Tag: website

Web Analytics using R , Google Analytics and TS Forecasting

This is a continuation of the previous post on using Google Analytics .

Now that we have downloaded and plotted the data- we try and fit time series to the website data to forecast future traffic.

Some observations-

1) Google Analytics has 0 predictive analytics, it is just descriptive analytics and data visualization models (including the recent social analytics). However you can very well add in basic TS function using R to the GA API.

Why do people look at Website Analytics? To know today’s traffic and derive insights for the Future

2) Web Data clearly follows a 7 day peak and trough for weekly effects (weekdays and weekends), this is also true for hourly data …and this can be used for smoothing historic web data for future forecast.

3) On an advanced level, any hugely popular viral posts can be called a level shift (not drift) and accoringly dampened.

Test and Control!

Similarly using ARIMAX, we can factor in quantity and tag of posts as X regressor variables.

and now the code-( dont laugh at the simplicity please, I am just tinkering and playing with data here!)

You need to copy and paste the code at the bottom of   this post  http://www.decisionstats.com/using-google-analytics-with-r/ if you want to download your GA data down first.

Note I am using lubridate ,forecast and timeSeries packages in this section.

#Plotting the Traffic  plot(ga.data$data[,2],type="l") 

library(timeSeries)
library(forecast)

#Using package lubridate to convert character dates into time
library(lubridate)
ga.data$data[,1]=ymd(ga.data$data[,1])
ls()
dataset1=ga.data$data
names(dataset1) <- make.names(names(dataset1))
str(dataset1)
head(dataset1)
dataset2 <- ts(dataset1$ga.visitors,start=0,frequency = frequency(dataset1$ga.visitors), names=dataset1$ga.date)
str(dataset2)
head(dataset2)
ts.test=dataset2[1:200]
ts.control=dataset2[201:275]

 #Note I am splitting the data into test and control here

fitets=ets(ts.test)
plot(fitets)
testets=ets(ts.control,model=fitets)
accuracy(testets)
plot(testets)
spectrum(ts.test,method='ar')
decompose(ts.test)

library("TTR")
bb=SMA(dataset2,n=7)#We are doing a simple moving average for every 7 days. Note this can be 24 hrs for hourly data, or 30 days for daily data for month # 

to month comparison or 12 months for annual
#We notice that Web Analytics needs sommethening for every 7 thday as there is some relation to traffic on weekedays /weekends /same time last week
head(dataset2,40)
head(bb,40)

par(mfrow=c(2,1))
plot(bb,type="l",main="Using Seven Day Moving Average for Web Visitors")
plot(dataset2,main="Original Data")

Created by Pretty R at inside-R.org

Though I still wonder why the R query, gA R code /package could not be on the cloud (why it  needs to be downloaded)– cloud computing Gs?

Also how about adding some MORE predictive analytics to Google Analytics, chaps!

To be continued-

auto.arima() and forecasts!!!

cross validations!!!

and adapting the idiosyncratic periods and cycles  of web analytics to time series !!

Using Google Analytics with R

Some code to read in data from Google Analytics data. Some modifications include adding the SSL authentication code and modifying (in bold) the table.id parameter to choose correct website from a GA profile with many websites

The Google Analytics Package files can be downloaded from http://code.google.com/p/r-google-analytics/downloads/list

It provides access to Google Analytics data natively from the R Statistical Computing programming language. You can use this library to retrieve an R data.frame with Google Analytics data. Then perform advanced statistical analysis, like time series analysis and regressions.

Supported Features

  • Access to v2 of the Google Analytics Data Export API Data Feed
  • A QueryBuilder class to simplify creating API queries
  • API response is converted directly into R as a data.frame
  • Library returns the aggregates, and confidence intervals of the metrics, dynamically if they exist
  • Auto-pagination to return more than 10,000 rows of information by combining multiple data requests. (Upper Limit 1M rows)
  • Authorization through the ClientLogin routine
  • Access to all the profiles ids for the authorized user
  • Full documentation and unit tests
Code-

> library(XML)

>

> library(RCurl)

Loading required package: bitops

>

> #Change path name in the following to the folder you downloaded the Google Analytics Package

>

> source(“C:/Users/KUs/Desktop/CANADA/R/RGoogleAnalytics/R/RGoogleAnalytics.R”)

>

> source(“C:/Users/KUs/Desktop/CANADA/R/RGoogleAnalytics/R/QueryBuilder.R”)

