James Balamuta

omnipresent explorer of the unknown, fashionably caffeinated informatics phd, amorous cavalier. design, build, analyze. #rstats on #macos + #webr and #python with #pyodide

GitHub: https://github.com/coatless
Website: https://thecoatlessprofessor.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesbalamuta/
Threads: @jamesbalamuta@threads.net

Last Notes

2026-03-23 03:45:17 UTC

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If you've ever wished you could grep through R-help, find that one Brian Ripley reply about CRAN policy from 2009, or just see who the top contributors to R-SIG-Finance were... now you can.
Blog post with all the details: https://blog.thecoatlessprofessor.com/posts/r-mailing-list-archives/

2026-03-23 03:44:50 UTC

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Want to do your own analysis? The full archive is available as Apache Parquet files, updated nightly via GitHub Actions.
One-liner to load any list in R or Python. No cloning required.
https://github.com/r-mailing-lists/data
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2026-03-23 03:44:14 UTC

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Every message is parsed, threaded, and indexed. You can browse threads, see who replied to whom, and actually follow conversations that shaped the language.
Here's a recent R-SIG-Mac thread about macOS 26:
https://r-mailing-lists.thecoatlessprofessor.com/lists/r-sig-mac/msg/msg-0b1a4d0c59cf/
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2026-03-23 03:43:41 UTC

29 years of #rstats community knowledge was sitting in hard-to-search pipermail archives. So I built a more modern home for it.
Introducing the R Mailing List Archives: 631,000+ messages from 32 lists, fully searchable and available as open data.
https://r-mailing-lists.thecoatlessprofessor.com/
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2026-03-15 19:09:55 UTC

This IS the droid you're looking for.
webRoid v1.0.0: a nearly full-featured R environment running natively on your Android phone or tablet.
Console, editor, plots, packages, 9 themes:no server, no cloud, no Jedi mind tricks. Just R on your device.
Tested extensively on emulators. Your actual device? The Force is strong, but no promises.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.webroid.app
#rstats #webR #Android #WebAssembly
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2025-09-16 03:46:12 UTC

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Docker: 'First, install Docker, learn containers, write a Dockerfile, understand volumes, manage images...' (or pull a rocker image ...)
AppImage: 'wget, chmod +x, done.'
Sometimes the wheel needed to be more... round? 🎡
😉 :heart_fire:

2025-09-15 18:27:45 UTC

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Spent part of the weekend hacking on this:
https://mastodon.social/@coatless/115209718377229086
AppImage is setup right now just for base R (no packages are present).
Try a copy here:
https://github.com/coatless-r-n-d/portable-r-appimage-linux/releases/tag/r-appimage-4.5.1-20250915-173001

2025-09-15 18:26:30 UTC

Finally, R that travels light and doesn't judge your distro choices: Portable R AppImages!!
Because you need the same base R everywhere: your Ubuntu laptop, friend's Fedora server, or data scientist cousin's Arch setup (btw)
No sudo, no tears, just science ✨
(package support coming soon!)
📁 Repo: https://github.com/coatless-r-n-d/portable-r-appimage-linux/
#RStats #Linux #AppImage #DataScience
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2025-09-12 16:10:44 UTC

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{shinyelectron} is focused on deploying an electron app. This simplifies how we're able to deliver an appimage as it's part of an output target electron-builder makes available under certain assumptions.
My read on the initial ask is you're looking more for a pure portable linux version of R. I've had an issue ticket open on that for awhile on the same repo:
https://github.com/coatless-rpkg/shinyelectron/issues/1
The short gist is to maybe repurpose `appimage-builder`'s py:
https://appimage-builder.readthedocs.io/_/downloads/en/latest/pdf/#page=20

2025-01-17 19:18:21 UTC

I'll be serving as Editor-in-Chief (EiC) for @npub1gxc…cyk0's Python package peer review process for the first half of 2025!
Interested in reviewing scientific Python packages? Let us know at:
https://forms.gle/GHfxvmS47nQFDcBM6
#PyOpenSci #Python #SciPy