My blog server runs WordPress software, which I can update hourly while the server is running, if necessary. However, the underlying Apache, PHP and MySQL software requires server downtime to update, so I have scheduled their updating to take place in the evening (UK time) of Tuesday 17 July 2018. I am hoping it will only take 1-2 hours to complete, but, having never done this big an update before, I can’t be more precise.
Did you miss the links to the blog posts and forums? They are now visible again under the menu! I’m not sure when these links vanished, but I re-instated them this morning:
On the 14Jun2018 my power supply is being upgraded, which may cause server interruptions between 1200hr and 1600hr (UK time). I have an interruptible power supply attached to the blog server, but, while I’ve tested it for short interruptions, I can’t guarantee that the power supply will smooth over all of the disconnections for power upgrade.
Please accept my apologies if you are impacted.
If there is any interruption (to quote the movies) I will be back!!
Have you registered for SAS Forum UK 2018 in Birmingham yet? It is being held at The Vox Conference Centre, Resorts World, Birmingham B40 1PU (next to the NEC) from June 18-19, and I’m presenting “The Art of Defensive Programming: Coping with Unseen Data” on Monday afternoon.
My highlights of the conference will be:
You may disagree with my highlights, so feel free to investigate the conference yourself. Full details about the venue, agenda and registration can be found at https://www.sas.com/en_gb/events/2018/sas-uk-forum.html.
In preparation for GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), which comes into force on 25May2018, I’ve added a Privacy Policy page to this site. GDPR is directly relevant to residents in the European Union, but supplies privacy tools to all web site users, who can now request a download of all their personal data stored on this site, but also can request the complete erasure of that data.
A link to this page can also be found at the bottom-left of every page on this site.
I’ve posted a new idea for the SASware Ballot about how to avoid locking SAS data sets when browsing them in Enterprise Guide (EG). Anyone who uses EG now will have discovered this at some point! However, I will need your help to get this idea into the real SASware Ballot for users to vote for it, which is why I need my idea to be voted up in the SASware Ballot Ideas Community at “Browsing SAS data sets in Enterprise Guide without locking“.
If you think this is a good idea, then please vote for it and tell your colleagues to vote for it too!
Just click on the blue voting button after logging into SAS Communities.
Many thanks in advance……….Phil
PS. The idea above is not the only SASware Ballot Idea I have submitted:
All of my SAS-related PDF eBooks in the Lulu.com store are 50% off during May 2018 !!!
SAS Global Forum 2018 was held in the Colorado Convention Center from April 8 to 11 (Sunday to Wednesday) in Downtown Denver.
Attending a large SAS conference like SAS Global Forum, with its 5,500 attendees, you have to be prepared to “think on your feet”, because nothing ever happens quite the way you expect it to, and finding a specific attendees requires luck and/or persistence. That said I found 60+ friends and contacts during the conference, from as far afield as Australia and the UK, and even met a friend in Denver airport on my way home!
It might be of interest to you that, even though many of the sessions were looking at the newest SAS products and features, including SAS/Viya, attendances generally appeared to be higher in the sessions involving SAS programming. In each session head counts were recorded, so the conference organisers will hopefully be able to see this for themselves. I presented “The Art of Defensive Programming” on the Tuesday afternoon to a full room of 148 seats, and with a queue of hopeful attendees outside. I was told afterwards that the room limit was 144, but 4 seats had been added before I started to present!
However, I would like to apologise to anyone who attended my paper and was disappointed that my 50-minute paper only lasted 20 minutes. I was making use of the new count-down timer on the desk, which told me how long I had to go, and then had amber and red lights to tell me when I had 5 minutes left and when I had to stop. Unfortunately I didn’t notice that the starting time had been set to 20 minutes, instead of 50 minutes, and nor did the room chair. If there are time left cards, or count-down timers, then I do tend to rely on them, rather than using my own watch, or the room clock (which I couldn’t see in that room anyway). Whenever I present I have specific slides which I use to check how fast, or slow, I’m going, and at the first of these slides I saw I only had 10 minutes left, so I upped my pace. However, I can assure everyone that I didn’t remove any of the content, even though I finished on 20 minutes to the second! I just cut back on the explanation I would have added to each slide, which could have extended my presentation to 50 minutes. Had the room chair or I known that there had been a queue outside, then I could have re-run my presentation in the 30 minutes I had left, so that no-one who wanted to attend would have missed out. But hindsight is a wonderful thing!
