MacResearch - Online Community and Resource for Mac OS X in Science

In Memoriam: Warren L. DeLano

dgohara — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 02:23:51 +0000

It's with sadness that I bring the news that Warren L. DeLano passed away, suddenly and unexpectedly, on Tuesday November 3rd. For some of you, Warren's name will be instantly recognized. For many more, you know him indirectly as the developer of PyMOL. PyMOL, the open source software he began developing as a graduate student, would eventually become his life's work and has become one of the key tools used by structural biologists the world over.

Which version of Mac OS X is on your primary machine

drc — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 10:00:08 +0000

* 10.0.x * 10.1.x * 10.3.x * 10.4.x * 10.5.x * 10.6.x * Other (Please add a comment)

BioInformatics software

drc — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 09:08:00 +0000

I was recently reading BMC Bioinformatics and came across two papers by Daniel Frank that I thought might be of interest. The first describing XplorSeq a software package that facilitates the compilation, management and phylogenetic analysis of DNA sequences.

Pre-order the Magic Mouse and Help MacResearch

dgohara — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 13:35:40 +0000

As most of you know MacResearch has an Amazon store. If you buy something through our Amazon store we get a percentage of the sale to help keep the site going. We've added Apple's new Magic Mouse (currently pre-ordering). The cost is the same as if you buy it from the main Amazon store.

So if you are considering buying one, please consider getting through our store. You'd be helping us out! Thanks.

Grand Central Dispatch ported to FreeBSD.

drc — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 08:43:31 +0000

A while back Drew McCormack reported that Grand Central Dispatch had been made open source:-

“...allowing Grand Central to be ported to other UNIX/Linux systems will encourage its use. Until today, it would have been very unlikely that any new UNIX tools would be developed on Mac OS X using Grand Central, simply because they would only run on the Mac. With the possibility that Grand Central will become available on other UNIX systems, the likelihood that Grand Central will be incorporated into command line tools is greatly increased.”

OpenCL Tutorial - Shared Memory Kernel Optimization

dgohara — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 17:53:31 +0000

In this episode we'll go over an example of real-world code that has been parallelized by porting to the GPU. The use of shared memory to improve performance is covered as well as a discussion of synchronization points for coordinated work within a work-group. Source code is provided.

In iTunes, you can subscribe to the podcasts by going to:

Advanced -> Subscribe to podcast
URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/opencl

Episode 6 - Shared Memory Kernel Optimization (Desktop/iPhone/iPod touch)
Episode 6 - Shared Memory Kernel Optimization (PDF)
Source code for Episode 6

NSConference 2010 Bookings Open

drewmccormack — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:05:20 +0000

By Drew McCormack

Early this year the Mac Developer Network (MDN) hosted the inaugural NSConference meeting for Mac developers. The 2 day meeting, which took place on a University campus in the UK, was enthusiastically welcomed by European developers, and considered a great success by all those who attended.

Next year, MDN plans to repeat the show, only this time twice over: once in the UK and once in Atlanta, USA. The same lineup of speakers will be appearing at each. The UK show runs from January 31st to February 3rd, 2010, and the US show from February 21st to February 24th, 2010. The lineup of speakers looks impressive, with the likes of Matt 'Legend' Gemmell and Aaron Hillegass to name but two. The full list is on the site.

I'll also be talking again this year, and — perhaps more interesting for scientific developers — will be giving a 6 hour workshop on Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL the day before the conference proper begins. Anyone wanting to get a grip on these technologies should consider coming. The workshop will be very hands on, so you should go away a more complete person.

ChemBioDraw 12 Review Added

drc — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 08:42:05 +0000

ChemBioDraw or as it is probably still better known ChemDraw is a very established chemical drawing package that probably sets the standard for publication quality chemical drawing. There is a short review here.

http://www.macresearch.org/chembiodraw-12-review

OpenCL Tutorial - Questions and Answers to Episode Four

dgohara — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 19:35:11 +0000

This episode covers questions hthat were generated from the previous podcast. We'll discuss GPU layout/terminology and bank conflicts resulting from shared memory access.

In iTunes, you can subscribe to the podcasts by going to:

Advanced -> Subscribe to podcast
URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/opencl

Episode 5 - Questions and Answers to Episode Four (Desktop/iPhone/iPod touch)
Episode 5 - Questions and Answers to Episode Four (PDF)

Cocoa for Scientists (XXXII): The Physics of Sumos (A Flirtation with iPhone Game Development)

drewmccormack — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 07:25:12 +0000

By Drew McCormack

I’ve spent most of my developer life solving scientific problems and developing tools to make people more productive in one way or another. A field of software development with which I have had very little involvement is games development. To be honest, I am not even much of a game player, let alone developer. Sure, I enjoy 5 minutes alone with Flight Control or Fieldrunners as much as the next guy, but beyond that, most games don’t really hold my interest. I would rather be creating something myself.

So I am perhaps the last person you would expect to develop an iPhone game. Nevertheless, my first — and probably last — game appeared in the App Store last week: Sumo Master. The story of Sumo Master extends back almost a year. In this tutorial, I want to tell the story of Sumo Master, why I developed it, and what I learnt along the way.