#hackyhour

It’s already shaping up to be quite a week for us all at Hack, especially those coming off the Oktoberfest celebration of Saturday.

Come on guys, let off him, Kris was there in spirit. 

Now it’s time to get busy planning our next event, coming Thursday, November 3rd, our first… HACKY HOUR!! Alright, that’s a lie, we’ve had a Hacky Hour in the past, but it’s been 3 years and coming from someone who really, really enjoys parties, that is far too long. In fact, this Hacky Hour business might just become a monthly excuse to get everyone drunk... I mean, get everyone together. 

So cheers to some good ol’ Texas beer and come hang with us in a few weeks to celebrate… well, whatever you like; Movember, November, Hack, beer, wine, girls, guys, life with a beard, lumberjacks, chipmunks under a bus stop waiting for the rain to let up, the list is literally endless.

Python has been transitioning from Python 2 to Python 3 for a ridiculously long time. This question was being asked in 2011 when I was wondering which version I should learn and what the difference actually was.

Currently Python 3 is probably your best bet, as most packages now support it and there are many improvements to the Python language in version 3.

That being said there are libraries that will only work in Python 2 and there is a huge amount of legacy code that has't been transitioned yet. This might be especially true if you use specialist libraries in your work.

Another reason to use Python 2 is if you are doing the excellent Coursera course by Dr. Chuck which is being converted to Python 3 (I know this because I'm part of the open source project to do the conversion) but is still in Python 2.

For most people the difference between Python 2 and Python 3 comes down to how you print and what happens when you divide something. Printing now requires brackets around what you want to print - just like any other python function.

Python 3 Printing

name = 'Alistair' print(name) >>> Alistair

Python 2 Printing

name = 'Alistair' print name >>> Alistair

The other one, division, is integer division (where the remainder is discarded) in Python 2 and normal division in Python 3 (use '//' to do integer division in Python 3) if the numbers being used are integers. If at least one of the numbers is a floating point number (e.g. 1.5), the division is normal in both.

Python 3 division

answer = 10/3 print(answer) >>>3.3333333333333335

Python 2 division

answer = 10/3 print(answer) >>>3

So for anyone starting out with Python, the difference between the two versions is trivial and I'd suggest using Python 3 by default and Python 2 when you have to.

Python 2 and Python 3 will live happily side by side on a computer but the Anaconda package manager will make this situation a whole lot easier and has many other benefits as well.

So I would suggest installing the Python 3 Anaconda and then setting up a Python 2 environment for when you need it.

Download the version for your OS here and follow the instructions. There is both a command line installer and a graphical installer, so choose whatever you're most comfortable with.

By Damien Irving.

If you've ever run a workshop or short-course on a particular digital research skill, you'll be familiar with this post-workshop conundrum: how can I provide useful, relevant and ongoing assistance to my attendees? Even if workshop participants are keen to continue learning, it can be very difficult to (a) get them to come forward and ask questions, and (b) have the discipline specific expertise on hand to actually answer those questions. Like many other prominant thinkers in educational psychology, our apporach to this problem was to come up with a silly pun ("Hacky Hour") and then base our answer around that. In the wake of ResBaz 2015 a number of people have asked about tips and advice for starting a Hacky Hour at their home institution, so here's our best attempt at wisdom and sage advice...

#hackyhour, combining nature with technology this Thursday afternoon at @tsububar. Don't suffer in silence, come chat pic.twitter.com/PdRVygU0Sc

— Research Platforms (@ResPlat) March 6, 2014

The first thing to say is that Hacky Hour is more than just a weekly help desk located at a bar on campus (3-4pm every Thursday, Tsubu Bar). Some weeks we get enough genuine questions to fill an hour, but you'd have to be part of a pretty extraordinary community to have enough questions to keep you going all year. To fill the void, we've worked hard to make sure Hacky Hour is the focal point of our networking activities. If I'm meeting up with the President of the Ecology Student Society to chat about running a Software Carpentry workshop, for instance, I'll schedule that meeting for Hacky Hour. Other people in our local ResBaz community start to do the same, and all of a sudden Hacky Hour becomes a hive of people with lots of different digital research skills and interests. It can be a little chaotic (lots of meetings going on all over the place), but the diversity of attendees is fantastic for answering the wide variety of questions we get from previous workshop attendees.

.@billdoesphysics takes #HackyHour international! http://t.co/lWSFypvF8j @MozillaScience @ResPlat

— Damien Irving (@DrClimate) February 8, 2015

Beyond just being a place to have your specific programming questions answered, Hacky Hour has become the open science and digital technology meetup on campus. Most of our "regulars" like to keep up-to-date with the latest tools and research best practices, and have found that Hacky Hour is a place to be part of that conversation. As a consequence, people come down who have something to share in front of such an audience. We've had a Masters student pitch his idea for a cloud-based hosting service for computer models, a cloud computing educator tested his new lesson materials on our regulars and next week an IT guru is going to come down and disassemble an old server in front of us all.

(Every Thursday, 3-4pm, Tsubu Bar)

By Damien Irving.

I was sitting at my desk the other day struggling (as per normal) with some code, when it occurred to me that within a 500m radius of my office, there was probably half-a-dozen (or more) people who could quickly and easily solve my problem. (Conversely, there was also probably half-a-dozen people wrestling with problems that I could solve, but at the time I was too frustrated with my own problems to worry about them!)

This should have been a very reassuring thought, however for all intents and purposes those half-a-dozen people might as well be living on the moon. Like most researchers, I rarely interact (in an academic sense) with people outside of my Department, and if I do I'm certainly not pouring my heart out to them about the programming issues I'm having.

we even got an umbrella at #hackyhour this week! @ITS_Res pic.twitter.com/KZ9AfEo4oL

— Katie Ewing (@katieaewing)

March 13, 2014

In an attempt to address this problem, we started running "Hacky Hour" (puntastic, right?) in early 2014. Every Thursday afternoon from 3-4pm, the Research Bzaar team leaves their offices and converges on Tsubu Bar (just look for the table with all the laptops!). Reseachers who'd like assistance with their coding are welcome to join us and ask questions, or you can also just come down and work on whatever you're working on, in the company of other researchers who are into coding. We'll either answer your question on the spot, or link you up with someone in the Research Bazaar community who can. Think of it as a help desk, with the added bonus of food and beer!

Another happy researcher! @action4climate came to #HackyHour today and @DrClimate solved his #netCDF and #Python problems! #ResBaz

— Research Platforms (@ResPlat)

October 30, 2014

Speaking of happy researchers, @Isa_Kiko was stoked to find that @andreabedini could solve her #HTML problems at #HackyHour! #ResBaz

— Research Platforms (@ResPlat)

October 30, 2014

Matchmakers! @andreabedini came to #HackyHour looking for help with @openstreetmap, so we hooked him up with our mapping guru, @stevage1

— Research Platforms (@ResPlat) October 30, 2014

We’d like to introduce you to Damien Irving! As well as being a stand-up great guy, Damien is our Research Community Coordinator for the Physical Sciences and leads our Software Carpentry and Hacky Hour initiatives.