Here’s a TCL script written for use with VMD to automatically generate a bunch of contours from grid files in a specific directory. The script saves the viewing angle and other rendering aspects.

#Set the directory for looking for files here
set dir "/home/cogswell/Downloads/dx/30-blend-95"
set currentDir [pwd]
cd $dir

#set height and width
#set h 500
#set w 500
set h ["%h"]
set w ["%w"]

#Set global defaults and preferences
axes location off
display antialias on
display depthcue on

# save the current display state and representation style
set viewpt [molinfo top get {center_matrix rotate_matrix scale_matrix global_matrix}]
set myrep [molinfo top get {rep}]
mol default style $myrep

foreach f [glob "p*.dx"] {
set file [exec basename $f ".dx"]
mol off top
mol new "$f"
#mol addrep top
molinfo top set {center_matrix rotate_matrix scale_matrix global_matrix} $viewpt
render POV3 "$file.pov" povray +H%h +W%w -I%s -O"$file.png" -D +X +A
mol delete top
}

#return to the original molecule and directory
molinfo top set {center_matrix rotate_matrix scale_matrix global_matrix} $viewpt
mol on top

Back a few weeks ago I bought some slide film and busted out my old-school Nikon film SLR. Here is a nice shot of Boston that I took around sunset one evening in October from near the Mass. Ave bridge. I used a polarizing lens, and the lighting was really interesting. I was also using Kodak Ektachrome 64 slide film, which is particularly good for cool colors, such as the sky. I have some more pictures that I took on a backpacking trip that I will post sometime soon as well.

Hancock Tower, Boston

Taken with Ektachrome 64 slide film.

 

 

Well, I’ve been busy since my last post. Last weekend my family flew to Boston and we drove to Dartmouth to visit my sister Heather. We had a good visit, and even did a hike in the snow! New Hampshire has already had some snow, and it hasn’t melted at higher altitudes. Hopefully ski areas will be opening soon. We also went to a Dartmouth hockey game which was a lot of fun, despite the fact that Dartmouth lost in sudden death overtime with 20 seconds left. Overall, Dartmouth has a similar feel to Northwestern, except for the fact that Northwestern is somewhere while Dartmouth is in the middle of nowhere. Although I choose schools based on their proximity to ski areas, so Dartmouth scores highly.

Northwestern beat Iowa last week and Michigan almost lost to Ball State last weekend. This was awesome, because I hate Michigan and Iowa (but especially Michigan). Northwestern is starting to get things together, and I think they can be mildly competitive against OSU this week. Many of you will remember that I was predicting Michigan’s only loss to be to Ball State last spring when I looked at their schedule, so I was almost correct. They are going to get destroyed by OSU, so it won’t matter anyway.