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Andrew Whitwham

@whitwham.bsky.social
76 followers 195 following 42 posts

Archer, gamer, coder.

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Andrew Whitwham @whitwham.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Why does the Sunderland Antiquarian Society have a picture of London? Sunderland was a major ship building town at the time
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Andrew Whitwham @whitwham.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Roker Pier Lighthouse.
Red and white stone lighthouse at the end of a stone pier. A partly cloudy sky behind it.
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The Other David Harper @theotherdavidh.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
We observed Wednesday evening's partial eclipse using several advanced instruments, including a Jacob's cream cracker acting as a (multiple) pinhole camera. This was much more effective than the colander, due to the cracker's smaller holes.
The shadow of a Jacob's cream cracker biscuit on a sheet of paper, with multiple tiny crescent-shaped images of the partially eclipsed Sun created by the holes in the cracker.
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Andrew Whitwham @whitwham.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
Okay, I will not mention it until it becomes official.
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Andrew Whitwham @whitwham.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
Have you officially announced your retirement at work? Nobody else has mentioned it.
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Reactor Magazine @reactorsff.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
Last week, we shared an American edition of Katharine Kerr's Daggerspell. Today, we're showing off the UK edition! This version came from the now-defunct publisher Grafton, and has a gorgeous cover by artist Geoff Taylor
Daggerspell by Katharine Kerr
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Robert Aboukhalil @robert.bio · 22/07/2026
grep is a fantastic tool, but it doesn't really work on sequencing data: it breaks when the pattern is in the read name, and doesn't support paired-end FASTQs. Thanks to @nilshomer.com, we have a new interactive guide on using fqgrep to find patterns in FASTQ files: ➡️ sandbox.bio/tutorials/fq...
sandbox.bio
Interactive bioinformatics tutorials
Learn bioinformatics from your browser, no setup required. Everything runs in a sandbox, so you can experiment all you want.
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James Bonfield @jbonfield.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
Note with the new release (1.24) of samtools / bcftools / htslib, we took the decision to drop CRAM 4.0 support. This is because htslib was the only thing that implemented it AFAIK, it was an experimental prerelease and not an adopted standard, and sadly it wasn't as well engineered as it should be
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Andrew Whitwham @whitwham.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
Release 1.24 of HTSlib, SAMtools, and BCFtools is now available from GitHub. See htslib.org/download/ for links to tarballs and release notes. 🧪🧬🖥️
htslib.org
Samtools
Samtools
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Nils Homer @nilshomer.com · 04/07/2026
🚀 bwa-mem3 v0.5.0 is out 🎉 One flag to rule them all. The new --fast preset makes whole-genome alignment ~2× faster while preserving accuracy and recall. 🧵 github.com/fg-labs/bwa-...
github.com
Release v0.5.0 · fg-labs/bwa-mem3
0.5.0 (2026-07-04) Features add opt-in --seed-order seed reordering (default off, byte-identical) (#186) (04749a1) add opt-in --smem-dedup (dedup identical SMEMs before chaining) (#187) (1384972) ...
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lilastromech (Mischa) @mischajaye.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
The cooling system was installed by the village AC technician, Thermodynamix 😊
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Andrew Whitwham @whitwham.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
You are a bad person (and so am I for liking this).
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Andrew Whitwham @whitwham.bsky.social · 17/05/2026
That was very American in style, but since it says I am a Swedish Nelson Mandela social democratic I'll take it.
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Pyroxian @pyroxian.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
youtu.be/byd5PRryi_Y?...
youtu.be
Rogue Trooper | Official Teaser Trailer
YouTube video by 2000 AD
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Andrew Whitwham @whitwham.bsky.social · 18/04/2026
🌟
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Solaris Books @solarisbooks.bsky.social · 18/04/2026
🎉30K giveaway book bundle! #💙📚 Inc @rhiannonagrist.bsky.social @aptshadow.bsky.social @voidcricket.bsky.social @lavanya.bsky.social @neuvel.net @csecooney.bsky.social @authortrmoore.bsky.social @shoutoutmapes.bsky.social US/CAN/UK/IE only. Like, repost, follow & drop a🌟in the comments! Ends 24/4
30K international book bundle giveaway from Solaris.

