The Curious Engineer

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Notes from a data witch

blog.djnavarro.net

A blog by Danielle Navarro

MathGraphicsSoftware / engineering practiceSociety / politics / economy

’21’22’23’24’25’26
Posts
102 from 5 Apr 2021 to 17 Oct 2026
Posting
monthly (11 in the last year)
Kind
personal blog
Feed
https://blog.djnavarro.net/index.xml

2026 10

  1. How to build a custom R graphics device
  2. Dining with wolves
  3. Aperiodic tilings with the de Bruijn method
  4. The trouble with ‘ntile()’
  5. Release: sessioncheck 0.2
  6. Separating sex and gender is statistical malpractice
  7. A cocaine skeptic starts an unwise habit
  8. Markdown styling in R plots and tables
  9. Some thoughts on checking the R session
  10. Mapping runkeeper data

2025 14

  1. Two githubs, one laptop
  2. Some notes on survey weights
  3. Some notes on probability judgement
  4. Linear cosine palettes
  5. GAMLSS, NHANES, and my own personal hell
  6. Splines, B-splines, P-splines, and a disapproving kitten
  7. The Box-Cox power exponential distribution
  8. Generating quarto syntax within R
  9. Bayesian Emax regression using brms
  10. Scatterplot matrices with pairwise pivoting
  11. When good pseudorandom numbers go bad
  12. Making menacing hearts Art LGBTQIA+ In which the author calls the little mermaid a whore Danielle Navarro Apr 17, 2025
  13. Three short stories about targets R Reproducibility Parallel Computing Blogging Literate Programming In which our intrepid adventurer turns a hacky data visualisation exercise into an analysis pipeline; builds an R blog with litedown and targets; and tries to wrap her head… Danielle Navarro Jan 8, 2
  14. The schools of magic R Data Visualisation Tidy Tuesday Code and explanations for a Tidy Tuesday data visualisation exercise Danielle Navarro Jan 1, 2025

2024 20

  1. Art from code VII: Pixel filters R Art An introduction to the ggfx package. Some weirdly distorted images are created. Good times are had by all concerned Danielle Navarro Dec 24, 2024
  2. Art from code VI: Tiles and tessellations R Art There are a lot of rectangles in this post. Also some foolishness with voronoi tessellations I guess Danielle Navarro Dec 23, 2024
  3. Art from code V: Iterated function systems R Art A deep dive into the fractal flame algorithm, an egregious coding error, and a lot more C++ than I would prefer to be writing Danielle Navarro Dec 22, 2024
  4. Art from code IV: Shading tricks R Art Let’s be honest, this entire post is a thinly-veiled excuse to play around and do terrible things with the rayshader package Danielle Navarro Dec 21, 2024
  5. Art from code III: Polygon tricks R Art It’s almost offensive how much you can do with 500 nearly-transparent polygons Danielle Navarro Dec 20, 2024
  6. Art from code II. Spatial tricks with ambient R Art Fun and games with spatial noise patterns, courtesy of the ambient package Danielle Navarro Dec 19, 2024
  7. Art from code I: Generative art with R R Art An act of wholesale, unapologetic theft. In which the author discusses the core logic of generative art, and (ab)uses the ggplot2 package for her own ungodly purposes Danielle Navarro Dec 18, 2024
  8. Baby got backreferences R Regular Expressions Now I have \2 problems Danielle Navarro Dec 16, 2024
  9. Bézier curve R Art Worms What sins will she commit? Danielle Navarro Nov 24, 2024
  10. Bayesian estimation for Emax regression R Pharmacometrics Bayes Statistics Stan In which the author sighs a lot Danielle Navarro Nov 11, 2024
  11. For fs R Command Line Let’s be honest… I wrote this post because I wanted an excuse to be sweary. But I guess it’s also a post about interacting with the file system in R Danielle Navarro Oct 6, 2024
  12. Use of flextable R Data Wrangling In which the author explores the flextable R package for table construction, and gushes far too much about the work of Iain M. Banks Danielle Navarro Jul 4, 2024
  13. Making tables in R with table1 R Data Wrangling A pretty reckless dive into a package that hits the sweet spot for me Danielle Navarro Jun 21, 2024
  14. Plotting data in Julia Julia Data Visualisation Part three of this three-part series of Julia posts, in which I try to figure out how to draw some nice plots Danielle Navarro Mar 3, 2024
  15. Working with data in Julia Julia Data Wrangling Part two of a three-part series on Julia, in which the author teaches herself the basics of wrangling rectangular data in Julia Danielle Navarro Mar 2, 2024
  16. A foundation in Julia Julia Part one of a three-part series in which I swear I was going to keep it brief but ended up writing a staggeringly long set of notes on learning a bit of Julia Danielle Navarro Mar 1, 2024
  17. Creating new generative art tools in R with grid, ambient, and S7 R Object-Oriented Programming Grid Graphics Art LGBTQIA+ There might be a darker undercurrent in this one Danielle Navarro Feb 25, 2024
  18. Splatter Art R How to make a mess with ggplot2 and ambient Danielle Navarro Jan 26, 2024
  19. Notes on the Emax model Pharmacometrics A post that is little more than notes-to-self, on a model I want to make sure I understand Danielle Navarro Jan 9, 2024
  20. Making generative art with observable.js Javascript Art Observable I’ve used observable.js before, but this time around I actually tried to understand how it works Danielle Navarro Jan 9, 2024

