Installing ipython, and using ipython notebooks

I wanted to be able to read and write ipython notebooks on my Mac laptop, so I followed these steps to install it (I had to install it in my home directory, as I don't have administrator privileges):

Installing ipython
1) I added the following to my .bash_profile file in my home directory:
export PYTHONPATH=/Users/alc/Bin/ipython/

2) I updated the PYTHONPATH  by typing:
% source ~alc/.bash_profile

3) I then made a directory Bin/ipython in my home directory
% mkdir ~alc/Bin/
% mkdir ~alc/Bin/ipython

4) I then installed ipython in the Bin/ipython directory:
% easy_install --install-dir /Users/alc/Bin/ipython/ ipython[all]
where the --install-dir argument specifies where to install ipython.

5) I then ran the test suite that comes with ipython by typing: [you can skip this step]
% ~alc/Bin/ipython/iptest
This gave error messages:
ERROR - 5 out of 13 test groups failed.
This doesn't seem to matter as I was able to run ipython notebook fine (see below).

Downloading ipython notebooks
Ipython notebook files end in the .ipynb extension. You can download ipython notebook files, and open them in the ipython notebook to read them (see below).

For example, to get the ipython notebooks for the excellent Python course that I recently attended in Cambridge, you need to go to the course github page. You should see there 4 files starting with 'Introduction_to_python...'. You just need to go to the github repository, click on one of the files (eg. Introduction_to_python_session_1.ipynb) and click 'Raw' in github, and then save the raw file.

Running ipython To start up ipython, I typed:
%  ipython/ipython notebook

This opened up a ipython notebook webpage, like this: 

You can upload an existing ipython notebook, by clicking on 'click here'. Then select your file. It should then appear in a list. Click on 'upload' beside the file name. 

Then click on the name of the file (that should now appear as a blue link). This should open up the ipython notebook in your web browser.  If you edit some of the text in the grey boxes, you can update the notebook by pressing the => symbol at the top of the notebook: