Mathematica and Numb3rs

If you happen to be into watching TV and also happen to be into math, then you probably watch the hit show Numbers (or NUMB3RS). I will save you the pain of looking at a Venn Diagram about this.

Wolfram (creator of the Mathematica software) and his team of mathematicians are actually doing some math consulting for the show. They also have a super slick web site that describes the math involved in each episode. You can check it out here.

Fixing My iPod

This is a bit of a departure for this blog, but I thought I would show a bit about how to fix an older iPod. There are a number of places to find great information about fixing iPods, some even include videos (look here, here and here for GREAT help). Here I just want to mention just how easy it is and mention that the process has become much less expensive than it once was.See how after the break.

The Beginner LaTeX Files pt.2 The Importance of Editing

Along with learning you will also need to get comfortable with an editor. This can be anything from the simplest text editor, such as TextEdit, to a WYSWYG style word processor, such as Scientific Workplace. Both styles work well, there are an ocean of solutions that bridge these two extremes.

AppleTV for Science

You knew it had to happen soon. Among the sea of AppleTV hack, one group has got an AppleTV to do scientific computation that could be put on a large scale grid. They have also done some benchmarks that put the AppleTV roughly on par with a G4. For $300, thats not so bad. The trials also note the low energy use and (obviously) low volume of the device. You can get the full story and more on their blog.
This is awesome and all, but I’m not sure it beats of the PS3. The PS3 costs about twice as much, but packs a much heavier computational punch. The big advantage of the AppleTV is that, when running OS X, it can be easily placed on a XGrid. Come to think of it, that is fairly cool.

Review: Skim-PDF Reader

If you own a Mac, it’s a little hard to get excited about a new PDF reader. Preview does a great job as a light weight reader and Adobe Reader works when you need forms to file your taxes. Both are free.
Scientists have a peculiar problem with PDFs, however. We use them ALL THE TIME. A good reader doesn’t just show the text and graphs. It also allows annotation, helps the user act as a librarian to keep things organized, and helps with searching. Some, such as DEVONthink, even try to make relationships between articles by using sophisticated AI functionality. Many folks have different methods to keep things organized. There has been an active discussion of different options at MacResearch.

TextMate Review

Slashdot.com just put up a review of a new manuel on TextMate. The review sums up the book well, but also give a small peek at what is becoming a quite popular text editor. Being slashdot, the comments devolve into a variety of topics. Fortunately, some of these include good comparisons to BBEdit and XCode. This may actually be interesting and helpful for a person new to Mac programming or one who is looking for a new way to do things.