Sometimes you may find that your Mac OS X installation has an old URL for the software update service in its preferences, which may mean that you can’t successfully run the Software Update tool under the Apple menu. In my case, I got my Mac from my university and the update server was set to some internal […]
I was thinking recently about a post I made a while back about my academic values, and happened to come across the Reproducible Research website. I can’t emphasise how much I agree with the idea of reproducible research – it would remove so many problems that I have been having with my research, and will […]
Summary: If you can get past the strange underlying story, then this gives a good introduction to R to someone with no programming experience. However, if you have any experience with other programming languages then another book is likely to be more suitable. Reference: Quick, J. M., Statistical Analysis in R: Beginners Guide, Packt Publishing, […]
(Yes the title is meant to remind you of snakes on a plane!) Goodness! At this time of year there really are a lot of people coughing on trains! I travelled from Southampton to Tunbridge Wells today, and my journey was accompanied by a large range of coughs and sneezes, from the high-pitched cough of […]
Well, as mentioned before, I’ve recently been given (by my PhD funding body) a MacBook Pro laptop. I’m really getting to like it, but there are still some things that frustrate me. So, this will be one of two posts: my favourite things, followed by my least-favourite things. So, the good bits first: Instant Sleep/Wakeup […]
This is the first in a series of posts on the lessons I’ve learnt from various episodes in my life. First up: my dissertation. In case you’re not familiar with dissertations: they are the large written projects which are often given to students in the final year of their degree. The details of mine are […]
I should probably first state that I’m writing this a few days after I fixed this problem, so I may have some of the details wrong. Apologies if that is the case. Now, on to the problem: Problem You have EndNote and Microsoft Word 2010 installed. When loading Microsoft Word the EndNote tab that normally […]
Summary: Very unusual approach, but also provides an interesting new view of geography. Reference: De Landa, M. 1997 A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History, Zone Books, New York. 333 pages. [amazon_link id="0942299329" target="_blank" ]Amazon Link[/amazon_link] When dipping into a chapter entitled Geological History 1000-1700 AD one would expect to find information on rock types, the development […]
Summary: More mathematical than I thought it would be, but very thorough and well explained. I thought that there would be more instruction in how to program in IDL and use the ENVI API, but much of this can be learnt by examining the code given in the book. The book is very comprehensive and […]
Quite through chance I just happened to stumble upon the USGS New EarthExplorer, and I’m really quite impressed. Remote sensing is a field that is almost entirely based around new technology: satellite sensors, computer processing techniques and so on, but for ages actually acquiring the data has been an exercise in frustration. Much as the […]