Oh hey dere!

This September has pretty much been THAT sort of month for me- and while I was worrying about September, October rolled in! And if you're wondering what "THAT sort of month" means, nearly every word in these first two sentences needed to be corrected BEFORE the proofreading stage of posting this blog.

FRACK!

For those long-suffering, loyal readers who might have been wondering where this blog had gone... rest assured, it is still here. Obviously.

What's been going on in my life?

Well, for starters, I'm still butting heads with R. For those unacquainted, ""R"  is a statistical programming language.

EH?

My main Twitter account, @cjoelharrison,  deals primarily with data: Big Data, the Internet of Things, Statistics and Mathematics. Now, before you write me off as a propellerhead with no foundation in the real world, let me explain what I do on Twitter.

My main twitter account exists primarily to gather and repeat information and news about Big Data, the Internet of Things and anything related to these topics. Lots of verticals, especially ag, petro, transport and health, and the IoT/IoE applications therein. (And for those who know me IRL... WTF???)

Yes, I actually think about these things.

Anyway, moving right along- I finally installed R and RStudio on our Windows 10 machine... somewhat  successfully. R is okay, but the 'swirl' library is not working,  so I made a post on the R Studio forum, and hope for a fix.

That's all for now, I suppose.

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.

Labor Day 2016

Its that time of year again... the "unofficial" end of summer. I'm not sure how it started, but in the United States, summer unofficially starts with Memorial Day and ends with Labor Day. I'm fairly certain that its not meterologically or astronomically accurate, but it certainly is convenient.

I'm not concerned with the calendar- I'm just waiting for the cooler temperatures!

Speaking of cool, Mr. T and I spent a good part of last Sunday working on organizing the Dungeon, which naturally spilled over to the SUL. Well, it wasn't really cool, but it was necessary... and months in the making! I'm not certain we gained any space, but the space we have is now much better organized.

Speaking of space, I've decided to fill a bit of the empty space between my ears with... wait for it..., R! Yes, it’s R, strange programming language from another planet that came to earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of other languages. R, which can change the course of mighty rivers, bend steel in a few lines of code. And that, disguised as a mere programming language, fights a never ending battle for truth, justice and the American way. And now another exciting episode in the adventures of Superman..., er, R (Sorry, I was thinking of Superman and the never-ending "battles" between programming languages.)

So, yeah, I'm taking a stab at R. There's a pretty neat tutorial that's been developed called "swirl" that's callable within the  R IDE. I haven't gotten very far, but I think I'll pop back to the beginning for a bit of a refresher.

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For those familiar with this blog, you should not be surprised surprised that I started writing this particular entry a week ago. Here in the United States, this past Monday was Labor Day, and also my birthday. Having a Monday holiday is always a nice thing- especially when it's one's birthday! Now, to set the record straight, at our house we don't do much for birthdays more than acknowledging that someone is a year older! Still, it's nice to have the day off. 

However, press schedules are relentless....

I worked four days this week, but I put in hours for almost six days. So, for once I have a fairly legitimate excuse for a delayed blog entry.

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Software and stuff- 

Not much to report, unfortunately.  I'm schlepping along in R... weeks like this are not conducive to learning! 

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to. 

R U Experienced?

As mentioned in the past blog, R and U (as well as many other letters in the English alphabet) are programming languages.

In my current work environment, our primary programming software is a pretty nifty composition and layout tool which is customizable through a C++ based scripting capability. The scripting is often utilized to create sample pieces or to compensate for data which- for whatever reason- does not perform as expected.

Like most things, the best way to learn something is to do/use it. In my role- working at night- there is some opportunity for programming, but for reasons which should be obvious, not a great deal. As a consequence, I do a small amount of programming (actually creating jobs), a lot of quality control, and some break-fix. I've acquired a great deal of QC experience over the years, and have gotten quite good at it. My programming skills- in this particular environment- are below many, but not all, of my peers. I'm not bad at break-fix, and rather enjoy this particular aspect of my position, because it involves both the "hard" skill of actually working with a program and coming up with a solution, as well as the "soft" skills of interfacing with imaging techs, press personnel and/or supervisors and becoming an integral element of keeping a project on time. And, in direct mail, time is an element which cannot ever be ignored. Our clients spend time and resources on creating campaigns that will execute within a certain timeframe. In military terms, we and the client combined are like artillery: we're most effective when we're on time and on target!

I've mentioned my peers here once or twice, and like most industries, not everyone arrives at their current position via a straight path. Some actually studied programming in school and have a degree in it. Others worked in some capacity in either direct mail or printing, and made their way into programming. One of our programmers started out as a minor league (professional) baseball player who had a degree in graphic arts and came to us via the prepress department. My background is sales, databases and spreadsheets. Go figure.

But... as I don't have a programming background, I thought it would be expeditious to beef up my programming skills. I had initially poked around in Python- and will get back to that- but right now I am trying my hand at R. And yes, for those uninitiated, R is indeed a programming language. R has been around for awhile, and was developed out of S. In any event, this is a mountain for me, for a number of reasons.

For starters, R is designed with statistical computing in mind. Statistical computing is the bailiwick of the likes of my good e-buddy Prof. Dr. Diego Kuonen, not a former math-as-a-last-resort sort of person such as I used to be. On top of that, I've NEVER had a stats course at any level, and do not regularly use it. And, my job has absolutely nothing to do with stats.

Still, I took it up as a challenge. Languages one does not regularly speak, read or write are not called foreign without reason. And here's where it gets interesting: I've got a metric ****-ton of experience with foreign languages. I speak English natively, but have studied at least four Slavic languages, two Romance languages and one other Germanic language. One of the languages needed the learning of a new alphabet.  So, why not a computer language?

