New Laptop

This page will now contain discussion of the configuration of my new laptop. All the stuff about choosing what to buy has now (22 May 2005) been moved to NewLaptopChoosing

Update 01 Jun 2005:

Merge in stuff from MacSoftware. Notes on various programs I might want to download for my Mac once I get hold of it, together with configuration tips I have gleaned from different places.

General configuration

http://www.macosxhints.com/

Lots of apps at http://osx.groovie.org/, supposedly "for Power Users and Unix Switchers"

By the same guy who wrote "Dive into python" we have http://diveintoosx.org/ (main page offline at the moment 31 May 2005 but you can still get to sub-pages via google)

The unofficial Apple weblog http://www.tuaw.com/

Ars Technica have an excellent article aimed at new Mac users who have switched from Windows or Linux: http://arstechnica.com/guides/tweaks/miniguide.ars

Change hidden parameters in OSX

http://www.bresink.de/osx/TinkerTool.html

TinkerTool is an application that gives you access to additional preference settings Apple has built into Mac OS X. This allows to activate hidden features in the operating system and in some of the applications delivered with the system.

using Spotlight

http://developer.apple.com/macosx/spotlight.html

The command line tools look interesting.

Filesystems

Support for non-hfs filesystems, like ext3. Will I be able to just mount my Hitachi 2.5" drive?

ext2 support: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fsx/

However, this does not work in 10.4 and there is no prospect of it doing so any time soon (mailing list thread)

Looks like I will not be able to share the 80GB disk between powerbook and thinkpad. If I want to use it with the mac I will have to reformat it as HFS+. Then I can use spotlight on it ....

Graphics

Canvas

Python

It seems that 10.4 already comes with python

Extra stuff, upgrades, etc at

http://undefined.org/python/

and

http://pythonmac.org/

RSS stuff

HOW-TO: Make a customized RSS screensaver in Tiger

http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000687043662/

RSS reader in case safari-rss doesn't cut it

http://ranchero.com/netnewswire/

This costs $30 but there is a free version with reduced features

Astronomy stuff

Good list at

http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/~nridge/osxastro/

IRAF

http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~marcosh/iraf/

ssh/scp/sftp client

http://rsug.itd.umich.edu/software/fugu/

graphical interface for command-line programs

http://rsug.itd.umich.edu/software/ihook/

application launcher

Quicksilver

you can also use spotlight

Fortran compiler

Testing of open source fortran compilers on linux/i86 to make sure they work on my codebase. They better do, or I will have to shell out 1000 dollars for a commercial compiler.

gfortran

http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/GFortranBinariesMacOS

Manages to successfully compile all in ~/IFshape/new-src/ after a trivial edit. A bit slower than the intel compiler.

Failures

Implicit loops in array constructors

Cannot deal with lines like

real :: a(n)
a = (/ (real(i)/real(n), i = 1, n) /)

g95

Successfully compiles ~/IFshape/new-src/ including the implicit loops in the array initialization expressions.

Timings

             gfortran    g95         ifort8
ifshapenew   0m48.424s   0m56.494s   0m37.502s