Monthly Archive for August, 2009

My First Gem: Biomart

A lot of my work these days involves building and querying biomart datasets. Interacting with the webservices (for queries) is pretty simple, you just have to post a piece of xml at the right url, but I found myself reusing a lot of boilerplate code in each and every new script.

So, to make my life a little easier (and hopefully some others) I packaged all of the code up in a module with classes to handle all of the monkey work for me and decided to release it as a gem. :)

The source code is available from github, and the documentation is on rdoc.info.

For more details, check out the release anouncement.

It’s my first ruby module so any advice or pointers on how to make things better would be most appreciated. :)

This Week on Twitter (2009-08-30)

Links for 2009-08-25

This Week on Twitter (2009-08-09)

  • I love a server crash to deal with first thing on Monday morning… #ihatemondays #

This Week on Twitter (2009-08-02)

  • Bonus! Just been sent the first royalty cheque from my book! Good times. :) #
  • Heading over to @ABarkell's for his birthday. Let's hope the weather gets better… Bring on the hog roast! :) #