jim gunn won the national medal of science

he will receive this honor from obama on wednesday (10/7). more details here.

he's my role model. congratulations, jim!

on china

即便是敵對國
我們仍應容許人們對中國懷有的各種感覺
不論追求統一或鼓吹獨立
言論自由都得得到尊重
當然 我們可以感到認同 或憤怒
可以加以批評
但不能訴諸人身攻擊

畢竟 少了自由 也許台灣就什麼也不剩了

果然

果然是有地震
震度二

並不是自己神經太過敏...

edward kennedy died

ted kennedy, who served as senator of massachusetts for 47 years, died from brain cancer on 8/25.

random email tips

here tells you how to remove a message in a conversation in gmail

however, it seems that it's not possible to remove attachments from the messages in gmail

it's also not possible to set automatic bcc option in gmail; in thunderbird, in "account settings" -> "copies and folders", specify the address you want all the message to bcc to

this page contains tips on how to remove an attachment from a message in thunderbird

to search for unread mails prior to some date, try searching with multiple conditions:
label:unread label:inbox before:2007/1/1

八月

實在發生了許多事

八號南部的大水災
暴露了許多的問題
長久以來山坡地的濫加砍伐開發
錯誤的水資源政策
導致自然的反撲
馬政府的無能
更是有目共睹

現在再加上新流感的擴大
只教人無比憂心

看各家媒體
報的盡是荒唐 聳動之事
不知到哪才能讀到台灣令人驕傲的事情呢

台灣要改變
要從教育做起
教孩子要 知恥 認真 踏實
也許十年後 能看到成效



日本前幾週也連續地震
五天內三次約六級的
之後常讓人產生地震的幻覺

tmt chose hawaii over chile

from tmt website, 7/21/09:

"After careful evaluation and comparison between two outstanding candidate sites—Mauna Kea in Hawai‘i and Cerro Armazones in Chile—the board of directors of the TMT Observatory Corporation has selected Mauna Kea as the preferred site for the Thirty Meter Telescope."

making c codes faster

some basic tricks for speeding up c codes:

• division is much slower than multiplication
• log10(), sqrt() are also very slow -- should avoid using these unless absolutely necessary
• inlines can be of tremendous help, as it may be easier for the compiler to optimize
  
• a for loop like for(i=1;i<=10;i++) can be re-written as for(i=10;i--;), which may save a little bit of time

more tricks can be found here

dolphin killing

a friend told me about a documentary on the annual killing with spears and knives of more than 2,500 dolphins driven into a cove at taiji, wakayama prefecture in japan.

i don't know if the activists have the rights to interfere with the dolphin hunting of the locals, but i do hope more people can become aware of this story.

http://www.savejapandolphins.org/index.php
http://www.savejapandolphins.org/educate.php
a short film on youtube
another one on youtube

extragalactic surveys

here's a compilation and links to some of the major UV/optical/IR surveys that may provide data complementary to the HSC survey:

Imaging

COMBO17

SXDS

SDF

CFHTLS -- fields -- data release

NDWFS

• fields: Bootes @ 14h 32m 05.7120s, +34° 16' 47.496" (J2000), and Cetus @ 2h 10m 00.00s, -4° 30' 00.00" (J2000)
  

ALHAMBRA

SWIRE -- fields

UKIDSS -- fields -- DR3

AKARI

GALEX


Spectroscopic

2dFGRS

2SLAQ

AGES

• overlap with NDWFS Bootes field
  

DEEP2

6dF

PRIMUS -- fields

GAMA

WiggleZ

Imaging+Spectro

SDSS

COSMOS -- field

VVDS -- fields

AEGIS -- field

GOODS

• fields are HDFN and CDFS
  

MUSYC

Planned

Pan-STARRS

DES

PAU

SkyMapper

VST KIDS

VST ATLAS

VISTA surveys

WIYN ODI

HETDEX

• IFU - 340-550 nm at R~800
  
• 1 million LAEs at z=2 -4
  
• 145 IFU units, with 1/9 fill
  
• each bundle has 0.22 sq arcmin on sky, 246 fibers, 1 sq. " each
  
• 200-500 sq deg (110 nights)
  

WISE

SOFIA

below is a (incomplete) list of major surveys in other wavelength, covering area that Subaru can survey:

ACT

ALFALFA

Planck

Herschel

XMM-LSS

• center at 2h 18m 00s, -7° 00' 00" (J2000)
  
• overlap with VVDS, SWIRE, NDWFS cetus, SXDS
  

michael jackson

suddenly died at age of 50...

herschel first light!

http://herschel.esac.esa.int/SneakPreview.shtml

one month after launch, the herschel satellite took a look at the galaxy m51, using its pacs instrument at 70, 100, 160 micron, which encompass the peak of the ir emission of typical galaxies.

arxiv

the arxiv is the place people get the latest research papers.

the submission is a bit tricky, as if you want your paper to be at the top of the daily list of newly submitted papers, you have to submit it right after 4pm eastern time. first, there's the submit form, at the bottom of which there's a "submit" button. clicking it you enter the second page, where it displays the info you just typed, as well as the "check the status" button. only by clicking this button the submission process is done. and therefore, you should click this button right after 4pm. however, what's gonna happen may be uncertain, as the arxiv may reject your submission (with reasons such as "square brackets cannot appear inside the authors/affiliation section"!). if that happens, you have to use the back button of your browser to go back to the submit page to do it over again, and you may lose the precious top place of the listing to others!

it seems that, one can proceed to the 3rd page (ie by clicking the two buttons) before 4pm, say 3:58pm, making sure everything is fine, then go back to the first page (submit form) with the browser's back button, submit at 3:59pm, and click "check the status" at 4:00:01. this will pull one's original submission from among the previous day's last ones to the first one(s) of the next day's.

this is just my conjecture; hope it works...i will try it next time.

we are not like them!

in 1968, realizing the unpopularity of the communist party in czech, the leader of the party decided to reform itself, creating more freedom in czech. the movement is known as the prague spring.

however, it was quickly shut down by the soviet union, with the invasion of czech by more than 200000 troops.

starting from 1985, with gorbachev's coming to power, things started to change. in '88, the 20th anniversary of the prague spring, there was large demonstration. in november '89, in response to the collapse of the nearby communist party's regimes, college students in prague initiated a peaceful demonstration, which was ended by violence from the police. large scale strikes led by the students ensued, whose culmination was a demonstration of 0.5 million citizens of prague. the parents all backed up their younger generation. on that occasion, vaclav havel, in an attempt to calm the crowd, told them "we are not like them", and the demonstration remained peaceful.

on 11/28/89, the party gave up the power, and a new era began.

notes on x11

x was originally developed in mit in '84 on system v, with the goal of not having much hardware dependence; the version 11, x11, appeared in sep '87

x386: the first x windows system based on intel 386 cpu, '91, based on x11r4, later became proprietary

'92: xfree86 (cf x-three-86): open source successor to x386; maintained x11r6

x.org: took over from xfree86; x11r6.7 onwards; '05: x11r7

xdarwin: apple's implementation of x server in os 10.3 and before, based on bsd

x11.app = xquartz: apple's implementation of x server for os 10.4 and later

in 10.4: x11r6.6, based on xfree86 4.4

in 10.5: x11r7.2, based on x.org




x server: for local user, handles local machine (monitor, mouse, keyboard, etc)

x client: remote server; creates data for plotting

window manager (e.g., gnome, kde): contains software for x client

startx: a shell script to set up x server, get parameters from x client; then xinit

xinit [client option]--[server/display option]
(eg xterm)

spring equinox

looking at the west; sun setting at about 6pm

it's a holiday in japan, as well as the persian new year (which makes a lot of sense!)

new mac

with so many troubles with the macbook, the company that sold me the laptop agreed to give me a replacement. after waiting for few weeks, the new one finally arrived.