> # download the file needed for authentication

> download.file(url=”http://curl.haxx.se/ca/cacert.pem&#8221;, destfile=”cacert.pem”)

trying URL ‘http://curl.haxx.se/ca/cacert.pem&#8217; Content type ‘text/plain’ length 215993 bytes (210 Kb) opened

URL downloaded 210 Kb

>

> # set the curl options

> curl <- getCurlHandle()

> options(RCurlOptions = list(capath = system.file(“CurlSSL”, “cacert.pem”,

+ package = “RCurl”),

+ ssl.verifypeer = FALSE))

> curlSetOpt(.opts = list(proxy = ‘proxyserver:port’), curl = curl)

An object of class “CURLHandle” Slot “ref”: <pointer: 0000000006AA2B70>

>

> # 1. Create a new Google Analytics API object

>

> ga <- RGoogleAnalytics()

>

> # 2. Authorize the object with your Google Analytics Account Credentials

>

> ga$SetCredentials(“USERNAME”, “PASSWORD”)

>

> # 3. Get the list of different profiles, to help build the query

>

> profiles <- ga$GetProfileData()

>

> profiles #Error Check to See if we get the right website

$profile AccountName ProfileName TableId

1 dudeofdata.com dudeofdata.com ga:44926237

2 knol.google.com knol.google.com ga:45564890

3 decisionstats.com decisionstats.com ga:46751946

$total.results

total.results

1 3

>

> # 4. Build the Data Export API query

>

> #Modify the start.date and end.date parameters based on data requirements

>

> #Modify the table.id at table.id = paste(profiles$profile[X,3]) to get the X th website in your profile

> # 4. Build the Data Export API query

> query <- QueryBuilder() > query$Init(start.date = “2012-01-09”, + end.date = “2012-03-20”, + dimensions = “ga:date”,

+ metrics = “ga:visitors”,

+ sort = “ga:date”,

+ table.id = paste(profiles$profile[3,3]))

>

>

> #5. Make a request to get the data from the API

>

> ga.data <- ga$GetReportData(query)

[1] “Executing query: https://www.google.com/analytics/feeds/data?start-date=2012%2D01%2D09&end-date=2012%2D03%2D20&dimensions=ga%3Adate&metrics=ga%3Avisitors&sort=ga%3Adate&ids=ga%3A46751946&#8221;

>

> #6. Look at the returned data

>

> str(ga.data)

List of 3

$ data :’data.frame’: 72 obs. of 2 variables: ..

$ ga:date : chr [1:72] “20120109” “20120110” “20120111” “20120112” … ..

$ ga:visitors: num [1:72] 394 405 381 390 323 47 169 67 94 89 …

$ aggr.totals :’data.frame’: 1 obs. of 1 variable: ..

$ aggregate.totals: num 28348

$ total.results: num 72

>

> head(ga.data$data)

ga:date ga:visitors

1 20120109 394

2 20120110 405

3 20120111 381

4 20120112 390

5 20120113 323

6 20120114 47 >

> #Plotting the Traffic >

> plot(ga.data$data[,2],type=”l”)

Update- Some errors come from pasting Latex directly to WordPress. Here is some code , made pretty-r in case you want to play with the GA api

library(XML)

library(RCurl)

#Change path name in the following to the folder you downloaded the Google Analytics Package 

source("C:/Users/KUs/Desktop/CANADA/R/RGoogleAnalytics/R/RGoogleAnalytics.R")

source("C:/Users/KUs/Desktop/CANADA/R/RGoogleAnalytics/R/QueryBuilder.R")
# download the file needed for authentication
download.file(url="http://curl.haxx.se/ca/cacert.pem", destfile="cacert.pem")

# set the curl options
curl <- getCurlHandle()
options(RCurlOptions = list(capath = system.file("CurlSSL", "cacert.pem",
package = "RCurl"),
ssl.verifypeer = FALSE))
curlSetOpt(.opts = list(proxy = 'proxyserver:port'), curl = curl)

# 1. Create a new Google Analytics API object 

ga <- RGoogleAnalytics()

# 2. Authorize the object with your Google Analytics Account Credentials 

ga$SetCredentials("ohri2007@gmail.com", "XXXXXXX")

# 3. Get the list of different profiles, to help build the query

profiles <- ga$GetProfileData()

profiles #Error Check to See if we get the right website

# 4. Build the Data Export API query 

#Modify the start.date and end.date parameters based on data requirements 

#Modify the table.id at table.id = paste(profiles$profile[X,3]) to get the X th website in your profile 
# 4. Build the Data Export API query
query <- QueryBuilder()
query$Init(start.date = "2012-01-09",
                   end.date = "2012-03-20",
                   dimensions = "ga:date",
                   metrics = "ga:visitors",
                   sort = "ga:date",
                   table.id = paste(profiles$profile[3,3]))

