Since I purchased this website (hosted by iPage) toward the end of summer (2011), I haven’t done too much with it. I quickly put up my personal information, my R scripts for my ALSM project, and some basic formatting. It has been idle most of the time. That is going to change.

First of all, I just installed ScribeFire for FireFox, from which I am posting this now. Thus, I can avoid the hassle of signing in when I want to publish a post. I also find the WordPress editor to run slowly on my old computer. I’m not sure how well this integrates with WordPress, but I’m hoping it’ll be enough for what I’m going to do; namely, I want to be able to write in LaTeX when appropriate, and once I get my CSS set up for a “code block” to improve readability when I publish code snippets, it will not require much. I notice ScribeFire has a “publish custom html tag,” so I’m hoping that will suffice.

Some things to expect as I begin adding more content to my website.

  • I found my old R code from my Numerical Analysis class. My R programming skills were horrible back then, at least from my current perspective. I’m going to rewrite them, entirely. I’ll include both an interactive script and a command-line (executable) script for each project. On that note, I’m also going to refresh my memory of Matlab by rewriting the functions using Octave, a GNU clone of Matlab. 
  • I will expand on my ALSM project, since I haven’t touched it in months. I’m going to rewrite a good portion of it, especially the commentary. I’ll write a function that will turn them into pretty HTML pages and include those for a better way to view my scripts.
  • I am proud of my writing and have yet to publish it here. I’ll add to the document section by including my old work and adding the current project I’m doing for a GIS class. It’ll be accompanied by a (required for the class) web page version.
  • There is much I can talk about with regards to programming as of late. Not only am I finding interesting things to discuss with regards to R, but also with regard to data analysis utilities in general. For instance, I’ve been playing around with Linux tools since I’ve migrated to Ubuntu a couple months ago. I am excited with the capabilities things like awk and cut provide. I’ll begin talking about those uses on my blog, along with other topics such as regular expressions and whatever else I encounter. 
  • Lastly, I also am going to put together a nifty icon sequence at the right-hand side of my “menu bar” that will link to the various places you can find me online that are listed under my “About” page. I know how to do the HTML/CSS for it. I don’t know how to make images! I’m not a graphics guy lol

Stay tune, as I need an outlet for my work to be recognized, and this website is definitely a work in progress. There is much I can share, and I know it can be of use to those out there that have to deal with data. As I learn, I want to contribute that to the broader community of analysts. Join me in discovering new ways to do the work we have a passion for!