MacBook Generations, alternate view, by Robert S. Donovan. via TUAW.
- Tweets from the 215th meeting of the AAS | Douglas Burke
Word clouds from the tweets. Fine, just #aas next time. - MIT Pledges to Improve Conditions for Minority Faculty Members | ScienceInsider
- Mac OS X’s application switcher does not go both ways | Finer Things in Mac
Use Cmd+~ to go backward in application switcher! - How-To: Remotely Support Your Parents with Screen Sharing | TheAppleBlog
- Evernote Review | Productivity501
We’ve got a guest post of our own on in the queue on Evernote so this is just a teaser. - 20+ Mac Apps to Increase Your Productivity | mashable.com
(via MacResearch) - Rain Design’s iMac turntable sends the iMac for a spin | The Unofficial Apple Weblog
- Frequently Asked Questions About Google Wave | Smarterware
- Using Greek Letters in IDL | Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming
For remote troubleshooting across platforms, I’ve found TeamViewer useful. The personal use edition comes for free 🙂
In my experience the most convenient way to use Greek letters in IDL is the textoidl package, which allows you to use LaTeX formatting codes instead of learning yet another markup language.
As far as a “language” for Greek letters, I don’t know how much easier it can get than spelling the Greek letters. You might have a moments hesitation with “omicron”, but I don’t think that letter is used much. TeXtoIDL doesn’t mention it.
But the real advantage is aesthetic. I’ve never really liked the Complex Greek that comes back from TeXtoIDL in Hershey fonts (when mixed with my Simplex Roman fonts) and I prefer to use True-Type fonts in PostScript. To me, these Greek letters just look better.
I’ve got to go with Marshall on this… textoidl is awesome. I don’t understand David’s point about ease of use – all you do in textoidl is spell the letters too. And it will correctly interpret ‘erg s^{-1} cm^{-2} \AA^{-1}’. So it’s much more useful than just Greek letters, for anyone who knows LaTeX (which presumably is every professional astronomer, unless somehow you get by without writing papers). For me that’s a whole lot more important than aesthetics.
Sorry, the humor was too subtle there. The Greek program is not really “another mark-up langage”. It’s just a way to get a Greek letter into a text string. And I have no arguments with TeXtoIDL being an awesome program. It’s great. It just doesn’t return Greek letter results that I like for completely aesthetic reasons. I realize aesthetics are not important to scientists. Heck, I work with scientists every day. Can you imagine what would happen if I suggested something other than the rainbow color table!?
Hey, we really need an “Ask Astrobetter” section so we can really go crazy swapping tips and tricks. For example, I’m struggling to find a good way to keep up with the astro-ph and want to hear what tools people are using to filter the steady stream of new papers coming out.
@IP freeley
You can always email admin [at] astrobetter.com with your idea for a discussion. We are happy to create a blog post about new topics that our readers are interested in.
@IP Freely (really, IP Freely?)
you are also welcome to start a discussion on the FB group: http://www.facebook.com/pages/AstroBetter/220025848560?v=app_2373072738&ref=ts
Regarding astro-ph, I highly recommend myADS in conjunction with Google Reader: https://www.astrobetter.com/myads-arxiv-rss-feeds-now-with-abstracts/