2023 28

  1. Writing knitr hooks R Literate Programming Customising knitr output with hook functions is a handy skill, and I can never quite remember it when I need to, so here’s a blog post to remind myself Danielle Navarro Dec 30, 2023
  2. Fine-grained control of RNG seeds in R R Randomness In which the author was trying to fuck a spider but ended up shaving a yak with a fabulous Dua Lipa soundtrack in the background Danielle Navarro Dec 27, 2023
  3. The blogdown of theseus Javascript R Blogging Literate Programming Because you know what? I am here to fuck spiders Danielle Navarro Dec 23, 2023
  4. Closed form solutions for a two-compartment pharmacokinetic model Pharmacometrics There are times when you simply have to derive a thing yourself in order to understand it, even if no-one else cares Danielle Navarro Dec 19, 2023
  5. Another year ends End of Year Some say the year ends in fire, some say in ice. As to my own desire, any end at all will be nice. Danielle Navarro Dec 16, 2023
  6. Pharmacometric simulation with rxode2 R Pharmacometrics Basically the same post as the last one. It’s a brief introduction to pharmacometric simulation, but this time I’m using rxode2 instead of mrgsolve Danielle Navarro Aug 28, 2023
  7. Pharmacometric simulation with mrgsolve R Pharmacometrics Yet another post in the ever-expanding series where Danielle teaches herself pharmacometric modelling, which I’m certain is thrilling to everyone Danielle Navarro Aug 14, 2023
  8. Four ways to write assertion checks in R R It’s not 50 ways to leave your lover, but spend enough time talking about assertive programming in the bedroom and you’ll only have 49 more to discover Danielle Navarro Aug 8, 2023
  9. Getting started with Torsten R Stan Torsten Pharmacometrics Another small step along the path to Bayesian pharmacometrics Danielle Navarro Jul 15, 2023
  10. Beware the IDEs of Windows (Subsystem for Linux) Linux R Setting up nice developer environments on a Windows / Ubuntu-for-WSL system with the help of RStudio Server and the VS Code WSL extension Danielle Navarro Jul 2, 2023
  11. Makefiles. Or, the balrog and the submersible Reproducibility Fly, you fools! Danielle Navarro Jun 30, 2023
  12. Extracting tables from pdf files with tabulizer R Data Wrangling Something nicer than the last post Danielle Navarro Jun 16, 2023
  13. On living in dark times R Statistics LGBTQIA+ Estimating the number internally displaced transgender people in the United States. Danielle Navarro Jun 15, 2023
  14. A little ANSI trickery R LGBTQIA+ Fun and games with asciicast and cli. There’s really not much to this one except a little bit of personal entertainment Danielle Navarro Jun 14, 2023
  15. Pins and needles R Reproducibility Learning my lessons the hard way Danielle Navarro Jun 12, 2023
  16. Building a population pharmacokinetic model with Stan Statistics Pharmacometrics R Stan NONMEM Bayes In which the author works her way through the first part of an online tutorial, rewrites some NONMEM code in Stan, and takes notes Danielle Navarro Jun 10, 2023
  17. Software design by example Software Design Javascript R Regular Expressions A book review, sort of. Not really. Look, Greg sent me a copy and I had fun reading it. okay? Danielle Navarro May 31, 2023
  18. Santoku R Data Wrangling On the small joys of clean, single-purpose R packages. Danielle Navarro May 22, 2023
  19. Pharmacokinetic ODE models in Stan Statistics Pharmacometrics Stan Bayes MCMC R A discussion of one- and two-compartment pharmacokinetic models with model implementations in Stan, covering both first-order dynamics and Michaelis-Menten kinetics. Danielle Navarro May 16, 2023
  20. Non-compartmental analysis Statistics Pharmacometrics R A heavily oversimplified discussion of a simple pharmacokinetic tool, written as an exercise in teaching myself something new. Learning new things is always fun Danielle Navarro Apr 26, 2023
  21. A personal essay on Bayes factors Statistics Bayes In which the dead return to life and the author has opinions Danielle Navarro Apr 12, 2023
  22. The Metropolis-Hastings algorithm Statistics MCMC A note that I wrote for a computer science class I taught all the way back in 2010 Danielle Navarro Apr 12, 2023
  23. How to run R code in the browser with webR R WebR In which the author gets unreasonably excited about a new thing Danielle Navarro Apr 9, 2023
  24. Generative art with grid Art R Grid Graphics LGBTQIA+ I decided it was time to learn more about the grid package in R, and so naturally used it to make generative art Danielle Navarro Mar 31, 2023
  25. Shattered landscapes Art R Using ambient and rayshader to create weird, broken landcape images in R Danielle Navarro Mar 13, 2023
  26. Fun and games with p5.js and observable.js in quarto Art P5 Observable Javascript Quarto Okay it’s a short post in which I teach myself a bit of p5.js, but it does have five different donut examples which seems cool? Danielle Navarro Jan 14, 2023
  27. Deploying R with kubernetes R Docker Kubernetes Plumber In which it is painfully clear that the author is trying to figure it all out as she goes Danielle Navarro Jan 10, 2023
  28. Playing with docker and the github container registry Linux R Docker In which the author learns how to use docker and, in her usual fashion, goes a little bit overboard. But there are also generative art whales, so that’s nice. Danielle Navarro Jan 1, 2023

