Wingedpig.com - Mark Fletcher's Blog

I talk about how I launched the site in the (woefully incomplete and unmaintained) ONElist files:

I wanted to start things slowly, so I decided to try to get one person to start a list. I'd be able to shake out any remaining bugs and get feedback. So I did a search of USENET looking for people who wanted to start mailing lists but didn't know how. I found one person, who happened to be in Norway, and spammed him about the service. Then I went to bed. Little did I know that this would be the last night of (non-alcohol induced) restful sleep for the next couple of years.

The next morning, I was hoping that there'd be one new list created. Or at least I hoped the guy from Norway didn't complain about me spamming him. Instead, to my surprise, there were about 20 lists created. The guy from Norway had created his list and then told all his friends about it. And that's how it grew. You create a list and of course you want subscribers. So you tell your friends. It snowballs. Viral marketing, the VCs call it.

So what was the first list? Discourse about Shakespearean influence in modern playwrights? Talk about rising tensions in the Middle East? In depth political discussion about globalization and free trade? No, no, no. It was about lizards. Not just any kind of lizard, but Anole lizards. From a guy in Norway. It's still there, even: Discussion list for all Anole species. And most of the other new lists were lizard lists. I suddenly had visions in my head about our first press release. "Leaping lists of lizards!," it would shout. Herpetologists rejoice!

From that, there was little stopping it. I occasionally posted announcements to USENET groups about ONElist, but the growth really came from word of mouth. In hindsight, I guess it's obvious that mailing lists are viral. But at the time, I had no idea. I just wanted to create a service that made finding and managing mailing lists easier.

I have a tendency to get caught up in things and not fully appreciate what's going on in my life at a given moment, whether it's a relationship, a vacation, or, in this case, a life-changing startup experience. It all went so fast. But I am extremely fortunate that I remain friends with many of the people I worked with during that time.

ONElist was an amazing 3 years of my life. To this day, I still occasionally hear stories about how one or another of the mailing lists has changed someone's life. As an engineer, it's incredibly gratifying to have been involved in the creation of something that so many people use on a daily basis. And to think, when I started it, I had no idea if anyone would use it.

Posted by Mark Fletcher at 11:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I was pleasantly surprised today when I logged into my 23andMe account today to check something and I found a new option to export all my data. It's about 5 megs in size compressed, and is in a tab delimited format. Here are the first 30 or so lines of my data file:

# This data file generated by 23andMe at: Wed Jan 23 09:48:03 2008
#
# Below is a text version of your data. Fields are TAB-separated
# Each line corresponds to a single SNP.  For each SNP, we provide its identifier 
# (an rsid or an internal id), its location on the reference human genome, and the 
# genotype call oriented with respect to the plus strand on the human reference 
# sequence.  We are using reference human assembly build 36.  Note that it is possible 
# that data downloaded at different times may be different due to ongoing improvements 
# in our ability to call genotypes.
# 
# More information on reference human assembly build 36:
# http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/projects/mapview/map_search.cgi?taxid=9606&build=36
#
# rsid	chromosome	position	genotype
rs3094315	1	742429	AG
rs12562034	1	758311	GG
rs3934834	1	995669	CC
rs9442372	1	1008567	AG
rs3737728	1	1011278	AG
rs11260588	1	1011521	GG
rs6687776	1	1020428	CC
rs9651273	1	1021403	AA
rs4970405	1	1038818	AA
rs12726255	1	1039813	AA
rs11807848	1	1051029	CC

I also saw that 23andMe has launched a blog called the spittoon™.

Posted by Mark Fletcher at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Alternate captions (feel free to add your own in the comments):

• These skis aren't short, I just have really long feet.
• A three-year-old punk was mouthing off to me at High Camp, so I stole his skis. Who's crying now, you big baby?!?
• But the box said they were pre-shrunk!

Posted by Mark Fletcher at 09:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

From the comments on my 23andMe posts:

Ann Turner asks:

Mark, if you or any of your readers are homozygous for the mutation conferring lactase persistence (both alleles are A), I'd like to compare notes on how far the homozygosity extends along the chromosome.

Andrew Scheidecker posts:

If you can't wait for 23andme to add support for raw data export, I've released the source code for a program that can extract the raw data from their website:

http://www.scheidecker.net/personal-genome-explorer/

It can store the data in its own encrypted file format or export it to CSV.

Finally, Gary Wolf has an excellent post up on his experience with 23andMe so far. He ends his post:

But for now, I'm looking for ways to make my 23andme results more relevant. I welcome suggestions.

Posted by Mark Fletcher at 08:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

For those ONElisters and eGroupies (and anyone else who knew Michael) who might see this and haven't already gotten the Evite, we're having a reunion this Wednesday, January 16th at Tres Agaves in San Francisco at 7pm, in honor of Mike Klein.

Tres Agaves
130 Townsend St
San Francisco, CA
650-303-8260

As Rikk says in the Evite, we "know that Mike would have wanted this to be fun, wild, and happy event." I hope to see you there.

Posted by Mark Fletcher at 06:50 PM | Permalink