Phil Ewels
banner
ewels.bsky.social
Phil Ewels
@ewels.bsky.social
🧬 Scientist (bioinformatics / genomics), 🧑🏻‍💻 software developer, 🪴 community builder.
Product Manager for open source @seqera.io
Top features:

✨ Simple syntax - uses GitHub-flavored markdown checkboxes

🎯 Single and multiple choice - One correct = radio buttons, multiple = checkboxes

⚡ Instant feedback - Show correct/incorrect answers

📊 Progress tracking - Automatic progress sidebar and results panel, with confetti 🎉
November 15, 2025 at 12:39 PM
New open source package alert! 🔔 ewels.github.io/mkdocs-quiz/

A #MkDocs plugin to create interactive quizzes directly in your markdown:


What's the best static site generator?
- [x] mkdocs
- [ ] Jekyll
- [ ] Sphinx

You've come to the right place!

![Random cat photo](cataas.com/cat)
November 15, 2025 at 12:39 PM
Running with data on AWS s3? Update to the latest version of @nextflow.io (25.10) and get some pretty tasty performance improvements for free 🤩

These kind of "under the hood" improvements can often go unnoticed, but it's this work that makes #Nextflow capable of powering huge analysis workflows 💪🏻
November 5, 2025 at 1:47 PM
And I'm off! Leaving a rather damp but colourful Stockholm 🇸🇪 to head to a hopefully sunnier Barcelona 🇪🇸

It's #NextflowSummit time! 🎉
October 22, 2025 at 6:46 AM
Exhausted but happy after a very productive week at @scilifelab.se for the @nf-co.re core / steering team retreat 🇸🇪😴 Huge thank you to everyone involved! 🙏🏻

We got loads done! Blog post recap coming soon..
September 26, 2025 at 2:51 PM
Really excited to announce the v1.9 release of the `rich-click` library 🎉 It's a Python library that uses builds on top of command-line help output from click, giving you beautiful output with only a couple of lines of code 🪄 ✨ 🌈

v1.9 TLDR: We have themes!
September 17, 2025 at 11:55 AM
Here's a little easter egg for those of you using @seqera.io #platform.. 🥚 ✨

Recently we released a new feature that lets you set custom pipeline icons. What's less well known is that animated icons are also supported - party time!! 🪩 🥳 🎉

The trick is to rename your .gif to a .png file extension 🤫
September 1, 2025 at 7:31 AM
Last year I gave a talk at #PyCon Sweden about one of my pet-projects: rich-click.

The title was "Accidentally popular: Beautiful CLI interfaces with rich-click". I talked about the library, but also the #opensource journey, involving @willmcgugan.bsky.social, @tiangolo.com and Daniel Reeves 😊
August 29, 2025 at 9:33 AM
That feeling when AI can create cat videos with better @nextflow.io training content than you've made in years.. 😻 😹

Could this be the new face of #Nextflow at @seqera.io ?!
August 27, 2025 at 3:58 PM
Back in Barcelona 🇪🇸 for a @seqera.io company retreat 🎉 So nice to see folks again and brainstorm more crazy ideas.. 🤗
June 8, 2025 at 9:53 PM
This is something I'm *super* excited about - @seqera.io studios isn't just Notebooks / RStudio / VSCode any more: You can now take basically *any* graphical application you can think of, chuck it into a Docker image and run it interactively in Studios.

The possibilities are endless..
May 28, 2025 at 4:01 PM
I know I've posted quite a lot the past few days (sorry), but this is super cool. Check the PDF for some really nice plots showing how Fusion works and *why* it's able to give cost savings over base AWS fees (no signup for the PDF required).
May 22, 2025 at 1:52 PM
For everyone who's ever told me "Nextflow errors are terrible" over the years (there are a lot of you), this is for you ❤️
May 15, 2025 at 7:15 PM
I did a bunch of AI-generated images for @nextflow.io run names a while back, one of them randomly came out as a cat 😹 - here's *drunk laplace*:

x.com/tallphil/sta...
May 7, 2025 at 3:20 PM
I'm super excited to be going to Vienna in June for @esaearth.esa.int #LPS25 - it doesn't get much better than giving a talk at a European Space Agency conference!✨🛰🌍

I'm hoping to bring @nextflow.io to more people working in the earth observation field, we have a lot in common..

lps25.esa.int
May 5, 2025 at 9:44 PM
April 3, 2025 at 7:04 AM
The venerable @maxulysse.github.io managed to snap a few photos of my talk, that was a lot of fun! 📸 😁

Many thanks to @ospjuth.bsky.social and colleagues at @scilifelab.se for organising such a great event 🎉
March 6, 2025 at 9:42 PM
Really excited to be part of the @scilifelab.se symposium "Automation of research processes with LLMs and AI".

We're already off to a fantastic start with a great talk by Olli Kallioniemi giving an overview of the state of the art 🤖

www.scilifelab.se/event/automa...
March 6, 2025 at 9:51 AM
By default, the @seqera.io #containers web interface searches the `bioconda` and `conda-forge` channels 📦

But did you know that you can prepend your search term with *any* conda channel?

Try it out: seqera.io/containers/
February 4, 2025 at 3:39 PM
Yes, but can it run Doom?

`nextflow run doom`

@nextflow.io (by @jordeu.bsky.social 🌟)
github.com/nextflow-io/...
January 22, 2025 at 8:11 AM
A new "r's in strawberry" challenge? Haven't yet found any image generators that can do this yet:

"Cartoon boy with socks on hands and gloves on feet"

Kudos to @chrisewels.bsky.social for finding this one..
January 5, 2025 at 9:15 AM
Not too shabby considering I don't really write so much code these days.. Spot the summer break 😂

git-wrapped.com/profiles/ewels
December 19, 2024 at 6:35 AM
The @nextflow.io advent calendar by @flowuenne.bsky.social goes super deep on easter eggs 😂

There are challenges nested within challenges (some even require downloading and running a pipeline) - I confess I resorted to reading the source code to find this one..

flowuenne.github.io/nextflow_adv...
December 17, 2024 at 1:25 PM
Guess where I turned the ventilation off for an hour.. 😆

Reporting and automated control via a smart plug + #HomeAssistant. Sensor is a Netatamo device. I also have a button on my stream deck on my desk with the current CO2 value that turns the ventilation on and off 👀 🤓
December 12, 2024 at 5:35 AM
Conspiracy detector: @nextflow.io is secretly a world domination tool disguised as a bioinformatics workflow manager.

"The Devoted Data Whisperer" 😆

blueskyroast.com/roast/ewels....
December 4, 2024 at 8:53 AM