I received an out-of-band question on the use of `%%` in my [CDC FluView](rud.is/b/2015/01/10/new-r-package-cdcfluview-retrieve-flu-data-from-cdcs-fluview-portal/) post, and took the opportunity to address it in a broader, public fashion. Anyone using R knows that the two most common methods of assignment are the venerable (and sensible) left arrow `
Post Category → Programming
Rforecastio 1.2.0 Bug-fix Update
Not even going to put an `R` category on this since I don’t want to pollute R-bloggers with this tiny post, but I had to provide the option to let folks specify `ssl.verifypeer=FALSE` (so I made it a generic option to pass in any CURL parameters) and I had a couple gaping bugs that I… Continue reading
Rforecastio Package Update (1.1.0)
I’ve bumped up the version number of `Rforecastio` ([github](https://github.com/hrbrmstr/Rforecastio)) to `1.1.0`. The new features are: – removing the SSL certificate bypass check (it doesn’t need it anymore) – using `plyr` for easier conversion of JSON-\>data frame – adding in a new `daily` forecast data frame – roxygen2 inline documentation library(Rforecastio) library(ggplot2) library(plyr) # NEVER… Continue reading
Moving From system() calls to Rcpp Interfaces
Over on the [Data Driven Security Blog](http://datadrivensecurity.info/blog/posts/2014/Apr/making-better-dns-txt-record-lookups-with-rcpp/) there’s a post on how to use `Rcpp` to interface with an external library (in this case `ldns` for DNS lookups). It builds on [another post](http://datadrivensecurity.info/blog/posts/2014/Apr/firewall-busting-asn-lookups/) which uses `system()` to make a call to `dig` to lookup DNS `TXT` records. The core code is below and at both… Continue reading
Points, Polygons and Power Outages
Most of my free coding time has been spent tweaking a D3-based live power outage tracker for Central Maine Power customers (there’s also a woefully less-featured Shiny app for it, too). There is some R associated with the D3 vis, but it’s limited to a cron job that’s makes the CSV files for the sparklines… Continue reading
One More Time…Mapping Maine Power Outages with D3
It started with a local R version and migrated to a Shiny version and is now in full D3 glory. Some down time gave me the opportunity to start a basic D3 version of the outage map, but it needs a bit of work as it relies on a page meta refresh to update (every… Continue reading
Reverse IP Address Lookups With R (From Simple To Bulk/Asynchronous)
R lacks some of the more “utilitarian” features found in other scripting languages that were/are more geared—at least initially—towards systems administration. One of the most frustrating missing pieces for security data scientists is the lack of ability to perform basic IP address manipulations, including reverse DNS resolution (even though it has nsl() which is just… Continue reading
My Picks From #PyCon2013
While you can (and should) view [all the presentations](https://speakerdeck.com/pyconslides) from #PyCon2013, here are my picks for the ones that interested me the most, as they focus on scaling, mapping, automation (both web & electronics) and data analysis: – [Chef: Why you should automate your web infrastructure](https://speakerdeck.com/pyconslides/chef-why-you-should-automate-your-web-infrastructure-by-kate-heddleston) by Kate Heddleston – [Messaging at Scale at Instagram](https://speakerdeck.com/pyconslides/messaging-at-scale-at-instagram-by-rick-branson)… Continue reading