Blink 7

Importing and Exporting Large Wordpress Blogs

Wordpress created the import and export admin functions to make the task of moving posts, comments and categories between blogs relatively simple. No longer did one have to be a database expert to cleanly transfer content from one blog to another, while creating backups of written content became a trivial exercise with Wordpress’ custom XML files. While the import and export functions work...

SQL for SAS Programmers - Part 1 - Extracting Data

The first part of this tutorial deals with using the PROC SQL statement to perform basic data extraction. Screenshots of the code and output are included. Readers who wish to follow along on their own systems or copy the code can download the files provided below (right click and select “save as” or “save link as”): (download) SAS Code for Tutorial Part 1 (download) SAS...

SQL for SAS Programmers - Introduction

What is SQL? SQL stands for Structured Query Language and was designed for development and maintenance within a Database Management System (DBMS). A DBMS consists of one or more tables of data, typically joined in a hierarchical fashion, and a series of programs for organizing the data. Typical tasks performed with SQL code include the following: Retrieve (or query) data from one or more data tables ...

Tutorial: Adding Hotlink Protection to Wordpress

What is Hotlinking? Hotlinking (also known as inline linking, piggybacking, leeching and bandwidth theft) refers to when one site links directly to an object on a second site. Typically, the object is a picture that can then be displayed on the linking site without the owner having to copy the actual file from the second site. How Hotlinking can Affect your Wordpress Blog Hotlinking not only allows...

Excel Tutorial: Using Conditional Formats for Traffic Lighting

Simplicity is key when presenting statistics to management or customers. Data analysts are often tempted to put as many details as possible on the standard “one sheet” template; however, too many numbers on a page can cause confusion about where to initially focus. When reducing the number of statistics on a page is not an option and summary stats are not appropriate, traffic-lighting is a quick...

SAS Tutorial: Creating Categories with PROC FORMAT

When performing data analysis on a cohort population, it is often desirable to categorize characteristics can have many values. Age, income level and credit card score are examples of population attributes that can be placed into “buckets” and easily analyzed based on broad categories (without having resort to linear or logistic regression). While variables can be quickly encoded using IF statements,...

SAS Tutorial: Loading Tab-Delimited Files

Imagine you are given a list of major Canadian political donators and wish to load it into SAS for further analysis. The list is in a text file with fields delimited by tab characters. SAS Enterprise Guide (EG) offers wizards to automatically import a variety of file formats, but using these GUI’s preempts the chance for automation or additional processing during import. Using code to load data...

Tutorial: Spotting a Phishing Scam in your Email

Phishing, in practical terms, is an attack used by hackers to gain access to private information such as credit card numbers, social insurance numbers and user passwords. Rather than breaking down a physical or technological barrier, phishing is a social engineering attack where targets are typically duped into providing this information directly to false versions of legitimate websites run by the...

Tutorial: Manually Adding Digg Support to Wordpress

What is Digg? Generally referred to as a social news site, Digg is technically a user-driven news aggregator. Registered Digg users can “digg” (i.e. bookmark and submit) an article on a web page by submitting a URL, along with a brief description. URL submissions are placed on display for other Digg users (registered or not) to read, comment on, rate, and bookmark for themselves. How Digg can...

Tutorial: Two Ways to Lookup Your Own IP Address

What is an IP address? An IP (Internet Protocol) address is a unique address within a network used by devices to communicate with other devices within the network. Computers, printers, routers, and network hard drives are examples of devices that could have an IP address within a network. IP addresses are generally assigned according to country and internet provider. There are also some specially...