be able to add information about authors and actors.

To that end, I need to rewrite Tellico's backend. And in considering how I want to do that, I've come to a decision point about SQL vs. RDF.

Many highly-visible KDE applications use SQL, such as Amarok, Digikam, and Akonadi. I just read a blog post about using the same MySQL instance for all three of those applications.

On the other hand, the Nepomuk framework in KDE provides an interface to an RDF database. Bangarang and KMail 2 are both heavily using Nepomuk.

So I'm trying to work up a pro/con list.

Portability

I want to say that SQL wins. Embedding or linking against SQLite means a typical user would never need to worry about database permissions, daemon persistence, or username and port settings. At the same time, for power users, the added work to make MySql or PostgreSQL an option, would be reasonable. Akonadi and Digikam have taken this approach, and up until recent versions, so had Amarok.

Using Nepomuk, on the other hand, requires the full Soprano and Virtuoso tool chain. Most KDE desktops are running Virtusoso at this point, I guess, but I don't want to shut out the GNOME users out there. And on my underpowered development box with 1 GB of RAM, I can't even use Strigi and Nepomuk.

Development Maturity

Here again, I think SQL wins. SQL (and to some extent, SQLite) is used in so many places, I know a significant amount of work has gone into optimizing and improving its efficiency. In other words, if the database access is slow, it's very likely that the problem is due to my poor programming knowledge rather than a fundamental flaw. I don't have that reassurance with RDF/SPARQL and Nepomuk. i know Nepomuk is improving, but looking at the bug reports and development fits and starts in the KDE code, it still seems a bit rocky.

SPARQL also has some weird semantics, such as blank nodes, a need for custom Insert/Replace behavior, and a lack of aggregate functions. SPARQL is still rather immature, in that sense.

Interoperability

I feel like I should include this factor. RDF seems to be a bit of a buzzword with the semantic database push lately.A SQL schema would largely be opaque, while the RDF store, assuming the use of common ontologies, would allow for future interoperability with other databases. This is all rather fuzzy, though, and there's nothing that says I can't have some sort of RDF export or translation from the SQL.

If I did use Nepomuk and RDF, I might even have to try to write some sort of abstraction layer to use Tracker on GNOME.

Developer Interest

I'd call this a tie! I've messed around with some limited SQL and RDF/SPARQL both, and I'm interested in learning more about both.

Conclusion

These are mostly just unordered thoughts bouncing around in my head. I'll all but decide to take a shot at implementing a SQL backend, and then change my mind an hour later. Plus, who's to say I can even figure out how to do any of this! I only impersonate a programmer on TV! :)

MSL Mission Animation

2011-06-04T04:10:56Z

The Mars Science Laboratory will launch late this year, sometime around the end of November, or early December. It's the largest rover that JPL has ever sent to Mars, and also the most expensive. Just about everyone I know at JPL has worked on some aspect of MSL at one point or another, myself included.

The sequence of events for Entry, Descent and Landing is incredibly complex, as you can see in the latest animation video that JPL put out.

Photo Collection From Endeavour STS-134

2011-06-04T04:04:28Z

The Atlantic's In Focus page has a photo collection from Endeavour's last flight, STS-134. The photos are amazing. I particularly love the ones of the Shuttle in space, with the long-exposure of the earth beneath.

I flew down to Florida to try to watch the launch of STS-134 in May. Alas, the initial launch date was scrubbed due to heater electrical problems. My wife and I spent all of 2 days in Florida, mostly driving and sitting out in Titusville. Love the adventure, hated to miss the launch.

Number of Humans Who Have Walked On Another World

2011-05-03T14:02:21Z

XKCD makes a cogent point about the number of people who have walked on another world.

Winding Down the Space Shuttle Program

2011-04-24T23:03:36Z

Carolyn Collins Petersen has a nice blog post about some of her memories of the Space Shuttle Program.

As NASA winds down its space shuttle missions -- Endeavour launches on April 29 and Atlantis is scheduled for late June -- it's kind of hard to think that after those flights, there will be no direct access to space via NASA.

I'm hoping to go down to the Cape to see Endeavour's launch on Friday. So far, all systems are green for my trip and for the launch!

William Shatner to Space Shuttle Discovery

2011-03-12T15:52:16Z

I saw this on the morning that NASA did it. The day before Space Shuttle Discovery landed for the last time, William Shatner gave a personalized wake-up call.

RADM Guadagnini on Carrier Night Operations

2011-02-01T06:33:04Z

My officemates and I have been following a series of videos posted on Youtube by the commander of the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group, Rear Admiral Guadagnini. I'd urge you to go back and watch all of them for the insight into life on an aircraft carrier, plus the enjoyment of seeing "Admiral Guad's" personality come through.

This latest one showing video of a catapult launch and aircraft landing during night operations is really nice.

Learning SPARQL: Bite 1

2011-01-22T23:50:52Z

Today, this particular aspect of SPARQL bit me in the test code I was writing:

An application writer should not expect blank node labels in a query to refer to a particular blank node in the data.