#5. Make a request to get the data from the API 

ga.data <- ga$GetReportData(query)

#6. Look at the returned data 

str(ga.data)

head(ga.data$data)

#Plotting the Traffic 

plot(ga.data$data[,2],type="l")

Created by Pretty R at inside-R.org

Interview Michal Kosinski , Concerto Web Based App using #Rstats

Here is an interview with Michal Kosinski , leader of the team that has created Concerto – a web based application using R. What is Concerto? As per http://www.psychometrics.cam.ac.uk/page/300/concerto-testing-platform.htm

Concerto is a web based, adaptive testing platform for creating and running rich, dynamic tests. It combines the flexibility of HTML presentation with the computing power of the R language, and the safety and performance of the MySQL database. It’s totally free for commercial and academic use, and it’s open source

Ajay-  Describe your career in science from high school to this point. What are the various stats platforms you have trained on- and what do you think about their comparative advantages and disadvantages?  

Michal- I started with maths, but quickly realized that I prefer social sciences – thus after one year, I switched to a psychology major and obtained my MSc in Social Psychology with a specialization in Consumer Behaviour. At that time I was mostly using SPSS – as it was the only statistical package that was taught to students in my department. Also, it was not too bad for small samples and the rather basic analyses I was performing at that time.

 

My more recent research performed during my Mphil course in Psychometrics at Cambridge University followed by my current PhD project in social networks and research work at Microsoft Research, requires significantly more powerful tools. Initially, I tried to squeeze as much as possible from SPSS/PASW by mastering the syntax language. SPSS was all I knew, though I reached its limits pretty quickly and was forced to switch to R. It was a pretty dreary experience at the start, switching from an unwieldy but familiar environment into an unwelcoming command line interface, but I’ve quickly realized how empowering and convenient this tool was.

 

I believe that a course in R should be obligatory for all students that are likely to come close to any data analysis in their careers. It is really empowering – once you got the basics you have the potential to use virtually any method there is, and automate most tasks related to analysing and processing data. It is also free and open-source – so you can use it wherever you work. Finally, it enables you to quickly and seamlessly migrate to other powerful environments such as Matlab, C, or Python.

Ajay- What was the motivation behind building Concerto?

Michal- We deal with a lot of online projects at the Psychometrics Centre – one of them attracted more than 7 million unique participants. We needed a powerful tool that would allow researchers and practitioners to conveniently build and deliver online tests.

Also, our relationships with the website designers and software engineers that worked on developing our tests were rather difficult. We had trouble successfully explaining our needs, each little change was implemented with a delay and at significant cost. Not to mention the difficulties with embedding some more advanced methods (such as adaptive testing) in our tests.

So we created a tool allowing us, psychometricians, to easily develop psychometric tests from scratch an publish them online. And all this without having to hire software developers.

Ajay -Why did you choose R as the background for Concerto? What other languages and platforms did you consider. Apart from Concerto, how else do you utilize R in your center, department and University?

Michal- R was a natural choice as it is open-source, free, and nicely integrates with a server environment. Also, we believe that it is becoming a universal statistical and data processing language in science. We put increasing emphasis on teaching R to our students and we hope that it will replace SPSS/PASW as a default statistical tool for social scientists.

Ajay -What all can Concerto do besides a computer adaptive test?

Michal- We did not plan it initially, but Concerto turned out to be extremely flexible. In a nutshell, it is a web interface to R engine with a built-in MySQL database and easy-to-use developer panel. It can be installed on both Windows and Unix systems and used over the network or locally.

Effectively, it can be used to build any kind of web application that requires a powerful and quickly deployable statistical engine. For instance, I envision an easy to use website (that could look a bit like SPSS) allowing students to analyse their data using a web browser alone (learning the underlying R code simultaneously). Also, the authors of R libraries (or anyone else) could use Concerto to build user-friendly web interfaces to their methods.

Finally, Concerto can be conveniently used to build simple non-adaptive tests and questionnaires. It might seem to be slightly less intuitive at first than popular questionnaire services (such us my favourite Survey Monkey), but has virtually unlimited flexibility when it comes to item format, test flow, feedback options, etc. Also, it’s free.

