Categories from continuous variables

Maybe I am the only one who always forgets how to handle continuous data in STATA in a way that you can create meaningful variables with categories in it. But if not, you might want to read one of the excellent pages from the UCLA Academic Technology Services on that here.
I don't wnat to start any discussions on whether you should do that at all...

Centering

Since there was a small discussion about centering commands in different statistical packages:

• here the link to the discussion;
• and here my short suggestion for R Code:
  

I do not know, whether this is the simples solution in R, but here is the shortest solution I came up with (without thinking about that too deeply):

#create a data matrix (not part of the process -- usually you have that already...)
a<-c(1,2,3,4,5)
b<-c(6,7,8,9,10)
test<-data.frame(cbind(a,b))

#Calculate mean of column a and place it as a new variable in the data frame:
test$meana<-mean(test$a)

#Or, if this is really about centering:
test$meana<-(test$a-mean(test$a))

The solution can spare some letters by attaching "test", but mostly I think, that's it.

Stuff found along the way

Since the box with a link to interesting stuff I found most recently on the web will disappear when this post is published, I do not want to miss the opportunity to present some of the things that I found over all these years.

One link some time ago was about mobilizing people. Maybe don't spend too much time with the catching but maybe somewhat simplistic page intro: they also provide video footage and discussions of the topic. Go and have a look!

I think one of the books that portraits human kind in a situation I never really thought about is Florian Böhm's "Wait for Walk". The text on this page is in German, but you can click on the book and browse several of the photographs.

Also about photos was the FM4 call for pictures with the title "In our bedroom after the war" which presented in my eyes some really amazing pictures.

On the artsy side is the work of Katharina Helming. I linked her over the past years several times because I admire her very minimalistic but detailed approach to the projects she does. And I have to admit, that I really like them because they simply move something deep inside me. Unfortunately, she keeps her webpages moving around, so there is not much sense in linking her anymore. For someone who wants to search you might also be interested in the keywords "Lifestrips" & "Artkitchen".

On the music side definitely "Miss Platnum" needs mentioning. I saw her 2007 in Trier live, as opener for the "Die Fantastischen Vier". She was excellent and with her mostly unplugged appearance on that gig definitely rocked (for a medium quality view into live performance). Even without that, for this song text as well as the video, she will always have a place in my music collection. Because I find it very nice, also a link to some newer work.

Also music: for finding some interesting free music, go and browse a little bit here.

For everyone in northern Germany: if you are near Lüneburg, please don't mioss to visit this shop.

[Album heard when writing this post: Prince and the new power generation -- The love symbol]