[[!meta date="2016-05-18 21:09:02 +0800"]]

Continuing a [long tradition](https://web.archive.org/web/20041111125713/http://vanrenterghem.biz/News/index.php?begin=25) with announcing *firsts*, I wrote an [R package](http://git.vanrenterghem.biz/?p=R/operatingdays.git;a=summary) recently, and made it available on [Projects](http://git.vanrenterghem.biz/), a new section of the website. (Talking about my website on said website is also not exactly new.)

It still needs further work, as it really only supports AU public holidays for now, but it's exciting to be able to use freely available public data to make analysis a bit easier. The ability to know how many working days are left in the month is fundamental in forecasting a month-end result. Extensions of the package could include simple checks like if today's date is a working day, or more complex ones like the number of working days between given dates for instance.

In other news, I received [a new gadget](http://www.rtl-sdr.com) in the mail today.

> RTL-SDR is a very cheap software defined radio that 
> uses a DVB-T TV tuner dongle based on the RTL2832U 
> chipset. With the combined efforts of  Antti Palosaari
> , Eric Fry and Osmocom it was found that the signal 
> I/Q data could be accessed directly, which allowed the 
> DVB-T TV tuner to be converted into a wideband software 
> defined radio via a new software driver.