Ajay- How do you see the cloud computing paradigm growing? Do you think browser based computation is here to stay?

Michal – I believe that cloud infrastructure is the future. Dynamically sharing computational and network resources between online service providers has a great competitive advantage over traditional strategies to deal with network infrastructure. I am sure the security concerns will be resolved soon, finishing the transformation of the network infrastructure as we know it. On the other hand, however, I do not see a reason why client-side (or browser) processing of the information should cease to exist – I rather think that the border between the cloud and personal or local computer will continually dissolve.

About

Michal Kosinski is Director of Operations for The Psychometrics Centre and Leader of the e-Psychometrics Unit. He is also a research advisor to the Online Services and Advertising group at the Microsoft Research Cambridge, and a visiting lecturer at the Department of Mathematics in the University of Namur, Belgium. You can read more about him at http://www.michalkosinski.com/

You can read more about Concerto at http://code.google.com/p/concerto-platform/ and http://www.psychometrics.cam.ac.uk/page/300/concerto-testing-platform.htm

Exciting Contest at CrowdANALYTIX

A new contest from a relatively new website. This one is fast and furious and has a decent chunk of money!

 

From

 

http://www.crowdanalytix.com/contests/airport-guest-sentiment-analysis-1544282253/view/

 

Submission Deadline:
Sun, 26 February 2012 05:00 AM UTC		 Results Announced by:
Mon, 05 March 2012 05:00 AM UTC
Category: Text Analytics Function: Aerospace & Aviation

 

Title
Analysis of sentiment and its intensity – feedback from airport guests
Description
ABC (name intentionally obfuscated) is one of the best managed and highly profitable airports  in India. As with all well managed airports, ABC would like to understand what guests feel about their experience when traveling, using or transiting through their airport. ABC has a website in which guests can visit and leave behind a comment, agree or disagree with others’ comments, or respond to a comment confirming or negating the expressed opinion.

The goal of this contest is to create a summarization of the opinions, feelings and sentiments expressed in the comments left behind by guests on the website. This information is being provided as data for solvers. Some understanding of the intensity of the opinion, feeling or sentiment will also be useful. For example, if there is a consistent demand for more spas across guest conversations, it needs to be highlighted.  Consistent positive or negative sentiments and opinions need to be discovered and highlighted.
Data
Guest comments have been crawled and provided to you. The data consists approximately 1000 comments from guests including the timestamp of those comments.  Personal information (name, email etc) have been hidden. This data is publicly available
Solver Expectations:
Participants may submit entries before the deadline. If a participant submits multiple entries, the entry submitted last before the deadline will be considered as the participant’s submission.
The following deliverables are expected to be submitted:
  • a report expressing the results of the opinion and sentiment mining
  • documentation about how you approached the problem, what tools, technologies and languages you used, and what problems you encountered
Timeline and Prizes: 
This contest begin on 16 Feb 2012 and will last for a duration of 9 days.
Prizes:
  • One 1st Prize – $1000
  • One 2nd Prize – $500
  • Two 3rd Prizes – $250

How to find out people who are spamming you

Step 1-

We assume you have Gmail. If you dont have Gmail, you deserve the Spam

You click -show original on the drop down in the spammy message

 

you see a lot of mumbo jumbo

(or you just pick the IP addresses from comment spam)

Step 2-

You pick the IP addresses from the mumbo jumbo above (called headers )

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_address

An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label assigned to each device (e.g., computer, printer) participating in a computer networkthat uses the Internet Protocol for communication.[1] An IP address serves two principal functions: host or network interface identification and locationaddressing

Step 3-

You find out who has that IP address using arin

https://www.arin.net/

 

Step 4-

You put those IP addresses in your firewall for your computer

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc733090(v=ws.10).aspx

(or if you have a self-hosted blog using Website cpanel ip deny)

http://www.siteground.com/tutorials/cpanel/ip_deny_manager.htm

Step 5-

 

Communicate to that IP Address using IRC

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chat

Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a protocol for real-time Internet text messaging (chat) or synchronous conferencing.[1] It is mainly designed for group communication in discussion forums, called channels,[2] but also allows one-to-one communication via private message[3] as well as chat and data transfer,[4] including file sharing.[5]

or use HOIC to test your own firewall better before people  spam  you

http://gizmodo.com/5883146/what-is-hoic or

http://www.decisionstats.com/occupy-the-internet/

 

Cyber Cold War

I try to write on cyber conflict without getting into the politics of why someone is hacking someone else. I always get beaten by someone in the comments thread when I write on politics.

