Monthly Archives: March 2012

Switching from Perl to Python: Speed

Posted on March 26, 2012 by

The job listings in scientific computing these days seem to show a mild preference for applicants with backgrounds in Python over Perl. It has high-profile (or just highly visible?) packages like NumPy and Python’s MPI bindings for scientific computing, and … Continue reading →

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The Sad State of our Storage Situation

Posted on March 20, 2012 by

Despite being in the field of technical computing for over thirty years now, the level of technological sophistication in my research group has been stagnant for somewhere around twenty years.  Take for example our user authentication: We use NIS for … Continue reading →

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Wolf’s approximation of Madelung potentials

Posted on March 15, 2012 by

Wolf (Wolf, Keblinksi, Phillpot, and Eggebrecht, J. Chem. Phys. 110 (1999) 8254) came up with a very clever way to approximate the Madelung potential in infinite solids that is much less expensive to calculate than the traditional reciprocal-space-based Ewald methods, … Continue reading →

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