Not sure how to find the Hacky Hour gang at Nano cafe on Tuesdays at 3 o’clock? We have just made it easier. Some of us will be wearing the new Hacky Hour T shirt and drinking from our new Hacky Hour mugs. Get a sticker to take away too.
Author: hackyhourstluc
So much Hacky Hour action today
Cam Allen’s visit to Hacky Hour today was a big success. Lots of people turned out to meet Cam and to hear more about how the Zooniverse can help with crowd-sourced science. Projects discussed ranged from eco sounds to bird identification through to bioinformatics. The Zooniverse has supported some amazing projects, from Shakespeare’s World and Amazon Aerobotany to stargazing and planet watching in many of the astronomical projects.
Another project, Planet 9, is the focus of the BBC’s Stargazing Live. The ABC’s Stargazing Live, with Brian Cox, and supported by the Zooniverse, starts on local TV tonight and runs for three nights.
Great to have a drop-in from Amanda Miotto, one of Griffith University’s Hacky Hour wranglers, talking here with Jake Parker.
Wet weather venue change for TODAY
Hi everyone
To keep you dry, we are moving Hacky Hour indoors today. We will be in the AIBN’s level 1 seminar room. Tell your friends! Just inside the AIBN’s front door – come in from Nano. The AIBN is building 75 on the campus map.
See you at 3pm with your research IT questions.
— Belinda
Zooniverse at Hacky Hour 4 April
Save the date! Cam Allen, from the Zooniverse, will be a guest at Hacky Hour UQ on Tuesday 4 April at the usual time of 3pm.
Cam is a core developer in the Zooniverse team and is available to work with researchers to develop Zooniverse applications. Zooniverse is the world’s largest and most successful citizen science organisation. Their projects include Galaxy Zoo, Old Weather, Planet Hunters, Snapshot Serengeti & more. Shakespeare’s World is one of Cam’s projects.
This is a unique opportunity to implement novel citizen science projects in many disciplines. Zooniverse even has funding to implement biomedical applications, so researchers from IMB, QBI, AIBN, CAI … why not come along? Anyone with an interest in citizen science is welcome to attend. Researchers from Griffith, QUT, USQ, USC, CSIRO … you are all welcome.
You can find out more about the amazing crowd-sourced work they do by following the Zooniverse on Twitter or visiting their website.
The UQ Centre for Advanced Imaging has a Zooniverse project already up and running. Read more here.
Can’t make it to @hackyhourstluc that day? Express interest in talking to Cam.
Good feedback
It is great to feel that Hacky Hour is meeting people’s needs – this tweet from Signe C sums it up: “Thanks to @HackyHourStLuc for great advice on how and where to learn more about programming. Such a good resource!”
Hacky Hour is run by volunteers from QCIF and the UQ Research Computing Centre. It also includes regular visitors who come along to volunteer their expertise from UQ’s IMB and the Faculty of EAIT.
Hacky Hour is open to anyone who wants to either ask or answer research IT-related questions. We welcome new ‘experts’. We don’t have all the answers ourselves, but by networking, we hope to put you in touch with someone who does.
When is Hacky Hour? Every Tuesday 3-4 pm at Cafe Nano, near the AIBN. Come along!
Zooming in on Nectar
Zoom as a collaborative meeting tool and Nectar VMs were discussed at this week’s Hacky Hour. Users of Nectar virtual machines may not know that there is a huge suite of fantastic training material available online. It includes walk-through videos as well as print material, slides, and tutorials on everything from SSH keys, securing and launching a VM to a basic introduction to cloud computing.
OpenRefine also got a look in as I gave a demo of the tool to Emily. She was very impressed with what it can do. If you are an Excel user, it is well worth a look as it is makes data clean up so easy. You can split multi-valued cells, split or join columns, transform or replace data, facet and filter columns and mass edit without risk. Every step can be ‘undone’ and you can save all (or only some of) the the steps as JSON code to apply to another data file. What a timesaver! OpenRefine also allows you to cluster and mass-edit columns, according to a range of different clustering algorithms.
— Belinda
Hacking and helping
Hacky Hour is one place you can bring your knotty research IT questions.
What can you ask us?
Anything!
If we can’t help, we can probably refer you to someone who can.
Want to use HPC, but not sure how?
Want to install software on Euramoo but don’t know the procedure?
Need extra computation? Or data storage? Or training?
Or maybe you want to ask about R? Or Python? Or even just a general software or stats question?
We can help. Come along Tuesdays at 3, Nano cafe near the AIBN. Look for the sign.
Hacky Hour Hiatus
Hi all Hacky Hour attendees!
HackyHourStLuc is having a mini-break to accommodate off-campus teaching commitments in Toowoomba.
There will be NO Hacky Hour at UQ on Tuesday 19 July.
Hacky Hour will return at Nano at 3pm on Tuesday 26 July.
Hope to see you there !
Got a burning research IT question in the meantime?
Tweet it to @HackyHourStLuc and I will answer it.
Posting a poster
Who should come to Hacky Hour?
Anyone !
Our role is to answer your research IT questions. We also hope to develop a community so we can broker solutions for people.
Here’s our poster – it says it all.
Today’s the day
It’s Hacky Hour time again – 3pm today at Nano (right outside the AIBN). Hope to see you there.
— Belinda
hackyhourstluc 