2022 18

  1. btw I use Arch now Linux R There is no reason for this. Danielle Navarro Dec 31, 2022
  2. A very strange year End of Year A wrap up of my 2022. Even by the standards of the recent past this has been a very weird year for me. A lot has happened, both professionally and personally. I’m still… Danielle Navarro Dec 26, 2022
  3. Queue Parallel Computing R Object-Oriented Programming It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a post about multithreading must be in want of an async trick Danielle Navarro Dec 22, 2022
  4. Crayola crayon colours R Data Wrangling Data Visualisation Am I bored in the house? Yes. And am I in the house bored? Also yes. But do I have rvest and a stubborn desire not to allow the horrors of ‘data encoded in the CSS style’ to… Danielle Navarro Dec 18, 2022
  5. Unpacking Arrow Datasets Apache Arrow R A comment on how Datasets work in Apache Arrow. I’m not really sure who the audience for this one. Am I just talking to myself? Probably. Danielle Navarro Nov 30, 2022
  6. Everything I know about Mastodon Mastodon Social Media A hastily written guide for data science folks trying to navigate the fediverse. Danielle Navarro Nov 3, 2022
  7. Building an Arrow Flight server Apache Arrow Networking R Python A step by step walkthrough introducing the reader to Arrow Flight, with examples in R and Python Danielle Navarro Oct 18, 2022
  8. Data transfer between Python and R with rpy2 and Apache Arrow Apache Arrow R Python A Pythonic approach for sharing Arrow Tables between Python and R. This is the second in a two-part series on data transfer. In this post I discuss how the rpy2 Python… Danielle Navarro Sep 16, 2022
  9. Passing Arrow data between R and Python with reticulate Apache Arrow R Python In a multi-language ‘polyglot’ data science world, it becomes important that we are able to pass large data sets efficiently from one language to another without making… Danielle Navarro Sep 9, 2022
  10. Sudo ask me a password Linux Credentials R Resolving a little quirk in managing packages with pak on linux Danielle Navarro Sep 4, 2022
  11. How to visualise a billion rows of data in R with Apache Arrow Apache Arrow Data Visualisation R In which the author grapples with the awkward question of what data visualisation really means when you have a staggering amount of data to work with Danielle Navarro Aug 23, 2022
  12. Arrays and tables in Arrow Apache Arrow R In which the author discusses arrays, chunked arrays, record batches, tables, and datasets in the R interface to Apache Arrow. Masochism is mentioned, and the music of… Danielle Navarro May 25, 2022
  13. Porting a distill blog to quarto Quarto Blogging Reproducibility Literate Programming I have moved this blog from distill over to quarto, and taken notes. A year after starting the blog, this promises to be an interesting reproducibility test Danielle Navarro Apr 20, 2022
  14. Using Amazon S3 with R Amazon S3 R Somehow I was convinced that using Amazon S3 would be a supremely difficult thing to learn, kind of like learning git and GitHub for the first time. Thankfully, it’s… Danielle Navarro Mar 17, 2022
  15. Data types in Arrow and R Apache Arrow R A post describing fundamental data types in R and Apache Arrow, and how data is exchanged between the two systems. It covers conversion of logicals, integers, floats… Danielle Navarro Mar 4, 2022
  16. R scripts for twitter mutes and blocks Twitter R Social Media Social media safety tools like muting and blocking are often misused, but for people who are targeted for harassment they are powerful and important. This is a brief… Danielle Navarro Feb 11, 2022
  17. Binding Apache Arrow to R Apache Arrow R I’ve been learning how to program with Apache Arrow inside R, and also I have been watching the SyFy show “The Magicians” obsessively. For no sensible reason I wrote a blog… Danielle Navarro Jan 18, 2022
  18. Setting CRAN repository options R A quick post on how to use RStudio public package manager instead of a standard CRAN mirror, and an example of why that can be useful sometimes. Danielle Navarro Jan 10, 2022