when i turned it on, i selected to use the migration assistant to transfer data from the time machine. it worked remarkably well (note: both computers need to be set to use the ethernet in case they are connected by an ethernet cable) -- most of things got copied over. i only needed to set up the mouse, printer, network setting by hand. some non-apple-native applications that i installed in the application folder, such as topcat, gimp, also needed re-installation. i was happy to find out that instead of iwork+ilife '08, they gave me iwork+ilife '09.

pretty soon i realized there were some problems:

• grab didn't work perfectly: when trying to grab a sm window, all i got was an image with the bar on the top, and blank everywhere else (NOTE: it turned out that downloading the latest x11 from xquartz project fixed (?) the problem...)
  
• finder didn't work: i couldn't find pdf files that i knew exist (NOTE: it turned out re-indexing spotlight solves the problem)
• java didn't seem to work perfectly; some java programs worked, but topcat didn't
  

are these due to the settings i had with the previous laptop? not sure...probably will have to do a re-installation, then copy data from the backup disk. sigh...

chandra

just finished reading the biography of subrahmanyan chandrasekhar by kameshwar wali. this is an excellent biography, written with great care, clarity, and authority, as the author was apparently a close friend of chandra's, and over the course for the preparation of the book, he and chandra had numerous conversations. it vividly recounts the life of a great astrophysicist and a humble person, his days in cambridge, his migration to the university of chicago, and his long term service to the astronomy community as a distinguished editor of the astrophysical journal. chandra's view points are revealed through his own letters, especially correspondences with chandra's father and family. the last chapter of the book contains several conversations between the author and chandra, and serves as a good source to further understanding the mind and thoughts of the master.

the book on amazon

a conference on dark energy

http://member.ipmu.jp/darkenergy09/welcome.html

hosted by the institute for the physics and mathematics of the universe (ipmu), in june '09, in the kashiwa campus of the university of tokyo

i made the webpages, with the help of the beautiful picture of odaiba taken from here

badmington

每球獲勝者得分 並取得發球權

單打時 發球者的分數為偶數時 站在右邊發球 單數則在左邊發

雙打時 發球隊的分數為偶數時 由右邊球員發球 反之則由左邊球員發 若得分 則發球員移到另一邊
的發球區發球

table tennis

11分的比賽 每人發兩球
21分的比賽 每人發五球
若是打成10平 或是20平 則每發一球便交替發球 直到一方領先兩分為止

不論發球者 贏球者得分

the curious case of benjamin button

a very touching movie

directed by david fincher, who has worked with brad pitt for several movies (fight club, seven)

the music is great; a playlist of the soundtrack is on youtube

iweb '08

some random tips

• even for "blank" template page, there are 3 sections: header, body, and footer. one can turn on "view -> show layout" to see the boundaries of these
• use the inspector -> page layout to set the dimension of the page, and each of the sections
• to put a textbox inside footer area: create the box in the main area, then option+click it to drag it to the footer, then delete the original box
  
• there doesn't seem to be a way to group objects together as in powerpoint
• there's no way to make tables in iweb; alternatives are using either pages or keynote (or the like) to generate tables, and copy and paste to iweb; however, iweb will treat those created by keynote as images, while treating those made in pages as text boxes
• when iweb is started, it's not possible to stop the annoying pop up window asking if you want to join the damn mobile me service from appearing. (in iweb '09 now there's an option to disable this window)
  

although there are certain respectable features of iweb, but given the absence of some important tools, plus my bad experience with macbook thus far, all the glorious lines in apple's ads just seem pompous and even disgusting...

connotea

one of the nuisances in migrating to a different computer is the transfer of data. one way to solve for this is to store data on the internet.

since long time ago i stopped to download new papers to my local disk, but rather bookmarked the interesting papers listed on the archive server. although transferring bookmark list is not a big deal, recently i switched to using connotea to keep my bookmarks for papers online. as this service is provided by nature publication company, i suppose it won't easily go away; furthermore, the archive server conveniently provides a way to bookmark papers with connotea.

