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General Software Discussion / WTF SourceForge
« on: April 30, 2008, 05:38 AM »
It's down. As in.. completely bombed. Unreachable, times out, gone! Why do I care? Well, I don't really, but I happen to have to care at this moment because I desperately need access to the Weka Data Mining software for OSX. I've googled all around using various queries.. and my conclusion so far is that any mention of a Weka download points back to SF. How crappy is that? I'll tell you: very crappy!

:/

Somebody must be haxing SF good. This doesn't seem like a random crap-out..

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Living Room / Phone Interview with Microsoft!
« on: April 30, 2008, 01:31 AM »
It's time to panic! Monday, I sent an MS recruiter a nice email with my resume attached. Just past lunchtime on Tuesday, April 29, the "Microsoft College Staffing Consultant" (basically the head MS recruiter for my university) replied and said that he's forwarded my info to the person who will conduct what he called "the phone screening to determine a possible fit". This person, (judging by the name, a woman), sent me an email a half hour past midnight tonight. What a turnaround time! Most of my friends, who are not in CS majors, are seeing non-existent turnaround times as they spend weeks waiting for any kind of response from the companies they send their resumes to, i.e. there are no responses. In contrast, I went from writing an email with my resume attached to a scheduled phone interview in roughly 30 hours! Crazy.

Anyway.. I noted in my initial email that I believe I'd best fit in with either software development or user experience. It turns out they've decided to interview me for software development. SDEV, they call it. Well, that's a bucket full o' reason to panic! Getting any summer internship position at Microsoft is pretty difficult (notoriously so around these parts), but a position in SDEV? It justifies entering panic-mode.

A good friend who interviewed with them for the same position passed the phone interview and was flown out to Seattle twice. They liked her enough to give her a position as something along the lines of system admin. She'll be responsible for a range of machines and keeping stuff going. At least that's what I could pull from memory--I'd have to ask her to get a specific job title. She starts there this summer.

I'm not too proud to say that she's most definitely the smarter human being than I am. She's a Comp Sci/Math major and overall, knows her shit pretty well, shall we say. Me? I'm passionate about computer science, but just don't quite have what it takes wired into my neural system to be a math whiz. I'm an intelligent being, for sure, but I can't say that mathematics is my forte. When it comes to coding I definitely enjoy it and would say my skill-set is solid, but not outstanding. Without some serious preparation, asking around and possibly buying a book on interview questions and studying that thoroughly, I personally don't think I currently would stand too good a chance at getting far.

So, yeah, panic mode! And all this comes in the last week of classes, one week before most of my final exams. The last day of classes is this Thursday, which happens to be the same day MS suggested I have the phone interview with them. Needless to say, no can do. I'll have to move the interview date as deeply as possible into next week, giving them multiple possible dates. This feels like a 5th final exam!

Anyway.. I thought I'd share and put this up for discussion for no particular reason at all. I feel pressured, and thought it might help a bit to share the story.

Thanks for tuning in!

PS
A bit of back-story: the friend I mentioned recently got hired by MS and she was out with two MS recruiters this weekend as part of a new hires event. They ended up at a bar down town and she let me know who she's there with. I went, of course, and ended up talking to them for a bit. I suppose I had a bit of an edge in that respect, though whether that had anything to do with their lightning fast response time is anyone's guess.

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Living Room / A data set for data mining?
« on: April 29, 2008, 08:43 PM »
I'm taking a (really fun!) database class that involved using all sorts of PostGRE SQL queries and working with Python. Now I'm working on the final project for the class, which involves picking an interesting dataset (well, any dataset will do, but it's more bearable work if it's interesting of course!) to perform data mining on. So here's an important snippet:

The problems/questions will typically be of three basic types:
  • classification/estimation: Is it possible to determine, predict, or estimate some attribute in the dataset, based on the values of other attributes? The medical diagnosis and credit-card promotion problems that we have covered in lecture are examples of this type of problem. If you choose a problem of this type, you will employ some type of classification learning and/or numeric estimation.
  • finding associations: Are there non-obvious associations or relationships between attributes in the dataset? Market-basket analysis (e.g., finding products that customers tend to purchase together) is one example of this type of problem. If you choose a problem of this type, you will employ some type of association learning.
  • grouping entities: Are there non-obvious ways of dividing up the entities described by the dataset into distinct groups? Another way of thinking of this type of problem is as a search for unexpected similarities or differences among the entities. If you choose a problem of this type, you will employ some type of clustering. It tends to be difficult to effectively use this type of approach, so if you choose to employ clustering, you should probably also plan to use one of the other two types of data mining as well.

We can use Weka data mining software to help us mine this data and it may be necessary to transform the data. Anyway.. I've had some real trouble finding a truly interesting dataset to work on. Do you guys know any interesting sources for data sets off hand? One of you might, so I thought it's worth asking :)

I've already scoured the web multiple times and found a metric ton of sources on open data and data sets. Here is an amazing link on that topic: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/where_to_find_open_data_on_the.php

The problem isn't so much finding available open data for use in a data mining project... really, it's PICKING a data set to work with. There's lots of stuff out there and I thought you may be able to help me narrow it all down a bit.

I don't want to flood you with information here, but I thought including the Requirements for the project may be helpful:
Requirements
Your final project must include:
  • the application of one or more data-mining techniques to a dataset that you choose
  • a clear and compelling presentation of the results that you obtain, both from the data mining and any other analysis that you perform. This presentation should include at least one example of a data graphic that follows Tufte's principles, as presented in the guest lectures by Prof. Snyder. You may want to make use of the tools at many-eyes.com to help you with this. The graph template that we gave you for Problem Set 8 may also be useful.


In addition, your project must include two of the following:
  • the creation of one or more relational tables from your dataset, and examples of useful queries that you performed on those tables. The tables must be constructed in a way that avoids redundancy and that captures any constraints that are present in the data. One possible use of SQL queries would be to compute averages or other types of summary statistics that you could then present in your report.
  • the use of a Python program to manipulate the data in some useful way. For example, you could use a program to extract the data that you need from a relational database, or to discretize one or more attributes in an existing dataset file.
  • one or more additional data graphics.

Lots of text, I know.. but I tried to make it easy to look at :)

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General Software Discussion / Directory Opus 9 - How to..?
« on: October 01, 2007, 05:28 PM »
Ever in need of customization, ever clueless about how to do it... I want Opus to display the bit rate of music files when I look at folders with music in them, and only then. I have automatic content type detection turned on, but I don't see how I can tell Opus to display the bit rate column only when the music content type is triggered.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance!

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General Software Discussion / Question about Directory Opus 9
« on: September 21, 2007, 04:08 AM »
How can I make Opus open the locations I was last at when Opus closed? Basically, I want it to be exactly where I left off when I last closed Opus. Thanks!

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