James Balamuta
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coatless.bsky.social
James Balamuta
@coatless.bsky.social
1.1K followers 16 following 320 posts
omnipresent explorer of the unknown, fashionably caffeinated informatics phd, amorous cavalier. design, build, analyze. #rstats on #macos + #webr and #python with #pyodide
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coatless.bsky.social
James Balamuta @coatless.bsky.social · Jul 7
Thank you @pyopensci.org! 🙏 These 6 months as EiC have been incredibly rewarding - from reviewing innovative tools to working with an amazing community of developers. Excited to continue contributing to making computational science more accessible! #OpenSource #Python #DataScience
pyopensci.org pyOpenSci @pyopensci.org · Jul 7
Cheers to James Balamuta for wrapping up 6 months as pyOpenSci Editor in Chief! 🎉 His #R + #Python skills + passion for accessible tools made a big impact. Grateful he’ll keep contributing!

💡 Want to join our peer review crew? www.pyopensci.org/software-pee...
Graphic highlighting James Balamuta as pyOpenSci’s Editor in Chief for Winter 2025. On the left is a photo of James standing outside with a sunset over water in the background. The right side features text about James’s community impact, passions, and a fun fact about traveling to Turkey. The pyOpenSci logo appears at the top along with links to the organization’s website, Mastodon, and Discourse forum.
coatless.bsky.social
So, #rstats does work natively on #iOS with plots and all.

Genuine question though: has the GPL vs App Store situation ever been resolved or are we stuck in "cool demo forever" territory?
January 17, 2026 at 8:40 AM
coatless.bsky.social
Just had a frustrating experience with @Airbnb that I think other travelers should know about. It's about third-party ID verification requirements that aren't clearly disclosed during booking. Thread: #Airbnb #TravelTips
January 17, 2026 at 6:59 AM
coatless.bsky.social
{surreal} 0.0.2: now featuring the "oh that would be convenient" update

1. Load images directly with surreal_image()
2. Explore everything in a Shiny app with surreal_app()

Sometimes the sequel has better quality-of-life features.

#rstats #rshiny #dataviz
The Surreal Shiny app in dark mode displaying a Jack-o-Lantern demo. The source panel shows a pumpkin shape rendered as a scatter plot, while the residuals panel reveals the same jack-o-lantern face with triangular eyes and jagged mouth, reconstructed from 5,395 points. Screenshot of the Surreal Shiny app with "Custom Text" selected as the source. The left panel shows "Hello R World!" as plain text, while the right panel displays the same text reconstructed from 3,328 regression residual points. Screenshot of the Surreal Shiny app showing a side-by-side comparison. On the left, the orange Reddit logo with Snoo mascot. On the right, a scatter plot of 8,160 points that perfectly recreates the Reddit logo through regression residuals. Hexagonal logo for the surreal R package. Dark blue background with "SURREAL" in white block letters at the bottom, where some letters have an outlined style. Above the text, white and light blue circles of varying sizes scatter upward, dense near the bottom and sparse at the top, evoking a residual plot rising from the package name.
January 11, 2026 at 6:58 AM
coatless.bsky.social
{webrarian} walked so {pyrarian} could... also walk? Ported #webr 's 4-panel editor to Pyodide. Already loading pandas and plotting with matplotlib in the browser. The librarians are going multilingual.

#pyodide #python #wasm
January 1, 2026 at 7:00 AM
coatless.bsky.social
{toggle} does one thing: adds a button to hide code output in #quarto docs.

Took two versions to do that one thing well. Now it works everywhere... tabsets, callouts, nested containers, you name it.

📚 quarto.thecoatlessprofessor.com/toggle/
🐙 github.com/coatless-qua...
Screenshot of the Toggle extension documentation website showing the Quick Start page. The left sidebar displays the Toggle logo and navigation menu with sections for Get Started, Features, Demos, and Reference. The main content shows an interactive toggle button demo, explains the ▼ (visible) and ▶ (hidden) chevron indicators, and includes R code examples with a visible "Output" toggle button on the code block. The page demonstrates how the toggle button appears when hovering over code cells. Toggle extension logo: A blue hexagonal badge featuring a stylized code block with a toggle button in the upper right corner, and a line chart output below it. The word "toggle" appears at the bottom in white lowercase text.
December 29, 2025 at 6:48 AM
coatless.bsky.social
{livelink} walked so {webrarian} could run. Mini browser-based #rstats environments powered by #webR and its 4-panel editor. YAML config, build, preview. Done.

R package coming soon. #pyodide folks, stay tuned.
December 28, 2025 at 8:33 AM
coatless.bsky.social
Shiny for R: GPL-3 → MIT ✨

Your dashboards are now legally chill. Deploy without consulting three lawyers and a ouija board first.

