Trip Report: Breckenridge Adventure in the SOLWAC

Posted on by mrsoltys
[caption id="attachment_1271" align="alignright" width="394"] The view from the "Subaru Outback Legacy Wagon Adventure Chalet" was amazing.[/caption] Needing a get away: Courtney and I had planned on visiting the Black Canyon of the Gunnison this weekend.  I was excited to see Gunnison, but more excited about my newly discovered knowledge that the seats in my Subaru could fold completely flat: converting the Subaru into the "Subaru Outback Legacy...Read More

Vectorized Binning in Matlab

Posted on by mrsoltys
In fluids modeling, a really easy way to build an model of a scalar (e.g., a polutant or chemical) that is transported by a flowfield is using a particle tracking model. Here, you have millions of finite particles, with x and y locations (and possibly mass).  building code to advect the particles by the flow-field and diffuse them based on...Read More

Choosing a Commuter bike

Posted on by mrsoltys
From time to time, someone will ask me for help buying a bike to ride around town.  While many bike companies make great "around town" bikes, there are a few accessories I would focus on over the bike itself that make up a great commuter.  In order from most importance to least Brakes I'm shocked that I needed to mention...Read More

Tool of the Week: Google Scholar (and your own Scholar Profile)

Posted on by mrsoltys
Google Scholar is a cool tool to find research papers.  If you find a paper you like, you can find similar papers by looking at who cited that paper, and who that paper cited.  (web of knowledge has similar features, but will you require you be at a university or using a VPN to access).  What I've never done before is click...Read More

Monitoring Progress in Matlab

Posted on by mrsoltys
There are a lot of pre-made codes out there to make progress bars for your code.  A lot of these work fine, but some will slow down your code.  The last thing you want is a progress bar that hampers progress. I like the built-in waitbar function in matlab.  It's pretty easy to use following the help dialog, with the caveat that it...Read More

Matlab Tip: Change the color-scheme to be easier on your eyes

Posted on by mrsoltys
Hey Matlab users, here's a quick tip that I hope is helpful.  If you stare at MATLAB for long hours, espically late at night, then changing your color scheme is a quick an easy way to reduce eye strain (and maybe help you sleep better). Our eyes never evolved to stare at a bright white light all day, and research...Read More

Rounding to Order of Magnitude in Matlab

Posted on by mrsoltys
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

Freeing up space on your iPhone: Deleting the "Other" category that takes up space

Posted on by mrsoltys
[caption id="attachment_1161" align="alignright" width="300"] What is this 1.3 GB of "Other" On my phone?![/caption] I get a little irked sometimes on my 8 GB iPhone when I can update an app or download a podcast because I'm out of space.  I usually try deleting some old apps I don't use, or old photos, but what's really annoying is the mysterious "Other" that...Read More

DIY Microwave Popcorn

Posted on by mrsoltys
[caption id="attachment_1154" align="alignright" width="300"] Mmm... Home-made microwave popcorn.[/caption] I love popcorn: It's great brain-food. Popcorn is healthy and light: Pretty much the perfect snack. Store-bought microwave popcorn is usually full of preservatives (unhealthy), and in addition the bag is coated in cancer-linked chemicals.  In addition to that, store bought popcorn normally costs a minimum of $0.60 a bag. I prefer to make my popcorn at...Read More