Source Code Management (SCM) is one of those things that computer scientists and geeks love to talk about, and I think I've just worked out why! When you get a new SCM tool working, and the coin drops - it's awesome! It's like the most impressive Hello World ever. Previously I've used Concurrent Versions System (CVS), which is the only time I've actively collaborated on a software project, and when I started my PhD I used Subversion. I'm a follower of fashion when it comes to SCMs, and as you've probably seen, Git has been spotted all over the internet. So I thought I'd investigate, and this is what I've discovered after using it for around 3 months.

read more...

SQL is really very useful. This single query allows me to find the greatest range of a particular variable for every day in my database (which is over 5000 days) read more...

Coda is a pretty good application for web development, and for a version 1.0 bit of software it's also fairly polished. However it's not excellent, and there are a couple of quirks which annoy me enough to write this:

read more...

I do like my graphical front ends; but I am also quite partial the the unix back end of OS X. The AI of SAMRAI stands for Application Infrastructure, which means that it is essentially a lot of code that helps someone wishing to develop a parallel adaptive mesh refinement application do exactly that. Applications are built using the Makefile system; SAMRAI has a configure file, so that it can be incorporated into the developer's own Makefile.

To use Xcode with SAMRAI, it just requires modifiying some build settings, and adding some libraries. Here's what you do...

read more...

I actually started this post around early April, but discovered that my SAMRAI install wasn't actually quite right; which took me a month or so to sort out. Eventually I got SAMRAI and a Level Set Method library working. Only now have I found time to putting some information on the web that some people might find useful.

read more...