Datanomics

Here are some things I learned today about my Mac:

•  dealing with Excel dates in Mac Excel and Windows Excel
• remove annoying applications from “Open With”
• (sort of Mac) Excel dates in Matlab: add a constant!

The new Mac OS Leopard uses a different graphics engine which Matlab 7.4+ does not like.  Working in the UI is painful.  No more!  Just follow this simple solution to bring back smooth, fast scrolling.

After I upgraded to Leopard from 10.4.x, my PHP processes stopped working.  The new OS overwrote some configuration files.  Check out this post on how to get things working again.

Working with Stata’s do file editor is one of the most painful exercises. The lack of syntax highlighting means a large do file is basically unreadable. Enter TextMate. One can edit and send .do files to Stata directly from a Textmate project. If you have the standard Stata Intercooled, then download and install the Stata bundle. Next, go to “Bundles –> Bundle Editor –> Show Bundle Editor” and find the Stata bundle. Select the “Send File to Stata” command and edit the first line “StataMP” to read “Stata.” Do the same with the “Send Selection to Stata.” Now open Stata, cd to the project directory, open your do file in TextMate and start editing. Bask in the glory that is syntax-highlighting.

If you want to edit remote files in TextMate (say with Transmit over FTP), opening them up usually means individual windows.  No more.  Follow these simple instructions and you can have a project with tabs whenever you edit a remote file.

With dozens of “bundles” that allow for application-specific editing, the Mac text editor TextMate is a great tool for the researcher. I posted four screenshots below for Stata, LaTeX, Matlab and PHP. The most powerful is PHP as there is a default bundle that lets you run the script directly from the file. With a little work (install TeX on your Mac), you can easily compile and view your LaTeX files. The quick command(e.g. “begin + “tab”) make editing a breeze. What I like most is the syntax highlighting that it brings to editing .m and .do files.  Moreover, you can create “projects” that let you easily handle multiple files.

Textmate with Stata

Textmate with LaTeX

Textmate with PHP

Textmate with Matlab

Start terminal and run:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall Finder

When you are done (be careful!) revert back with:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
killall Finder

(Note: this has little to do with data, but it did make this blog function better) As Mac OS X is unix based, htaccess files are recognized as system files when they are created/edited. This differs from creating them in Windows, which sees them simply as a text file. If you create a .htaccess file in OS X (note the period), the file will disappear once saved. You could kill Finder and view all files, but there is an easier way to get that .htaccess file to where you want to get it:

1. Create the file as usual
2. Save as ‘htaccess’ without a file extension or period.
3. Upload the file to the server.
4. Once uploaded, rename the file on the server to ‘.htaccess’