Monte Carlo radiation transfer — Since I am currently working on a task-based Monte Carlo radiation transfer algorithm, I thought it would be nice to dedicate a post to this subject. However, until now I have only covered the topic...

More advanced sketch — Last week, I introduced sketch as a tool to generate 2D projections of truly 3D scenes that have the correct depth perception. The final result of that post was the drawing below: This example was...
Timing and performance management — An important part of developing code is making sure that your code performs efficiently. There are several reasons you should do this. First of all, there is the obvious reason that it is good for...

Graph decomposition — I previously mentioned space-filling curves and their application in scientific computing, and concluded that post with the remark that space-filling curves are actually not the best solution if you want to distribute some large computational...
Running a development environment inside a Docker container — Dependencies are usually a nightmare for scientific software projects. Scientific software needs to run on a variety of systems, ranging from remote clusters with very strict limitations on the available compilers and libraries, to student...
Memory logging — One of the big issues I have as a code developer is keeping track of memory usage. While it is relatively straightforward to track performance using appropriately placed timers, there is no clear-cut solution to...
Task based parallelisation — This week’s post will need to be quite short, as I am currently on a conference in Finland and have very little time to spare. Additionally, DiRAC last week approved our short project worth half...
Using TikZ with sketch — In a previous post I introduced TikZ, a powerful LaTeX package that helps you create high quality drawings that can be directly incorporated into LaTeX documents. TikZ itself is highly suited for creating simple 1D...
Why you should never divide by two (on a computer) — In this week’s post, I will try to make you appreciate how computers perform mathematical operations using the very basic example of dividing a number by two. I will try to convince you that dividing...

List of commands I frequently forget — One of the reasons I like the large amount of computational blog posts available on the world web is because of all the useful information they contain. Especially when it concerns very trivial tasks, there...

Testing the stability of supersonic ionised Bondi accretion flows with radiation hydrodynamics — Last week, a scientific paper that has been in my scientific pipeline for over a year got accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (Vandenbroucke et al., 2019), and this seems...
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