By 30th September 2022, I had clocked up a total of over 2000 km of running in 2022. This milestone was a good opportunity to look at how I got to this point. The code is shown below. First, we can make a histogram to look at the distance of runs. From this type of […]
Line Up: recommendations for the best human cell line
Here is a summary of the info I gleaned from asking for recommendations for the best human cell line. These were my criteria: For context, we currently use a number of human cell lines in the lab: HeLa, RPE1, HCT116, SKOV3; as well as many others in the past: HEK293, DLD-1, U2OS. I consider HeLa […]
Videotape: From Microscope To Figure
I recently did a webinar for ASCB called “From Microscope To Figure“. For posterity, I am re-posting the webinar here with some additional info. The webinar Useful links There was a request to share the tutorial I showed (in short form) to making montages in ImageJ. Q&A I didn’t get time to answer all the […]
I’ve Gotta Get A Message To You III: fixing SMTP on Raspberry Pi
Sometimes an update causes a chain reaction which borks a system. Here are some notes on how I fixed a SMTP mail issue on my Raspberry Pi camera project. A quick recap: the RPi camera takes pictures every ten minutes, each night the images get sent to a server and each week the transferred images […]
Pledging My Time V: analysing race results in R
It’s been a while since I posted a breakdown of half marathon times. The last time seems to have been 2018. I decided to give my old code a clean-up and quickly crunched the numbers from the 2022 Kenilworth Half Marathon. First, the results: Briefly, the code below reads in a csv file of race […]
Multiplex: comparing Plex libraries
This website is all about niche tech tips and this post is no exception. I run a Plex media server. This allows me to stream my music collection when I am out and about. Plex pass owners get the nifty plexamp app for listening to music, which I really like. The databasing for the movie […]
The Package: learning how to build an R package
I recently made my first R package and was asked how I did it. The answer of course was: I searched, read, and stumbled around until it was done. But having gone through the process I figured it was worthwhile summarising what I did and what I found tricky. First off, there are a ton […]
Tracking: announcing new R package TrackMateR
A short post to announce TrackMateR, a new R package to analyse TrackMate XML outputs. Code Instructions Background TrackMate is a plug-in for ImageJ which ships with Fiji. It’s essential for single particle tracking work, particularly for microscopy movies. For example, tracking the movement of fluorescent vesicles inside cells. A tracking session generates a TrackMate […]
Slacker: archiving information from a Slack workspace
Slack is a wonderful tool for communicating and organising work in teams. Many academic groups are using the free version (since the pricing is simply incompatible with how we are funded). Slack has had a 10,000 message limit for free tier workspaces for many years but they recently changed it to a 90 day limit. […]
Tips From The Blog XVIII: upgrading a Music/iTunes library
Niche tech tips are the cornerstone of this website, and here is another. How to upgrade an iTunes/Music library whilst maintaining the database. I know everyone streams music these days – hence this is likely a very niche tech tip – but I still maintain a large music database on a server. The data in […]