I've found, as I look at languages, that the more one studies, the closer one looks, and starts to see similarities and patterns that may have been seen before ... and so, I find myself looking at R.

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.

Git outta here! "U" is a language?

Straight up, bro. U is indeed a language, as are R, S and T. Really? Yes- google any of them. They are all real programming languages.

And I bring this up ... WHY?

There are a couple of reasons. For starters, "coding" is still considered to be an arcane skill. In many ways, this can be seen as true.

Next, for some reason, coding in one language is sometimes held in a higher esteem than coding in another language.

Lastly, among programmers, even environments and specialized interfaces can cause a certain amount of elitism. If one cannot code a certain task in a certain IDE, one is an a**tard,

So, one attempts self-improverment after well-intentioned coworkers have slammed one to the ground.

Their myopia damns them and in the end does nothing to assist their coworkers.

I tire of some of my coworkers' belittling my efforts to me become a better programmer- their petty complaints and insults have been relegated to "mosquito" stage- annoying, but ineffective.

Sorry about the negative tone here. The next post will be more interesting!

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.

I Want To Tell You

George Harrison really doesn't get a lot of credit as far as the Beatles go... well, apart from being the reason the Beatles were deported from Germany, at least. "I Want to Tell You" finally rose to the top for today's blog title after considering a number of rain related titles.

Yesterday was the third consecutive day that I tried to cut the grass, as well as the third consecutive day that we experienced rain, and storms, so my first choice was Eurythmics' "Here Comes the Rain Again," which was appropriate. Then, another Harrison song, "Rain" came to mind. I had almost decided to use CCR's "Who'll Stop the Rain?" when Duran Duran's "Hold Back the Rain" came to mind. Sheesh! What's a blogger to do? The thing that made the decision for me was this: I didn't start out to write about the rain, but it's pretty much what got today's post going.

I woke up unnaturally early on Tuesday morning, fifteen minutes before my 0730 alarm. I did all of the usual morning stuff, and by 0800 had my first cup of tea in hand. The weather was threatening rain, but I figured that as long as the rain was light, I would cut the grass. Rain came (but there wasn't much actual precipitation), thunder came, and then it was clear. The weather went through a few cycles like this. After my fifth cup of tea (~1300CST), I had decided I'd had enough. It was relatively dry and the grass was taunting me. I changed into my grass cutting gear and headed out.

As we had been rained out the previous day, I knew the gas tank was full. I proceeded to pull on the starter handle; I was rewarded with the handle coming off the string! I made a bigger knot which actually survived a few pulls before coming off again. Jennifer must have been watching, because she came out of the house. In the most measured and polite voice that I could muster under the circumstances, I handed the green plastic handle to her and said, "Fix it. Please." I then went to the fence and pulled down some of the ubiquitous wild morning glories.

After a few minutes she had reattached the handle and given the motor a few unsuccessful cranks. Undaunted, she went into the garage and got out Ye Olde Sparkplug Socket and removed Ye Olde Sparkplug. It was somewhat fouled, so I got a paper towel, dipped it in some gasoline, and gave it a good cleaning. She replaced Ye Olde Sparkplug, reattached the wire, and it started on the second crank. Then, I proceeded to cut the grass. The grass was higher than we usually allow it to grow, so it took around forty-five minutes to cut. It was also incredibly humid: by the time I was done, there was sweat on top of my perspiration.

I put the mower away, went inside and cleaned up. I made myself a delicious concoction of spicy seafood ramen, Progresso Tomato Basil soup and cheddar cheese and started this blog entry. I infrequently go to work in the "front half" (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday) of the week, but I text or email every day to see if I'm needed. I was pleasantly surprised when the asked me to come in.

And then it rained some more. Now, about twenty-four hours later, we have flooding, flood warnings, flash flood warnings and more rain is forecast.

Whew! After all of that, what I Want To Tell You is this: I found a couple of pieces in cyberspace that I wanted to share. The first one claims that "80% is the new 100%" and other one through a finely detailed chain of events example effectively refutes the first. I think the author of the first piece might have been speaking from his own experience about growing into a more effective manager, but in the world I live in, 80% almost NEVER cuts it. In my world, when I am proofreading something which has an expiration of July 17, 2013 11:59, that isn't good enough- because sometimes my world is based in internet time, 24/7, and 11:59 not only needs to be followed by A.M. or P.M., but the time zone also needs to be specified. I could go on and on and on, but I think you get the idea.

Lastly, Jennifer and I were at the library today, pretty much intending just to drop a few things off. However, I thought we'd go up to the fourth floor to see if we could see any of the flooding. This time, there was no water. We went to the New Books shelf, and a title caught my eye. With great excitement, I grabbed R For Dummies before anyone else could! I had actually been looking for something like this for the past several months! I showed it to Jennifer, and she naturally said, "What's R?" I took a breath, gathered my thoughts and gave her the best answer I could think of: "R is the freeware version of S." I got the deer-in-the-headlights look. I eventually was able to explain that R is a language used to graphically represent statistics. It's easy enough to understand, but it's not always that easy to explain.  At this point reality came crashing through the R-induced fog, and Jennifer remembered that Mr. T needed a new book to read. I had a thought that he might enjoy a nice biography of Nikolai Tesla, so I went off in search of that while she browsed the electronic catalog. Surprisingly, every one of the Tesla books missing from the shelves, so I went to check the electronic catalog to confirm this. They were indeed all checked out, the catalog confirmed, but I found a few other interesting titles. I went into the stacks and grabbed The Physics Book. It is a softcover book approximately 500 pages in length, and the pages are equally divided between text and pictures or illustrations. It covers milestones, persons and generally presents the history of physics in a very readable format. Another book that caught my eye but I did not check out was Physics for Entertainment. It was written in 1913 and apparently was a best-seller in the 1930's at one time. Curious, curious title.

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.

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