How do I read journal articles from home? |
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What e-mail lists are there? |
E-mail lists |
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12/12/08 |
Does anyone know how to create symbolic links to directories in bash? |
ln -s |
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bash |
2/13/09 |
How do I set up my laptop to print to the 9th floor Astro phaser (room 6913A)? |
Download the drivers from the Xerox website. Click on the first download link. Follow the instructions.
See here for more directions from structbio (requires on-campus location). Make sure that you select the phaser6360 socket and not the default colorq (that one is located somewhere in MRB III).
However, for Macintosh computers (haven't checked on Windows), the instructions given at structbio are confusing and possibly wrong. Use these instructions instead.
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Windows/Mac OSX |
3/9/09 |
How does one change the color of background and foreground for a document produced by LaTeX? For e.g. what if I want green text on a black background? |
In the preamble of your LaTeX document, put \usepackage{color}. Then to make the font a specific color, do:
\textcolor{color}{words to be in color}
For changing the background color, do \pagecolor{blue}.
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LaTeX |
3/11/09 |
How do I set up my personal webpage?
How do I make files available to people outside of Vanderbilt?
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set up your own web space |
Saurav,
Josh
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UNIX/Linux
Mac OS X/ Windows
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8/24/09 |
I'm lazy trying to be expedient in making unit conversions/looking up physical parameters of X, Y, Z objects. Where can I find such things quickly? |
WolframAlpha Astronomy page
Unit conversions example here
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5/2/09 |
I use Thunderbird as my Vanderbilt email client, and I'm having problems with the disk space limit, or I'm receiving emails saying I am almost exceeding my quota limit and I don't know how to fix it. |
manage your email space
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Josh |
Email |
8/26/09 |
I'm having issues with IDL Direct Graphics- tvrd() or other device commands aren't working properly (e.g., image data stored in 2D arrays instead of 3D with R, G, B component). |
Make sure IDL is in 8 or 24 bit mode.
VNC users beware, sessions start
up in 16 bit by default. Use -depth 24 keyword when starting a VNC session.
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IDL, VNC |
8/25/09 |
How do I use remote access to my estrella/vpac account? |
First, set up your VPN to access the Vanderbilt network. Then, use NX to make the connection to your computer.
Set up NX Client [updated]
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Keivan |
All
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2/15/11 |
I'm having IDL problems since switching to v7.1. I think it doesn't know where the idl astro library is. Can anyone tell me how to add the idlastro lib to the idl path? |
IDL7.1 lives on a different server that does not seem to have astrolib installed. The astrolib package just needs to be downloaded from here and copied to /net/vpac00/usr/local/idl/idl71/lib/. This needs to be done by someone with superuser permission, so this should be resolved by submitting a trouble ticket. (Keivan submitted the trouble ticket and this is now resolved.) |
Resolved by Keivan |
IDL |
8/31/09 |
How do I set up an alias for my vanderbilt email address? How do I forward my vanderbilt email to another address? |
Sign in here and change your preferences: https://www2.vanderbilt.edu/vunet/modify.html |
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Email |
9/21/09 |
How do I use sed for command-line modification of files? |
See this page for a list of cool tricks to do with sed. Mirrored here. |
Josh |
sed, shell |
10/7/09 |
How do i view FITS images continuously (like in a slideshow)? For e.g. 'gs' allows you to do this with postscript images. |
Use a simple IRAF script, posted here on the wiki and as a downloadable file here.
There is also a very pretty Mac program that does this - QLFits - it does cost 2.95euro but there is a limited free demo you can try out.
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Saurav
Erika
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IRAF
Mac
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1/20/2009
9/8/2010
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How do I view a fits header within the shell, rather than within IRAF? I want to view headers in full or specific fields. |
Use the fitshead and fitskey shell scripts. Find them in the Software Repository here. |
Josh |
Shell |
1/8/10 |
How do I measure the FWHM for a set of stars on an image? |
Use the kfwhm script. Check in the Software Repository here for details. |
Josh |
C |
1/13/10 |
Syntax highlighting in Emacs with Fortran 90 files (*.F90 files) |
Add the line to your .emacs file:
(setq auto-mode-alist
(cons '("\\.F90$" . f90-mode) auto-mode-alist))
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Manodeep |
Linux, Fortran |
1/18/10 |
What is an easy way to manage my BibTex database |
For those with Mac's, I suggest BibDesk. Otherwise, I suggest the Java program JabRef . If you have a Mac and have $42 to spare, Papers provides lots of bells-and-whistles. |
Phill
&
Saurav
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OSX,Linux,Windows |
1/26/10 |
How do I install a frontend for LaTeX in Linux?
