It’s been a while since I updated, so I figure I should, especially since I should be keeping this blog closer to daily than weekly. Last week was just as busy as the week before, but this week offers a breather as I begin classes on Wednesday.

Early last week I had been trying to figure out the best way to save an event list once I’ve filtered it in IDL. I thought I could base the commands after the postscript save option already written in the scripts I’ve been modifying, but it didn’t seem to be that easy. I used the IDL script MWDFITS and was successful. However, I believe the filtering method I programmed only filters the plot displayed and not the actual event list. I will have to look into this further.

Last week I accidentally stumbled upon an x-ray timing analysis presentation on HEASARC. It’s a good overview which shows me what I should see if I am successful. However, I have yet to see a clear light-curve-turned-to-power-spectrum with what I’m doing. Chryssa advised that I start with a light curve I created with a known sine wave; if I don’t see a period after running an FFT on that, I’ll know something’s wrong with my method.

I moved into my new office on Friday and spent a little bit of time trying to set up my new computer. I decorated my office today and continued getting my computer up-to-date. Upgrading a computer is never as easy for me as it should be. I spent all morning stuck on an error in building the help files for FTOOLS. Later this afternoon Sandy and I realized it was because of a known bug, and that my computer needs an upgraded compiler to make it work. Hopefully I can finish this tomorrow.