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cloud (5)
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Python (22)
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R (24)
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TIL yearly (3)

Claude Sonnet 4 coding agent

AI
This week I explored Claude Sonnet 4 and GitHub Copilot’s new Agent Mode. Claude Sonnet 4, recently released by Anthropic, is particularly strong at coding tasks. Agent Mode…
Jul 16, 2025

Today I learned (TIL) · 2025

TIL yearly
Format Markdown with mdformat and uv.
Apr 19, 2025

Color Chart page with AI

AI
Farbtafel (Color Chart) webpage — Gerhard Richter inspired · 🤖🎨
Jan 5, 2025

http requests with urllib3

Python
API
My goal is to use the urllib3 more regularly. It is a library that has no dependencies (see below)
Oct 27, 2024

Public broadcasting Germany

R
ggplot
geo
Today, there was a decision about a public broadcasting reform in Germany.
Oct 25, 2024

Arrange plots with tables

R
ggplot
I use patchwork regularly to combine ggplots; see my R template.
Sep 22, 2024

uv instead of venv/pip

Python
packaging
uv recently released its 0.3 version.
Aug 31, 2024

Thousands categories

R
ggplot
I wanted to create categories of thousands and needed to put numbers into intervals of one, ten, and hundred thousands as well as millions.
Jul 28, 2024

Round to first two digits

R
AI
To improve the readability of a table, I wanted to round various numbers between 100 and 10,000,000 to their first two digits. 123,456 would become 120,000 and 987 would…
Jul 20, 2024

Select map region in R

R
geo
Here is an example of selecting a region from a map by specifying a rectangle for the selection.
Jul 17, 2024

Bar charts with ggplot

R
ggplot
AI
Horizontal bar charts are a regular part of my work with graphs in R. Nevertheless, I have to look up the details regularly, so here is another example.
Jul 16, 2024

Geocoding in R

R
geo
Geocoding of places in R with the tidygeocoder package using the OpenStreetMap Nominatim API and creating a sf geometry list-column.
Jul 14, 2024

DOI reference with httr2

R
API
Get citation references from DOI API with httr2.
Jul 13, 2024

Today I learned (TIL) · 2024

TIL yearly
Use git force push safely (2023) with
Jun 11, 2024

pip install in cell

Python
packaging
Sometimes, I want to install pip packages in a Jupyter notebook without specifying the packages and pinning them in a requirements.txt.
Apr 30, 2024

R in Docker and Codespaces

R
cloud
Docker
packaging
For my work, I use Docker regularly to create fully reproducible environments.
Mar 22, 2024

Requests in JupyterLite

Python
In a recent post, I tried to use requests in JupyterLite. It did not work at the time.
Mar 21, 2024

Python f-strings

Python
Here are some examples of f-strings in Python inspired by a post and a cheat sheet.
Feb 26, 2024

Today I learned (TIL) · 2023

TIL yearly
Keep the date of a git commit after changing the history with rebase
Nov 26, 2023

iPython display

Python
The display functions from iPython is nice in an interactive Jupyter notebook. Unfortunately, it does not work equally well in Quarto or in a Jupyter notebook converted into…
Nov 25, 2023

JupyterLite

Python
packaging
I listened to the the recent Talk Python To Me episode Celebrating JupyterLab 4 and Jupyter 7 Releases and became aware of JupyterLite which I had not used before.
Nov 23, 2023

API requests with httr2

R
API
httr2 1.0 was recently released. I used it earlier this month in my API explorations to understand what the Python requests equivalent is in R. Python and requests are so…
Nov 20, 2023

Python Pizza Hamburg

Python
This Friday, I attended the Python Pizza micro conference in Hamburg. It was a very nice, welcoming and informative event. I liked the broad perspectives on how-to, learning…
Nov 17, 2023

pyproject.toml metadata and dependencies

Python
packaging
Python allows to specify metadata and dependencies in a pyproject.toml.
Nov 4, 2023

Zenodo API

Python
API
This week, I worked with the Zenodo API. My goals was to add Zenodo metadata to GitHub for the partypositions-wikitags project.
Oct 31, 2023

Get DOI metadata

Python
API
I was interested in getting the metadata for a DOI without using a package in Python or R. My goal was to get a better understanding of the APIs that are available to access…
Oct 10, 2023

R packages with pak

R
packaging
I started using pak install and manage R packages.
Oct 7, 2023

Quarto version in Docker

Docker
Quarto
I realized that installing the latest version of Quarto in Docker will not lead to a reproducible environment since the latest Docker version depends on the day an image is…
Aug 21, 2023

