Trip Report: South Arapaho (Or: Lessons Learned From a Day of Digging...)

Posted on by mrsoltys
With one of my best friends from college in town, we were anxious to do some hiking in the Indian Peaks Wilderness, just a short drive from Boulder. Ignoring the many suggestions that it was too early to climb South Arapaho Peak, we figured we were burly, and with snowshoes and enough time we could climb the peak no problem....Read More

Trip Report: Fruita Mountain Biking, Spring 2012

Posted on by mrsoltys
Well, Spring break is over.  I had to work most of the week, but thursday night I set out with 20 of my closest friends for a weekend of camping and mountain biking at Fruita, CO.  This was  my third trip out to Fruita, and I really love the area: it offers really amazing scenery and super unique terrain, and...Read More

MATLAB Tip: Logarithmic color-scales for contour and image plots

Posted on by mrsoltys
[caption id="attachment_761" align="alignright" width="392"] Logarithmic Color-bar for Contour Plot[/caption] A lot of my data ranges orders of magnitude, and can be very hard to depict using standard MATLAB functions like imagesc, contourf, contour, etc.  A quick google search on how to make logarithmic contour plots and logarithmic color-bars yielded some unhelpful results, so I thought I'd give a quick post here. 1) Define Your Contours Define where you'd like...Read More

Took of the week: KeepVid.com

Posted on by mrsoltys
I teach at a public school that has amazing technology resources: many students are given laptops and there are ample computers around the school. One problem I run into quite often is YouTube is blocked from any computer on the district's internet. Now, I'm not going to say anything negative on the district's policy to block youtube: It can be...Read More

Tool of the Week: GitHub

Posted on by mrsoltys
In any sort of research, chances are you're going to have to write some code, be it in Matlab, R, or Javascript, or some other processing language.  Having the ability to share your codes with others, and truly collorabirate is extremly useful in being productive.  You could share your codes via a file sharing service like Dropbox, but at least...Read More

Tool of the Week: Making Animations in Matlab

Posted on by mrsoltys
Once you've made a pretty plot in Matlab, making an animation might help you understand temporal phenomena.  Making an animation is super easy in matlab, weither you're working with figures or images.  There are two methods to do this, but the most robust is using the VideoWriter class.  It's compatible with all versions of quicktime on both Mac and PC.  Here's how you do it: 1)...Read More

Trip Report: Brighton Ski Resort

Posted on by mrsoltys
As I mentioned in my previous post, I'm in Salt Lake City, UT for the 2012 ocean sciences conference.  Today I thought i'd take a break from the morning sessions and ski, getting back in time for one of my lab-mate's poster sessions in the afternoon. The road to Alta and Snowbird was closed due to an avalanche in the canyon,  so I decided to...Read More

Update - JEB cover and Ocean Sciences Meeting

Posted on by mrsoltys
[caption id="attachment_714" align="alignright" width="241" caption="My work on the cover of a special issue of the Journal of Experimental Biology"][/caption] I'm in salt lake this week for the 2012 Ocean Sciences Meeting, alongside 4,000 other researchers.  I'm presenting some exciting research findings on friday, and in the mean time I'm learning a lot and trying to network some for future research...Read More

Tool of the Week: Running Multiple Instances of Matlab on Mac

Posted on by mrsoltys
[caption id="attachment_605" align="alignleft" width="249" caption="Notice There are two Matlabs Running!"][/caption] My research often involves running Matlab Code that can take hours to run. Admittedly, Matlab isn't the fastest language out there, but it has super powerful debugging tools, and image processing packages that make it really easy to use for a non-computer scientist. While matlab is running a bit of...Read More

Tool of the Week: PowProject.com

Posted on by mrsoltys
Sometimes figuring out where to go skiing feel's like a roll of the dice.  Where's the snow deep enough to not hit rocks?  Where are the freshies at? In the backcountry, it gets even worse: Will the snow be windswept? Will it be steep enough to ski? Will it be too steep to ski safely? How's the avi danger? How...Read More