Semianalytical

• 2012-11-01

  

  During hurricane Sandy, I took a few photos of my living lighted only with my beeswax candle. Sometimes it’s nice to experience life without electricity.

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  matplotlib.pyplot — changing line styles real-time

  Just figured out how to do this… how to change the line styles (and markers, for that matter) AFTER making the plots. So I won’t need to replot everything if I want to change line color!

  Here’s how to do it:

  >>> line, = plt.plot(arange(10.))
  >>> plt.setp(line, linestyle='--')  # change from solid line to dashed line

  if I want to know what options are possible for a given keyword (say ‘linestyle’), then I can say 

  >>> plt.setp(line, 'linestyle')
  >>> linestyle: [ ``'-'`` | ``'--'`` | ``'-.'`` | ``':'`` | ``'None'`` | ``' '`` | ``''`` ]         and any drawstyle in combination with a linestyle, e.g. ``'steps--'``.

  Recently I’ve also found topcat to be extremely useful for exploratory data analysis. One can load in fits table, do some selections, create new columns using existing columns, and quickly make some plots. The UI is also easy to use (although does need some getting used to at first), and it’s quite fast. Another tool to use in the future!

• 2012-07-21

  Just visited Lucid cafe on 38th St and Lexington. Good Latte, friendly barista from Korea!

• 2012-07-19

  

  Recently came back from a trip to Japan. The main purpose of the trip was to attend my cousin’s wedding in Tokyo, but I also toured other places like Sendai, Matsushima, Yamadera, and Kanazawa. I also met my friend in Sendai after 9 years. Even though Japan is not my home country, I often feel nostalgic because everything reminds me of Taiwan. It is mysterious to me how I can feel nostalgic in a place that I’ve never been to before… but it just happened.

• 2011-12-13

  

  More construction on campus.

• 2011-12-07

  

  Homewood Museum was open on Monday night for the “Candle Light” event. We walked around the house, listened to the histories of the house, and enjoyed some eggnog and gingerbread cookies. A string quartet from Peabody performed Haydn’s work while we walked around. A nice way to spend an hour on a weekday evening.

• 2011-08-08

  

  Ramsey is my friend’s cat who will stay in my living room until Thursday. He also likes to wake people up at 5am in the morning.

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  Last Friday we went to a baseball game in Camden Yard, the home stadium of Baltimore Orioles. After the game there was a firework show (which is why we went to the game). Although Orioles are losing like crazy recently, still a lot of fans showed up and showed their support. I’m not sure when Orioles will start winning again… well but at least there is the firework show.

• 2011-08-01

  

  Another shot of Pavlov. I’ve gotta have a shot of the other cocker in the house, too!

• 2011-07-27

  

  Pavlov is an English cocker spaniel in my house. He is actually my landlord’s dog (along with another American cocker). He has a very shy personality — whenever someone walks in the house he will become very nervous and back away from that person and bark loudly at the same time. He is said to have lost his mother at birth and that might be the reason for his shyness (so it appears to my landlady). It took me about a month to get over his fear of me after I moved in, but now he’s kind of attached to me! I give him rubs on his tummy sometimes and he loves that very much.