MacResearch

The folks at Phusion have created a very nice tutorial that walks you through the steps of creating a Mac OS X application with MacRuby and XCode. I know many people with great ideas for scientific apps that they'd like to implement as native Mac OS X applications, but are somewhat hesitant to dive into the world of Objective-C. This tutorial might give you enough know-how to take make your Mac OS X app idea a reality all from the comfort of the Ruby scripting language.

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

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

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 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.

The hugely successful Stanford iPhone programming course is running again.

http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs193p/cgi-bin/drupal/

As many of you are heading back to campus to start a new quarter or semester, I thought it would be timely to post a link to Mashable's guide to Mac Apps for Productivity. I'm happy to see that some of my favorite productivity apps, such as Things and Dropbox, made the list. If you know of any science-oriented productivity apps (e.g. lab notebooks) that didn't make Mashable's list, please feel free to post them in the comments.

Our sister organizations MacEnterprise.org and MacLearning.org will each be presenting webcasts that may be of interest to the MacResearch.org community.

On January 19 MacEnterprise.org will be presenting - Snow Leopard Server Setup: Under the Hood. The description follows:

First, happy new year to all of the MacResearcher's out there. Hopefully everyone had a fun, safe and relaxing holiday. I wanted to give you all a quick update on the pledge drive that we were doing.

As many of you know, Warren DeLano, the author of the molecular visualization program PyMOL, passed away on Nov. 5, 2009. In honor of his work a memorial fund was established by his friends and family called The Warren L. DeLano Memorial Award for Computational Biosciences. On Nov. 15 we made a pledge that all PayPal Donations and profits from referrals in the MacResearch Amazon Store, made between Nov. 15 and Dec. 31, would be donated to the fund on behalf of the MacResearch.org community.

We've opened up the date range slightly to include all donations and sales between Nov. 5 and Dec. 31. In that time period there was a total $422.57 that came in. To all of you who made a donation or purchase, thank you very much.

In a previous post I mentioned a target of around $1000 (1% of the estimated amount needed to establish the fund). Obviously we didn't quite make it. However, since I was the one that was pushing this particular activity and it was my pet project, it's only fair I feel, that I put my money where my mouth is. So on behalf of the MacResearch.org community I'll be contributing the difference to bring the total to $1000.00 even.

Of course, you are all welcome to send your own contributions directly to the fund. And certainly if you would like to continue to support this site by making purchases in our Amazon Store or via PayPal Donations, we'd greatly appreciate that as well. All funds received from Jan 1. forward, will go directly to activities and expenses associated with maintaining this online resource.

Again, best wishes for a successful and prosperous 2010 (and beyond, of course).

I've just published a new book on Fortran programming which may interest some people here. This is the second manuscript I have published via the self-publishing site lulu.com. My experience publishing Scientific Scripting with Python a few months ago was both pleasant and profitable, which should encourage others thinking of publishing technical books via the site.

Scientific Software Development with Fortran is an introduction to the Fortran 90/95 variants of the language, which are probably the most commonly used at this point in time. Unlike most Fortran text books, this one focuses a lot on software design and engineering. It aims to not only teach the language itself, but — just as importantly — how you use it to construct robust and maintainable scientific software.

The book is available as a PDF download for €9.95, and as a printed paperback for €24.95.