Write a Script to Send Database Query Results to Excel
Viewing database query results in the terminal is fine, but sometimes I need to get the results into Excel quickly so I can prod and analyze the data to see if I need to modify the query. Ideally I’d just query directly from Excel using and ODBC driver but our…
Automating Remote Data Fetching With Terminal.app: A Practical Example
I always tell people that my favorite aspect of UNIX is the fact that you can quickly and easily string together a few command-line utilities and do things that would require days worth of custom programming to pull off on Windows. There are plenty of UNIX geeks using OS X these days,…
LAPACK/BLAS from FORTRAN on 10.6
Dear all, since updating to 10.6, I’ve been struggling with strange crashes in connection with LAPACK/BLAS routines used in my C++ code, when using the Apple LAPACK and BLAS. They are strange in this sense, that I get a “Bus error” in a reproducible fashion, however depending on whether optimization…
Lab Journal: Installing Sun Grid Engine on Xserve Cluster
I recently started a postdoctoral position and one of my first tasks was to get Sun Grid Engine up and running on our new Xserve cluster. I downloaded the sge-6.1u2 darwin binaries from http://gridengine.sunsource.net/ and then began the installation. The installation scripts are very picky about DNS and hostnames. In…
The Xgrid Tutorials (Part I): Xgrid Basics
At MacResearch we have some big plans for Xgrid in the coming months. Stay tuned for announcements. But to warm you up, we have a real coup: Charles Parnot, creator of one of the largest Xgrids on the planet, has agreed to write a series of tutorials for MacResearch. To kick off…
error trying to exec `as’: execvp: No such file or directory
I have downloaded gfortran and gcc and they are safely tucked into /usr/local/bin! However, gfortran test.f (where test.f is a Hello World write statement!) gives me the above error message. Would some kind person suggest the next step! FIX: This error usually means that gcc isn’t installed. However since you…
gfortran for Leopard
I have gfortran and gcc 4.3 binaries ready for Leopard using current snapshot GCC sources. Dave has created an installer package for the gfortran binary. This includes separate PowerPC and Intel binaries. Note that this installer does NOT include the XCode plug-in for gfortran. You can get it from here: MacResearch gfortran Installer You can also get the gfortran tarball…
First Tech Book Published Exclusively on iPhone?
A while ago I suggested that perhaps the iPhone platform could offer an avenue for publishing technical books. In summary, I argued that the App Store offers a broad distribution network, takes care of sales processing, and even offers DRM protection of content. The only thing really missing was a…
A review of StatPlus:mac
Whilst Excel has been around on the Mac platform since 1985 and is probably the leading spreadsheet application, the data analysis capabilities and statistical analysis is still rather limited. Whilst these limitations may not be an issue for financial or accountancy uses they are a significant obstacle towards scientific use….
Difference between [alloc [init]] and [new]
Is there a difference between these two syntax: [alloc [init]] and [new]. Apple uses [new] when they allocate the memory pool, so why do all developers use the convention [alloc [init]] instead of the short form [new] ? I tried using [new] and it seems to do exactly the same…
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