One of the best things about working on the top floor is hearing rain hit the roof.

I need a 3-stage pipeline or a trio-sequencing tool to build, solely so I can name it "The Three Sisters" and have a professional excuse to post my Goblin Valley photos.

Setting new professional goals is always a great chance to reflect. This year, I’m continuing to evolve my previous objectives while channeling a lot of energy into leading the incredible AMD Mountain Region Bioinformatics Code Club! 💻🧬 Take a look at what we've been building:

Dear @vscode.dev , I want to thank your devs for adding Mermaid diagrams to preview in 1.121

The new work logo just dropped. Here's hoping it makes all my routine emails look incredibly smart and official.

Nothing brings me more joy than announcing a "necessary reboot" of the shared workstation just to immediately monopolize 100% of the CPU.

FYI, Nancy Drew: Ghost Dogs of Moon Lake has a great cozy-spooky #OST. The game also has some great information about how to avoid getting Hantavirus from animal droppings. #VideoGameMusic

A short piece about what "the pangenome" is and is not. open.substack.com/pub/profmcin...

I have the personal engagement skills of an Excel spreadsheet, but I do understand the rationality of more engagement in social media in the space of public health. Notes from Dr. Sharfstein #APHL #APHL2026

I'm feeling very welcomed to Baltimore for the 75th APHL annual conference. #APHL #APHL2026

My favorite quote from this is "I just hope the bioinformatics community could collaboratively come up with guidelines and common practices on tool rewriting to advance this field in a friendly manner. After all, ... Empathy matters more than technical benefit or legal correctness."

This seems like I should implement this

Finished the first week of MTN region code club, which was all about common Bioinformatic files: FASTQ, FASTA, SAM/BAM, BED, and VCF 🧬🖥️

Just finished updating my prokaryotic representative genome mash reference coinciding with RefSeq version 234 zenodo.org/records/1921... 🧬🖥️🦠

Today’s #soundtrack is from Final Fantasy IX. This #ost blends medieval folk, whimsical orchestration, and melancholic piano. #VideoGameMusic

Today's #soundtrack is from Factorio. This #ost is industrial ambient and minimalist. Tracks layer mechanical drones and distant synth textures, shifting from sparse atmospheric hums to steady, hypnotic rhythms that mirror the quiet expansion of a sprawling automated factory. #VideoGameMusic

I was recently reminded just how much I love geNomad's beautifully boxed summary information. It includes a clear file trees and built-in explanations for every output file in the stdout. 🧬🖥

Today's #soundtrack is from Hearthstone. This #ost is whimsical and orchestral. Tracks blend playful tavern melodies with subtle magical fanfares, shifting from lighthearted jingles to adventurous, epic motifs. #VideoGameMusic

I had a fantastic morning connecting with some incredibly inspiring young scientists at our local STEM fair! Congratulations to all the students who showcased their curiosity, creativity, and hard work! (And their corresponding adults.) The future of science is bright! #sciencefair #STEM

Hello world! I am excited to announce my lab is open at the University of Utah in the Department of Biochemistry. We are looking for scientists at all levels interested in studying host-virus interactions in both bacteria and animals. Come join us in beautiful Utah! (photo is 10 steps from lab)

It's great being able to connect with my fellow public health bioinformaticians at the AMD Leads Meeting in Atlanta!

Working from home with a sick-kid-that-feels-fine is such an adventure. Features: fever that reduces with acetaminophen random infrequent cough lots of energy and stir craziness

I finally fleshed out one of my python scripts into a package: daisyblast Instead of pairwise blast results, this is intended to find blast hits that are shared by _n_ queries (like a daisy chain!). I can create dotplots of multiple samples

This is my first time working with NeighborNet (part of phangorn), and I think I'm going to need to do some reading so that 1) this makes sense to me, and 2) I can explain it to my collaborators

I have finally done it! I finished a rough draft for a manuscript and sent to to co-authors for editing. I may have it submitted by the end of this year!

I had an EPI contact me to see if any isolates were clustering with 2024CK-00004 and 2024CK-00250 for EPI reasons. Pathogen Detection has these two isolates in the same cluster, making this question relatively easy to answer.

I probably need some different colors, but I've made a graph detailing the number of AMR genes we've seen in organisms that we've sequenced for the last few months.

"WGS-informed prevention could hypothetically generate net savings of €1.35 million annually if transmission was stopped once a clonal isolate was detected in a second patient." I think that translates to ~1.5 million US dollars

And today's (useless) figure is that the mean depth observed in a bam file is linearly associated with the number of reads in the corresponding fastq files.

I had 18 samples (33 million+ reads) of SARS-CoV-2 amplicon-based sequencing that would not create a decent consensus fasta after aligning with `bbmap` and trimming/consensus generation with `ivar`, but would if I tweaked the pipeline a bit. /

Just finished updating my prokaryotic representative genome mash reference coinciding with refseq version 232 🧬🖥️🦠

Conda is an open-source command-line system for package and environment management. It's free, and generally does not need admin privileges. Since I helped someone install conda today, I'll share the process here. /

Awesome to see the transparent, systematic, and evidence-based approach behind the WHO Bacterial Priority Pathogens List 2024 out in the Lancet Infectious Diseases www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

We have a new APHL fellow working with us! @robbysainsbury.bsky.social is going to do some great things!

We've successfully sequenced *6* Movbillivirus hominis (the virus that causes measles) found in local patients. The fastq and fasta files will eventually be found in BioProject PRJNA1293457. /

Currently having an intern test how normalization impacts coverage for amplicon libraries. This one is normalized to 500X coverage.

I watched this video of a concert that was part of Game Developers Conference (GDC), and the back of my mind won't stop trying to find a Public Health or Bioinformatics Conference equivalent.

It's 8+1 day, so it's a day to feature Cecret (Lake)

I finally have slurm up on both of my linux workstations! (please clap)

Today's #soundtrack is from Abzu. This #ost is both orchestral and Choral. Tracks transition from tranquil, meditative tones to swelling, dramatic climaxes #VideoGameMusic

Just finished updating my prokaryotic representative genome mash reference coinciding with refseq version 231 🧬🖥️🦠

Have I done primer design before? Yes. Have I added in probe design before? Yes. Has it been over a decade? Also, Yes. Wish me luck!

Today's #soundtrack is from Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles. This #ost is mostly calm and whimsical instrumental pieces. #VideoGameMusic

Today's #soundtrack is from Drakengard 2. The Drakengard 2 #ost is dramatic and orchestral, which I think is great for creative or minimal-focus work. It also makes the day feel like a fantasy epic. #VideoGameMusic

I kept my name because it comes with a theme song. I wish everyone everywhere the same privilege, even if their reasons are more valid.

I love being able to video conference in for friend's thesis defenses! Congratulations Amy Sawyer! (Not on bluesky... yet)

Today's #soundtrack is from Batman: Arkham Shadow. This #ost has a full orchestra and choir for dramatic and tense pieces. #VideoGameMusic

For the first time in _forever_, I took a long trip outside of cell service and wifi range. It was an immensely refreshing experience. Also, I apologize to everyone who needed an email from me last week.

Today's #soundtrack (s) are from Age of Empires (AoE) I and II. There isn't enough music with just one of them. I's #ost blends traditional-sounding rhythms and instruments with synthesized sounds. II is more melodic and layered than I. #VideoGameMusic

Today's #soundtrack is from Octopath Traveler. This #ost consists of orchestral and folk-inspired pieces. #VideoGameMusic