Category: Software

Online Scientific Python: Wakari

If you like Python, want to analyze data online, and are interested in a standardized environment that can be easily shared, read on:

Continuum Analytics is offering a new beta: Wakari. You can register…



Post publication peer review

Post publication peer review has yet to really take off, but Labrigger hopes it does. One of the newest sites is PubPeer.

PubPeer does it right, allowing for anonymity. This is important in order to obtain…



Aftermarket iPhones and Canon camera software for scientific applications

Sometimes it’s possible to use aftermarket software (or firmware) to make consumer products function for lab applications. In this post, I’ll cover some software for iOS cameras and Canon cameras that add functions useful for scientific…



Interview with the developers of HelioScan

Last Monday, Labrigger covered HelioScan, a LabVIEW-based, two-photon laser scanning microscopy software suite.

Marcel van ‘t…



HelioScan software for imaging

HelioScan is a LabVIEW-based software suite from Fritjof Helmchen’s group that is specialized for running 2 photon microscopes, and is carefully designed to be modular. This modularity is intended to make it more…



LabVIEW Style Guide

LabVIEW is a great tool, but the block diagrams can become a mess if the programmer isn’t careful. This book was recommended to me by David Ferster, whose LabVIEW code is very…



Getting NEURON to run on OS X with Python support

UPDATED!
This question has come up a number of times recently: how does one get NEURON to run with Python support on OS X.

At this time, there’s no simple way to install NEURON with Python support any more because Eilif’s package is outdated and won’t run with current EPD and XCode versions. The…



Micro-Manager

Micro-Manager (µ-Manager) is an open, ImageJ-based suite of code for controlling microscopes and associated instrumentation. Check out the list of supported equipment.



DIY Superresolution

Quickpalm is an open source software package for DIY PALM and STORM implementations. They’re responsive on their discussion forum and have a wiki with a decent amount of technical information.



SOFA, open stats

If you’d like to read some deep, wide-ranging philosophical discussions about R, an open statistics software package, then I wonder why we’re friends. But since we are, here are some links, you psychopath:
“R is a programming language missing a GUI”



Z-Projections

To project 3D image stacks to a 2D image, several different algortithms can be used. Maximum projections and averages are the most commonly used. Neither…



GIMP 2.8

GIMP is an open source image editing program. You can use it for a lot of the same things Adobe Photoshop is used for.

They just released version 2.8 (release notes).

In addition to…



Scrivener for the first draft

Writing a first draft is almost a completely different sport compared to editing and revising. It’s the most creative part of the writing effort. The work flow incorporates outlines, research notes, references, organization, re-organization,…



Visual stimuli for mice

By virtue of their small eyes, mice enjoy a large depth of field. In a classic experiment (buried in the methods section) Balkema and Pinto put +6, 0, and -7 diopter lenses in…



Optical recognition of resistor codes

This is an iOS/iPhone app that uses the camera to optically recognize resistor color code bands. I find this interesting because I tried writing something like this one time. I couldn’t sleep at 3am…