Come rain or shine, every summer we leave our desks and journey across Oxford’s finer drinking establishments. This year’s Le Tour de Farce was held on 11 June [1]. The trip is traditionally done by bike; however, as long as you have a helmet and lights, anything goes. To emphasise this point, Charlotte jokingly suggested rollerblades were also welcome.
Continue readingCategory Archives: Humour
Chat bots and the Turing test
When I recently tested out the voice activation features on my phone, I was extremely impressed with how well it understood not only the actual words I was saying, but also the context. The last time I used voice control features was years ago when the technology was still in its infancy. There was only a specific set of commands the voice recognition software understood and most of them were hard-coded. Given the impressive advances we have made utilizing machine learning for voice recognition and natural language processing to the point where I can tell my phone: “Hey Google, can you give me a list of the best BBQ restaurants near me?” and it will actually understand and do it, it is interesting that we still struggle with a language based technology that has been around for ages: chatbots.
Continue readingGetting home: An ordeal of flight cancellations (& what they actually cost)
Last week, a sizeable flock of OPIGlets went to ISMB in Basel. Also last week, a storm and a radar tower problem over London Gatwick (LGW) and London Heathrow (LHR) led to four of those OPIGlets being stranded in Switzerland. This is a (somewhat accurate) timeline of their ordeal:
Continue readingFilm review: Back to the lab
Background:
Interdisciplinary projects are in fashion. Nowadays, most of the top universities in the world offer “interdisciplinary” doctorate programs. It seems that becoming a specialist in a particular field is not enough to progress in science. Now, students must prove their ability to understand and be proficient in different areas. Why study only Chemistry if you can combine it with Statistics, Programming and Biology? The more tools and concepts you can play with the better.
Continue readingSome useful tools
For my blog post this week, I thought I would share, as the title suggests, a small collection of tools and packages that I found to make my work a bit easier over the last few months (mainly python based). I might add to this list as I find new tools that I think deserve a shout-out.
Biopandas
Reading in .pdb files for processing and writing your own parser (while being a good exercise to familiarize yourself with the format) is a pain and clutters your code with boilerplate.
Luckily for us, Sebastian Raschka has written a neat package called biopandas [1] which enables quick I/O of .pdb files via the pandas DataFrame class.
Continue readingPreparing a five minute conference talk: an honest account
On 26 September I had the opportunity to give a short talk at the COSTNET18 conference in Warsaw. I’d never done anything like it before, which made it both exciting and a tiny bit terrifying. I thought I’d share how I prepared for it, in the hope that other conference newbies might find some of it useful, or at least funny.
20 July
I register for the conference, and apply to give a talk. I use a version of my paper draft abstract, to which I add a couple of introductory sentences. I submit successfully, but at the end of the day accidentally delete this version of the abstract from my computer. I guess if I need it, I just need to wait until the conference programme becomes available. #fail Continue reading
Le Tour de Farce v6.0
Tuesday the 12th of June brought sun, cycling and beer to the land of OPIG. It was once again time for the annual Tour de Farce.
Le tour, now in its highly refined 6.0 version, covered a route which took us from the statistics department at Oxford (home to many OPIGlets) to our first port of call, The Head of the River pub. We then followed the river Isis (or Thames if you prefer) from the head of the river towards Osney mead.
Passing though Osney we soon arrived at our second waypoint. The Punter. One of the OPIGlets lived locally and so we were met by their trusty companion, who was better behaved than many of the others on Le Tour.
Departing the punter on two wheels (or in one case, on one) we followed the river upstream to The Perch.
Our arrival at The Perch was slightly hampered by a certain OPIGlet taking out anything in her path in her excitement. Mr Sulu.. Ramming speed.
Those that survived soon left the perch, as we were once again headed upstream, this time to The Trout.
Having braved about half the journey it was now time for another restorative beverage and to take on supplies. Sustenance was provided by Jacob’s Inn. Jacob’s Inn has the advantage of goats, chickens and pigs in the back garden. Having spent most of the afternoon in each other’s company, the company of pigs was preferable for some.
As we finished dinner, the sun was beginning to set and so we abandoned the original plan of finishing off at The Fishes. Instead we returned southwards where we closed off the evening with a drink at The Royal Oak, mere yards from where we started the day.
The route of the 2018 v6.0 Tour de Farce.
The Ten Commandments of OPIG
In OPIG one must learn, and one must learn FAST! However, sometimes stupidity in OPIG knows no limits (*cough* James *cough* Anne *cough*), so for the newer (and prospective) members of the group, I thought it wise to share the some ground rules, a.k.a. The Ten Commandments of OPIG.
Vaguely adhering to these will drastically improve your time in OPIG (see Exhibit A), and let’s face it, none of them are particularly challenging.
- No touchy the supervisor.
- No touchy other students.
- You’re not late unless you’re after Charlotte. Don’t be late.
- All prizes are subject to approval by The Party.
- Thou shalt not tomate.
- Any and all unattended food is fair game.
- Meetings (especially the one before yours) will go on as long as they have to.
- Finish your DPhil or die.
- This is not a democracy.
- NO TOUCHY THE SUPERVISOR!
Bonus (and final rule). If this is your first time at Group Meeting, you have to present (well at least introduce yourself).
P.s. we’re not that bad, I promise!
Disclaimer: while I’ve categorised this post as “humour”, I take no responsibility for your enjoyment.
And the Oscar goes to …
08:44
I have a bet I can write a blog post in under 20 mins. Last week I asked Leila Tamara where her blog post was (we aim to have one up every week) and she replied that “It was ready but hadn’t been proof-read yet“. I guess it goes to show the diligence of the students here at Oxford. (Some of them, anyway).
So as a Marie Curie Stars ITN Fellow, my time is coming to an end (in mid-September). Part of my D.Phil was about finding novel anti-malarial inhibitors using computational methods (virtual screening). No, we haven’t cured it yet.
During a conference in Riga we made a video about the project – I find it funny to see myself on screen, (and to hear my heavily accented commentary). Pity the Oscars have already been dished out this year!
And a “making of” still
08:52.
Warning: this post hasn’t been proof-read yet!
Free food!
Yesterday I walked into Group Meeting not having read Bernhard‘s paper (shameful, I know), and I was immediately asked “Where is the Daleks post on the blog?”. To which I mumbled something unconstrued, because I am not sure what a Dalek is and because I didn’t know we were doing post requests.
Anyway, at every group meeting one of us is responsible to organise the talk and another to supply food. The only current rule (since the well-received demise of the “No alcohol” one) is: “No tomatoes“. We’ve had a number of original and tasty contributions: Dominos pizza, Ben’s and Millies cookies, truckloads of Haribos, Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Sushi, Nutella baguettes and home-baked delights.
But Eoin‘s contribution takes the prize this round (a small trophy in Lab Room #1).
Eoin’s Dr. Who Daleks sugar rush inducing cakes (click for the juicy detail).
So, a small pointer to OPIG prospective students – “baking” and “creative thinking” skills are really well appreciated and look good on your CV!