Category: Software

Nature article on releasing source code

Nature just published a 4-page perspective article on the important of releasing the source code for programs used in scientific research. The authors emphasize the importance of reproducibility for results that depend…



Open Microscopy Environment, for managing microscope images

The Open Microscopy Environment (OME) is a group of programmers, from academia and industry, who put together open source software packages for managing microscopy data. The emphasis is on handing multiple image formats, organizing…



OpenElectrophy – for multielectrode recordings

OpenElectrophy is a somewhat mature, actively developed, open source program for analyzing data from multielectrode recordings. It makes heavy use of Python and SQL and is developed by a team of French researchers…



3D Sketch-up models for Newport parts

Thorlabs and Newport have offered 3D models of their products for a long time. However, they’re typically in formats for expensive programs like SolidWorks and AutoCAD. In the past year or two, Newport has been slowly adding to their library of Google SketchUp models.



Competition

Like many of you, I went to monster truck show last weekend.

The competition reminded me MATLAB’s new thing: Cody.

It’s a bunch of problems posed as MATLAB coding tasks. For example:

Find the mean…



MATLAB command locateVal

In two previous posts I shared some MATLAB code to help design collection optics in 2p scopes.
Collection optics for 2p scopes, post 1
Collection optics for 2p scopes, post 2
It was just brought to my attention that I didn’t include the command locateVal in the code I posted. It’s a very…



MATLAB Mobile for iOS

On the topic of iOS apps, MATLAB has released v3.0 of their mobile app. The most apparent changes are UI usability improvements.
(MATLAB link, App Store link)



Spectra viewing app for iOS

Zeiss released an iOS app for viewing spectra.

No Android version yet, but Johannes Amon said:

of course I can’t tell you any specifics but at the moment we are evaluating a…



Software for visual psychophysics

This site has a nice big list of software for visual psychophysics. It’s very extensive and includes free as well as commercial solutions: visual stimuli, analysis, teaching, hardware, and more.



Virtual desktops on Windows

Virtual desktops are used to manage screen real estate. A user might have a bunch of web browsers open on the desktop, and then hit a key to switch to a nice clean…



More MATLAB learning

On the topic of MATLAB learning materials (covered previously here and lots more MATLAB stuff here), MIT has some online courses freely available. Here’s an “aggressively gentle” intro to MATLAB,…



Use ScanImage? Support it. It’s free.

ScanImage is an excellent software package for controlling 2p scopes. It’s free and open source. It’s been actively developed and released to…



Raster plots and MATLAB

A colleague once told me: “in MATLAB, drawing a raster plot is a trivial, one line command”. True, but then you spend another 10 lines of code trying to make it not look like…



Tycho Brahe

Like the Mayan astronomers over 600 years before him, Tycho Brahe was a data factory. A data factory in the same vein as…



Stop Safari from reloading tabs

Apple’s Safari web browser v5.1 has an annoying behavior where tabs reload/refresh like crazy. This can cause lost work and data.

Disable the problematic behavior this way:
1. Close Safari

2. Open a terminal and enter this command

defaults write com.apple.safari IncludeInternalDebugMenu 1


3. Restart Safari. You should see a new menu to the right of…