powrbox

[powrbox]

matlab → python

I've pretty much completed the transition from matlab to python. I've used matlab for analysis since about 1990 as a grad student, only breaking from it during the dark years of the 90s when it was not supported on the Mac. But its maturity and ubuiquitous tools make python hard to beat.

I've set up a jupyterhub for my group, so that we all share the same packages and don't have to worry about maintaining multiple installs. And we have a workflow that involves publishing jupyter notebooks to evernote that makes documentation very simple.

In the next few weeks I'll post a few details about these workflows...

[powrbox]

Lion and modem dialing scripts

The biggest problem with upgrading to Lion was that it no longer supports the apple USB modem and that it broke my modem script.

I bought a Zoom USB Modem to replace the useless one from Apple, and after installing it I found that if I deleted the USB Modem in "Print & Scan" preferences and re-added it using "+" button, it worked fine as a fax modem.

I have a phone dialer script copied from this hint from macosxhints.com. The key command to initialize the modem is:

do shell script “screen -d -m -S phone /dev/cu.usbmodem”

In Lion, this command was failing. By issuing the command “ls /dev/cu.*” in the Terminal, I found that there was no device called "cu.usbmodem" present. Instead, there was “/dev/cu.usbmodem24680241”. From what I gather from other pages, the numerical suffix indicate the specific USB port to which the modem is attached.

In order to avoid dealing with these numbers, I wrote some commands to determine the port name of the modem automatically. Here are some commands to directly replace the one above:

try set theModemPort to do shell script “ls /dev/cu.usbmodem*” on error the error_message number the error_number display dialog “Error: no USB modem found” buttons {“Cancel”} default button 1 end try do shell script “screen -d -m -S phone ” & theModemPort

As far as I can tell, the resulting applescript works great in Lion.

One more big change is that, unlike the Apple USB modem, the Zoom modem makes no sound while dialing. To fix this, I put in the command

say “dialing"

to get the user’s attention when the modem is actually putting the call through.