Books include:
HOME SICK by Rhiannon Grist
SINOPHAGIA edited by Xueting C. Ni
TERRIBLE WORLDS: DESTINATIONS by Adrian Tchaikovsky
AN UNBREAKABLE WORLD by Ren Hutchings
THE GANYMEDAN by R. T. Ester
INTERGALACTIC FEAST by Lavanya Lakshminarayan
THE MANY by Sylvain Neuvel
THE MOUNTAIN CROWN, THE DESERT TALON and A COVENANT OF ICE by Karin Lowachee
THE DOOR ON THE SEA by Caskey Russell
THE GODS MUST BURN by T. R. Moore
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Michael Baym @baym.lol · 17/04/2026
I’m looking for an automated way to read others’s scientific data without giving credit or acknowledgement, and also claim full credit for insights from it. And I want it to have a fitting name OAI: say no more
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Andrew Whitwham @whitwham.bsky.social · 30/03/2026
It's from the BBC SAS Rogue Heroes series.
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Andrew Whitwham @whitwham.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
Release 1.23.1 of HTSlib, SAMtools, and BCFtools is now available from GitHub. This fixes crashes that could occur when reading malformed CRAM or GZI files. See htslib.org/download/ for links to tarballs and release notes. 🧪🧬🖥️ #samtools #bioinformatics #genomics
htslib.org
Samtools
Samtools
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James Bonfield @jbonfield.bsky.social · 16/12/2025
SAMtools / HTSLib / BCFTools 1.23 has been released. See the releasenotes on GitHub and www.htslib.org for details.
htslib.org
Samtools
Samtools
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Andrew Whitwham @whitwham.bsky.social · 12/12/2025
The original WH40K was full of puns and silliness. I bet they just loved calling their blue marines after the colour.
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James Bonfield @jbonfield.bsky.social · 23/11/2025
A lovely collection of fungi from WildlifeTrustBCN's Gamlingay Woods. #fungi
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Andrew Whitwham @whitwham.bsky.social · 18/11/2025
If you put the three books together the cover art showed a view of The Land. Teenaged me used the map to work out where the viewpoint was from but I have long since forgotten.
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Jos Buurmans | New Zealand @josbuurmans.bsky.social · 11/09/2025
Silver Beech at the Cleddau River - Milford Sound, New Zealand. #photography #landscape #nz
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Andrew Whitwham @whitwham.bsky.social · 09/09/2025
Bagpuss was set around 1900, 70 odd years before the programme was made. Why would you set it in the modern day?
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Jos Buurmans | New Zealand @josbuurmans.bsky.social · 13/08/2025
Valley Highlights - Te Mata Peak, Hawke's Bay, NZ. A collaboration between the rising sun and moving clouds to highlight the Tukituki river and green valley. #photography #landscape #nz
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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 30/07/2025
Motherfucking wind farms…
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Andrew Whitwham @whitwham.bsky.social · 24/07/2025
I don't think I know anyone who has been thrown off Facebook. I did not expect you to be the first.
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Andrew Whitwham @whitwham.bsky.social · 14/07/2025
Release 1.22.1 of HTSlib and SAMtools is now available from GitHub. This fixes crashes that could happen when reading malformed CRAM files, or when writing files with very long secondary alignments as CRAM 3.1. See htslib.org/download/ for links to tarballs and release notes.
htslib.org
Samtools
Samtools
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Andrew Whitwham @whitwham.bsky.social · 30/05/2025
Release 1.22 of HTSlib, SAMtools, and BCFtools is now available from GitHub. See htslib.org/download/ for links to tarballs and release notes. 🧪 #samtools #bcftools #htslib #bioinformatics
htslib.org
Samtools
Samtools
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Andrew Whitwham @whitwham.bsky.social · 29/05/2025
Thanks. 10,000 citations as of yesterday.
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Andrew Whitwham @whitwham.bsky.social · 17/05/2025
Thanks, I'll take a look after I get back from archery practice (yes really).
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Andrew Whitwham @whitwham.bsky.social · 17/05/2025
You could be right. My own discipline is target archery and there are many other techniques. It will be an interesting question to put to my coach (who knows about the biomechanics of it all). "How would you pull a 100lb+ bow?"
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Andrew Whitwham @whitwham.bsky.social · 17/05/2025
Indoors, my archery club shoots with 18 people in a line along the width of a basketball court. Longbow, recurve and compound. I'm pretty sure we are not in a six foot box.