if the doi of a paper is known, it can also be added to connotea. it seems that papers listed on ads can be easily bookmarked by connotea.

i think the best feature of connotea (and other online bookmark systems) is to be able to label papers by various tags. a paper usually doesn't belong to one single category, and so it's sometimes difficult to decide which folder to put it in.

os x questions

• how to always open the finder window in a certain view?
• safari: how to configure to open new pages in a new tab (rather than doing command+click)?
• how to navigate to the first and last page of a pdf file in preview? (or, what's the key combination for home and end?)
  

quake!

the first earthquake i noticed since arriving in japan last october...

the epicenter is ibaraki-ken, scale is 3; in kashiwanoha the scale is only 1.

http://www.jma.go.jp/jp/quake/

troubles with macbook

i got my macbook last december, but it already created lots of trouble for me.

about a month ago, a noise started to occur whenever i tried to close the lid/screen; i took it to the apple store and they said it needed to be replaced. thankfully within two days i got the laptop back.

the first backup with time machine after getting the laptop back tried to copy the whole content of the hard drive; probably the time capsule thought it's a new laptop (in some ways). therefore i lost ~60 gb of storage space on the time capsule.

also occasionally when i tried to find some files, although the status bar at the bottom of the finder window indicated that it had found some matches, in the icon view it appeared to be blank; only when i switched to the list or column views i could see the search results.

i googled but didn't find other users complain about this kind of situation. i called apple care and they first suggested me to do a safe boot, that is, shutting down the laptop, then turning on the power while pressing the shift button. the mac will enter a safe boot mode. after booting up successfully, shut down the computer again.

this didn't help; i was then suggested to do a re-installation of os x: using the installation disk, clicking on "install os x", following on-screen instructions until the "select destination drive" (or something like that) step, selecting "option" on the lower left, clicking both "archive & install" and "preserve setting & user account" boxes.

i've just done this (taking about 2hrs), but am not sure if it really solves my problem. hope it does.

###################################################

it turns out the above re-installation didn't solve the problem. the blank finder problem (and other graphic-related issues) remained. fortunately the company that sold me the laptop is kind enough to let me get a replacement.

now i have to think how to transfer data, either from the current laptop or from the time capsule, to the new laptop...

a paper

http://ads.nao.ac.jp/full/1968ApJ...152..577W

this was the last paper by the author, john waddell iii. in its original form, the paper was very long and was rejected for publication in apj. the author was very upset upon receiving the rejection letter from the editor, the famous "chandra", and stormed out with his car and got killed later in a car accident. chandra was sympathetic of this and asked the referees to edit and condense the paper to a publishable form, and the paper eventually got published.

mount fuji from my apartment?!

america

a land with ample supply of paper towels in restrooms

with icy toilet seats
with real non-smoking restaurants

with the nuisance of tipping and paying tax when dining out
with the blessing of extremely good return policy

crazy

前幾天在電車上看到一個廣告

一家電視台要播關於world heritage的節目

標題叫"the世界遺產"

總覺得不倫不類

冠詞在那是做什麼的?

此乃抵日後所見最怪異之現象

setting up useful tools in os 10.5

-- install fink (comes with finkcommander), scisoft

-- install sm

read sm.install first!

then run make in the sm2_4_28 directory. then sudo make install in the same directory.

NOTE: as noted in http://geordie.astro.uiuc.edu/mac.html#sm, I need to substitute
XLIB11 = -lX11
for
XLIB11 = -L/USR/X11R6/lib -lX11
in the src/Makefile file to compile sm.

put .sm in home directory.

