I know it’s been a while since I posted, but since the only traffic this blog seems to get is from my post about Hawaii, it doesn’t seem like much of a point to update regularly.

But, since I’m bored, I figured I’d make a short post about my Ph.D. classes. I’m halfway done w/ the required classes. I only have my electives and 2 required classes left. I should be starting on the dissertation next year. > more <

Since I’ve started on my Ph.D. course work, I found that I am having to do a lot of statistical work. I figured there would be some but there’s a lot more than I expected.

My school, like many others, has standardized on SPSS for statistical work. However, being the FOSS guy I am, I chose to find an open-source stats program to use. Plus, I didn’t want to spend $200+ on a program that expires in 4 years. > more <

I was just accepted to a university to start on my Ph.D. School doesn’t start until October but that’s fine. I don’t know how much time the Navy will give me to work on the degree anyways.

One of the reasons I haven’t posted in a long time is because I have been deployed so bloody much. Working on a Ph.D may clash with the schedule, not to mention the spotty Internet connection we have when we are at sea. > more <

For those of you tracking my book writing progress, you may be happy to know that I finally had a chance to find a file hosting site. Originally I was planning on creating a web page just for the downloads but that was more work than I wanted to do; I already have the blog for the book. Why make yet another site?

So, I found a file hosting service and uploaded the .zip file of the ebook and supporting source code files. Not to redirect you again, but in the interests of having one location for downloading, please visit Start Programming with Python for the direct download link. Also, I still have the torrent file link available if you prefer that method.

I was talking to my wife today about how much I hate election years. You have a bunch of idiots spewing garbage all over TV while the media falls over itself dedicating hours of airtime restating the same “news” about the campaigns. > more <

I just created a new blog for my upcoming ebook: Start Programming with Python. Right now it’s mostly just a place holder, though I do provide links to my current tutorials. Once I have converted the tutorials to a rough draft of the book, I will post it there for community comments. That way I hope it will become much better than I could create just on my own, especially with all the changes that will be coming to the Python language in the next few months.