--SPARQL Query Language for RDF Definition

I'm sure it won't be the last time that some aspect of SPARQL bites me in the rear.

Credit Card Rewards

2011-01-17T00:29:15Z

Like many people, most of the expenses that my wife and I have are paid using credit cards. We follow a budget, and pay off each account in full every month. Once we got married and combined our credit accounts, we had to make a decision about which cards to keep and which to use as our primary cards. That was mostly for me, since I don't want a fat wallet.

Since we pay off the cards completely, the interest rate on the card becomes a secondary consideration. The additional benefits offered by each card become the criteria by which we decide. There are plenty of credit card comparison sites around the Internet, so I though I'd just post about my year-end review.

We didn't end up canceling any accounts, since we both wanted to keep our credit history. The four cards that we currently use each month, in combination, are the Citi PremierPass Mastercard, the PenFed Visa Platinum Cashback, the Chase Freedom Visa, and the Costco TrueEarnings American Express. Except for the PremierPass, all of the cards have a rewards floor of 1% cashback. The PremierPass provides ThankYou points as rewards, and if we use the points to pay off our mortgage, the cashback rate is effectively roughly 0.8%.

But each of the cards provides a specific increased benefit.

The PenFed card provides 5% cashback on gas, and until this month, 2% cashback on groceries. We had a retention offer from Citi on the PremierPass card for six months that raised our reward rate to 4% on everything. Plus, we get ThankYou points for every mile we fly on tickets bought with the Citi card. The Costco AmEx provides 3% cashback on restaurants. For the past four months, the Chase Freedom card has provided 5% cashback on groceries. I've also had an AT&T credit card since college that gives us 5% rewards for all of our phone bills.

So with smart spending, we're able to increase the cashback rate from each card. We're not ticky-tack with this, since neither of us wants to have to remember a long list of which card do I use for this purchase?. But remembering which card for groceries and which for restaurants is easy.

It takes about 15 minutes each month to look at each credit card statement and pull out the closing balance and reward balance and put those numbers in a spreadsheet. I just combined the last 12 months, and our effective credit card reward rate for the year was 3.4%! I'm pretty darn happy with that!

By far, the bulk of the spending was with our Citi PremierPass. We did some remodeling in the spring and paid most of that with the credit card, since we were earning 4% back at the time.

We're not spending any more than we would have, but we've been able to earn 3.4% overall that we wouldn't have gotten otherwise! I'd say that makes good sense!

Further Adventures in Asset Allocation

2010-12-16T05:45:00Z

After I had decided on the basics of our asset allocation, there were stilll some further choices to be made. First, within the 60% we were allocating to equities, those stocks can be divided into domestic and international funds. Diversifying outside the bounds of the U.S. shields our portfolio from the risk of having all the eggs in one basket. If the U.S/international split was based purely on market capitalization, it would be close to 50/50. But with my American exceptionalism hat on, I decided to weight the U.S. at 60% of the total stock allocation, leaving 40% for international.

Further, since past data (which provides no guarantee of future behavior!) shows that stocks of small companies, particularly those that are undervalued vs. their inherent value, perform a bit better than the overall market. So out of the U.S. and international pie slices, a small bit of each is reserved for indices which track small capitalization, under-valued companies.

Finally, within the bond portion of the asset pie, I split half and half between a fund tracking the full bond market, and one that includes inflation protection (TIPS). TIPS provide a lower rate of return than normal bonds, but since the return is guaranteed to be on top of inflation, they provide additional diversification and protection.

Now, all of that adds up to quite a few pie slices. I didn't quite round the numbers exactly, but the following chart shows the general idea.

Next, the difficult portion was to find funds available in the various retirement accounts that my wife and I had accumulated. They all had different lists of available funds, so it took quite a while to work everything out. I use a modified version of an Excel spreadsheet from the Bogleheads site to check how everything adds up. When there were multiple options for a given asset type, I chose the fund with the lowest operating expense, which usually ended up being either Vanguard or Fidelity Spartan funds.

All told, we ended up with 18 different funds. Crazy, I know! That's what we get for having nine different accounts with three different firms! At the moment, 12 of the 18 constitute less than about 5% of our total each.

So there it is. Most of the information I've read recommends rebalancing no more than maybe twice a year. Rebalancing is the process of comparing your current asset allocation against your target and then shifting funds to bring yourself back into alignment. You don't want to do it too often, or you lose out on investment gains. But do it too sparingly and you don't get as much risk protections from the diversification.

Too many numbers. I know myself to be a spreadsheet junkie, so it was somewhat enjoyable. But now I get the benefit of knowing that our retirement funds are balanced against risk and that I don't have to bother to check the market very often. Our target asset allocation is set, and we'll ride this for at least five years or so, when it may be time to adjust the percentages due to age.

Apollo 13 Feed: It's Like Twitter!

2010-12-09T14:53:29Z

SpaceLog is transcribing the logs from some of the early space missions.The Apollo 13 transcript is fascinating. The infamous "Houston, we've had a problem" occur on the second day.

I saw one comment that remarked on how often the astronauts say Roger.