The Blog Swan

Hi. My name is Dan Swan (you can call me Daniel if you like, depending on your level of familiarity/disdain).  I’m still just about in my mid 30′s.

I like to describe myself as a chappist, geek, bioinformatician and bon vivant. I’m living in Gateshead, working in Newcastle and enjoying both!

I run the Bioinformatics Support Unit at Newcastle University ably aided and abetted by Simon Cockell

We mainly sit around playing with computers, number crunching through scientific  data and listening to the hum of fans in the office. Occasionally we go into big rooms with hundreds of CPU’s in to kick the servers until they work again. Such is life.  Actually the kicking of servers is more than just an occasional outing.  There’s a lot of things that can go wrong apparently.

My technological interests lie largely with anything that involves lots of machines, or expensive machines – so e-Science, cluster computing, cloud computing are all high on my priority list.  I’m now into my 14th year of Linux use (first install was in 1995), but I’m all about Mac OSX  on the desktop.  But Linux on the server.  I will admit to using Windows 7, and owning an Xbox360.  I am not a Microsoft hater.

I prefer vi to emacs.

I prefer Ruby to Perl.

I prefer libre to proprietary.

I’m originally a developmental biologist, so I still get a kick out of working with genuine, pipette wielding scientists.  In general I can be found doing almost everything from microbial genomics, metagenomics, transcriptomics, systems biology, synthetic biology (with the iGEM students), cancer, ageing – well anything that involves getting digital data out of a complex biological system.

In my spare time I game, read, run and appreciate good wine and good whisky.  More of the wine these days.   A whisky habit can be awfully expensive.  A gin and tonic is a good subsitute however.

This page almost never gets updated.  Neither does the blog.  You’d be better off looking for me on FriendFeed or Twitter.  Links are in the sidebar!