Here is a listing of code written by myself and others that have made life a lot easier.

Matlab

Generate observation from an arbitrary pdf

Uses cdf inversion to give random numbers from a pdf.  Great if you construct a mixture pdf from gmdistribution and need to run some simulations.

Stata

Converting standard excel dates m/d/yyyy into Stata date format:

* 2008 tells stata to treat 99 as 1999
gen new_date = date(excel_date, "MDY", 2008)

WordPress

Creating a “What I am reading” widget.

  1. Download the Sideblog plugin.
  2. Pick a category that will be links to good external stories.
  3. Edit the settings of Sideblog to show “<li><a href=”%excerpt%”>%title</a></li> and select the category from step 2.
  4. Add the Sideblog widget to your theme.
  5. Add a blog entry with the title of the story and the post = the link.  Select the category from step 2.
  6. Use this method to exclude that category from feeds and the blog using this method.

Now when you add a new post that is an external link as in step 4, it will show up in your sidebar.