-- install MacTeX, which includes TeXShop

move texmf to ~/Library

-- next, some steps for x11. following helpful tips given here, I create the following files to put in my home directory:

.xinitrc:
###########################################################
#!/bin/sh

userresources=$HOME/.Xresources
usermodmap=$HOME/.Xmodmap
sysresources=/etc/X11/xinit/.Xresources
sysmodmap=/etc/X11/xinit/.Xmodmap

# merge in defaults and keymaps

if [ -f $sysresources ]; then
xrdb -merge $sysresources
fi

if [ -f $sysmodmap ]; then
xrdb -merge $sysmodmap
fi

if [ -f $userresources ]; then
xrdb -merge $userresources
fi

if [ -f $usermodmap ]; then
xrdb -merge $usermodmap
fi

# initialise programs below
# xterm &
# start the window manager

exec quartz-wm
###########################################################

.login:
###########################################################
source /usr/share/tcsh/examples/login
###########################################################

.logout:
###########################################################
source /usr/share/tcsh/examples/logout
###########################################################

.cshrc
###########################################################
setenv TERM xterm-color
setenv CLICOLOR true
setenv LSCOLORS exfxcxdxbxegedabagacad
# set color ls options

source /usr/share/tcsh/examples/rc
# sourced handy defaults

test -r /sw/bin/init.csh && source /sw/bin/init.csh

source /Applications/scisoft/all/bin/Setup.csh

set path=($path . )
###########################################################

in addition I also download Xcode 3.1.2 Developer Tools from
https://connect.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/MemberSite.woa/204/wo/4R4sFKmLiB8s3DbJsyXUK9qgCeq/7.1.17.2.1.3.3.1.1.1.1.0.3.4.3.3.1
and install Developer Tools Essentials and UNIX Development Support

this installs gcc; for gfortran, I download the compiler here

then update x11 to the latest version from xquartz project website

-- ssh: as I'm using a new laptop, I need to create a key, then transport it to the machines I want to connect to. using file sharing to first transfer my new pub key to my old laptop, then use it to transfer the key to the servers I work with.

here and here provide good tips.

the basic idea is, on the local machine, type "ssh-keygen -t dsa", then somehow transport the .ssh/id_dsa.pub key to the server, and append it to the ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file on the server.


-- for astronomers, starlink and scisoft are useful collection of tools to have, despite their big sizes

set a reply-to address in gmail

from this gmail help page:

to define a reply-to address:
1. click 'Settings' at the top of any gmail page, and open the 'Accounts' tab.
2. click 'edit info' next to your email address.
3. click 'Specify a different "reply-to" address' in the dialogue box.
4. enter the address to which you want the recipient(s) to reply.
5. click 'Save Changes.'

alternatively, one can configure gmail to send and receive emails from other accounts. these pages describe how to do that:

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=22370
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=34528
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=22377

some tips in using os 10.5

• to name the computer: system preferences -> sharing
• to enable root: see this article
• to change the login shell: as root, run "chsh -s /path/to/the/shell username"
• using eps figures in latex (MacTex+TeXShop): in TeXShop's preference, in the typesetting pane, select "tex+ghostscript"
• to combine all opened safari windows: window -> merge all windows
• to navigate through the tabs in safari: shift+command+right/left keys
  
• to sort safari's bookmarks: use bookdog, which is not a free software, but you can download it and sort the bookmarks with a trial version
• to have preview open all images in one window: preferences -> images, select "open all images in one window"
• to customize the toolbar of preview and finder window: view -> customize toolbar
• to navigate through the tabs in firefox: option+command+right/left keys
• to view pdf files directly within firefox: install pdf plugin
• enable 3-button setting for mouse
• to remove the icon for modem on the top bar: command click the icon to drag it off the bar
• it's not necessary to wirelessly connect to a time capsule; one can connect the laptop and the capsule with an ethernet cable
• spotlight indexes the hard drive, that's why it can find things quickly; if for some reason spotlight doesn't work well, one can try to re-index the hard drive; see this article
• can set up the trackpad so that tap the trackpad with two fingers functions as clicking the right button
• to change the default application to open certain file types, right click the file, choose "get info", then click the triangle next to "open with", select the desired program/application
• to automatically resize a windown, option+click the green button on the upper left corner of a window
• in itunes, when importing a cd, but the album/track info from the cddb is wrong, can edit the album/track info, then submit the correct info back to cddb; or, in the case of selecting the wrong album when there's multiple entries of the cd, can use "advanced -> get cd track names" and select again
• this is not os x, but a general unix/linux trick: to go back to the previous directory, use cd -
• to save a ppt presentation as a pdf file, can use print -> save as pdf
• note that time machine doesn't back up things in the trash
• to change the number of items remembered in "recent items": System Preferences -> Appearance
• in Finder, view options: hold the option key will make "restore to default" appear!
• to disable the sidebar when opening pdf files with Preview: preferences -> pdf -> check "show sidebar only for table of contents"
  

