Tool of the Week: Stack Exchange

Over the past few months I've gotten a handful of requests on this blog to help write a custom piece of code. There are a couple reasons I don't do this: Ain't Nobody Got Time For Dat! One of the most valuable parts of my 10.5 years of higher education was learning how to learn. If I just gave you answers,...Read More

Reflections on Grad School: Tools and Tricks I wish I knew all along

I've done it! I've gotten my Ph.D.!  Here's a few things I wish I had done from the very beginning. Enjoy Yourself. You're going to take 4-8 years investing in yourself. This is time you've set aside to educate yourself about a subject you're hopefully passionate about.  Along the way, you'll learn a tonne about a multitude of subjects! Besides...Read More

Rounding to Order of Magnitude in Matlab

Knowing what order of magnitude a number is can be really helpful when performing analysis.  I find this especially useful when setting my color-scale using caxis. To find the order of magnitude of a number, denoted as O(10n) of some number A in matlab, use: n=floor( log10(A)); [caption id="attachment_1179" align="alignright" width="300"] Example: Say I want to plot this constrained to some integer value of 10^n....Read More

Tool of the Week: Online 3D printing (rapid prototyping)

[caption id="attachment_863" align="alignright" width="150" caption="The Cube 3D printer or the makerbot could be a really fun engineering teaching tool."][/caption] Recently, I've been super intrigued by online 3D printing services (Aka: cloud printing, rapid prototyping).  The principal is simple: You upload a modle to a website, it's printed on a rapid prototyper machine, and mailed to you. I've found 3 services online that...Read More

Tool of the Week: Evernote

Evernote is a free app for windows, pc, and smartphones, and is a great way to remember stuff. [caption id="attachment_584" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Evernote Screenshot"][/caption] For research: I love being able to quickly snap screen shots of plots and clip them to Evernote, with a description of what's going on and what i'm working on daily. I can easily e-mail a...Read More