MacResearch

For those of you who rely on macro's in the Office suite of applications, news from the Microsoft BU released today, mentions that VBA support will be added back in when the next version of Office for Mac is released. There is no mention of a date, so it could still be some time. However, when VBA scripting does return it may mean that some third-party applications that rely on it (EndNote, I'm looking at you), will regain full functionality in Office. That's a kinda, sorta, maybe of course. To be somewhat fair, Thompson Scientific, the makers of EndNote, have stated that a version of EndNote that will work absent VBA is in the works, but no release date has been set that I'm aware of. And to be honest, I'm not a fan of EndNote at all.

More information on the Office updates is available here.

One of the advantages of scripting languages like Python is the multitude of modules you can install and leverage in your research. One of the disadvantages of scripting languages like Python is the multitude of modules you can install and leverage in your research. Anyone who has worked with packages like Numpy and Scipy will know the dilemma: On the one hand, there is a lot of useful code in these packages; on the other, they can make getting started a pain in the neck, because installation is not always trivial, and often will depend upon other modules being pre-installed. This is the type of situation that projects like Fink and MacPorts have arisen to address in the space of UNIX tools.

So is there anything like Fink for scientific Python? It turns out there is: SAGE. The SAGE project slogan is ‘Creating a viable free open source alternative to Magma, Maple, Mathematica, and Matlab’, which will hopefully give you some idea of its lofty goals. In a nutshell, SAGE brings together a swath of different modules in one easy to install package.

I think Time Machine is fantastic, particularly when used with a Time Capsule. For this week, I just thought I would do a quick roundup of a few tricks and news I have collected on Time Machine.

Tip 1. There was this week an interesting software released, that allows access to Time Machine via the command-line. That's right. Instead of flying through space, you can just type some text and get some lines of text back, the good old way. The CLI version tms was developed by Robert Pointon who runs the FernLightning website. It was designed to accept VCS-like command (which means similar to what you would do with version control software such as Subversion). Learn all about it on the tms website.

I recently discovered Sweave, and have become enamored with Literate Reporting. (That is, the idea of including the report text and the calculations behind the report in the same document, which can be woven to create a final report that includes both, or can be tangled to get just the calculations without the extra verbiage. This helps with transparency and reproducibility in research.)

LEUVEN, Belgium — May 6, 2008 — Orbicule today released Macnification, its brand new workflow solution for digital electron microscopy.
Macnification enables scientists to import, organize, find, annotate, analyze, adjust, compare, visualize and publish microscopic images.

We have a new poll. Does your work require non-Mac programs? For example, do you have instruments or other work which requires access to Windows, Linux, or X11 on the Mac? What kinds of programs do developers need to bring to the Mac?

Last fall, I began my new lab at the University of Pittsburgh. I've been using Macs almost exclusively since arriving.

I will share some shortcuts and productivity tips over the next few weeks that I picked up during my first year as a faculty member. The first is on saving keystrokes. The Mac has several extremely good programs which can expand text shortcuts and fix typos on-the-fly, including Typinator, TypeIt4Me, TextExpander, and SpellCatcherX.