Archive for the 'General Macintosh' Category
A new SDK for Papers is out that allows developers (or anyone) to write search engine plugins for Papers, the excellent journal paper management program that I have mentioned previously. Alas, I know next to nothing about Mac programming, so try as I might to understand the SDK and how to make a plugin that let us search ADS from within Papers, it looks beyond my abilities.
So, maybe someone out there reading this would like to give it a shot?
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UPDATES BELOW
So, Daring Fireball dubbed George Ou a “jackass of the week” for this post declaring that Vista’s font rendering puts OS X “to shame.”
Alas, something went awry in Ou’s comparison because he seemed to be showing OS X’s “best for CRT” text smoothing setting. See below the difference between what Ou purports to be OS X’s font rendering and what it actually can be on an LCD.
As has been pointed out, what makes for “good” font rendering is highly subjective, but Ou could have taken the time to actually look in the Appearance preference pane and try some other settings. (I think one has to quit and re-launch a program before the new font smoothing settings take effect.)
Update By default it appears that the Mac is “automatic” which, I would assume for a laptop sets it to “Medium (Best for Flat Panel)”. I’m guessing for some reason “automatic” was producing the “Best for CRT” setting in whatever machine Ou was on - I don’t know why though.
Update II Indeed, the post has been updated as Ou’s comment suggests. I’d argue that font rendering on screen is somewhat a matter of taste. Here’s some more on the differences between Vista and OS X Font rendering. I don’t have access a Vista machine so I can’t add them myself, and Ou’s examples are a different size than mine for some reason (font sizes in browsers no doubt.) You can see all of the renderings now compared at the original post.
Update III There are many other discussions about font rendering especially now that Safari on Windows uses the Mac-style font smoothing.
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So, I admit I only recently installed SM(supermongo), and only have used it slightly. Between IDL, grace(installable via Fink or there are binaries for MacOS X at the HPC site), and Plot, I just don’t see why any Mac user would make plots in SM. It requires gnuplot-esque scripts/programs, and just seems in general a pain and esoteric.
Perhaps it is powerful, perhaps for automated plot creation from certain kinds of data, it’s great, but I don’t understand its popularity. Has anyone used all the above tools and yet prefers SM? If so, please post a comment. I’m curious if I’m missing something.
For casual plotting, say from analysis that I do in IDL, I just do quick plots in IDL itself, and I’ve written a fair number of simple IDL routines that call plot or ploterr or other people’s plotting programs. This works for day to day plotting, and is easy to integrate into my other IDL programs. For almost all plots for publication, I have always used the aforementioned grace, which I installed with Fink.
If if I wasn’t already familiar with grace, I’d probably try this unfortunately under-named program, Plot. It seems pretty good, but since it’s very similar to Grace except with all the options in different places, so I’ve just stayed with the familiar Grace. But, I vastly prefer a graphical interface like this for tweaking than altering parameters via some script. I have also used gnuplot. It was a nightmare. I recreated in grace in one hour what it took days to get gnuplot to do, and do poorly. I abandoned gnuplot as a first year grad student.
Anyway, I know sm must have its fans, so if that’s you, let me know why you like it below. But, please note if you’ve used any other plotting program.
Update I’m baffled by the “something else entirely” winning unless it’s non-astronomers voting for Excel. Whatever you are voting for, could you post a comment and tell me? Also, I recently got a new Macbook, and installing Grace via Fink was a royal pain requiring a selfupdate via rsync and then a very long compile-fest because they don’t have a binary available. It’s hard to recommend with all that pain, but I maintain it’s much better than SM.
Update II Ploticus sounds vaguely familiar (see in the comments), but not so much python/matplotlib. These sound like IDL/SMish sort of plotting though. Personally, I still prefer a GUI - hence my like for xmgr Grace.
Update III I certainly get the desire to have a plot automagically made while one is doing data reduction, analysis, etc. This is one reason I like IDL. However, I prefer to be able to finely tune the appearance in a GUI for a plot designed for publication. I suppose it’s a learning curve thing. Granted, once you write one sm script to plot a spectra … you’re set for all other spectra. However, I’m not convinced for my own work that the time/effort spent learning how to write such a script is worth it, since I’m obviously rather comfortable with Grace. (It’s worth noting for a certain repetitive plots I have used IDL.)
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I know, many of you probably don’t want to hear about the iPhone - but hey, the IRAF installers and IDL tips are all still here, so I can post about what I want. You don’t like it? Make your own Mac IRAF site. 
