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Qualitative Data Analysis Using Office

Written on September 27, 2011 at 5:45 pm, by

It seems every time I embark on the qualitative data analysis (QDA) stage of a project, I get frustrated by QDA software. My approach to data analysis is iterative and collaborative. Existing QDA makes both of those approaches obscenely difficult (if possible at all). Hence my frustration.

I want to be able to edit transcripts even after I’ve loaded them into the software (e.g., if I notice an error in the transcription). I also need to be able to share my work with colleagues who use a variety of computers including PCs, Macs, iPads, and Android phones. Read more

Research, Technology No Comments

Dear Rep. Culberson

Written on July 6, 2011 at 11:23 pm, by

I heard the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice & Science (CJS) is considering changing the 2012 appropriation to eliminate the Social, Behavioral & Economic Sciences (SBE). My Representative does not serve on this committee, but I feel pretty strongly about basic science funding and its positive contributions to our economy. So, I tried to write to some members of the Committee. Unfortunately, their websites do not accept contact forms from people outside their districts. Rather than lie to get the form to submit, I decided to post one my letters publicly instead. Below, you’ll find what I meant to send to Rep. John Culberson of Texas’s Seventh District. If any of the men (yes, all the members are men) on the committee are your representative, please contact him. If you’d like to know how much SBE funding is active in your district, use NSF’s Award Search to find out. You can search by institution and NSF Organization. Read more

Politics, Research 2 Comments

Setting up Apache and PHP on Amazon EC2

Written on June 23, 2011 at 1:06 pm, by

You can tell by today’s posts that I’m getting something started on EC2. You can also read what’s already installed on the free instance or how to get started. PHP and MySQL are not installed on the free instance, so this post is about getting setup so I can run 140dev’s excellent Twitter Database Server. Read more

Code, Research, Technology No Comments

What’s running on free micro EC2?

Written on June 23, 2011 at 11:47 am, by

I’ve been having trouble finding out what’s installed and/or running on the free Amazon EC2 instance, so I’ll use this post to list the processes and installs as I uncover them.

Default versions of stuff I use:

  • Python 2.6.6
  • ruby 1.8.7 (2010-12-23 patchlevel 330) [i386-linux] (You’ll need to install Rubygems yourself)

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Code, Research, Technology No Comments

Getting Started with Amazon EC2 on a Mac

Written on June 23, 2011 at 11:23 am, by

I’m setting up some free Amazon EC2 instances so I can run my Twitter data collectors without violating the terms of my Dreamhost hosting agreement or worrying about losing power on my office machine (happened just last week). Despite the many Google results for “getting started with ec2 on a mac”, the process is not that complicated.

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Code, Research, Social Computing No Comments