Is NASA preparing a moon base?

Well, the question is valid - NASA, with the help of the team that created America's Army, has just released a free game on Steam, called Moonbase Alpha. Now, America's Army was a recruitment tool to get young people interested in joining the army... So, are we seeing the same thing here?

Now don't get too excited - the game shouldn't be hyped too much. After all, at the moment you only get one mission - to repair a few broken modules that lead from the solar panels to an oxygen-producing plant, and use a remote-control robot to repair the damage to said plant. You can choose to do it the real way (with a 25 minute limit, which is not always enough) or just elect to do it "freeplay" style.

What leads me to believe this may be a recruitment tool is also the fact that your score can be uploaded to an online leaderboard - potentially, NASA personnel could elect to look at it and contact the top players to offer them NASA training. Or, perhaps it's just to get people excited about being astronauts again... But what's the point of being an astronaut if all that's going on right now is the ISS? That's precisely where the setting on a moon base may be an insight on what NASA is planning in the near future.

Our moon's got plenty of potential, especially for research (see Wikipedia: Colonization of the Moon).

Speaking of Wikipedia, it seems that my idea is not so far fetched after all! NASA does, indeed, have the plan of having a moon base by 2019, which is very close in terms of time! The possible moon base rendering looks a lot like the game, too :P

RTS: Not so RT after all

I'm probably not the first one to realize it, most likely not the first one to blog about it, but I still have to say it: Where's the Real Time in Real Time Strategy?

I started playing Starcraft again, if only because I picked up a book at the library (Liberty's Crusade) that followed the SC1 original storyline. I'm also hoping that Karma will be with me and that they will release SC2 soon - so I'll be brushed up on the story already. So anyway, as I'm playing this I suddenly realize (again) how completely ridiculous the time is in StarCraft and any other so-called "RTS" games. I mean, it takes, what, about a minute to build barracks, a bit more to train a marine (yes, *train* a *marine*, as in the US navy, only better!), it takes 3 minutes to build a command center, etc. Yes, it makes for better gameplay and a way to defend against the oncoming Zergling Rush, but to me, that's no excuse.

An RTS for me, would really be a game where your base is already established when you start your level, and you have no option of actually building new large structures. Gun emplacements yes, if you have a reserve in a workshop, but building a 2-3 story structure out of metal, complete with power station, a mess, seats and 50-inch plasma screens... I don't think so. This would not only make it more real, it would also make sure that your *strategy* will be what makes you survive, not your ability to quickly construct 50 marines and rush the n00b on the other side of the map!

But how do you get new technology, build new machines like tanks for example? Well, on the one side you could already have a reserve that's limited and no option to build new ones (at least, not more than one or two). On the other hand, the storyline could be made such that a bit of time elapses between "battles" so that those forces are replenished - also offering the obvious possibility of using a different base that might already have more resources at their disposition.

This gives rise to the challenges of building a different engine with this more logical way of making war - but I'm sure someone will rise up to that challenge... eventually. Soon, I hope.

OOps! Zergs are a comin'! Gotta go!

Wife has a blog now :)

My wife just started her own blog, called The Lemon Aid (yes, a clever play on words indeed!). Far from being my techno-randomness blog, she's actually posting some useful food-related stuff, like reviews of other blogs, recipes, tips & tricks, etc.

Finally, she's doing something a little bit geeky :)

Features I'm looking for in a budget management software

So I've been struggling to actually get a clear picture of my budget recently. It's not like I don't have a general picture, but the details and especially the predictions, will sometimes fail me. I've gone through a few experiences with different software, and I'd like to start by recounting them.

My first try was actually using Google Calendar, which isn't a budget software at all, but it at least let me enter all my regular bill reminders with the precision I wanted and needed (every X day, every second friday of the month or the first monday of every 4 months if I wanted it to!). It didn't import any transactions nor tell me what my balance was. Didn't have budget planning either. But it was ok for reminding me what my steady, revolving bills might be and when they came up.

About a year back I discovered CalendarBudget.com , which felt pretty awesome indeed because not only did it look like Google Calendar, it added almost all the features I wanted Calendar to have in the first place! For a while there I really wished Google would buy CalendarBudget and integrate it into their system... Tough luck. CalendarBudget is actually pretty cheap (a few dollars a month) and I still highly recommend it.

