SQLITE -- a useful join

Just putting it out here:

SELECT g.CALIFA_ID, g.el_major_axis*0.396, g.el_mag, g.circ_hlr*0.396, g.circ_mag, g.gc_sky, n.ba, n.pa FROM gc_new as g, nadine as n where n.CALIFA_ID = g.CALIFA_ID order by g.rowid asc

Deploying my inpainting code on other machines

It's quite a mess, since I have limited permissions on each of them, and their environments vary. Also, no git.
required:
wget
python (developed on 2.6.5)
First, I need pyfits:
mkdir python
cd python
wget http://pypi.python.org/packages/source/p/pyfits/pyfits-3.1.tar.gz
Second, pyfits need setuptools:

wget http://pypi.python.org/packages/2.7/s/setuptools/setuptools-0.6c11-py2.7.egg#md5=fe1f997bc722265116870bc7919059ea
I want to install to a custom location (the ./python directory tree), hence I have to create directory trees for both of them:
mkdirhier [ABSOLUTE PATH TO]/python/lib/python2.7/site-packages/
mkdirhier [ABSOLUTE PATH TO]/python/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/

The .bashrc file's PYTHONPATH variable must be adjusted:
vi ~/.bashrc
export PYTHONPATH=[ABSOLUTE PATH TO]/python/lib/python2.7/site-packages:[ABSOLUTE PATH TO]/python/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/
Do not forget to restart bash:
bash
Then, installing setuptools:
sh setuptools-0.6c11-py2.7.egg --prefix='[PATH TO]/python'
python setup.py install --prefix='[PATH TO]/python'

The file structure:
../growth-curve-photometry/
../data/SDSS/u/ #griz
../data/MASKS/
../data/maskFilenames.csv
../data/maskFilenames.csv
../data/SDSS_photo_match.csv
../data/CALIFA_mother_simple.csv
../data/filled_u #griz

I need AstLib as well:
wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/astlib/astlib/0.6.1/astLib-0.6.1.tar.gz?r=http%3A%2F%2Fastlib.sourceforge.net%2F&ts=1348484024&use_mirror=switch
tar -xvzj astLib-0.6.1.tar.gz
cd astLib
python setup.py install --prefix='[PATH TO]/python/'

...and all the hell breaks loose here, because my home is mounted across the network, hence $PYTHONPATH points to a couple of different Python versions. Separate ~.bashrc.$HOSTNAME files worked: http://askubuntu.com/questions/15618/repercussions-to-sharing-bashrc-across-machines-with-dropbox.
Then fill.py should be edited, or even copied to allow several different processes work in different bands and galaxy sample slices.

making posters with LaTeX, rendering matplotlib images of right size

I'm doing a poster presentation next week in a conference, and I didn't want to use our default poster templates -- they just don't look pretty enough for me. So, I cooked my own, or rather lobotomised the baposter template by Brian Amsberg. It's quite customisable and well-documented. I was a web developer once so I get some masochistic satisfaction out of positioning, aligning and resizing stuff anyway.
Some things I learned underway, from matplotlib cookbook mostly:
For an A0 poster, getting image sizes and font sizes right is important. While compiling my .tex document, I inserted

\showthe\linewidth

command next to relative to text scaled images. It made LaTeX print out the image size in points in its hilarious output stream.

fig_width_pt = 628.62  # Get this from LaTeX using \showthe\columnwidth
inches_per_pt = 1.0/72.27               # Convert pt to inches
golden_mean = (sqrt(5)-1.0)/2.0         # Aesthetic ratio
fig_width = fig_width_pt*inches_per_pt  # width in 
fig_height = fig_width*golden_mean+0.3       # height in inches
fig_size = [fig_width,fig_height]    
print fig_size

fig_size was later set as a matplotlib parameter. If you specify .pdf as the filename extension, matplotlib generates a crisp file to be used as an image by LaTeX.

Getting a single file from git stash

Sometimes I do want to keep some local changes, even though stash is such a good way to bury and forget them.
A solution from stackoverflow:

git checkout stash@{0} -- [filename]

opening images with ds9 from a python script

I did it the old-fashioned way (os.system is going to be deprecated):

  import os

  os.system("~/ds9  -zoom 0.3 -scale mode 99.5 -file "+ 

GalaxyParameters.getSDSSUrl(listFile, dataDir, i) +" -file  "+ 

GalaxyParameters.getMaskUrl(listFile, dataDir, simpleFile, i) +" -match frames")