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.

The ABC's of programming

This past Thursday/Friday started out quietly enough at the office.

We were short-handed this week, as the Fresh Prince of Data Services was on vacation. He-Whose-Name-Shall-Never-Be-Mentioned (HWNSNBM) therefore reassumed the mantle of command on Thursday night and guided the projects ("The Big Show") to fruition that the Fresh Prince normally has a major hand in.  For the first time in as long as I can remember, though, none of these projects was "HOT", and during our Friday morning impromptu turnover meeting, I informed both the Stig and the Princess that if they were not able to get to The Big Show, then HWNSNBM and I would take care of it on Friday night.

I worked late on Thursday, so I came in later on Friday night, which is pretty much the norm for our office. When I arrived, HWNSNBM and I had a brief meeting, and someone had done one production QC on the Big Show, and he had done one on all of the others. So, as I had also done one on Friday morning, this left me with two to complete, along with two other jobs. Friday night was shaping up to be quite uneventful.

It would have stayed that way except for printer drivers. Our I.T. department has been optimizing the drivers for one of our printers, and I've been doing some testing of these drivers. The easiest way to test them is to print out .pdf's. The results of a particular test were not great, so the Lurker suggested using a different printer.  I did this, and discovered that when the Man-With-Three-First-Names (MW3FN) created this particular file, he did not account for white space at the top of the document. Normally, this would not be an issue, but for this particular job we needed to do a type of duplexing, and although the program was set up correctly with the imaging falling in place nicely, the white space (~2.5", or 5cm) that had not been cropped off the top of the background overlapped when duplexed, causing 2.5" of the bottom of one page to be obscured by the top of the second page.

Bottom line: it took me close to 2 hours, but I finally got the background cropped properly and outputted acceptable proofs.

That's it for printers and Thursday night drama. Next up: taking a chance on programming.

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

Windows 10, PCs 4

In my world, today is August 6  August 14. My last post was on the 24th of July, and much has happened since then... more in a following post!

For starters, on the very last day that the free Windows upgrade was available (July 29), I upgraded one of our PCs in the SUL. I might have upgraded more, but only one of the PCs we tried actually worked.

I'm very happy with the upgrade.As it was a workday for me, Mr. T had the privilege of babysitting the install process. It  was very smooth, according to him, and seemingly unlike every other new OS install, the HDD was untouched save for the OS. Had I the slightest clue it would be this easy, I would have installed it on at least one other machine. Alas, that time has passed.

So,how is performance?

The machine in question is an HP/Compaq DC7600 Pentium 4 3.4 GHz with 4GB (max, I believe) and a 1TB HDD.  

From a cold start, I think I get a login screen in 10 seconds or less. This is a 50% or better improvement. The interface is very nice- Win 7/8 users should have no problem transitioning to this OS.

On the minus side, MY experience with the new Edge browser has not been good. It is no better than the last iteration of IE, which is VASTLY inferior (that's the polite way of saying it absolutely SUCKS) to Chrome, Pale Moon or Vivaldi. As a side note- if you've never tried the Pale Moon or Vivaldi browsers, give them a try.

That's it for now- just a few notes on Win10.

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

Professional email addresses... and other terminally flawed data

I'm sorry. That's a pretty bloody lame title. And I'll also forgive you if you didn't read my previous post on this subject... which had such a clever title that I can't find it either!

Every so often, though, I read something that makes me wonder: why did the writer go into business at all?

Last week we received a flyer from a realtor whom I'll call "John Doe". John obviously is pretty good at selling homes- after all, he's been in business for over 10 years with the same firm in the same office (we'll say he works for "Acme"). So, with a proven track record of solid business acumen and a professionally written and laid out color flyer, why would I do business with him?

I wouldn't. Why? He's got a winning smile, a good track record, and a really nice flyer.

Why? Because of his amateur, second-string personal email address- johndoe477@hotmail.com.

R U pulling my leg?

I'm sorry, but this is one of those things that just get me going. This IS the 21st Century, after all. And unless you're the only game in town, I'm not going to contact someone who has a throwaway email address- that's no way to run a business. So, my advice to the SOHO and SMB readers who may see this is this: get a domain that has your name in it. Give everyone in the firm a standardized email address, like john.doe@acme.com or jane.doe@acme.com. If your web presence is lame or nonexistent, hire a designer. Trust me on the website- believe it or not, I have "webmaster" in my list of credentials.

(Pause for effect)

Most readers will not know me personally, but on my best of days, I have trouble even spelling HTML. I'm kidding, of course. Just a bit. For example, if I see the tag <!DOCTYPE html> at the top of a page, I know I'm looking at an HTML 5 page. I also know how to recognize and change colors, as well as edit text and import or delete images. I told you that so I could tell you this: don't hire me or anyone like me to manage your online presence. There are pros out there who will do it better and for a fair price. If your business is your livelihood, you owe it to yourself.

But please do it.

Speaking of addresses, data and names, I'd like to share one more pet peeve. I don't consider pride to be a major fault of mine, but when it comes to business, please take the time to spell my name correctly... and get the city I live in right. The city I live in is a suburb of Chicago, with a population of approximately 60,000. It has three ZIP codes, one of which is shared by a village that is 1/15 our size and is strongly mob connected. I cannot tell you how INSULTING it is to get a piece of mail addressed to me, with the proper ZIP code and +4, but with that other village's name on it. Mail like this goes DIRECTLY to the garbage.