Anyway, I’m not really going to post about the iPhone persay, but I was thinking on Friday how Apple much has transformed in the last 10 years. Would anyone have believed it in 1997 if you told them massive lines and massive media attention would surround the release of any Apple product? OS X didn’t exist, the Mac was struggling, the Newton was .. not a success.
Now, the Mac is healthier than ever - Apple rules the music player market with the iPod and is set to, at the very least, transform the expectations of mobile phone users. Personally, I don’t think the $600 iPhone is going to change the world, but the $300 iPhone Nano (or whatever they’ll call it) sure will. Just as it took a while for the iPod to truly explode, I would imagine the same is true of the iPhone.
There was a line in this sci-fi TV show, back in the 90s, “Seaquest DSV,” which referenced some future buyout of “Apple Computer” buying Microsoft, and - especially at the time (and even, frankly, now) it was laughable. I remember thinking “no way the Macintosh will ever be that big.” And, it probably never will be. But, it never occured to me Apple would create other, non-Macintosh things that would prove so succesful. (Though, arguably the iPhone is Mac-like in that in runs OS X.)
Obviously, here at Mac Singularity we care about OS X and the boon it is the productivity of our astronomical research. But for me, as a lifetime Apple user, it’s quite a trip to see them create so much attention and in general, have so much success. It’s been quite a ride from Wired urging us to pray for Apple’s survival.
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The problem - your department’s network won’t let you ssh or connect directly to your work Mac, you can only ssh to one special computer, and then from there you can ssh to your Mac. But, you’d like to be able to use Apple file sharing or sftp directly to your work Mac.
Well, SSH Tunneling (Port Forwarding)[sic] is great, clear, explanation of how to use SSH tunneling to directly connect to an ssh-enabled machine that doesn’t allow ssh connections from people offsite/off-campus, etc. It shows how, even when you can only access the work machine through the “gateway” machine (a situation I face here at UF), that you can setup an ssh tunnel through the gateway machine to access your work machine directly.
The best part about this? I can now use sftp (specifically fugu and its ability to edit external text files in TextWrangler) on my work quad core mac from home. I always knew this sort of thing was possible but … now at last I’ve figured out how to do it!
Update Oh, it gets so much better. Because in addition of using port 22 to forward ssh to your work machine, you can also forward port 548 (appleshare).
So, a variation on the tip from the site would be like so (where work is the Mac on your desk that has ssh and appleshare running (actually for this tip, your Mac only need be running file sharing, not ssh) and gateway is the one machine you’re allowed to ssh into from off-campus.
ssh -l myuserid -L 7778:work:548 gateway cat -
Then minimize this terminal window, and then use the Finder to “Connect to Server” in the Go menu. Enter “localhost:7778″ as the server address and boom, you should see the standard apple file sharing login window for your work machine. Enter your user name, password, and choose what you want to mount. Nice. (I use 7778 here, but you could use 7777. Obviously, if you use 7777 for forwarding port 22, you need to use a different port to forward 548).
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Tags: apple, appleshare, networking, port forwarding, ssh — .
This is an excellent article in ComputerWorld comparing the value of Macintosh hardware to similarly configured PCs from Dell, Sony, etc.
The comparisons show, that for the equipment you’re buying when you buy a Mac, you’re getting a good deal. As I like to say, there are cheaper PCs than the cheapest Mac, but … you’re getting less computer.
The author says that the 15″ macbook pro (which, incidentally, is what I think my next Mac will be… sometime in late 2008 though) and Mac Mini aren’t good values in his mind, but he didn’t quantify this. Another site that compares Macs and PCs of similar price feature by feature is System Shootouts.
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Well, I’m at the AAS meeting in Honolulu.
The most interesting Mac-related news is that, for the first time, AAS presenters can use Macs (and Keynote) for presenting in oral sessions. They have Powerbooks with Parallels running OS X and Windows in every room, so people are free to use whatever OS and presentation software they want. Excellent idea. Hopefully this becomes standard practice for AAS. I grumbled about being forced to use Windows here some years ago, so it’s only fair I post again now that the situation has been improved.
On an unrelated note, I attended the NASA CAE workshop on improving the introductory astronomy class for non-majors, and it was excellent. There is a large body of research that lecture-only classes are ineffective for teaching non-science major courses, and so called “active learning” techniques are better. I’m convinced, and I think many people would benefit from the workshops so… find one near you and check it out.
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Tags: aas, keynote, powerpoint — .