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Andrew Whitwham @whitwham.bsky.social · 17/05/2025
I don't shoot longbow myself, but I have shot with people who do and none of them hold their bows horizontally at any point. In the photos the archers don't hold their bows vertically even at full draw, but are always at an angle. In target archery that would throw your aim off at any real distance.
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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 28/04/2025
Alright, @sarahebond.bsky.social in her cruelty has made me aware of this remarkably incompetent talk Malcolm Gladwell gave and so I am going to inflict it on all of you by going through all of the mistakes he makes here in the hope that none of you will ever take him seriously again. 1/
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Andrew Whitwham @whitwham.bsky.social · 17/04/2025
Yes, occasionally the smog parts and sunlight falls on the pale faces of the Londoners.
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Andrew Whitwham @whitwham.bsky.social · 29/03/2025
Me, on the Northumberland Lawn at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge.
People in a queue, waiting to look at the partial eclipse through a telescope. The telescope is in a small building on a lawn surrounded by trees.
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John Bull @garius.bsky.social · 07/01/2025
Something I try to explain to tech peeps/investors is the danger of seeing yourself as the outcome, rather than the enabler. It leads to creating 'value' that isn't valuable to the user. It just complicates their journey to the outcome you are meant to deliver. Facebook is speed-running that. /1
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Paul Callaghan @paulcallaghan.bsky.social · 27/12/2024
Penshaw Monument looking incredible in the fog today Photo by Steven Lomas
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Andrew Whitwham @whitwham.bsky.social · 27/12/2024
Boxing day Seaham.
Steps going down to the sea from grassy cliffs. The sky is blue, fading to pink at the horizon. The sea is calm.Person on the beach looking towards Seaham. Beach is in shade as the sun sets but the sea and sky are still bright blue.Series of posts heading into the sea. The posts are dark against the blue of the sea and the sky.Statue of "Tommy" at Seaham. Statue is of a double height First World War soldier sitting on a trunk. It has a pink sunset sky behind it.
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Andrew Whitwham @whitwham.bsky.social · 14/12/2024
I had a ZX81 when I was 10 years old. Learning to program on it has kept me in employment all my adult life.
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Pulp Librarian @pulplibrarian.bsky.social · 13/12/2024
DATELINE: MARCH 1981. Shakin' Stevens is top of the charts, Tom Baker is leaving Doctor Who and Clive Sinclair is bringing computers to the masses. Britain is finally moving into a new age, and one object above all heralds its arrival. This is the story of the ZX81...
ZX81 computer setup instructions
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Spooky Breakaway 👻🎃 @breakaway71.bsky.social · 07/12/2024
Whenever I have a bad pain day, I rewatch my favorite fanvid ever made (Starships, a multifandom fanvid by bironic) and it cheers me up. Since I've shared it a billion times on The Site That Shall Not Be Named, it's past time I share the glory of this vid here, too. www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTGd...
youtube.com
Starships - a multifandom space vid by bironic
YouTube video by closetfan
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Andrew Whitwham @whitwham.bsky.social · 05/11/2024
What is a "first colleft"?
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rogueclassicist ~ david meadows @rogueclassicist.bsky.social · 18/09/2024
Pallantium, the Legendary Greek City the Romans Believed Existed Where Rome Was Later Founded - www.labrujulaverde.com/en/2024/09/p...
labrujulaverde.com
Pallantium, the Legendary Greek City the Romans Believed Existed Where Rome Was Later Founded
One of the most fascinating and perhaps lesser-known stories of Rome's history is that of Pallantium (in ancient Greek Παλλάντιον), a legendary city that, according to various ancient sources, stood o...
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Andrew Whitwham @whitwham.bsky.social · 08/09/2024
According to the Jewish Chronicle: "British lawyer Trevor Asserson, who runs Israel’s largest international law firm, Asserson Law Offices, and who has long campaigned against BBC bias, led the research."
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Andrew Whitwham @whitwham.bsky.social · 03/09/2024
The Knife Angel in Haverhill.
Large metal statue of an angel made of knives.
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Andrew Whitwham @whitwham.bsky.social · 02/09/2024
I read the Crown of Stars books after seeing a funny mock advert by a good person on the Bad Place. What should I read next?
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Andrew Whitwham @whitwham.bsky.social · 07/08/2024
Sigh. Another author whose books I will have to move to the bottom shelf of shame.
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