This project contains all the files for the blog.

Instructions (for my future self)

• Create a folder under posts/ with the folder name indicating the slug of the post

• Create an ignored.qmd¹ file in the newly created folder

  • If using Python + Jupyter notebook from within VS Code, then create ignored.ipynb instead of ignored.qmd

• Start writing

  • If the post contains Python code, then the venv for the blog should be used. This is done automatically when using Quarto with RStudio (on my linux machine) and when using VS Code. See the section on managing python environments below.

• For R - When the post is ready for editing / proofreading, rename the file to index.qmd

• Save the image shown on the main page with these parameters, if generated via ggplot

  ggsave(plot = plot_object, filename = "<plot_name>.png",
         device = "png", units = "px", width = 900, height = 800, dpi = 180,
         path = fs::path("posts", "<subdirectory>"))
  

  plot_name and subdirectory should be modified for each post. The dpi can be modified if the plot has some issues.

• Run quarto preview in the terminal, or click the Render button and see the post in the Viewer pane within RStudio. Same works for VS Code.

• When satisfied with the result, send Ctrl+C to the terminal to cancel quarto preview

  • For previewing how a page would look on mobile, press `Ctrl + Shift + I` to access developer tools and click the mobile icon (same on Chrome and Firefox). Ideally nothing should be overflowing the page and creating lots of unnecessary whitespace on the page.

• For converting the final ipynb file, this command should be run from the terminal (also see this)

  quarto convert posts/<post_dir>/ignored.ipynb --output posts/<post_dir>/index.qmd
  

• Optionally run styler on the source files (.R, .qmd). Useful to stage the source file to see what styler has changed and whether it should be accepted or rejected.

• Run quarto render if quarto preview was used to review the file

  • If the change doesn't show up, then the subdirectory in /posts has to be rendered explicitly via quarto render posts/<post-subdir>

• Commit changes and push to master / main branch

• Run quarto publish gh-pages

• Go do something else

Managing R environments

For this, the renv documentation can be referred to. Important to periodically run

renv::status()

and

renv::snapshot()

Managing Python environments

Python packages are managed using pip. The local python environment for the blog can be activated by running the following from the root directory of the blog via bash

source blogpyenv/bin/activate

See this link for managing venv.

If new packages are installed or upgraded, then the requirements.txt file should be updated by running

python -m pip freeze > requirements.txt

I should probably use poetry -- which I would for complex projects -- but will switch in the future if I end up having enough Python posts.

The reticulate package in R is key when writing and running Python code from within RStudio.

Python with VS Code

See these links:

• https://quarto.org/docs/computations/python.html

• https://quarto.org/docs/tools/jupyter-lab.html

• https://quarto.org/docs/tools/vscode.html

• https://quarto.org/docs/tools/vscode-notebook.html

• https://quarto.org/docs/visual-editor/vscode/

Extras

• Should the footnote be capitalized and end in a full stop? See this thread.

Footnotes

1. File is called ignored.qmd because of the render: "!ignored.qmd" parameter in the _quarto.yml file ↩