Re^2: Enlightenment and Frustration

This is advice I take very much to heart - as an inveterate reader and knowledge-sponge it is waaaaaayyy too easy for me to opt to "read another book" rather than actually DOING something. It is a big struggle for me (maybe the biggest ... marriage was a big one, too, but I've failed that'n twice), but with Perl I am trying to focus on "doing things" with some basic astronomical data, since astronomy is my #1 life-force-passion-devotion-thingie.

That sounds vague. Right now I am trying to really nail down the basics of the language by massaging, spindling and mutilating -- seeing what I can do to -- a copy of some observational data collected by the Saguaro Astronomy Club of Tucson, AZ. This is a collection that has been around for a long time and is used in some software created for amateur astronomers ... so it is looking forward to my "big goal" of trying to code an observation planning-and-logging application.

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Re^3: Enlightenment and Frustration by lin0 (Curate) on May 01, 2007 at 21:09 UTC
Hi chexmix, If you are interested in Astronomy and Perl, you might also be interested in learning about the Perl Data Language (PDL). It was created by Karl Glazebrook, a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the Johns Hopkins University. To have an idea of what you can do with PDL, I recommend you to have a look at PDL -- Scientific Programming in Perl and to the nodes The Perl Data Language (PDL): A Quick Reference Guide and RFC: PDL Cheat Sheet. Cheers, lin0	[reply]
Re^4: Enlightenment and Frustration by chexmix (Hermit) on May 02, 2007 at 18:46 UTC
Many thanks. I've looked at PDL a little in the past but have sort of tended to shunt into the pile of "things to look at when I know more." I didn't know that its creator (Glazebrook) was the one who IDd the "cosmic latte" overall color of the universe! :^) PDL gets me to wondering in what directions I will eventually need to re-up and strengthen my math skills in order to become a better Perl person. That's a whole other kettle of stuff ... - GB	[reply]