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For Ubuntu Linux users (as of Karmic Koala - 9.10), open a terminal, and type "sudo apt-get install texlive" to install the base LaTeX files. To then install the frontend, type "sudo apt-get install texmaker" to install TeXmaker. Now you can run TeXmaker by selecting from the menu: Application>Office>Texmaker. |
Tommy
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Linux(Ubuntu)
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1/28/10
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How do I combine separate plots into one page? |
for PS:
% psmerge plots*.ps | psnup -4 > out.ps
for PDF:
(i use a LaTeX package called pdfpages, see example on latex page)
discovered this functionality is included in the PDFjam package via pdfnup command, see
http://go.warwick.ac.uk/pdfjam
for PNG: (or any other bitmap image format)
% montage -tile 2x2 one.png two.png three.png four.png out.png
if you need to resize the output image, in case the default output
image is too small or big, you can use "-geometry":
% montage -tile 2x2 -geometry 800x600 1.png 2.png 3.png 4.png out.png
for PS/PDF:
gs -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -q -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile='' one.pdf two.pdf
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Cameron
&
Saurav
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*nix |
1/28/2010 |
How do I kill processes by name (rather than process ID) |
use the "killall" command instead of "kill". e.g.
% killall -9 xterms
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Copying text from X11 to pasteboard in Snow Leopard |
Select the text in xterm etc and then run 'echo "<pasted text>" | pbcopy '
(Alt-Click to paste into xterm)
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Manodeep |
Mac |
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What is GREP? |
GREP is a unix command that helps you find substrings. See for this page for more information. |
brittany |
unix |
02.08.2010 |
How do I use Regular Expressions? |
Here are some examples of how to use Regular Expressions with GREP. See this page for more information. |
brittany |
unix |
02.08.2010 |
How do I use footnotes in the LaTeX table environtment? Using \footnotemark and \footnotetext sometimes works, and sometimes I get footnote marks and no footnote. |
You can use the package 'threeparttable', found here: http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/threeparttable.zip
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LaTeX |
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Where can I find a list of empirical high resolution, high signal to noise stellar spectra? |
http://www.sc.eso.org/santiago/uvespop/field_stars_uptonow.html
The UVES Paranal Observatory Project
Field Stars Across the H-R diagram
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Leslie
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03.16.2010 |
How can I use the du command to list the sizes of directories and also display in human-readable format? |
Put this text in your .myaliases file:
alias du1='du -h --max-depth=1 > dutemp; grep [0-9]G dutemp | sort -nr; grep [0-9]M dutemp | sort -nr; grep [0-9]K dutemp | sort -nr; rm -f dutemp'
That line will create an alias called du1. It runs du with the -h option (display in human-readable format) and also only down a single directory level. It pipes the output to a temporary file called dutemp, then uses grep and sort to display the lines from that file in the correct order, then deletes the temporary file.
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Josh
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Unix / Linux
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5/3/10
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How do I use GREP,SED or AWK? |
Here are the GREP, SED and AWK tutorials to help get you started. |
brittany |
unix |
06.05.2010 |
Can AWK recognize user defined shell variables? |
Yes. You can either use -v or extra quotations
ex. 1
$ PI = 3.14
$ awk -v val=$PI '{print val*$1}' abc.dat
val is just a user defined variable.
