How to...

Matt

How to negotiate a better home loan rate with your bank (from Barefoot Investor SCOTT PAPE):

You: Hello, my account number is ______. I’ve been with you for ___ years, but I’ve applied to refinance with UBank. Their rate is ____ per cent, which is a full ___ per cent cheaper than you’re charging me. Given our longstanding relationship, I’d like you to match the offer — or send me the forms I need to switch to UBank.

Bank rep: One moment, please.

(You’re bluffing, of course. However, the bank’s sales team have strict targets, backed by incentives, that they have to meet — one of which is giving profitable customers discounts to stop them leaving.)

Bank rep: We can’t match the rate you have quoted. However, we understand you are a valuable customer, so we would like to offer you a 0.15 per cent discount.

You: That’s not good enough. I’ve already got conditional approval … so in order to stay I need at least a 0.5 per cent discount. Could you please speak to your supervisor? I’m happy to wait.

Bank rep (a full six minutes later): On reviewing your case, we can offer you that 0.5 per cent discount on your current rate.

You: Brilliant! Please send me an email confirming the new rate and confirming that it will be applied as of start of business tomorrow.

Matt

How to fix the error "FATAL: container creation failed:" "error: can't mount image " "failed to mount squashfs filesystem: input/output error":

#This occurs when you try to run a singularity container within a VM and it is located on a mounted ntfs filesystem. The solution is to transfer the container to a different filesystem eg. ext3.

Matt

How to run docker-compose when you get the errors:

File "posixpath.py", line 376, in abspath
FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory

Open a new terminal and repeat the command.

Matt

How to login to root account in a new ubuntu/xubuntu virtual machine that has been set up with a non-administrator account:

su
yourpasswordfortheuseraccount

Matt

How to update apt and install filezilla on xubuntu using a proxy:

sudo apt -o Acquire::http::proxy="http://user:password@host:port/" update
sudo apt -o Acquire::http::proxy="http://user:password@host:port/" install filezilla

Matt

How to install ubuntu on windows:

Follow the instructions at:
https://s1gr1d.medium.com/how-to-set-up-linux-on-windows-with-wsl-2-debe2a64d20d
(NB. these instructions work for Windows 10 and 11 although the location of the Settings menus may differ slightly. Also note that VMX is the same as VT-X in the BIOS settings)
In Windows Powershell, you may also need to issue the following commands:

bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype Auto
wsl --update

Matt

How to use your phone as a webcam:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArVDKf2QK1s

Matt

How to fix the following error in NextFlow:

WARN: Failed to render DAG file:

This error prevents NextFlow from drawing the DAG for the pipeline.

#install Graphviz 
#eg. with conda
conda install -c conda-forge graphviz

Matt

How to gather and group all tuple elements in a NextFlow channel by the first and second indexes of each tuple, perform a process on a file containing the first and second indices, and then reform the original channel by scattering:

hc_ch = Channel.of(
    ['abc', 1, file('file1.txt')],
    ['abc', 1, file('file2.txt')],
    ['abc', 1, file('file3.txt')],
    ['def', 2, file('file4.txt')]
)

combinedChannel = hc_ch.groupTuple(by: [0, 1])

Expected structure of combinedChannel:

[ ['abc', 1, [file('file1.txt'), file('file2.txt'), file('file3.txt')]],
['def', 2, [file('file4.txt')]]
]


process delete_txt {

    input:
    tuple val(id), val(sub_id), val(files) from combinedChannel

    output:
    tuple val(id), val(sub_id), val(files) into processedChannel

    script:
    """
    rm ${id}_${sub_id}.txt
    """
}

Expected structure of processedChannel:

[ ['abc', 1, [file('file1.txt'), file('file2.txt'), file('file3.txt')]],
['def', 2, [file('file4.txt')]]
]

flattenedChannel = processedChannel.flatMap { id, sub_id, files -> files.collect { [id, sub_id, it] } }

Expected structure of flattenedChannel:
[ ['abc', 1, file('file1.txt')],
['abc', 1, file('file2.txt')],
['abc', 1, file('file3.txt')],
['def', 2, file('file4.txt')]
]

Matt

How to get the path for the folder containing a bash script within the bash script:

# Get the directory where the script resides
SCRIPT_DIR="$(cd "$(dirname "$0")" && pwd)"
echo $SCRIPTDIR