A Great Password Solution at Last!

I've been searching long and hard since 1997 for a good way to manage hundreds of online accounts and passwords securely. Everyone who has been on the internet for any length of time has the same problem. It is impossible to remember all your account names, IDs, and passwords let alone use different strong passwords for each account (so that if one is compromised the rest are not). Yet if you write them down, that introduces other security risks. Having your browser remember them is also very insecure.

Roboform and many other password safe solutions were inadequate (not cross platform or too hard to use). Bank of America's My Portfolio and Yodlee provide interesting solutions but have flaws depending on your perspective.

By far the best cross platform solution and the one I now use is LastPass (http://LastPass.com).

In a nutshell, it locks all of your account information into an AES-256 bit safe that only you can open. That safe moves wherever you want it to go. LastPass makes it simple to log onto hundreds of accounts all with different strong passwords while also providing safe storage for arbitrary bits of sensitive textual information. It does what Roboform does, but better.

The only thing it currently lacks is a trusted auditor (like KPMG or Ernst & Young) to verify that LastPass's documented security protocols are really what it does. Based on my review of LastPass, it is the real deal. I highly recommend it. And it's free!!!!!!

Kudo's to my friend Andy Sohn for introducing me to LastPass.

[Added 5/5/2009: See also some older reviews at Downloadsquad and LifeHacker. These additional reviews compare LastPass to KeePass, an older open source alternative.]

Vaccines are Worth It

In general, I'm in favor of vaccines. They are one of humankind's biggest health accomplishments of all time (along with soap, dixie cups/drinking fountains, toothbrushes, and antibiotics).

Every intervention, really every action we take, has consequences. If we breathe air, we generate by products (carbon dioxide, etc) that can catch up with us. If we pave roads, we reduce the capacity of our earth to purify water. On the whole vaccines have been hugely beneficial with very few adverse effects.

Since vaccines are a bit mysterious and somewhat invisible, it is easy to blame them for some mysterious maladies -- like autism. While it is possible, it is quite doubtful. Thankfully a recent book defends vaccines against this rampant urban legend. For more, please read http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/13/health/13auti.html.

Passive Houses -- Simple Sophistication

I'm always looking for simple systems that work well. Passive houses seem like a great innovation: they are so efficient that they do not need furnaces and are heated by the occupants and other equipment in the house itself. A special heat exchanger allows a steady exchange of air with the outside to keep the house ventilated yet warm.

Unfortunately they are still too cutting edge in the US to make them practical but they are doing well in Germany.

Read more in the Dec 27, 2008 NY Times article: No Furnaces but Heat Aplenty in ‘Passive Houses’

Nutritiondata.com is the Best!

After I created the relatively healthy but still tasty Canola-meal Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe, I wanted to find out how it compared to other cookies -- ideally by creating a nutrition label for it like those found on packaged foods in the United States. I started doing this calculation myself by reading labels and assembling all the information in my own spreadsheet. This was very tedious. In looking around the web for nutrition information about vanilla extract, I stumbled on http://www.nutritiondata.com/ and discovered that I could put my own recipe into it and have it calculate the nutritional results for me. Wonderful!

Having found this source, I looked diligently for others and found http://www.nutrientfacts.com/ and a few others. But these others were not nearly as good as http://www.nutritiondata.com/.

http://www.nutritiondata.com/ was by far the best, most thorough, and most accurate. Plus it allowed me to enter my own ingredients, assemble recipes, display the nutritional results of the recipes, and save it all for others to use.

Try it out for yourself! Enjoy!

Canola-meal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients

7/8 cup -Canola Oil
1 1/2 cups - Brown Sugar
2 tsp - Vanilla extract
2 - Large Eggs

1 1/2 cups - Whole Wheat Flour
2 cups - Whole or Quick Oats
1 tsp - Baking Powder, Double-acting, Sodium Aluminum Sulfate
1 tsp - Spices, cinnamon, ground [Cassia]
1/2 tsp - Salt

12 ounce package - Chocolate Chips, Nestle Semi-Sweet


Instructions

Preheat oven to 350°F. A stand or other electric mixer works best. Otherwise this is very good exercise for your arm. In a large bowl mix oil, brown sugar, and vanilla. Add eggs and mix. Add flour, oats, baking powder, cinnamon, salt. Mix until well blended. Add chocolate chips and mix until chips are evenly distributed. Drop tablespoons of cookie dough 1.5 inches apart onto baking sheets (greased if necessary). Bake for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown. Cookies will be soft but should firm up some as they cool. Let stand on baking sheets for 2 minutes before transfering to racks to cool. Makes about 48 cookies.

This is the healthiest chocolate chip cookie recipe I could come up with (I invented it myself). I've also posted it at: http://www.nutritiondata.com/facts/recipe/792359/2 so everyone can see its resulting nutritional makeup as compared to the nutrition in a more traditional chocolate chip cookie recipe as described at http://www.nutritiondata.com/facts/recipe/792363/2 and http://www.verybestbaking.com/recipes/detail.aspx?ID=18476

Copyright 2008 Tim Oey. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 543 Howard Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.

Smoking is a Dead End

Most know this, especially in California, but it bears repeating as many worldwide still smoke and/or tolerate it:
Smoking is a huge waste -- addictive, expensive, smelly, dirty, bad for the environment, bad for everyone's health.

It's amazing yet tragic that tobacco companies have made huge profits from killing others. And yet so many still giving them money to kill themselves.

Save money, save lives, stop smoking.

Read more at:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20081015/hl_hsn/smokingmakesyouoldbeforeyourtime

Prius Reaffirmation

The article 'Which hybrids save you money?" in the October 2008 Consumer Reports compared hybrids with similar all-gas models to see how the each car's 5 year total owner cost compared.

The Toyota Prius was a clear winner with the lowest total 5 year owner cost ($28,250) whereas the Lexus G5 450h Hybrid had the highest (70,250). So just picking a hybrid does not necessarily save money or the environment, but taking the total vehicle into account, can do both.

The Prius is a very nice family sedan with lots of features so it was great to confirm my earlier post that it is very economical as well (just as we would expect) -- useful features at a low total cost.