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I upgraded to Leopard on Friday when it came out. (I admit it: I even stood in line and got a free T-shirt).

I really like Leopard, but I couldn’t get widget programs in IDL 6.4 to work under it. The good news is that beta versions of IDL 7.0 seem to be just fine. Also, under Leopard, I end up with multiple X11 applications running when IDL (even 7.0) is running, so I’m not sure I have everything configured correctly (I can’t even find the system xinitrc anymore).

The best part of Leopard is that it seems to be so snappy. I have a fairly new Mac Book Pro so take it for what it’s worth, but everything seems to be much more responsive (I think Leopard makes better use of the graphics card and multiple code CPUs.).

UPDATE: It appears that using Tiger’s X11.app should fix it for now. Link.

UPDATE: ITT VIS has released a fix for this issue. See this tech tip. This works for me.

Ken Bowman, author of An Introduction to Programming with IDL, has been collecting tips for the Mac that would be of particular interest to IDL programmers at Mac tips and tricks.

Also of interest to Mac using scientists:

1. MacResearch: Online Community and Resource for Mac OS X in Science has general resources for scientific programming on a Mac (with a few things about IDL).
2. Mac OS X for Astrophysicists is a roundup of scientific tools for astrophysicists.
3. OS X for Astronomers is a list of quick things to get your Mac setup to do astronomy.
4. Apple - Software for Research is a list generated by Apple of software for search in the physical sciences.

There are many standard UNIX directories that are invisible to Mac OS X’s Finder. Apple assumes that your normal OS X user does not want to see them. There are three ways a file will be invisible to the Finder:

1. Files listed in /.hidden are hidden.
2. Files that begin with a dot are hidden.
3. Files that have their invisible attribute set are hidden.

We can make all hidden files visible to the Finder, as well as show selected hidden files.

Continue reading “See standard UNIX files that are hidden in Mac OS X.”

I updated the 1RM Dashboard widget for Mac OS X and gave it a permanent home. The only change to the widget itself is a bit cleaner interface (check out the 1RM page for a screenshot).

See previous post announcing the original version.

1RM (”one rep maximum”) is a Dashboard widget for Mac OS X 10.4 “Tiger” that calculates the maximum amount you can lift given a submaximum lift. So for example, if I can lift 75 pounds 10 times, then according to the widget below, I should be able to lift 100 pounds once (as seen in the 100% row). The other percentages are handy for determining what to lift for a given “effort level.”

Making a Dashboard widget is pretty easy. There are a few extra Javascript routines you can use (and the ability to use other code that I didn’t need), but otherwise it’s fairly straighforward application of HTML, CSS, and Javascript to make a mini “webpage.” The one thing that I had to learn was to make some icons and backgrounds. This was “image processing” at a different level than I am normally used to. I used a Mac port of the Gimp (an open source alternative to Photoshop) to make the icon, the front, and the back of the widget. I was impressed with the Gimp; now when is an Illustrator alternative going to emerge? Is Inkscape the best right now?

UPDATE: Here are the installation instructions Apple says I should tell you:

Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger is required. If you’re using Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget’s icon in the Widget Bar to open it. If you’re using a browser other than Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, unarchive it and place it in /Library/Widgets/ in your home folder. show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget’s icon in the Widget Bar to open it.