But recent events have forced me to update my usual “how-to” cyber conflict to “why” cyber conflict. This is because of a terrorist attack in my hometown Delhi.

(updated-

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/14/world/middleeast/israeli-embassy-officials-attacked-in-india-and-georgia.html?_r=1&hp

Iran allegedly tried  (as per Israel) to assassinate the wife of Israeli Defence Attache in Delhi using a magnetic bomb, India as she went to school to pick up her kids, somebody else put a grenade in Israeli embassy car in Georgia which was found in time. 

Based on reports , initial work suggests the bomb was much more sophisticated than local terrorists, but the terrorists seemed to have some local recce work done.

India has 0 history of antisemitism but this is the second time Israelis have been targeted since 26/11 Mumbai attacks. India buys 12 % of oil annually from Iran (and refuses to join the oil embargo called by US and Europe)

Cyber Conflict is less painful than conflict, which is inevitable as long as mankind exists. Also the Western hemisphere needs a moon shot (cyber conflict could be the Sputnik like moment) and with declining and aging populations but better technology, Western Hemisphere govts need cyber conflict as they are running out of humans to fight their wars. Eastern govt. are even more obnoxious in using children for conflict propaganda, and corruption.

Last week CIA.gov website went down

This week Iranian govt is allegedly blocking https traffic on eve of Annual Revolution Day (what a coincidence!)

 

Some resources to help Internet users in Iran (or maybe this could be a dummy test for the big one – hacking the great firewall of China)

News from Hacker News-

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3575029

 

I’m writing this to report the serious troubles we have regarding accessing Internet in Iran at the moment. Since Thursday Iranian government has shutted down the https protocol which has caused almost all google services (gmail, and google.com itself) to become inaccessible. Almost all websites that reply on Google APIs (like wolfram alpha) won’t work. Accessing to any website that replies on https (just imaging how many websites use this protocol, from Arch Wiki to bank websites). Also accessing many proxies is also impossible. There are almost no official reports on this and with many websites and my email accounts restricted I can just confirm this based on my own and friends experience. I have just found one report here:

Iran Shut Down Gmail , Google , Yahoo and sites using “Https” Protocol

The reason for this horrible shutdown is that the Iranian regime celebrates 1979 Islamic revolution tomorrow.

I just wanted to let you guys know about this. If you have any solution regarding bypassing this restriction please help!

 

The boys at Tor think they can help-

but its not so elegant, as I prefer creating a  batch file rather than explain coding to newbies. 

this is still getting to better and easier interfaces

https://www.torproject.org/projects/obfsproxy-instructions.html.en

Obfsproxy Instructions

client torrc

Step 1: Install dependencies, obfsproxy, and Tor

 

You will need a C compiler (gcc), the autoconf and autotools build system, the git revision control system, pkg-config andlibtool, libevent-2 and its headers, and the development headers of OpenSSL.

On Debian testing or Ubuntu oneiric, you could do:
# apt-get install autoconf autotools-dev gcc git pkg-config libtool libevent-2.0-5 libevent-dev libevent-openssl-2.0-5 libssl-dev

If you’re on a more stable Linux, you can either try our experimental backport libevent2 debs or build libevent2 from source.

Clone obfsproxy from its git repository:
$ git clone https://git.torproject.org/obfsproxy.git
The above command should create and populate a directory named ‘obfsproxy’ in your current directory.

Compile obfsproxy:
$ cd obfsproxy
$ ./autogen.sh && ./configure && make

Optionally, as root install obfsproxy in your system:
# make install

If you prefer not to install obfsproxy as root, you can instead just modify the Transport lines in your torrc file (explained below) to point to your obfsproxy binary.

You will need Tor 0.2.3.11-alpha or later.

Step 2a: If you’re the client…

 

First, you need to learn the address of a bridge that supports obfsproxy. If you don’t know any, try asking a friend to set one up for you. Then the appropriate lines to your tor configuration file:

UseBridges 1
Bridge obfs2 128.31.0.34:1051
ClientTransportPlugin obfs2 exec /usr/local/bin/obfsproxy --managed

Don’t forget to replace 128.31.0.34:1051 with the IP address and port that the bridge’s obfsproxy is listening on.
 Congratulations! Your traffic should now be obfuscated by obfsproxy. You are done! You can now start using Tor.

