Dr. Nixon’s Programs and Utilities
I am known for putting in long hours developing shortcuts for lab work and life. Sometimes this drive ends up with the creation of a simple tool or utility. Anything I have developed for sharing is available here, free of charge, with one caveat: Everything on this site is here with a Creative Commons license, allowing personal use and modification (so long as the modified version is also licensed the same way), but no commercial use is allowed, and attribution must be included in all modifications. Click the Creative Commons button at the bottom for more details. Enjoy!
- Dilution Calculator
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I use this web-based calculator quite often at work. This utility calculates dilutions for immunohistochemistry. It isn’t very complicated, but it works. Plug in stock and desired concentrations, hit the buttons, and watch your answers magically appear.
dilution.html, plus JavaScript and CSS file, in one .zip file.
- Data Utilities
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The Data Utilities bundle contains programs written to automate processing of data files output by several behavioral and physiological monitoring systems; specifically, the Echo Medical Systems EchoMRI, Columbus Instruments calorimeter, MedAssociates open field activity systems, and Lafayette running wheels. Data from these systems are handled by the Echo2CSV, OxyMaxer, Spa2CSV/SPA Grouper, and Wheel2CSV apps, respectively. The programs do not require administrative permission to run, but administrative permission may be required to install them (see the ReadMe file for details).
Mac OS X Intel | Windows 64-bit or 32-bit | ReadMe file
Mac OS X Universal (32 bit, no longer actively developed) can be found here.
- VitalView Splitter
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This application was built for use by colleagues working with VitalView circadian acquisition systems and the ClockLab data analysis package. The program splits VitalView ASCII files (containing multiple study subjects) into ClockLab-compatible files (containing one subject per file). The programs do not require administrative permission to run, but administrative permission may be required to install them (see the ReadMe file for details).
Mac OS X Intel | Windows 64-bit or 32-bit | ReadMe file
Mac OS X Universal (32 bit, no longer actively developed) can be found here.
- PDF Utilities
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The PDF Utilities bundle contains two programs written to help handle PDF files. Anyone in research is bound to have to deal with managing folders full of PDFs. The PDF Renamer app attempts to change the name of PDFs from gibberish to the actual title of the article, using the Title metadata and/or automatic DOI lookup. The PDF Unlocker app attempts to remove write-protection from PDFs so that Title metadata can be edited (to aid in indexing, or to allow PDF Renamer to work on the file). The programs do not require administrative permission to run, but administrative permission may be required to install them (see the ReadMe file for details). These apps are currently only available for Intel Macs; PDF Renamer has only been tested with OS X 10.8+. The PDF Unlocker app contains GPL components and is therefore released under the GNU General Public License.
Mac OS X Intel | ReadMe file
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