SAM MORRELL

Outreach

I passionately believe that communicating research is a key responsibility of every researcher. A regularly do outreach talks and interviews about and around my own research. I also play a role in some longer term outreach projects. Chirp I currently lead an international collaboration developing Chirp, an app for the web, iOS and Android that...

Dealing with Blank Lines Comments in Fortran READs

Just a quick little programming snippet today. When preparing data files, it’s often useful to include headers and comments in them, especially in the more complicated ones. Most data applications that you might be loading data into, such as maybe Python or MATLAB, have plenty of ability to filter out those comments, but what if...

My Plans for the Apple Watch

I have traditionally been a fan of Apple stuff, but lately I’ve found myself becoming less and less enamoured with their current offerings. Whether it be the lacklustre MacBook Pro, with zero USB-A connectors and complete lack of an SD card slot, or the omission of a 3.5mm audio jack on the latest iPhones, they...

What I’ve Been Listening To – December 2016

Apologies for the tardiness of the post. I’ve been meaning to get it out for a couple of weeks, but unfortunately I’m pretty apt at procrastination. It’s certainly been a hell of year. What with the various questionable bits of politics, scandals, gates of all varieties and now the first year where the antarctic sea...

What I’ve Been Listening To – October 2016

A heady welcome to the second year of my music posts. As we being the long down hill meander towards the end of the year I’ve compiled another bunch of tunes to draw you through the increasingly cold night and crisp mornings. It may be a few days late, but let’s get into it. Kina...

What I’ve Been Listening To – September 2016

Happy first birthday to these posts. I’m glad to say that the quick purpose meant to bring purpose to my website and motivate me to keep it up have indeed done just that, and I’ve managed to post one per month for the past year… even if no one has read them, it’s still an...

Boldly Going for 50 Years

It’s very much not an overstatement to say that I adore Star Trek. Today is a very special for someone who claims this level of adoration for the franchise as it is exactly 50 years old today. Back on September 8th 1966 the first ever episode of Star Trek, The Man Trap, hit the screens...

Beginning with BibTeX – Making Referencing in LaTex as Easy as Pi

[mathjax] It’s no secret that physicists love using LaTeX to write papers. This has many practical advantages, such as the ability to completely unlink your content from the formatting, very flexible layout tools and a veritable smorgasbord of packages to do everything from change the colour of your text to allow you to programmatically create plots...

Redesigning XRT-C

As some who read this may know I’m involved, well currently the project lead, on the Exeter Radio Telescope at Caradon (XRT-C) project. The idea behind this project is great; to build a professional grade, 4.5m radio telescope in the Cornish country side that can be used by students across the UK. Up until now,...

What I’ve Been Listening To – June 2016

Well, what a bleak month it has been. From widespread mass shootings across the entire globe to the UK being brought into political and socioeconomic turmoil, this is a month I’m glad to be finished with. However, it’s not all bad. We managed to get away on a nice weekend trip to Cornwall, from which...

What I’ve Been Listening To – May 2016

Good day all. Phew, well here I am, back on the blog wagon. This post should be appearing here on time, which makes a change from the tardiness of the previous two. What a varied month it’s been. Only this past weekend its gone from clear blue skies as far as the eye can see,...

Dr Samuel Morrell Postdoctoral Research Fellow University of Exeter I'm a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Exeter, in Devon, UK. I was trained as an astrophysicist, and my astrophysical research interest spans studies of young clusters, stellar evolution, and exoplanet science. In my current position, I am bringing my expertise as an astronomer to...