BEB's blog

  1. Install ownCloud on Ubuntu

    Sat 13 April 2013
    Getting started with ownCloud on Ubuntu
  2. Installing XML in R xml2-config error

    Sat 23 March 2013
    How to fix the cannot find xml2-config error
  3. Installing RMySQL Error

    Thu 21 March 2013
    What to do if you receive the error: could not find the MySQL installation include and/or Library directories when installing RMySQL
  4. How to Rsync Files using Post-Commit git Hook

    Tue 19 March 2013
    A useful task, is to be able to update a remote server with files once you have commited changes to a git repository. Below are the typical steps used to activate a hook to do so.
  5. How to setup error pages with Pelican

    Tue 19 March 2013
    Error pages are a necessary element for any webserver. Pelican's documentation does not provide explicit instructions for how to implement them. However, it's quite simple.
  6. Forcing Auto Increment to Start Higher in MySQL

    Tue 12 March 2013
    Simple steps to force auto increment to start at a higher number for a primary key in a mysql table
  7. Getting Started with Django

    Sat 22 December 2012
    Going through the tutorials there are a few elements that are not necessarily obvious for Ubuntu users. In particular, the connector for MySQL and PIP
  8. Connecting Zurmo, SurveyGizmo and ifbyphone

    Mon 10 December 2012
    One of the tasks that I have to work on, and would like to document for the future is the interoperation of Zurmo (CRM software), SurveyGizmo (Survey Software) and ifbyphone (IVR and Call Recoding Software).
  9. Ruby vs. Python

    Mon 10 December 2012
    With R, I have reached a plateau where solving problems is essentially a trivial matter. Although R provides facility for performing functions outside of data analysis there are a number of elements relating to integration with the web where it simply cannot manage everythihg. I would like to increase the scope of my skills but avoid a low level programming language, so learning Ruby or Python seems to be a logical choice that fits with my career goals.
  10. An Introduction to Reproducible Research with R

    Sun 09 December 2012
    The concept is simple, provide a set of files that anyone can use to recreate your output in exactly the same fashion that you have. [Reproducible Research][1] is not new. The ability to look back and say "here is how we did that" - is worth the extra time required to do so.
  11. 'Data is' or 'Data are'?

    Sun 09 December 2012

    RE: “Data Is” or “Data Are”?

    The Green Plum Data Science blog had a recent article about the use of the word "data" as plural, technically it is plural - but only statisticians seems to use it as such. Google provides two cool research tools that allow us to take a ...

  12. Extend Battery Ubuntu 12.04 on Dell XPS 15z

    Sun 09 December 2012
    When I loaded a fresh install of Ubuntu on my Dell XPS 15, the initial battery life was *horrible*, no - *terrible*. A measly 90 minutes of battery life, to begin with. The problem is related to the drivers for the NVIDIA Optimus graphics card. Unfortunately, NVIDIA is somewhat well known for having a [bad relationship][1] with Linux.
  13. Integrate data and reporting on the Web with knitr

    Sun 09 December 2012
    I really love the knitr package. It allowed me to convert a wordpress blog into a private knowledge base of survey data and statistical reports with only a few hours of work. It sure beats the hell out of mucking around with latex!
  14. Scraping tables from the web

    Fri 02 November 2012
    If, like me, you do a bit of work with mutual fund data across a number of sources, you'll eventually need to pull in the dealer codes or the fund codes. Below is a working example of how to pull in active dealership codes
  15. Setting Geany as the Default Text Editor

    Sun 12 August 2012
    On a fresh install of Ubuntu 12.04, the default text editor is gedit. While gedit is a great program, it is not as full featured as Geany. If you'd like to change this, run the following
  16. Installing wordpress from the command line

    Wed 09 May 2012
    How to install wordpress over SSH (the unix command line). Personally, I'm using Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, so this is formatted accordingly