MIT Photonic Bands (MPB) documentation

Like most open source projects, they can always use more documentation. I recently posted a tutorial on how to run the MPB code on Cygwin. The tutorial has since been added to the MPB website, which is a nice affirmation that it may be useful. One stone in a great project by Steven Johnson.

MIT Photonic Bands (MPB) on Cygwin

MIT Photonic Bands (MPB) on Cygwin
how to run MPB on windows
-Robert Hovden, Jul 30 2008

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This is a quick rundown / summary of what I did to compile and install MPB using Cygwin on my Windows Vista machine. There are many dependencies and libraries that are needed to get MPB up and running. It is not comprehensive but at the very least, this should save you some time.

Installing Cygwin

Cygwin is a Linux-like environment for Windows which can be used to run software written for Linux distributions. After downloading Cygwin and running setup.exe you will be prompted with a couple hundred optional packages to install. You will need many of these packages to run MPB, let’s go through what dependencies can be installed using setup.exe.

gcc : C compiler
> Devel
gcc-g++: C++ compiler
> Devel
gcc-g77: Fortran compiler
> Devel
gettext: GNU Internationalization development utilities
> Devel
guile: The GNU extension language and Scheme interpreter – executables
> Interpreters
guile-devel: The GNU extension language and Scheme interpreter – development
> Libs
hdf5: HDF5 Hierarchical Data Format
> Utils
lapack: Comprehensive FORTRAN library for linear algebra operations.
> Math
libhdf5-devel: HDF5 Hierarchical Data Format – (development)
> Utils
libgmp-devel: Development library for GMP arbitrary precision arithmetic library
> Libs
libiconv: GNU character set conversion library and utilities
> Libs
libtool: A shared library generation tool
> Devel
make: The GNU version of the ‘make’ utility
> Devel
 

FFTW 2.1.5

FFTW version 3 is available through the cygwin setup but you will need version 2 which must be downloaded and compiled. Versions 2 and 3 will not conflict if both are simultaneously installed on your machine.

LIBCTL

Libctl is written by the authors of MPB and it can be found on their website. This must be compiled and installed.

MPB

With all of the above dependencies you should have enough to compile, install, and run MPB. Note that in order to install MPB using Windows Vista you will have to run cygwin as an administrator.

Facebook Advertising, Marginal Success

After running just over ten dollars in Facebook advertisements, I was able to get a couple responses. Since my ads were directed towards a specific demographic, engineers and computer scientists, I received semi-qualified applicants. The most interesting of which, was a computer science major with a high GPA at Cornell. I sat with him to discuss some ideas. Although he was fully capable of writing code, his Linux administration skills lacked severely. So much, that I was not comfortable hiring him. This is surprisingly common among C.S. majors. It would be difficult for me to pay for his advancement along the Linux / Web Development curve. Plus, I was not looking for a position of mentorship. Either way, I learned that my interview skills lack and I should be more prepared before talking with potential business partners. In the end, I made contact with a student who will no doubt, become a successful programmer.

Facebook Marketplace, Failed

In order to start pushing forward some of my ideas, I decided to step it up, get some help. Ideally this help will come through hiring a part time college student. I figure I can pay comparable wages to that of the schools library (about $10 or $11 an hour). There are many ways I can go about hiring such a student, but I figured I would start with Facebook marketplace.

I posted an add on Facebook marketplace looking for students willing to work 10 hours a week for $10 an hour. I figured this would be a fair price and hours for a student taking courses and looking for work on the side. Also, if the student works too much in the week I will not be able to keep up with delegating tasks.

Well, it has now been over a week and I estimate a hundred people saw the ad, at best. Most of which probably have no interest in the type of work I am looking for. There could be multiple reasons for this failed attempt: Many students leave or have full time jobs during the summer, the pay is too low, and most likely, no one saw my post.

I have to say that this attempt was a bust, but having put little or no effort into finding anyone I am not surprised. The next step will include flyers and / or paid facebook advertisement.

First goals of this blog

Blogs are the obvious first step to becoming an active member of the internet community. As such, I decided I needed a blog. It also establishes a source of web traffic and linking which can be used to promote search engine page ranks. Most importantly it is an excuse to write and share ideas. Both of which I enjoy.

The next step is choosing the purpose of my blog. I started this blog as an outlet for my ideas, observations, and entrepreneurial experimentation. With greater academic aspirations, becoming an entrepreneur is most likely not possible. From what I hear, starting a business is a full time job, or thats what I believe. None the less, I like projects and pursuing ideas, regardless of their utility. This blog aims to share my experiences.