Note – This post has been updated from 2007-03-20 to describe new installation instructions. Overview I’ve integrated Stikkit into most of my workflow and am quite happy with the results. However, one missing piece is quick access to Stikkit from the command line. In particular, a quick list of my undone todos is quite useful without having to load up a web browser. To this end, I’ve written a Ruby script for interacting with Stikkit.
Most of my updates arrive through feeds to NetNewsWire. Since my main source of national news and analysis is the Globe and Mail, I’m quite happy that they provide many feeds for accessing their content. The problem is that many news stories are duplicated across these feeds. Furthermore, tracking all of the feeds of interest is challenging. The new Yahoo Pipes offer a solution to these problems. Without providing too much detail, pipes are a way to filter, connect, and generally mash-up the web with a straightforward interface.
I find it useful to have a list of my unfinished tasks generally, but subtley, available. To this end, I’ve added my unfinished todos from Stikkit to my Gmail web clips. These are the small snippets of text that appear just above the message list in GMail. All you need is the subscribe link from your todo page with the ‘not done’ button toggled. The url should look something like:
My experiences helping people manage their data has repeatedly shown that databases are poorly understood. This is well illustrated by the rampant abuses of spreadsheets for recording, manipulating, and analysing data. Most people realise that they should be using a database, the real issue is the difficulty of creating a proper database. This is a legitimate challenge. Typically, you need to carefully consider all of the categories of data and their relationships when creating the database, which makes the upfront costs quite significant.
I like to believe that my brain is useful for analysis, synthesis, and creativity. Clearly it is not proficient at storing details like specific dates and looming reminders. Nonetheless, a great deal of my mental energy is devoted to trying to remember such details and fearing the consequences of the inevitable “it slipped my mind”. As counselled by GTD, I need a good and trustworthy system for removing these important, but distracting, details and having them reappear when needed.
I grabbed this image while preparing a new Windows machine. This seems to be an interesting comparison of the difference in design approaches between Apple and PC remotes. Both provide essentially the same functions. Clearly, however, one is more complex than the other. Which would you rather use?
Prior to general release, plantae is moving web hosts. This seems like a good time to point out that all of plantae’s code is hosted at Google Code. The project has great potential and deserves consistent attention. Unfortunately, I can’t continue to develop the code. So, if you have an interest in collaborative software, particularly in the scientific context, I encourage you to take a look.
I recently helped someone process a text file with the help of Unix command line tools. The job would have been quite challenging otherwise, and I think this represents a useful demonstration of why I choose to use Unix. The basic structure of the datafile was: ; A general header file ; 1 sample: 0.183 0.874 0.226 0.214 0.921 0.272 0.117 2 sample: 0.411 0.186 0.956 0.492 0.150 0.278 0.110 3 .
Japan’s Hinode spacecraft has started taking pictures of the Sun. The detail of the shots is amazing and gives a sense of the Sun’s structure.
Edward Burtynsky documents our impacts on the landscape through extraordinary photographs. In this presentation at TED he describes his motivations for the work and showcases some of his best images. The descriptions of China are particularly impressive.
The Stern Review has been in the news recently for predicting that global warming could cost up to $7 trillion if not addressed soon. Of course, this has caused quite a stir as it offsets many of the, likely unfounded, concerns that fixing climate change will cost too much. The full report is available online and should be a quite interesting, if long, read.
This article in the Guardian explores the use of public relations firms by big oil companies to fight against the science of climate change. Apparently, the same tactics and people even of the tobacco industry’s fight against the link between smoking and cancer are being employed by the oil industry.
Choosing appropriate software tools can be challenging. Here are the principles I employ when making the decision: Simple: This seems obvious, but many companies fail here. Typically, their downfall is focussing on a perpetual increase in feature quantity. I don’t evaluate software with feature counts. Rather, I value software that performs a few key operations well. Small, focussed tools result in much greater productivity than overly-complex, all-in-one tools. 37 Signals’ Writeboard is a great example of a simple, focussed tool for collaborative writing.
An excellent presentation regarding the use of country statistics. The visualizations are particularly effective.
Since I’m looking for work, I found this post rather interesting. They’ve applied a spam filter to resumes to automatically filter through candidates. The output is only as good as the reference resumes used to construct the filter, but still an intriguing idea. My results are below. Most importantly the probability of me not being hired is 1.15e-59, which is a very, very small number. Perhaps I should add this fact to my resume?
The Canary Project is an intriguing idea. They are documenting the effects of global warming through pictures. Since many people, apparently, don’t believe the abundant scientific evidence, perhaps some startling pictures will be convincing.
I’m not sure how this escaped my notice until now, but `RSiteSearch` is a very useful command in R. Passing a string to this function loads up your web browser with search results from the R documentation and mailing list. So, for example: RSiteSearch("glm") will show you everything you need to know about using R for generalised linear models.
I generally write my documents in Sweave format. This approach allows me to embed the code for analyses directly in the report derived from the analyses, so that all results and figures are generated dynamically with the text of the report. This provides both great documentation of the analyses and the convenience of a single file to keep track of and work with. Now there is a new contender for integrating analysis code and documentation with the release of an R module for ConTeXt.
The CBC Radio 3 podcast is an excellent source for independent, Canadian music. They have recently added a playlist feature that helps you search for your favourite artists and create your own radio station. Definitely worth checking out.
Here’s a simple trick for creating experimental designs in R: use the function expand.grid. A simple example is: treatments which produces: treatment level 1 A 1 2 B 1 3 C 1 4 D 1 5 A 2 6 B 2 7 C 2 8 D 2 9 A 3 10 B 3 11 C 3 12 D 3 Now, if you want to randomize your experimental treatments, try: