• SQL

    Your First SQL Statement

    Databases and Tables A SQL database is an organized collection of data. Or at least that’s what they taught me in college. In real life, it’s only as organized as the people putting data into the database. Databases contain schemas, tables, stored procedures, reports, views and other objects. Most databases will contain multiple tables. Tables contain rows that have data in them. I like to think of a database kinda’ like an Excel spreadsheet. Each tab on a spreadsheet is similar to a table; each row is similar to a row in a database and each column in the spreadsheet is somewhat similar to a column, or attribute. The headers…

  • Mac OS X

    Changing Time Machine Backup Frequency

    Time Machine just does what it does and there’s not much controlin’ it aside from what’s in the System Preference pane.  Or is there?  Earlier, I covered how to disable the disk check feature, now let’s look at how to change the frequency of when backups occur.  Backups are initiated by com.apple.backupd-auto.plist, stored in /System/Library/LaunchDaemons.  The contents of this file are, by default: <?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?> <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC “-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN” “http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd”> <plist version=”1.0″> <dict> <key>Label</key> <string>com.apple.backupd-auto</string> <key>ProgramArguments</key> <array> <string>/System/Library/CoreServices/backupd.bundle/Contents/Resources/backupd-helper</string> <string>-auto</string> </array> <key>StartInterval</key> <integer>3600</integer> <key>RunAtLoad</key> <false/> <key>KeepAlive</key> <false/> </dict> </plist> The StartInterval integer controls the frequency with which backups occur, in seconds.  You can customize this by altering the…