some sites that have useful tips in using mac os x:
http://macsingularity.org/astrowiki/tiki-index.php

http://geordie.astro.uiuc.edu/mac.html
http://developer.apple.com/opensource/tools/runningx11.html
http://users.ociw.edu/jrigby/osx.html
http://hitoshi.berkeley.edu/macosx/
http://www.icg.port.ac.uk/~edmonde/mac.html

migration from powerbook to macbook

剛買了新的13" macbook, 花了一番功夫把資料從原先用的15" powerbook g4傳到新的電腦上. 藉此記下過程以供日後參考.

一開始的時候, 用了os x提供的migration assistant. 雖說很方便, 但因為我不知道怎麼只選擇部份的東西拷到新電腦上, 因而powerbook上許多舊的, 過時的設定, 也都跟著傳了過去. 在網上找了這篇, 裡面提供了許多有用的技巧, 值得參考.

我在舊電腦上跑的是os x 10.4, 而新電腦上的是10.5.

建議是
(1) 先將新的電腦設好(也就是略過migration assistant): network, trackpad, timezone, expose/spaces, etc. Note that in both laptops I use the same username.
(2) 然後是software update
(3) 為電腦取名: system preferences -> sharing; 在同個視窗內選擇 file sharing
(4) 下載及安裝thunderbird, skype 等需要的軟體
(5) 在舊電腦上, 將file sharing打開, 用網路線連接兩台電腦 (note: there's no firewire port in 13" macbook!)

我要migrate的軟體包括safari, thunderbird, skype, ical, itunes, x11. 以下簡單說明:

safari - 我要的只是書籤. 只要將~/Library/Safari/Bookmarks.plist copy到新電腦上的同個資料夾即可
thunderbird - follow the instructions on this page; basically (quoted from that page):

• Locate your Default Thunderbird Profile folder named "XXXXXX.default" where the X's are a random mix of numbers and letters. On a Mac running OS X it's located in your Home folder (or if you have multiple users on your Mac, your user account's folder) > Library > Thunderbird > Profiles.
• Copy all the files in the Default folder to the new computer over the network.
• Start up the "new" Mac running Mac OS X and download, install & launch Thunderbird. By launching Thunderbird, the program will create a new Default Profile in Home > Library > Thunderbird > Profiles.
• Shut down Thunderbird.
• Move the contents of the Default folder from the "old" Mac to the "new" Mac's Default Profile for Thunderbird. Again, the Default Profile folder is located in Home > Library > Thunderbird > Profiles and is named "XXXXXXX.default" where the X's stand for random characters.

skype - 使用者資料存在~/Library/Application Support/Skype. 將資料夾裡面的user的folders copy到新電腦上的同個folder

ical - 在舊電腦中將calendar export為 .ics檔 傳到新電腦上 再import

itunes - 把原先的itunes library (~/Music/iTunes/) copy過來

x11 - 把 .XDefaults, .cshrc, .vimrc, etc 拷到新電腦上

最後, 一些零碎的設定:

skype - 避免他在每次login時自動啓動, 到system preferences -> account中的login items, 刪掉skype

x11 - in x11's preference, select "emulate 3 button mouse"

finder - open a finder window, set it the way you want, then click "use as default", then all finder windows will appear the way you like