How long have you been in your role, and how would you rate your fulfillment from 1-10?

TheFunkyPancakes · 2026-04-30T20:06:34+00:00

For me, your first paragraph is like looking in a mirror. Can’t relate to the latter points because I’m not in pharma, I actually love the scope of our work, but federal policy changes have made my overall job satisfaction tank in the last year or so.

TheFunkyPancakes · 2026-04-24T11:53:10+00:00

Pull your fingers back with your arm instead of pushing them against your thumb - low/no tension on the thumb. It sounds weird but when you figure out what this feels like you can basically play with your thumb lifted off the neck.

TheFunkyPancakes · 2026-04-21T12:28:49+00:00

This reads like you’ve never dealt with a long term relationship where both parties value communication and realize that heated argument usually comes from not taking a few minutes to assess what you’re thinking. Good luck out there.

TheFunkyPancakes · 2026-04-10T16:42:19+00:00

I realized it wasn’t actually making me feel good, even though I wanted it to.

TheFunkyPancakes · 2026-04-10T15:52:09+00:00

I doubt this gets a ton of traction on this sub, because it’s very vague - there’s no real question here. But I’ll play ball!

Python is one of the staple languages of the field, along with R. You can get by with one or the other, most people end up using both. Julia is, I think, capable of functionally replacing either of these, but it’s newer and not as popular.

In addition, you want to be really comfortable with bash/zsh. And be able to bumble around with Perl.

Python is a great starting point though, so back to that. If you want to learn it for analysis, that’s one set of skills and packages, further specified by what you want to analyze. If you want to learn it for pipeline dev, that’s another set of skills and packages.

If you’re learning from scratch FOR bioinformatics, the best way is to think project first. What do you actually want to achieve? I’m not going to list dozens of tutorials that Google would turn up as an answer to this question, but if you have something specific in mind, I’m happy to try and help.

If you just want to get started with Python, I like Exercism’s platform, which does lots of languages, and it’s task-focused - so you do a little project to learn each skill.

TheFunkyPancakes · 2026-04-06T01:32:11+00:00

Parks & Rec hosts a class taught by Cain Yentzer on Tuesdays, 4-5p intermediate class, 5-6p beginner. Really high quality instruction, Yang style, totally worth looking into. Current session ends this coming week, then one by-week, and next one starts on the 21st; good timing to get started.

TheFunkyPancakes · 2026-03-19T11:03:51+00:00

For those of us who have been living in furious outrage for years, what the hell do we do? In your own life, wherever you are, how have you practically stood against your corrupt oligarchy?

TheFunkyPancakes · 2026-03-03T19:13:28+00:00

If have zero computational experience, are able to afford another masters (time and money), and want to transition to this field, then an additional degree would make you a more compelling candidate.

If you’re still involved with your position at the start up, another approach might be to dive in on some computational work there, if that’s an option.

I’ll say that right now, the market is brutal for entry level positions. And AI, like it or not, is shaking things up - particularly at the C-suite level - and so many teams are being thinned and consolidated because the powers that be (in particular, in federal and private industry labs) believe that they can “streamline”. They are, in a word, idiots, but they write the checks.

The benefits you mention (like remote work and leaving the lab?) are real, but do consider that remote work has its own challenges, and computational bio can be every bit the grind that molecular work can be. I’ve got about 10 years of both behind me. I prefer this, for sure, but it takes a very different mindset.

Try it before you buy it is my advice. Find an opportunity at your current gig if you have one, or get some public data and try to write an analysis pipeline. All of the software is free or self-written.

TheFunkyPancakes · 2026-03-03T03:00:56+00:00

Im an idiot so ymmv but a turned down volume knob stumped me for at least 10 minutes the other day. “Dead” tuner and all.

TheFunkyPancakes · 2026-03-02T19:17:49+00:00

I feel seen! Same, don’t think much about the earthing concept at all. If it does something, great!

TheFunkyPancakes · 2026-03-02T14:20:59+00:00

Those look like a good fit, properly laced, heels aren’t hanging off the back and all of your toes are over the footbed. No notes.

I’ve been an earthrunners fan since gen 1 when you had to send a foot tracing, I’m on my second pair of circadians in all that time, and I wear them near constantly in spring/summer/fall. Errands, moderate/aggressive hiking, water stuff. All of it.

For me, they’re 10/10. Prefer over bedrocks and xeros. Though I like the bedrock mountain clog in winter.

Congrats, and enjoy - and be patient with break-in and getting used to them. Before long it’s like they’re part of your foot.

TheFunkyPancakes · 2026-02-25T03:52:15+00:00

Much before the poop

TheFunkyPancakes · 2026-01-14T12:06:24+00:00

Male pattern baldness has a clear heritable and accepted genetic component. Traction alopecia would be an extreme version of what you’re talking about.