For old fashioned tunnel creation under Seas of English Channel-

http://dag.wieers.com/howto/ssh-http-tunneling/

Tunneling SSH over HTTP(S)
This document explains how to set up an Apache server and SSH client to allow tunneling SSH over HTTP(S). This can be useful on restricted networks that either firewall everything except HTTP traffic (tcp/80,tcp/443) or require users to use a local (HTTP) proxy.
A lot of people asked why doing it like this if you can just make sshd listen on port 443. Well, that might work if your environment is not hardened like I have seen at several companies, but this setup has a few advantages.

  • You can proxy to anywhere (see the Proxy directive in Apache) based on names
  • You can proxy to any port you like (see the AllowCONNECT directive in Apache)
  • It works even when there is a layer-7 protocol firewall
  • If you enable proxytunnel ssl support, it is indistinguishable from real SSL traffic
  • You can come up with nice hostnames like ‘downloads.yourdomain.com’ and ‘pictures.yourdomain.com’ and for normal users these will look like normal websites when visited.
  • There are many possibilities for doing authentication further along the path
  • You can do proxy-bouncing to the n-th degree to mask where you’re coming from or going to (however this requires more changes to proxytunnel, currently I only added support for one remote proxy)
  • You do not have to dedicate an IP-address for sshd, you can still run an HTTPS site

Related-

http://opensourceandhackystuff.blogspot.in/2012/02/captive-portal-security-part-1.html

and some crypto for young people

http://users.telenet.be/d.rijmenants/en/onetimepad.htm

 

Me- What am I doing about it? I am just writing poems on hacking at http://poemsforkush.com

How to learn to be a hacker easily

1) Are you sure. It is tough to be a hacker. And football players get all the attention.

2) Really? Read on

3) Read Hacker’s Code

http://muq.org/~cynbe/hackers-code.html

The Hacker’s Code

“A hacker of the Old Code.”

  • Hackers come and go, but a great hack is forever.
  • Public goods belong to the public.*
  • Software hoarding is evil.
    Software does the greatest good given to the greatest number.
  • Don’t be evil.
  • Sourceless software sucks.
  • People have rights.
    Organizations live on sufferance.
  • Governments are organizations.
  • If it is wrong when citizens do it,
    it is wrong when governments do it.
  • Information wants to be free.
    Information deserves to be free.
  • Being legal doesn’t make it right.
  • Being illegal doesn’t make it wrong.
  • Subverting tyranny is the highest duty.
  • Trust your technolust!

4) Read How to be a hacker by

Eric Steven Raymond

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html

or just get the Hacker Attitude

The Hacker Attitude

1. The world is full of fascinating problems waiting to be solved.
2. No problem should ever have to be solved twice.
3. Boredom and drudgery are evil.
4. Freedom is good.
5. Attitude is no substitute for competence.
5) If you are tired of reading English, maybe I should move on to technical stuff
6) Create your hacking space, a virtual disk on your machine.
You will need to learn a bit of Linux. If you are a Windows user, I recommend creating a VMWare partition with Ubuntu
If you like Mac, I recommend the more aesthetic Linux Mint.
How to create your virtual disk-
read here-
Download VM Player here
http://www.vmware.com/support/product-support/player/
Down iso image of operating system here
http://ubuntu.com
Downloading is the longest thing in this exercise
Now just do what is written here
http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vmware_player40.pdf
or if you want to try and experiment with other ways to use Windows and Linux just read this
http://www.decisionstats.com/ways-to-use-both-windows-and-linux-together/
Moving data back and forth between your new virtual disk and your old real disk
http://www.decisionstats.com/moving-data-between-windows-and-ubuntu-vmware-partition/
7) Get Tor to hide your IP address when on internet
https://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-doc-windows.html.en
8a ) Block Ads using Ad-block plugin when surfing the internet (like 14.95 million other users)
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-plus/
 8b) and use Mafiafire to get elusive websites
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/mafiaafire-redirector/
9) Get a  Bit Torrent Client at http://www.utorrent.com/
This will help you download stuff
10) Hacker Culture Alert-
This instruction is purely for sharing the culture but not the techie work of being a hacker
The website Pirate bay acts like a search engine for Bit torrents 
http://thepiratebay.se/
Visiting it is considered bad since you can get lots of music, videos, movies etc for free, without paying copyright fees.
The website 4chan is considered a meeting place to meet other hackers. The site can be visually shocking
http://boards.4chan.org/b/
You need to do atleast set up these systems, read the websites and come back in N month time for second part in this series on how to learn to be a hacker. That will be the coding part.
END OF PART  1
Updated – sorry been a bit delayed on next part. Will post soon.