#rstats #rshiny
Screenshot of a GitHub pull request #4339 titled "chore(license): Change license from GPL-3 to MIT." The PR shows a purple "Merged" badge indicating it was merged by user cpsievert 13 minutes ago, with 5 commits from the branch "migrate-gpl-to-mit-license" into main. The description by contributor karangattu explains the PR closes issue #4208 and updates the Shiny package licensing from GPL-3 to MIT License.
December 17, 2025 at 12:11 AM
Reposted by James Balamuta
edgarmerkle.bsky.social
Consider submitting a proposal to the (open access) Psychometrika special issue on Variable Selection for Complex Psychometric Data, with a proposal deadline of Jan 15. Full details:
Call for Papers: Psychometrika Special Issue - Psychometric Society
Variable Selection for Complex Psychometric Data
www.psychometricsociety.org
December 9, 2025 at 5:59 PM
coatless.bsky.social
Released a #Quarto extension for collapsible content blocks.

Why? The {details} are inside.

📚 quarto.thecoatlessprofessor.com/details/
💻 github.com/coatless-qua...
Screenshot of the details extension quickstart documentation showing three methods to create collapsible blocks in Quarto: using the summary attribute, using a heading, and using a summary div. Each method shows the code syntax and its rendered output as expandable disclosure widgets. Hexagonal sticker logo for the details Quarto extension. Orange background with a stylized illustration of three accordion-style collapsible content panels in cream and brown, with the word "details" in white text at the bottom.
November 29, 2025 at 7:21 PM
coatless.bsky.social
Turning another year older tomorrow and celebrating by releasing Quarto extensions into the wild. Gift to me, gift to you. And yes, if you've been peeking at my GitHub, you already know what's coming. Act surprised!
November 29, 2025 at 5:09 AM
coatless.bsky.social
{ripper} dissects your #Quarto documents, extracting code blocks by language and leaving executable scripts behind.

Supports #rstats, #python, #julia, and 13 other victims.

For those who never stopped celebrating Halloween.

📚 quarto.thecoatlessprofessor.com/ripper/
💻 github.com/coatless-qua...
Ripper extension hex logo with Halloween-inspired design. Black hexagonal badge featuring a white .qmd document on the left with red blood splatter effect, and multiple file extension labels on the right (.R, .py, .jl, .js, .lua, .sh, .ts, .md) resembling torn paper. The word 'RIPPER' appears in large red distressed lettering at the bottom, with additional blood drip effects throughout. Screenshot demonstrating the ripper Quarto extension workflow. Shows the ripper logo (a dark house silhouette with red text), documentation page for Default Configuration, example R and Python code blocks in the rendered document, and two code editor windows displaying the generated script files (qripper-default-config.R and qripper-default-config.py) with extracted code. A red arrow connects the 'Script files' section to the generated output files.
November 22, 2025 at 10:57 PM
coatless.bsky.social
One does not simply stay away from social media. I return with: R packages, portable R, Shiny/shinylive apps, Electron integrations, Python packages, Quarto extensions, LLMs, and blog posts. The code has been reforged. The roadmap is full.
October 23, 2025 at 5:20 AM
Reposted by James Balamuta
frodsan.bsky.social
Still fascinated with #webR and its potential for teaching stats

Here students can play (even from their phones) and find out themselves how the p-value depends on sample size

pakillo.github.io/LM-GLM-GLMM-... #rstats
A screenshot of a statistics tutorial made with R, quarto and webR
October 22, 2025 at 6:36 AM
Reposted by James Balamuta
mickael.canouil.fr
@coatless.bsky.social also did that few months ago using another approach based on JavaScript.

"Pick your poison" 🙃

github.com/coatless-qua...
GitHub - coatless-quarto/toggle: Toggle Code Output in Quarto Code Cells
Toggle Code Output in Quarto Code Cells. Contribute to coatless-quarto/toggle development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com
October 10, 2025 at 4:26 PM
Reposted by James Balamuta
ivelasq3.bsky.social
Quarto has a way to collapse code, but what if you want to collapse code OUTPUT?

The amazing @mickael.canouil.fr created an extension that does just that!!!

Check it out! github.com/mcanouil/qua...
October 10, 2025 at 4:09 PM
coatless.bsky.social
Nothing makes you feel vintage like your license getting moved to the retirement home directory. GNU put GPL 2.0 in /old-licenses/ causing #rstats packages to throw URL warnings. Somewhere a CRAN maintainer is rubbing their hands together, ready to trigger 847 email requests...
Screenshot of a code diff showing line 10 being updated. The removed line (red) shows a GPL 2.0 license URL pointing to gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html, while the added line (green) shows the same URL updated to point to gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html, indicating the license documentation has been moved to an 'old-licenses' directory.
September 26, 2025 at 6:12 PM
coatless.bsky.social
Flying to Istanbul to meet my SO's family felt like nervous excitement. Flying to California felt like possibility. Flying back home for a funeral feels like gravity remembering how to work. Now Illinois feels like living in a house where all the furniture is made of memories.
September 19, 2025 at 12:17 AM
coatless.bsky.social
macOS 26 Tahoe + R 4.5.1: Keeps #rstats moving along on #macOS. Upgrade confidently, just remember to update Xcode CLI afterwards if using stan & compiled code.
A screenshot showing R 4.5.1 working under RStudio 2025.9.0.387 on macOS Tahoe (26.0.0) with a call to compiled code requiring gfortran through RcppArmadillo. A screenshot showing R 4.5.1 working under Positron 2025.9.0 (Universal) on macOS Tahoe (26.0.0) with a call to compiled code requiring gfortran through RcppArmadillo.
September 16, 2025 at 12:39 AM
coatless.bsky.social
R that travels light on #Linux: Portable R AppImages.