2021 12

  1. Getting started with Apache Arrow Apache Arrow R I’ve been wanting to learn the basics of Apache Arrow a while: this is the story of how an R user learned to stop worrying and love a standardised in-memory columnar data… Danielle Navarro Nov 19, 2021
  2. Data serialisation in R Serialisation R A terrifying descent into madness, or, an explanation of how R serialises an in-memory data structure to summon a sequence of bytes that can be saved or transmitted.… Danielle Navarro Nov 15, 2021
  3. Unpredictable paintings Art R An example showing how to build a generative art system in R. The post walks through some of the creative and design choices that are involved, and highlights how much of a… Danielle Navarro Nov 1, 2021
  4. Generative art resources in R Art R An extremely incomplete (and probably biased) list of resources to help an aspiring generative artist get started making pretty pictures in R Danielle Navarro Oct 19, 2021
  5. How to mint digital art on HEN Art Not every artist wants to make cryptoart, and that’s okay. Others do, and that’s okay too. But if you want to try it out in a socially responsible way, it takes a bit of… Danielle Navarro Sep 26, 2021
  6. Visualising the hits of Queen Britney Tidy Tuesday Data Visualisation R A gentle walkthrough of a few data wrangling and visualisation tools using the Billboard 100 data for this weeks Tidy Tuesday. Pitched at beginners looking to refresh their… Danielle Navarro Sep 14, 2021
  7. Art, jasmines, and the water colours Art R An essay and tutorial covering a few useful art techniques in R Danielle Navarro Sep 7, 2021
  8. Managing GitHub credentials from R, difficulty level linux Git Credentials Linux R A sick sad story in which a humble R user was forced to learn something about how linux stores passwords and, more importantly, got R to use her GitHub credentials properly Danielle Navarro Aug 8, 2021
  9. Generative art in R Art R Comments on an exhibit I contributed to as part of useR!2021 Danielle Navarro Jul 8, 2021
  10. Bootstrap cards in distill Blogging Bootstrap Distill R How to enable bootstrap 4 on a distill website, even though you probably don’t need to. I like it though because I get to add pretty bootstrap cards Danielle Navarro Apr 19, 2021
  11. Pretty little CLIs Command Line R How to make a gorgeous command line interface in R using the cli package. Somewhere along the way I accidentally learned about ANSI control codes, which strikes me as… Danielle Navarro Apr 18, 2021
  12. Welcome to the jungle Blogging Reproducibility Distill I have reluctantly decided to create a new blog. Some thoughts on what I hope to achieve, having tried my hand at blogging so very many times before Danielle Navarro Apr 5, 2021