wma -> wav

Q: In linux, how to convert an wma file to K3b burner?

A: use mplayer and decode it to wav. then burn it. something like:

mplayer -ao pcm /tmp/$file



the converted file is named "audiodump.wav"

Freeware for Social Network Analysis!

To those who are interested in analyzing social networks, this will be of interest: Libsna.

How to install bst files in Lyx?

Quoted from Dr. Paul Johnson's post:

To make the biblio work, you need a bibliography style file (a file
with a name like apsa2.bst).  You need to copy the bst file you want
into your LaTeX installation.  The bst file can
be copied under your system's bibtex configuration, which in my system
is

/usr/share/texmf/bibtex/bst/natbib

The shortcoming with that is that you might lose your customizations if
you upgrade your TeX installation. To prevent that, I maintain a
parallel customized directory here:

/usr/local/share/texmf/bibtex/bst/natbib

Assuming that your TeTeX is configured in the normal way, when you run
the command

 > texhash

the system will scan all of the configuration files and it will notice
you have added a bst file.  

American Politics: American Election Public Opinion Tool

American Election Public Opinion Tool
http://www.publicopiniontool.org

Web-available application presenting multiple visual rendering options and an alternate scenario calculator for every U.S. presidential election ever held. The application allows users to view outcomes of actual elections, as well as hypothetical elections based on relevant issues of the time.

Use CustomizeGoogle to filter unwanted websites!

Just found this cool extention for Firefox. It is a wonderful helper for googlers. I used it to filter out the websites that I don't want google to show in search result pages. Check it out.

An Exellent Text of Introductory Statistics for R Users

Finally, Verzani (2004) presets is a book for students who want to self-learn R. This book is written in clear description of concepts, thoughtful organization of chapters, and nicely formatted R codes. Compared to the text books by Dalgard (2001) and Fox (2002), this book is the best.

Thunderbird has an extension to support Webmails!

Thunderbird is a wonderful mail client. You can expand its functions by adding extternal packages. I just found this extention "web-mail" that enpowers me to access my hotmail account without using a web browser.

Grammar check in OpenOffice Writer

現在可以更舒服地用Open Office Writer(MS Word的替代軟體)來編輯英文文件囉！安裝Grammar Checker之後，你也可以像在MS Word下檢查文法了。check it out: http://www.danielnaber.de/languagetool/

Using R in introductory statistics classes

我在2004年有機會到U of Michigan, Ann Arbor的ICPSR方法營親近John Fox與Robert Andersen兩位老師，對於他們投注在R的教學印象深刻。他們最近所合寫中的這一篇文章，很值得有興趣將R導入政治學研究方法的老師們參考：
http://socserv.socsci.mcmaster.ca/jfox/Teaching-with-R.pdf

It is time to update Swarm to 2.2.2

RPM packages for Fedora Linux was released on January 16, 2006.
http://www.ku.edu/~pauljohn/Swarm/Swarm-2.2X_Fdr4/

R users' responses to the UCLA statistical packages report

Patrick Burns summarized R-users' responses in the list and made a report here: http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/technicalreports/Number1/R_relative_statpack.pdf

comparison of statistical packages

Michael Mitchell, UCLA ATS Statistical Consulting Group, provided a comprehensive comparison of SPSS, STATA, and SAS. Check out his report here.

On p.31, he talked about R and thinks that R is very difficult to learn. Well, I agree it is difficult to learn R if there is no right road map and guidence. But, R is not difficult to master if you just want some results. Most of time, R requires only several lines to get the results. Therefore, it is still an open for students to decide what they like. If I like Stata, I would say that a graphical user interface of R (R-GUI), such as JGR will make R look and and easy to use as Stata.

a comparison of text editors for R

While I am evaluating Jedit as a text editor for beginners of R, I found this site that introduces JGR and SciViews, the two GUI packages that be attractive to R users.

http://www.nettakeaway.com/tp/R/137/r-guis

用Muse做網站

怎麼樣把用Emacs打出的純文字筆記直接出版成漂漂的網頁呢？我之前用的是Emacs-wiki，我這兩天決定使用muse來取代emacs-wiki，把成果放在這兒： http://lark.cc.ku.edu/~ashan/wiki/WelcomePage.html

Good Firefox Extensions

I use Firefox because it is a cross-OS browser. I can use it in either Linux or Windows without being constrained by IE. Another reason I use Firefox and would recommend it to you is that it allows many addons that enhance browsing experiences.

Here are my most favorite extensions:
1. All-in-one gestures: with it, you can close a window by simply draw a line while holding the right bottom of the mouse.
2. Web-developer: it gives you the power to look through the source codes of a website and how its CSS is designed.
3. Tab-Mix-plus: let's makeall new windows, including pop-ups, into different tabs one frame.
4. Performancing: it gives you the power to add new stuff to your blogs while browsing.