OR
ex.2
$ PI = 3.14
$ awk '{print ' "$PI" ' *$1} abc.dat
Need to make sure that you have single and double quotes around $PI
Both are equivalent
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brittany |
unix |
06.05.2010 |
How can I start an xgterm window running IRAF anywhere on my machine without having to be in the IRAF home directory? |
See my solution at this link:
Start IRAF in another window
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Phill |
IRAF |
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How do I make a table for aastex? |
Found this website that is handy for making tables with your data file that you have.
http://dopey.mcmaster.ca/LATEX/make-latex.html
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brittany |
latex |
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Configure pine for the new vanderbilt email server |
You will need to update the pine config (main menu -> setup -> config; or directly edit the .pinerc file if you have used pine before)
smtp-server=smtpauth.vanderbilt.edu:587/tls/user=VUNETID
inbox-path={email.vanderbilt.edu:993/imap/ssl/user=VUNETID}Inbox
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Roy/Manodeep |
*NIX |
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Why are my references in LaTeX not working? All references to my tables/figures/etc. have the same number!
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To be on the safe side, place all labels for referencing at the bottom of your figure/table/etc. construct. If placed in the beginning, for some reason the references were not being displayed correctly.
Example:
\begin{my_figure}
\figurenum{figure_number}
\includegraphics{SomeGraphic.eps}
\caption{Some caption}
\label{my_label} <--- Place label here!!!
\end{my_figure}
Then reference your figure/table/etc. in your LaTeX documents using \ref{my_label}
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Tommy
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LaTeX
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09.08.2010
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How can I figure out when my star/object is visible? |
Totally awesome Mac program - iObserve - it has the capability of synching with SIMBAD even! It will also take an input list of stars.
(free for now, most recent version works best with Snow Leopard)
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Erika
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Mac / Observing |
09.08.2010 |
How do I view very large fits images in IRAF with DS9? |
If you want to use the "disp" command in IRAF to view images in DS9, you might run into problems with very large images. Specifically, if the images are too big (e.g. 4096 x 4096), you will only be able to see the central 512 x 512. That can be easily fixed by placing the following line in your IRAF login.cl file and restarting IRAF:
set stdimage = imt4096
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Josh
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IRAF
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9/13/10
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How can I display scientific notation in my document?
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Use this line in your preamble (before the \begin{document} statement):
\providecommand{\e}[1]{\ensuremath{\times 10^{#1}}}
The above creates a custom command for \e that replaces any instance of "calculator" scientific notation within the document to the proper format using described template. To use, try something like:
The flux calibration used in this study for the R-band is 2.25\e{-9}.
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Tommy
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LaTeX
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09.22.2010
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How can I convert a fits table to an ASCII table? |
Use the table_extract.py script. See the 20110419.html entry of Martin's Python tutorial for more information. |
Josh |
Python |
5/13/11 |
How do I open a file with a .bz2 extension? |
This is an option used with tarballs. If you have a file file.tar.bz2, just use the j option in tar:
> tar xvjf file.tar.bz2
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Josh (from Kelly) |
shell |
8/31/11
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How do I save my iWeb site files?
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Saving your iWeb site files involves saving the Domain.sites or domain.sites2 file buried within you Mac directories. This is different from saving your individual html folders and files, as iWeb does not have the ability to import a site, html or otherwise.
However, making a backup of the Domain.site or Domain.sites2 file will ensure that your site remains editable in iWeb. Navigate to:
/Users/username/Library/Application Support/iWeb
where username is the name used for your home folder on your Mac (you can go to this folder directly by typing Shift+Command+G while in the Finder, and copy/paste the above directory into the search box). There should be a Domain.sites (for iWeb '06) or Domain.sites2 (for iWeb '08/'09). Simply backup this file, and restore to the same directory if you ever refresh your computer, and your site should be available for editing!
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Tommy
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iWeb (Mac OS X), html web authoring
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11.8.2011
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How do I figure out what parts of my code are the most computationally expensive? |
Use Valgrind. |
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How do I chop out and save one page from a multi-page ps file?
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> psselect -p# input.ps output.ps
where # is the page number to extract.
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Josh
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shell
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10/21/12
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How do I view extragalactic objects and their environments? |
Use RAVEN (radial velocity defined galaxy environments) in NED: http://proto.ned.ipac.caltech.edu/help/galenv/. Username: nedguest; password: AAS2013. |
Ben |
WWW |
1/14/13 |
How to get involved in SDSS? |
Please visit the following page for how to sign-up for SDSS related accounts.
How to get involved in SDSS
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Qingqing |
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8/28/14 |
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