Meetups

• Hacky Hour UQ [via Zoom]
• Dr Nick's Image Clinic
• Brisbane Microscope Facility Forum
• UQ R Users Group (UQ RUG) meetings
• Virtual HPC User Support [via Zoom]
• Tips for Using Zoom for Meetups and Training

Hacky Hour UQ

Note: Hacky Hour UQ will meet virtually for the last time in 2020 on Tuesday, 1 December, 3pm–4pm, and will return on Tuesday, 2 February 2021.
More than 530 attended Hacky Hour UQ in 2020, a great effort given the COVID-19 pandemic. In contrast, 628 attended in 2019, 448 in 2018 and 283 in 2017.

RCC supports Hacky Hour, held on UQ’s St Lucia Campus. Hacky Hour is a weekly meetup, held Tuesdays, for UQ researchers to ask research-related technical issues to do with:

• high performance computing
• cloud computing
• virtual machines
• data storage
• data security
• data cleanup
• automated workflows
• data pipelines
• virtual desktops
• Python
• R
• Linux
• Software and Data Carpentry.

Experts from RCC and QCIF will be at the Hacky Hour to answer your questions, and researchers can also help each other. All UQ researchers are welcome to attend.

When: Hacky Hour UQ occurs each Tuesday, 3–4pm. Occasionally it is cancelled if no RCC and QCIF experts are available that day. Because Hacky Hour is held outside Cafe Nano, it is cancelled if it is raining. For updates, follow Hacky Hour UQ on Twitter (@HackyHourStLuc) or check the blog.

Where: Due to the ongoing COVID-19 situation, Hacky Hour will be held via Zoom video conference until further notice. For Zoom meeting details please email hackyhourUQ@gmail.com.

When it's deemed safe to do so, Hacky Hour UQ will return to being held at Café Nano (outside), near AIBN, on the St Lucia Campus (view map).

Any questions? Email hackyhourUQ@gmail.com.

Genomics focus

• First Tuesday of the month: Bioinformatics Hacky Hour — come and ask bioinformatics analysis, software and pipeline questions.
• Last Tuesday of the month: BioLab Hacky Hour — to answer your experimental design and technical sample processing questions to get you started in the lab.

During these special Hacky Hours, all researchers are welcome to attend and ask for help with all the usual research-related IT issues, such as HPC, Python and R.
 

Dr Nick's Image Clinic

Dr Nick Hamilton, a QCIF/RCC/IMB eResearch Analyst, holds an Image Clinic at UQ’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB) most Monday mornings. Get help with: 

• bio-image analysis
• quantification
• automated image classification
• mathematics 
• modelling
• analysis pipelines
• data visualisation
• computational methods. 

Contact Dr Nick for more information: n.hamilton@imb.uq.edu.au.
 

Brisbane Microscope Facility Forum

RCC/QCIF/IMB eResearch Analyst Dr Nick Hamilton has launched a monthly meetup called the Brisbane Microscope Facility Forum.

The forum will be held on the last Friday of each month from 3pm–4pm at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB) at UQ St Lucia (in Large Seminar Room 3.142), with drinks to follow at the nearby Pizza Café.

The inaugural forum was held on Friday, 31 August.

All Brisbane microscope facility managers and support staff are welcome to attend.

“The idea is for people running microscopy facilities in Brisbane to meet up, exchange information, knowledge, co-ordinate activities and training, give short presentations on new technologies and facility updates etc., followed by drinks,” said Dr Nick.

The first forum featured attendees from the Translational Research Institute, Griffith University, QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute and UQ’s IMB, Queensland Brain Institute and School of Biological Sciences.

Please contact Dr Nick if you have any queries: nick.hamilton@qcif.edu.au.

James Springfield, IMB Microscopy Facility Manager, presenting at the inaugural Brisbane Microscopy Facility Forum on IMB’s new microscopes, including the Lattice Light Sheet Microscope and the Dragonfly Spinning Disk Microscope. (Photo: Dr Nick Hamilton.)

UQ R Users Group (UQ RUG) meetings

A user group for those working with statistical program R was launched at UQ in January 2020. 

The UQ R User Group seeks to bring this community together to share ideas and provide a collaborative, problem-solving space for new and experienced users.

The group will meet monthly at UQ St Lucia central Library building (12), training room 12-N109.

Currently, the aim is for the group to meet on either the third or fourth Monday of each month from 3pm to 5pm. Check the RCC events webpage for upcoming UQ RUG meetings.

This initiative is supported by the UQ Library and the R-Ladies Brisbane Chapter.

UQ vHPC (Virtual HPC User Support)

Fridays, 2pm-3pm (AEST)  via Zoom: 535-415-695; https://uqz.zoom.us/j/535415695

As a readiness test for the evolving COVID-19 virus situation, RCC offered a virtual HPC (vHPC) help session on Friday, 13 March 2020, 1pm-2pm (AEST), as an adjoint to our usual Hacky Hour sessions.
The session was successful and we will be offering it again on Fridays, 2pm-3pm (AEST) until further notice. (Change of start time.)

Please note vHPC won't have the wide scope of expertise that is available at the face-to-face Hacky Hour meetups.

We will focus primarily on HPC access, usage and workflows with a smattering of the other topics that makes Hacky Hour the success that it is.

If you are interested, but you cannot make it this time, please email rcc-support@uq.edu.au with the message subject "vHPC".  

Tips for using Zoom for Meetups and Training

A critical component of any video conference is the audio.
To avoid problems for all participants, please ensure that you

• use a headset (earbuds, or something more substantial), or an echo cancelling speaker/microphone device, and that you
• ensure that Zoom is configured to use that audio device for both microphone and speaker functions,
• if you are in a noisy environment keep your microphone muted except when you speak. Zoom has a hot key combination for mute/unmute.

Whether working from home, or at work,

• be conscious of visual distractions in the background (eg. colleagues, family members or pets walking past)
• try to avoid having strong lighting behind you which makes you a silhouette (eg. overhead lights, unshaded windows)
• often the glow from your laptop screen or monitor is sufficient front illumination
• if your network bandwidth is constrained, consider stopping your video and sending a still photo instead.