I was, however, wanting a solution that offered *more* than just a calendar view, and at the suggestion of a colleague, tried out Quicken 2009 (the offline version). It all went great at first, I entered my transactions, started bashing away entering all my bill reminders, income reminders, etc etc, trying to plan the wedding... Until I realized that Quicken sucks at realizing that this invoice I was expecting and that I mark as "payed" is precisely the same as the transaction downloaded from my bank with the same amount and the same date! I was extremely irked at its failure to recognized this, and the missing feature of actually telling the software that this was what I needed. A simple right-click would have done the trick... But nope, Quicken sucks. After reading a few reviews online about their business practices, I can honestly say I'm never going to use this software again.

I then tried a few solutions online, googling "alternative to quicken" and finding a few. Amongst the plethora of half-witted solutions that only offer bill reminders or entering every single one of your receipts manually, there were a few gems... though they still failed to meet my expectations.

• Wesabe looked really awesome on the surface, importing my information speedily with the use of a great Firefox plugin that "records" what you do to download your statement, reproducing it on demand. However, you soon realize that it's just a glorified account overview that only excites you with awesome Web2.0 javascript and some pie charts with fancy colors.
• moneyStrands didn't stand much of a chance, at the level of frustration I was at when I found it... And it failed miserably from whatever standards you see it. Strands offers to connect automatically to your bank account as long as you provide the card number, question/answer security and password... But if I am to believe the forums posts I've seen, I'm not the only one for whom it failed on both the accounts I tried. I may return to explore it and try the manual download option, but my philosophy is, if you can't make it right, don't bother!
• Buxfer, though it does the importing easily and the categorizing is pretty good, lacks a lot of the features I want, including projections (it has bill reminders, but no more than Google) and accounts other than debit accounts.

I also tried a few other software, including GNUCash and jGnash... But they all seem so... convoluted, hard to grasp, so "if you don't know how to work this product, then tough luck". It may be me, but as a regular user and someone who knows what he wants, I don't want to have to read through the documentation until I've had my initial setup done and I'm ready for some more advanced stuff. A tutorial/setup is mandatory, in my opinion. Quick at least got that, if nothing else.

So, I've decided to make a little list of features that I feel a personal finance management/planning software or web service should have. When I say Personal, I mean for myself and my soon-to-be spouse, who - as most people do - have the following:
One bank account each, a credit card, a personal loan, and RRSPs. We'll soon have a mortgage, so I'm also taking this as granted (because people with houses have even more reasons to want to manage finances). So here are the features I'd like to see, working correctly and all together, in a financial management software. Show me one (that's affordable!), and you get a cookie:

Accounts:
- Support for Chequing/Savings account
- Support for Credit Card accounts
- Support for Line of Credits
- Support for Loans & Investment accounts (RRSP, Mortgage, Etc)
- Ability to set up complete information for all accounts, including interest rates, interest type (revolving, etc), credit limits (have X left on my Visa, Y left on my line of credit).
- "Individual" accounts and "Joint" accounts, separating my budget from my spouse's if I want to. Personal information (city, country, medical info such as having glasses or regular expenses) could be useful, especially in a "multi-user" environment.

Transactions:
- Import standard bank formats (Quicken, Money, CSV, etc) or, even better, just like Wesabe does: Have me log on once, record the motions, and then do it on request, automatically.
- Transaction categories and sub-categories, with rules to sort them automatically.
- Transaction planning, monthly/weekly/bi-weekly/yearly bills with truly complete methods for choosing when the transaction occurs (stuff like "it's going to pass on Friday if the date's a weekend" or "this transaction will be on the First and the Last Wednesday of each month". Yes, we have a transaction like that!)
- Variable amount bills with proper "guessing" of what the next amount should be (average/mean) after a few of them.
- Bayesian detection of "similar" entries (if I enter a planned transaction and download my statement from the bank that shows that transaction as passed, don't put it twice like Quicken does!). Using amount and +- days, with "unsure" one shown in an easy to manage list with drop-down ordered by possible percentage of transaction match.
- Creating automatic transaction planning from past transaction (Right-Click, "This is a recurring transaction")
- "Merging" or "Overwriting" transactions that may have passed that filter (or as an alternative) with drag&drop detection.
- "IOUs", a feature that I've seen in one of the online interfaces (one that was lacking features I think) is a nice addition. No interests, just reminders of what people owe you and what you owe them. Linked to transactions of course.

Budget Planning
- Fancy-Smanshy pie-charts and graphs to show which areas are spent in the most.
- "Wallets" or "Envelopes", one of the favored (and traditional) methods of budgeting.
- "Scenarios" - didn't see this anywhere but I'd definitely buy a product that did this: Create a "copy" of the whole database and let me play with it as I wish. Create a fictional mortgage with payments here and there, change my income, win the lottery, etc. Then, clear the whole thing and return to the current reality. This would help people with "what if" scenarios... I lose my job, or we buy a house, a new car, get a kid or a dog... Anything.
- Reports: All the information you need is in the database, so it's relatively trivial to show it in a report (spendings by time, categories, in/out graphs, etc).

Interface/Visual
- A complete, easy to use initial setup screen with steps for each of the necessary information to get you started: Accounts, Recurring Transactions, Credits, Loans, Personal Information.
- You can't get anywhere without using something like a jQuery UI framework that just works well. Base your interface on Google, Wesabe, Windows 7 (awesome!) if you have to, but make it look good.
- Spend that few extra hours/days/weeks tweaking performances so that it's not only fancy, it's also blazing fast.
- Drag & Drop interface, click&change, right-click menus, whatever it takes to make the job easier and the interface intuitive.
- Autocomplete - a must whenever it's fit to use.

Things that I don't need (and that I'm sure, most people won't need either):
- Support for multiple currency: If you're dealing with multiple currencies, you need more than a "personal" budget software. You're out of scope, buddy.
- Stock Prices, Exchange Rate, PortFolio: See above. Out of scope of a personal software for the masses.
- Cheque Writing or automatic bill payment: I don't think I'm really as lazy as to want my software to pay my bills for me. It's not a good way to teach people how to manage their money.
- Tax Filing/Tax Return: There are plenty of software for this, out of scope again.
- "Payees" are overrated. I'm not a business, I don't pay people, I pay bills. Don't give me payees crap.


So.... After all of this, who's up for the challenge? If you have more ideas and features you'd like to see in a personal finance management software, post in the comments!

Edit:
In the end, I went back to CalendarBudget.com because, even though it also lacks some of the features, it has the ones that just make me like it! I strongly suggest trying it out.

CSV2MDB in VBScript

Thought I would share the following VBScript, which can be used to automate the transfer of a CSV to an MDB database automatically (columns need to be hardcoded however).

It might not be of any use to much people, but it's out there now :)

'Option Explicit
Dim strConnection, conn, strConnection2, conn2, objResultsCSV, objResultSQL, strSQL
'
' Open connection to the CSV
strConnection = "Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=C:\data\;Extended Properties=""text;HDR=YES;FMT=CSVDelimited"""
Set conn = CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")
conn.Open strConnection
'
' Do Query on the CSV
Set objResultsCSV = CreateObject("ADODB.Recordset")
strSQL = "SELECT * FROM test.csv"
objResultsCSV.open strSQL, conn, 3,3
'
' Open connection to the MDB
strConnection2 = "PROVIDER=MSDASQL;DRIVER={Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb)};DBQ=C:\data\Test.mdb;UID=admin;PWD=;"
Set conn2 = CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")
conn2.Open strConnection2
'
' Loop through each line of the CSV
Do Until objResultsCSV.EOF
' Insert SQL
strSQL = "INSERT INTO example (Column1, Column2, Column3, Column4) VALUES ('" & objResultsCSV(0) & "','" & objResultsCSV(1) & "','" & objResultsCSV(2) & "','" & objResultsCSV(3) & "');"
conn2.execute strSQL
objResultsCSV.MoveNext
Loop
'
'Close Connections
objResultsCSV.Close
Set objResultsCSV = Nothing
conn.Close
Set conn = Nothing
conn2.Close
Set conn2 = Nothing