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]
   

Fresh install vs. upgrade

As the Ubuntu release dates approaching, the debate of whether a fresh install or an upgrade is the preferred way to get an update-to-date system is re-emerging.

To me, an upgrade is always preferred, simply because it took quite some time to tailor a new system, installing all the required packages, solving dependency issues. It is just too much to do that every once or even twice in a year.

Since I am really busy right now, I may well skip this release and wait for the next one (April 2009).

Copy and paste in Cygwin

Copy/paste from Cygwin: highlight the text will also put the text in the clipboard;
Copy/paste into Cygwin: shift + mouse click will put the text in the clipboard into the insertion point.

Compile aML under Cygwin using g77

I finally got the time to setup a cygwin environment on my computer and tried to compile aML. After several trial and error, I got it successfully built and tested. The procedure is pretty straightforward, with only one thing to keep in mind: choose g77 3.3 instead of 3.4 otherwise the generated binary will issue an error message "core dump" (and this is probably why aML cannot be directly built on Ubuntu 8.04). I only tested on my 32-bit machine and will try it on my 64-bit Vista office machine on Monday.

This is exciting!

Emacs with true type font support under Ubuntu

Following the instructions here (http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/XftGnuEmacs#toc12), I finally get a usable Emacs with true type font support (I use Liberation Mono) installed on my Ubuntu notebook. I have to say, this makes a huge difference and makes it much easier for my eyes. I am going to use Emacs more.