First install ImageMagick using this install script hosted on github (http://github.com/masterkain/ImageMagick-sl):

cd ~/src
git clone git://github.com/masterkain/ImageMagick-sl.git
cd ImageMagick-sl
chmod +x install_im.sh
sh install_im.sh

Now simply sit back and wait. (Oh, you’ll need to enter your password at some points as the libraries are installed into /usr/local).

Then, once that’s done, RMagick is installed by:

gem install rmagick

Simples.

First install the oracle instant client somewhere - I normally install it to /usr/local/oracle/instantclient_10_2. Then…

cd /usr/local/oracle/instantclient_10_2
ln -s libclntsh.dylib.10.1 libclntsh.dylib

Following this, run mkdir -p /usr/local/oracle/network/admin/, and place a copy of the tnsnames.ora file in this directory.

Now you need to add the following to your .profile or .bashrc file:

# Oracle env variables
export ORACLE_HOME="/usr/local/oracle/instantclient_10_2"
export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH="/usr/local/oracle/instantclient_10_2:$DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH"
export SQLPATH="/usr/local/oracle/instantclient_10_2"
export TNS_ADMIN="/usr/local/oracle/network/admin"
export NLS_LANG="AMERICAN_AMERICA.UTF8"
export PATH="$PATH:$DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH"

That’s all of the set-up done, now you just need to install the gem:

gem install ruby-oci8

Done.

useradd syntax

useradd [options] {username}

Useful options are:

-d

declare the users home directory

-m

force ‘useradd’ to create the home directory

-D

accept the system defaults for account settings

An alternative for ‘useradd’ though is ‘adduser’:

adduser {username}

This will then prompt you for all the information needed to set up the account.

making the user an administrator (with sudo)

As the root user…

visudo

Then underneath the entry for ‘root’ just add in an entry with the desired user name:

{username} ALL=(ALL) ALL

The general gist is a basic introduction to both git and github, for developers who are already using version control (i.e. cvs or svn) but have yet to try distributed version control tools such as git.

I got the kit from the folks at The Happy Brewer in Bedford, it was very reasonably priced, and they were very friendly and happy to explain what was needed to be done to a complete novice. If you live near the Bedford area and fancy having a go yourself I’d happily recommend them.

That there is potentially 40 pints of Woodfordes Wherry, a very tasty beer sold at the local near the Sanger Institute - fingers crossed I’ll do a good job of it. This is the first fermentation step, in about 4-6 days I can move it into the barrel, then it’s a 3-4 week wait for the finished product. Will update with news on whether I killed myself (and anyone else brave enough to try it) soon!

I have to admit that quite a lot of the content of the workshop was completely irrelevant to me and went straight over my head at times, but I did enjoy it, and it’s good to hear what other people are doing.

I was there for two reasons, first was an interest in the content of the workshop, and second was that I was one of the people presenting a lightning talk! The content of my talk was pretty different to most of the other presentations - they were mostly about grid computing and development of portal interfaces for said grids - whereas mine was about the architecture I developed for the new Sanger Mouse Resources Portal.

It seemed to go down pretty well, it got a couple of laughs, no one fell asleep and quite a few asked questions at the end, so I was quite happy at that. Here’s the slides from the talk, just in case anyone would like to take a look. Copies of all the presentations from the workshop can be found here.