File hashing

R
To increase the transparency of my work, I was interested in file hashing. It allows to assign a unique value to a file. Such a value is calculated with a defined algorithm.
Aug 14, 2023

dplyr join_by() argument

R
tidyverse
dplyr 1.1 introduced a new option for the by argument to the *_join() family of functions. You can now use join_by() instead of the previous c().
Aug 12, 2023

Screenshots with Playwright

Python
I heard about Playwright in Episode #424 of Talk Python To Me.
Jul 30, 2023

Package versions with renv

R
packaging
renv::snapshot() creates an renv.lock file that includes the versions of all R packages used in R code in the current project folder.
Jul 29, 2023

First pull request accepted · 😊

R
git
My first public pull request on Github was accepted.
Jul 16, 2023

dplyr programming

R
tidyverse
I wanted to use some dynamic variable names in dplyr and had to look up dplyr programming again.
Jun 30, 2023

string interpolation with str_glue()

R
In R, I like string interpolation with glue and prefer it over Base-R paste(), paste0(), sprintf(). Regularly, I use glue() and forget to load the respective library at the…
Jun 24, 2023

Conditional R cells

R
Quarto
For R notebooks in Quarto not all information that can be presented in an html-document is feasible for the respective pdf-document. So sometimes, I want to include…
Jun 20, 2023

Git rebase interactive

git
Git rebase interactive is nice. I have used Git for a long time and correcting wrong commits has been a hassle so far. I try to keep a nice Git history and pay attention to…
Jun 17, 2023

Jupyter notebooks in Git

Python
Working with Jupyter notebooks in Git repositories has always caused some struggles for me with the Git commit history. Jupyter notebooks use the json-format and include…
Jun 12, 2023

GitHub Codespaces

cloud
Python
GitHub offered me to review the code of a pull request in GitHub Codespaces. It is an environment to run code online. I used it briefly before but not for one of my GitHub…
Jun 4, 2023

GitHub Pages

Quarto
I published my first two web sites with GithHub Pages.
Jun 3, 2023

AI images with DALL-E

AI
Today, I became aware of an OpenAI service to generate images — DALL-E.
Jun 2, 2023

Wikipedia, Python, ChatGPT

Python
AI
geo
I wanted to get the first image of a Wikipedia page and the coordinates.
May 1, 2023

Geocoding in Python

Python
geo
Get geographic coordinates for an address with Nominatim from OpenStreetMap data.
Apr 27, 2023

Dataverse URLs

R
I followed a talk on electoral politics in Honduras. The presenter referred to the very stable two party system in Honduras. That made me interested to look at election…
Apr 27, 2023

Posit Cloud

R
cloud
I use RStudio in Posit Cloud sometimes. It is a convenient solution on a Chromebook or on a computer where R/RStudio is not installed. I also like to use it for mini-project…
Apr 27, 2023

R coding with ChatGPT

R
AI
Finally I got into ChatGPT and started using it.
Apr 23, 2023

WebR (WebAssembly)

R
cloud
I read about the webR release on the Tidyverse blog. It allows to run R in a browser.
Mar 20, 2023

PyScript (WebAssembly)

Python
cloud
I used pyscript for the first time and created a web page that run some Python code.
Mar 15, 2023

A few days of Quarto

Docker
Python
Quarto
So I have had my first experience with creating dynamic documents in Quarto. It has been a pleasant experience. I could use some of my RMarkdown und knitr skills and like…
Feb 26, 2023

Python visualization with Altair

Python
ggplot
I have been interested in finding a visualization library for Python that is similiar to ggplot2 in R. I like the quick plots in pandas but Matplotlib has never worked for me.
Feb 26, 2023

Hello Jupyter

Python
Quarto
I used my new Quarto and Jupyter skills to create web pages for an introduction to notebooks that Arnim Bleier gave recently at GESIS DSS.
Feb 22, 2023

Jupyter notebooks with Quarto

Python
Quarto
Jupyter notebooks can be rendered with Quarto.
Feb 18, 2023

Horizontal bar chart

R
ggplot
To have horizontal bar charts ordered by frequency, I have used geom_bar() and coord_flip for a long time.
Feb 17, 2023

Things I learned: A new TIL

R
Python
Quarto
My idea is to keep a more systematic collection of things I learned (TIL).
Feb 16, 2023
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