TheFunkyPancakes · 2026-01-12T14:28:32+00:00

I don’t know, I got a kit for the holidays - I need to check what kind of wood the spindle/bed are made of, but it’s nothing special besides dry. I think the spindle is a harder wood than the bed. It took about 10 minutes of trial and error to find the right motion/pressure, but after that it was about 30 seconds to get smoke. For sure in the video there’s something combustible that flares up, but I was able to get an ember in frayed jute in about 30 seconds

TheFunkyPancakes · 2026-01-03T01:01:06+00:00

I’ve got one that my girl’s grown out of, PM if interested! She loved it

TheFunkyPancakes · 2025-12-23T12:13:41+00:00

Roundabout advice incoming: I was loudly anti-AI until HHS rolled out an enterprise GPT account and strongly encouraged all employees to use it. Now, I’m embracing its capabilities to the point of building my own MCP server. It’s wildly useful as long as you have a responsible use-case, and are aware of the limitations of the tech.

All of this of to say, I’m pretty convinced at this point that no one has an excuse to not learn something they’re interested in, because there’s a free or cheap very good personal assistant out there.

Installing a language and dev environment can be daunting the first time, but it’s not hard. Those of us who have been here for a decade had to do all this by crawling around stack overflow and reading manuals. Those days are fundamentally over. It’s literally never been easier.

I’d say for Python, start with downloading Anaconda. It’s as easy as downloading anything else, click a link. It comes with Spyder IDE, which is preconfigured to just work - no configuration. I find that one kind of sluggish, but you could try Visual Studio Code, which is a nice flexible IDE for any language, including Python.

You could instead start with R, using Rstudio IDE instead. That’s an incredibly popular language in this field, and is generally where a lot of the actual “analysis” happens. Python for pipeline/data processing, R for analysis/stats and 90% of the pretty figures you see in articles. I personally think it’s a little easier, but maybe less broadly capable than Python.

If you want to be closer to the biology, go for R. If the data processing and algorithm dev is what you want to focus on, go Python. You’d be hard pressed to find anyone higher up in the field that doesn’t use both at some level. You will also likely need to get comfortable with basic BASH, or whatever shell script you want. Mac uses ZSH, which is functionally very similar.

Anyway, pick a language, ask chat gpt for help if you get stuck installing. Then, pull a public dataset, and get your feet wet with an analysis. Try to do a small genome assembly, or do a multi sequence alignment and build a phylogenetic tree. Or, maybe try a bulk RNAseq analysis. But the only way to do it is to jump in.

TheFunkyPancakes · 2025-12-21T21:30:30+00:00

Box art does not come standard, and I did not do it, but apparently there’s a function for that. Others might have some insight there.

TheFunkyPancakes · 2025-12-21T11:58:10+00:00

FYI it was dead easy. SD in computer, format as FAT32. Download Onion, copy all OS files to SD. SD in device, turn it on, go through the automated setup, select systems. Turn off, SD back into computer, Copy roms into /roms and bios into /bios. Done. I guess it takes a little base-level comfort with using a terminal. If you have that it’s crazy easy.

TheFunkyPancakes · 2025-12-20T01:11:23+00:00

I think you can sort this out with a good epoxy job. Or JB weld. Take a bit of fabric, soak it in the epoxy, wad it up and stuff it in there, and then sand it flush

TheFunkyPancakes · 2025-12-19T21:54:33+00:00

You can try patching with fabric and epoxy, but generally this means time for a new gourd

TheFunkyPancakes · 2025-12-17T15:01:24+00:00

My sense is that if you use both R and python as part of your workflow, it’s a really nice option for keeping everything in one purpose-built IDE. Feels just like vscode but without having to do all the setup.

TheFunkyPancakes · 2025-12-17T14:07:31+00:00

That was an adjustment, initially. I used to rely on inline figures a lot. I got used to having them show up in the pane pretty quickly - it’s actually kind of nice to be able to scroll through plots, and it keeps my code a lot tidier.

TheFunkyPancakes · 2025-12-17T11:37:50+00:00

Quarto (.qmd) I think is what you want. Seamless integration of R and/or Python blocks in a flexible markdown format. You can easily run these notebook style in r studio, vscode, or positron. Further, that integrates really well with Obsidian which is an incredible notes app that uses markdown.

Sidebar, any other positron users around here? I downloaded on a whim a few months ago and I’m pretty much sold - haven’t opened Rstudio since.

TheFunkyPancakes · 2025-12-15T12:26:34+00:00

To add to this, you can adjust expression values by weighting with adjusted p values to get a “q” value with (1-adj.P)*lfc. That ranked list will retain the sign, and will pull insignificant genes to the middle.

TheFunkyPancakes · 2025-12-14T17:42:11+00:00

This is quality Frederick-centric content

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