Now working everywhere: your Ubuntu, friend's Fedora, cousin's Arch setup (btw)

No sudo, no tears, just base R science ✨

(package support coming soon!)

#RStats #AppImage #DataScience
Terminal session showing the download and execution of an R AppImage from GitHub releases. The commands show wget downloading the ARM64 AppImage built on Ubuntu 24.04, making it executable with chmod +x, and then launching it to run R statistical analysis including a linear regression model with income vs age data, demonstrating the workflow from GitHub release to running statistical computations. VS Code showing the successful completion of an R AppImage build process. The terminal displays the build summary indicating a 76MB minimal R 4.5.1 AppImage for ARM64 architecture with package installation disabled (immutable). The output shows usage examples and confirms the build completed successfully, with R actually running at the bottom showing the standard R startup message and executing system environment commands, demonstrating the fully functional portable R installation. VS Code terminal showing R 4.5.1 running from an AppImage on ARM64 architecture. The file explorer shows the typical AppImage directory structure with usr/bin, usr/lib, and usr/share folders, demonstrating the self-contained portable nature of the R installation.
September 15, 2025 at 6:37 PM
coatless.bsky.social
RcppEnsmallen 0.2.22.1.2 on CRAN: Upstream Armadillo Changes

blog.thecoatlessprofessor.com/software-rel...

#rstats #rcpp #rcppensmallen #ensmallen
RcppEnsmallen v0.2.22.1.2 Released - Upstream Armadillo Changes – TheCoatlessProfessor
blog.thecoatlessprofessor.com
September 11, 2025 at 3:55 AM
coatless.bsky.social
Linux support 🐧

Same #rshiny → desktop workflow on #Fedora 42 aarch64:

shinyelectron::export() → #rshinylive → #AppImage → portable #Linux app

Plot twist: no more "go buy yourself a real computer" moments - you get zero #rstats dependencies too! The condescending Unix users have won this round.
September 10, 2025 at 5:49 AM
coatless.bsky.social
Core Shiny Application (Shinylive Layer): 61.9 MB

This represents the base Shiny application code and dependencies

Platform-Specific Packaging Overhead (ARM64):

Windows: 300.1 MB
macOS: 264.1 MB
Linux: 304.9 MB

Total Application Size by Platform:

Windows: 362 MB
macOS: 326.4 MB
Linux: 366.8 MB
Windows 11 File Explorer displaying the Programs folder with properties dialogs open for "My-App-Title," showing the application size as 362 MB (379,900,896 bytes) in the Local Programs directory, demonstrating the Windows build footprint. macOS Finder window showing the contents of an "electron-app" folder with various build artifacts from running {shinyelectron} to create a standalone R Shiny App, highlighting the "converted-app" executable file sized at 326.4 MB, representing the packaged macOS application bundle. Screenshot of RStudio IDE on Ubuntu 24.04 showing R code in the editor and a system file browser dialog displaying the "linux-arm64-unpacked" folder containing 76 items with a total size of 366.8 MB, representing the Linux build of the standalone R Shiny application created using {shinyelectron} with shinylive. macOS Finder window displaying the contents of the "converted-app" folder with the "shinylive-app" subfolder selected and its info panel open, showing the Shiny application components (app.json, index.html, shinylive folder, and shinylive-sw.js) with a total size of 61.8 MB (244 items). This is the core Shinylive layer footprint shared across applications.
September 9, 2025 at 9:25 PM
coatless.bsky.social
By request: Same #rshiny app → native #electron desktop app workflow now on #Windows11

shinyelectron::export() → #rshinylive → installer → app.exe

[Worth the Parallels license to record this from my Mac]

Still no #rstats dependencies for end users. Living the cross-platform life (virtually).
September 7, 2025 at 5:57 AM
coatless.bsky.social
JJ Allaire & Charles Teague (of Posit fame) launched Meridian Labs, a nonprofit dedicated to frontier AI research and evaluation tools.

Early focus: LLM evals + visualization & SWE Agent tooling for Inspect AI.

meridianlabs.ai | github.com/meridianlabs-ai

#AI #Research
Meridian Research Labs
meridianlabs.ai
September 6, 2025 at 5:15 PM
coatless.bsky.social
Prototyping #rshiny apps to native #electron desktop apps:

shinyelectron::export() → #rshinylive conversion → .dmg → Native Mac app

Zero #rstats dependencies for end users! Early days but promising 👀
September 4, 2025 at 7:35 AM