Michael V. DePalatis 2011-04-16T18:49:19-04:00 http://mike.depalatis.net/docs.html http://mike.depalatis.net/docs/mpllatex.html 2010-09-01T14:14:31-04:00

## General considerations [Matplotlib][] can be extremely useful for plotting, though it requires a little work in order to make the output be publication quality. Primarily, the default figure size does not conform to the golden mean. This is easy enough to fix by editing the `matplotlibrc.py` file (or changing it on the fly with calls to `matplotlib.pyplot.rc`). To get optimal results, it's good to make the figure size fit into a LaTeX document without resizing (this is because we don't want the fonts to be so tiny as to be unreadable). The long explanation on how to do this is [here][mpl-w-latex]. I have determined reasonable sizes and axes parameters to use for some different document classes and put them in a [file][mplparams.py] that I keep in my `$PYTHONPATH`. For example, if I a...

http://mike.depalatis.net/docs/gplatex.html 2010-09-01T17:10:47-04:00

There are a few different ways to get figures to look pretty when included in LaTeX documents. The main concern is to have the font of the figure to match that of the rest of the document. The easiest way to do this is to compile all the text with LaTeX rather than trying to [specify specific fonts yourself][psfontfile]. Options include: 1. Using the `fig` terminal and converting to eps or pdf with the `fig2eps` or `fig2pdf` utilities from the [fig2ps][] project. 2. Using a terminal like `epslatex`. This generates both tex and eps files which can be included in any LaTeX document or combined into one file for use elsewhere. [psfontfile]: http://had.fmf.uni-lj.si/~horvat/publishing/gnuplot4.x/ps_fontfile_doc.pdf [fig2ps]: http://fig2ps.sourceforge.net/ ## Using the `fig` termi...

http://mike.depalatis.net/docs/python-tricks.html 2009-07-30T18:13:46-04:00

<!--UPDATE--> A list of various tips and tricks for doing neat things in Python. ## NumPy Tricks * To sort an array `x` by rows: `x_sorted = x[np.argsort(x[:,0]),:]` ...

http://mike.depalatis.net/docs/accidental-discoveries.html 2009-07-27T14:45:16-04:00

<!--UPDATE--> Here I compile neat things I have initially discovered by accident. * [GNU Screen](http://www.gnu.org/software/screen/)'s copy mode. If you do `C-a [`, you will enter screen's "copy mode." You can move the cursor around with vi-like keybindings (or the arrow keys) and mark the beginning of the text you want to copy with space. Hit enter when you've selected everything you want, and you can then paste it anywhere within screen with `C-a ]`. ...

http://mike.depalatis.net/docs/lenovos10-debian.html 2009-07-27T14:24:00-04:00

I just got a Lenovo It of course needed a Windows exorcism followed by a fresh installation of Debian. Here is a quick rundown of what had to be done. Several of the first few steps are generic to USB installs. * Get Debian Installer on a USB drive. There are several ways to do this, but I chose to the easy The process is [well documented](http://d-i.alioth.debian.org/manual/en.i386/ch04s03.html). In short, you download the boot image from <mirror>/debian/dists/lenny/main/installer-i386/current/images/hd-media/boot.img.gz. This can be written to a USB drive using zcat boot.img.gz > /dev/sdc where /dev/sdc is the device rather than the partition. Once this is done mount /dev/sdc1 somewhere and copy a netinstall or business card ISO image into it. Unmount and remove. * Boot th...