Cool Fortran blog

Here is a cool Fortran-related blog: http://www.fesb.hr/~psarajce/limeblog.html

AD Model Builder

The ADMB team seems to be open-sourcing their nonlinear statistical library, AD Model Builder. I took a quick look at the document and have mixed feeling. On the one hand, the software is strong in modeling capability; on the other hand, it works at very low level and use C++ as the modeling language. Unless it can solve important problems that other packages such as Stata, R, aML can not, I don't see a C++ based modeling environment gains popularity among social sciencites any time soon.

Anyway, it is another fun toy to play with.

http://admb-project.org/

Buffer tab in Emacs

I follow instructions in this post (http://amitp.blogspot.com/2007/04/emacs-buffer-tabs.html) to get a nice-looking and functional buffer tab in Emacs. Looks good:

There is still no cure model facitility in R

I remember a while ago I posted a message to R mailing list asking about the cure model (long-term survivor model) using R, somebody pointed me to: http://post.queensu.ca/~pengp/software.html

But the author does not provide source code and there is no Linux binary. These are the same options when I was in graduate school in the early 2000s. By contrast, now Stata has "strsmix" and "strsnmix" to do both mixture version and non mixture version of the cure model, both are very well documented.

SciViews-K does not work with the new KomodoEdit

I just updated my installation of KomodoEdit from 4 to 5, and SciViews-K stopped working. This is a bit frustration, but I have not been using it much anyway. It would be nice if the author can fix the problem soon.

Stata equavalence to Zelig

The R package Zelig can generate meaningful results such as predicted value, expected value, first difference, etc. from a wide variety of statistical procedures via simulation or bootstrapping. The Stata module "prvalue" and "prgen" seem to do at least a subset of what Zelig can do. Interestingly, the authors did not mention Gary King's work on Zelig and "Clarify".

However, it does not seem to work with mixed effect models.

The art of Unix programming

Yesterday I checked out a book named "the art of Unix programming" by Eric Raymond. Wow, this is a truly great book. Now I know that it is not a coincidence that I enjoy R, Emacs, and Linux: they are all part of a grand tradition that has nurtured many brilliant scholars and hackers.

Very good book indeed.

My paper

Here is the url of my paper: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a904480633~db=all~order=page

Ubuntu 8.10 DVD

This link: http://torrent.ubuntu.com/releases/intrepid/release/dvd/

A list of books to checkout on Monday

1. Economic interdependence and international conflict : new perspectives on an enduring debate / edited by Edward D. Mansfield and Brian M. Pollins. [HF1418.5 .E274 2003]
   
2. Handbook of data analysis / [edited by] Melissa Hardy and Alan Bryman. [H62 .H224 2004]
3. Loglinear models with latent variables / Jacques A. Hagenaars. [QA278 .H333 1993]
4. Introducing network analysis in social work / Philip Seed. [HV11 .S44 1990]