During the conference I ran a free prize draw at the ODS Graphics booth to win a copy of my latest book “SAS Programming and Data Visualization Techniques“. I set up the draw on the Sunday afternoon with a printout of the book’s cover and contents, a pile of cards for the entrant’s name and email address, and a box to put the completed cards. Unfortunately the cleaning team in the Quad were super-efficient, and on Monday morning the box with the completed cards from Sunday had gone! I had to borrow a plastic bowl from SAS Publishing for the completed cards, and hope that the cleaning team would ignore it. Anyway by 4pm on Tuesday the bowl was still there with 22 entry cards (although I’d had to replace the printout of the book’s cover and contents on Tuesday morning!), and Christine Grice’s card was drawn by Sanjay Matange. I arranged for an announcement to be made over the public address system, and I contacted Christine using email and the SASGF app, but was unable to find her during the conference. Happily though, since the conference, we’ve been in touch, and she now has copies of the 2 self-published ebooks that were included in my latest book.
After the conference my wife Angela and I went on a day tour into the nearby Rockies, visiting the Red Rocks Amphitheater, where the Beatles, John Denver and Widespread Panic had performed. We also visited several mining towns. Thursday was a very warm day in Denver with temperatures reaching 27C (81F), and Angela and I walked to the Denver Botanic Gardens in the afternoon. Friday, however, was not at all warm, with Denver reaching 6C (43F), but Central City in the Rockies reaching -3C (27F)! Idaho Springs was warmer at 0C (32F), but there was still a frozen waterfall there.
Did I enjoy the SAS Global Forum? Yes!
Did I enjoy exploring Denver and the Rockies? Yes, and I tasted 25 local beers while I was there too!
Would I come back? If I had the opportunity to present in Denver again, then Yes!
I’m not planning to attend the SAS Global Forum 2019 in Dallas, unless I’m invited to run a SAS training course alongside the conference, but I will be at PharmaSUG 2019 in Philadelphia, which will be my first time at PharmaSUG! I’m hoping to run a training course before or after the conference, and present at the conference too. Hopefully I’ll be able to meet you there (and I’ll be bringing my own clock!).
The winner of the Book Draw at the SUGUKI April18 meeting in London was Chris Smith!
The meeting in SAS UK’s London offices was a great success. Hadley Christoffels presented on data management in the cloud after I’d presented my “Converting Plots from SAS/GRAPH to ODS Graphics” paper to a lively and appreciative audience.
A SUGUKI meeting in Edinburgh will be held on 19 April, before we return to SAS UK’s offices in London for the May meeting on 3 May. I’ll be presenting again at the July meeting, but you can find all the details about the SUGUKI meetings on their web site.
Will I see you in Denver next week at the SAS Global Forum? I’m presenting “The Art of Defensive Programming” on Tuesday at 2 pm in Meeting Room 504.
I’m also hoping to run a free prize draw for my book “SAS Programming and Data Visualization Techniques: A Power User’s Guide” during the conference. Look out for the draw at the ODS Graphics stand in The Quad, with the winner being drawn at 4:30 pm on Tuesday afternoon.
I may not be attending the SAS Global Forum in 2019, so don’t miss out this year.
Will there be a Mile High stack of draw entries?
I have reported that the VIEWS web site had been closed down, and although the newsletter archive is still available on sasCommunity.org, that site is now read-only prior to being decommissioned. However, I have stored all 55 of the original VIEWS News PDF files on my blog site, which can be accessed via the VIEWS UK forum. This forum is available on request to all registered blog members, and those with access will be notified of any new content. The issues include the following features:
Some of the new content will include previously unpublished indexes I used to help me write the Formats, Options & Functions articles in the newsletters, which allowed me to see in a single view which features had already been described and when. I will also be including an authors list soon. All features that could help you find information that is difficult to find using standard searches. You also need to know that I intend to publish some new issues of VIEWS News too, but only if 100+ members request access to the VIEWS UK forum.
You might be thinking that, as I had emailed VIEWS members in the past, I could use that email list to include them automatically again. However, this new VIEWS environment has been built on an existing blog site, and, although theoretically I could register all the previous VIEWS members using their email addresses, I don’t know all of their real names and would, therefore, have to guess their new user names, so I don’t think forcing anyone to register on my blog site is at all appropriate. This is the reason I’m asking everyone interested to register themselves instead.
So, whether you have been a VIEWS member in the past, or not, here is how you can join the new VIEWS UK forum:
Note that, as I write this post, a total of 69 members now have access to the forum. If you’ve not yet requested access, then only 31 more members are required to give me the impetus to publish more VIEWS News issues!
I’m an Invited Speaker at SAS Global Forum in Denver in April, but I’m probably not presenting at SASGF19. I probably presented my last PhUSE paper at the PhUSE Single Day Event in Beerse, Belgium. So what is happening?
I’m getting older, as are we all, but I’m approaching retirement and looking for new experiences while I’m still able, so in 2019 I’m planning to be at PharmaSUG conferences for the first time, rather than at SASGF and PhUSE.
Could you persuade me to change my mind? Well I live in the UK and travelling costs money, so I might be persuaded to present at a conference if my travel and accommodation expenses were paid for me. However, the best way to get me to attend a conference is to allow me to run a training course there.
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