Because of the positive response I’ve to had to this tips & tricks edition I’ve been thinking about where to take it next. The initial I idea I had was to put it onto a wiki, where people can contribute. However this is pretty similar to what’s going on at wikiomics, and I don’t think it would be a good idea to overlap.

So I thought about this a bit more - how about an Ubuntu approach to creating a bioinformatics wiki-type book. For example every two months we focus on a particular area of bioinformatics, say sequence analysis, and everybody contributes their tips and it gets written up as a chapter and ‘released’. I’m hoping a regular release cycle might stimulate interest. Of course this idea is entirely speculative, and I’ve no idea what sort of interest their might be in this - i.e. it would rely on the community making contributions.

This is a great idea you have had. Its generated a lot of interest and the advice is excellent. I would be very keen to be involved in a future project.

Kieren

I am still very very green as regards to bioinformatics but am very interested in the area. So, these tips and tricks are so well received.

If I can help in a later edition of something similar to this or even the bio::blogs, it’d be great.

Once again, congrats!

let me try two of mine:
- listen to some good jazz/instrumental music when programming if don’t have to work too hard
- The story about ‘doing a pause every 40/50 minutes’: I use this program, workrave (http://www.workrave.org/welcome/), which is a tool that reminds me to do a pause every 50 minutes.
It could seem stupid, but I think that I work better since I’ve installed it.