I work in an industry very closely associated with direct mail; most of our business is from folks doing direct mail. Every day, I look at mail data, and am constantly reminded of the old programming axiom GIGO (garbage in, garbage out). However, from a personal perspective, I tend to scrutinize the mail we receive at home... and Jennifer has also taken an interest in it. The USPS (United States Postal Service) depends on direct mail, but does not often see fit to enforce its own regulations. I see so much direct mail that is so out of spec that it really IS junk mail, and yet the USPS just accepts the money for the postage rather than enforcing its regulations.

That's not my beef, though.

Even though we live in a 24*7 world, take the time to get stuff right. Get the easy (data) stuff right- for example, it's spelled Coeur D'Alene. not Coeur Dalene. It's not <frigging> rocket science, folks. Then, when you get the easy stuff right, spell my name correctly- at least get my gender right! My name is a little long, and in an address block is often truncated. How about just truncating it to a standard, shortened (nickname?) name rather than just arbitrarily chopping letters off?

Okay, I'm putting the soapbox away now.

Data: 42 (my personal database project) is inching along. I got some data entry done over the last week, and did a few table upgrades. I think I'm currently up to seven complete CD entries, and quite honestly the last one was a bear!

I'm not a huge Elvis Presley fan, but I picked up a SEALED copy of his 30 #1 Hits CD from our local Goodwill store a few months ago for a buck (1USD). When I first built the table for CDs, I had included seventeen track titles. I knew I'd need more, as classical music tends to have LOTS of tracks. The Elvis CD, though, has thirty tracks, so I added thirteen tracks to the table, only to realize that there is one unnumbered track at the end! In unrelated database news, I added 885 pieces to my Lego collection, courtesy of the Amazon Prime sale on the 12th. As I was thinking about Lego and the database, I decided to only include Lego part numbers for parts that I actually possess.

That's it for now, fellow datacampers. As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.

Big Data, Small Data, and 42 Data

Its been a bit since I've written, so a quick update is in order.

Work had not been particularly busy as of late; my reason for the delay in writing has more to do with software than anything else. I finally had the opportunity to upgrade my laptop to Microsoft Office Pro 2010 from 2007, which has been on my to-do list ever since the hard drive replacement a while back. With the installation of 2010, I've FINALLY gotten back to working on the database.

I seem to be unable to stop referring to von Moltke the Elder, and I'm not stopping now. I found an older, saved version of the database, and decided it was not usable, so I'm starting afresh (again!) with Forty-Two, with a much-improved (I hope!) design.

Before I got too deep into this database, I thought I'd do a bit of web scraping and see if I could find a "music template" for an Access database. After a fair amount of searching, I discovered that Access templates- generally speaking- do not exist... at least not in the same league as Excel or Word templates. The best explanation that I've found for this was on an Access board, and I paraphrase here: "Access is pretty much a sandbox developer's environment. You won't find many templates. Period."

So, I'm back to doing it the way I've always done it: making it up as I go. Well, LEARNING as I go.

I suppose I should take this opportunity to make once of my periodic disclaimers: I'm not an expert, but I have a deep interest in Big Data, the Internet of Things (sometimes referred to as the Internet of Everything), data analysis, databases, STEM and the Maker Movement. Okay, back to our regularly scheduled program.

Some time ago- not long after I'd discovered the joy of caring for and feeding databases- I ran into a statement which I thought was a bit curious. It was about database design, and the author stated that the best way to design a database is with pencil and paper. I eventually understood his premise and agreed with him up to a point. My personal perspective is that this can be a great starting point, especially if you're completely new to databases, are looking at a completely new database, or if you're designing with a certain goal in mind. I've built small databases, for example, that were for crunching data in a small project (<200 data points) of mostly text. I've used existing databases and added my own queries to provide quality and efficiency reports for ISO 9001:2008 (at least, I THINK that's the spec!). There have been others as well, but my project....

Let me introduce (or reintroduce) everyone to my pet project, Forty-Two. It's called that quite simply because its ultimate function will be to answer the question, "What is the meaning of Life, the Universe and Everything?", which, for those who who are not immersed in in-print memes, is a reference to Douglas Adams' "The Hitchikers' Guide to the Galaxy".  And this was before I had even heard of Python, and Guido van Rossum's homage to Monty Python's Flying Circus. This is THE truth that I have found: I.T. and literature are strange bedfellows.

So here I sit writing about the database.

Once again back to von Moltke: the best plan can fail. Vis à vis my database. I had a grand thought for normalization: make a names table.The names table is as simple as it sounds: first name, middle name or last name- all are contained in one table.  The problem with this theory reared its ugly head almost immediately: music groups do not fit this model. So, there is a new- unplanned  table: music groups. Although the individual members of said groups may be part of the database at some shining point in the future, for now there is a groups table that just lists the names of groups- its the only way to make soundtracks and other compilations work.

That's it for now- I want to publish this entry.

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

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