Use Wget through a proxy

This worked really well:
http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/how-to-use-wget-through-proxy/

Since I'm in tcsh, I just used
setenv http_proxy ......

I'll make sure when I get home that it doesn't screw things up when not using the proxy, in which case we have to remember to comment things out.

apply pixel mask

This is going to be an on-going post about making this piece of code run, . I'm just going to add to it bit-by-bit until I have something complete. Usually the first thing to check is:

setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH /usr/local/lib/

in your .cshrc. There are other steps required, but on my current libraries, installed on a new machine, this is the thing I forget to add most often. /usr/local/lib is where I usually keep all the needed C/C++ libraries, but it certainly change if you move to other machines.

IDL color tables

It often happens that when I go to a new computer and run IDL, the color tables don't work. The simplest fix to try is usually the following:

IDL> device,decomposed=0

Then loading the color table is as simple as:

IDL> loadct,1 ;; or no number will list the available color tables