Computing facilities

Required software and data for tutorials is now available at: http://blake.bcm.edu/emanwiki/Ws2015

All tutorial sessions will require participants to use their own laptop computers. While you are free to attend the workshop without actively participating in the tutorials, the tutorial sessions will be active, and there will be relatively little to do for long periods if you are not actively participating. While several of the software packages used in the workshop, including EMAN2.1, SPARX, Gorgon and Chimera, are fully cross-platform compatible, some of the other workshop software may not be possible to use directly on Windows laptops, without installing an appropriate environment. Also, as we will be doing image processing directly on the laptop, machines with small, low-resolution screens and/or minimal processing capabilities may not be suitable.

It is critical that you install and test all of the workshop software and data before leaving for the workshop. This is a large workshop, and in no way will there be time to help individual participants with installation issues. If you don't have the software working, by the time you get it working, you will be so far behind, you will not be able to catch up with the tutorials. We will offer assistance via email before the workshop (in fact, you are welcome to email and ask for assistance at any time, irrespective of the workshop.

Absolute minimum reasonable machine specifications:

Dual Core 2 Ghz or faster processor

4 GB RAM

30-50 GB free disk space

If your display resolution is 1024x768 or 720P, you may survive, but the screen will feel extremely cramped.

If you install EMAN2.1 and run e2speedtest.py, you should get a score of at least ~0.3. If it is in this range or lower, you may consider looking for an alternative.

Strongly recommend a Linux or Mac environment. For Windows machines, there are 3 options:

Skip tutorials which don't offer Windows support

Install a Linux virtual machine or dual-boot environment

Install Cygwin, a unix-like environment for Windows

Unless you are a bit of hacker, option 3 may be considerably more trouble than option 2. Eventually if you are doing CryoEM image processing, you will need to learn how to use the unix command-line. This is simply how all software in this field is normally used. You may be able to use Windows machines for some simple purposes, but in this field even software with Windows support largely wasn't designed with Windows in mind.

Each seat will provide power for laptops and Wifi connections will be available, but it will not be possible to download tutorial material on-site.




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National Center for Macromolecular Imaging
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