When I started doing optical observing in my postdoc, I was unpleasantly surprised at how difficult it was to learn to reduce the data. Most optical astronomers use a venerable package called IRAF, which may charitably be called “user antagonistic.” There is a Python wrapper, PyRAF, which mutes some of the annoyances but is no […]
The IPython Notebook combines code, documentation, and computational results in one package that’s easy to share. It’s proving a great way to teach, as notebooks are easy for the instructor to write and for students to modify. Notebooks also provide seamless integration with other programming environments through extensions providing “magic functions“: short code prefixes beginning […]
Mac OS X provides multiple desktops via the Spaces feature. I use this feature all the time to keep my mental workspace uncluttered: typically I have one Space with a web browser, one or two more with terminals (iTerm2 is great), and another with documents or presentations. In Apple’s Spaces model, if you click on […]