Earlier this year the RSE team in Sheffield put a call out for proposals for researchers in the University of Sheffield to collaborate with the RSE team. The successful applicants would receive dedicated support from an RSE Team member at 50% FTE for a period of six months.
This article introduces virtualenvwrapper for creating and working with Python Virtual Environments showing how to install and use it and highlighting some useful features.
We’ve finally put all the videos, slides and other resources together from the Best Practices in AI Afternoon event that happened on the 5th of July 2024. You can find them listed below.
Due to a security vulnerability, all users are advised to update their installation of R to version 4.4.0 or newer as soon as possible (ideally within the next month).
Members of the University of Sheffield have access to a range of GPU resources for carrying out their research, available in local (Tier 3) and affiliated regional (Tier 2) HPC systems.
As of March 2024, the N8 CIR Bede Tier 2 HPC facility now includes an Open Pilot of 3 NVIDIA GH200 Nodes which are available to all users.
Each GH200 node in Bede contains a single NVIDIA GH200 Grace Hopper Superchip - a 72 core NVIDIA Grace ARM CPU connected to a single NVIDIA Hopper GPU via a 900GB/s NVIDIA NVLink-C2C interconnect. This new interconnect allows data to be moved between the host and device with a much higher bandwidth than in traditional PCI-e based systems, reducing the time spent transferring data.
The RSE Team are pleased to announce four scheduled sessions of the ever popular Git & GitHub through GitKraken - Zero to Hero!. These courses will run in-person over two consecutive days in morning sessions from 09:30 to 13:00 on the following days.
Git is a system of version controlling your code. Think of it as a lab-book or doctors notes that are taken as you progress through your work, recording conditions, saving what has worked and correcting what doesn’t.
GitHub is a website that allows people to work collaboratively on version controlled code.
GitKraken is a client for working with Git and GitHub that includes both a GUI (Graphical User Interface) and a CLI (Command Line Interface)
Everyone who writes code! If you write scripts to analyse your code in R, Stata or Matlab you would benefit from using Git to version control your code and GitHub to share your code and make it open. If you write Python, JavaScript, C/++ code as part of a team in your research group you would benefit from using Git and GitHub to work together.
Getting started with these tools can be overwhelming but by taking this course you will be introduced to the concepts behind them and how to use them effectively to not just version control your own work but work with others on the same code.
The course material is available online if you want to take a peek and the first half using Git and publishing web-pages can be worked through in your own time. The real benefit comes from participating in the collaborative exercises in the second half where you work together on projects making Pull Requests and resolving problems that arise.
If you’ve never used Git, GitHub or GitKraken or have only just started then sign-up and come and learn more about these powerful tools.
Pytest is an excellent framework for writing tests in Python. One of the neat features it includes is the ability to parameterise your tests which means you can write one test and pass different sets of parameters into it to test the range of actions that the function/method are meant to handle.
I’ve written before about Python Packaging and pre-commit which I’m a big fan of. Today I discovered a really useful tool for checking your packaging configuration and pre-commit configuration from the Scientific Python Development Guide.
R is a statistical programming language and one of the most popular languages for data analysis, statistics and plotting in academia and industry. Learning a new language can be daunting, particularly if you have no experience of scripting and are used to Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) where you point and click to perform your statistical analysis.
Fear not though, there are lot of resources and very friendly, enthusiastic and helpful R users out there who can help you on your journey learning R. This post details some of them, and I’d welcome additions.
Python packaging is in a constant state of flux. There is the official Python
Packaging User Guide and the Python Packaging
Authority (PyPA) which is probably the best resource to read but things change, and often
quickly. The focus here is on the PyPA Setuptools using
pyproject.toml which works with Python >= 3.7, but you may wish to consider other packages such as
Poetry or PDM which offer some advantages but with additional frameworks to learn.
For queries relating to collaborating with the RSE team on projects: rse@sheffield.ac.uk
Information and access to JADE II and Bede.
Join our mailing list so as to be notified when we advertise talks and workshops by subscribing to this Google Group.
Queries regarding free research computing support/guidance should be raised via our Code clinic or directed to the University IT helpdesk.