Ian Lyttle

"Years and years ago, there was a production of The Tempest, out of doors, at an Oxford college on a lawn, which was the stage, and the lawn went back towards the lake in the grounds of the college, and the play began in natural light. But as it developed, and as it became time for Ariel to say his farewell to the world of The Tempest, the evening had started to close in and there was some artificial lighting coming on. And as Ariel uttered his last speech, he turned and he ran across the grass, and he got to the edge of the lake and he just kept running across the top of the water — the producer having thoughtfully provided a kind of walkway an inch beneath the water. And you could see and you could hear the plish, plash as he ran away from you across the top of the lake, until the gloom enveloped him and he disappeared from your view. And as he did so, from the further shore, a firework rocket was ignited, and it went whoosh into the air, and high up there it burst into lots of sparks, and all the sparks went out, and he had gone. "When you look up the stage directions, it says, 'Exit Ariel.”

Eleven years ago, I wrote to Tom Stoppard to ask about this coup de théâtre from 1949. It took me down an unexpected rabbit hole - in memory of Stoppard, here's what I found.

Can you see Newfoundland from Cape Breton? Online photo sparks debate | CBC News An online photo has sparked a passionate debate about whether or not it's possible.

Today in Canadian headlines: www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

At 83, Paul McCartney takes Hamilton crowd through longest list of greatest hits any artist ever had | CBC News In Hamilton Friday night, McCartney led a grateful, sold-out crowd on a magical history tour starting in Liverpool with the Beatles' first number one hit single, From Me To You. His show opened the ne...

in case you're interested: www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Screenshot of CBC website with headline, "At 83, Paul McCartney takes Hamilton crowd through longest list of greatest hits any artist ever had"

Today in "most Canadian headlines":

Screenshot showing usage of usethis::browse_package(), usethis::browse_cran(), and usethis::browse_github().

I'm reminded of how handy the usethis::browse_*() functions are and thought I'd remind people they exist. Choose from a menu of links or go straight to CRAN or GitHub. #rstats

this dude helping his bro pick up his stick should be highlight of the night but our bloodthirsty sports media only feeds us conflict

YouTube video by Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Bluegrass Band - Topic Tomorrow Never Knows

this is the wildest thing I have heard in a while
www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMz4...

asking for a favorite track is a trap...

for me, this is less of an album, and more of an old friend: there when needed

you should be using rig

Want to manage multiple R versions without pain? 🧰

The rig (R Installation Manager) tool makes installing, removing, and switching between #RStats versions simple; works across macOS, Windows, and Linux.

🔧 github.com/r-lib/rig

While I had been using rainbow parentheses for a while, I only recently found out about rainbow indentation thanks to @ijlyttle.bsky.social and @3mmarand.bsky.social 🌈 #rstats

Screenshot of first page of slidecrafting-book.com website

I'm exited to announce a new resource about making slides with quarto and revealjs. This book is the combination of all the work I have done in this area, reordered and polished up

There isn't a lot of new information yet, but this format allows me to add more easily

slidecrafting-book.com
#quarto

RDM Weekly - Issue 014 A weekly roundup of Research Data Management resources.

RDM Weekly Issue 14 is out! 📬

After attending posit::conf last week, I decided to highlight some recent and past data management related talks from the conference. #rstats

- AI Coding Assistants
- Spreadsheet formatting
- Creating R Data Packages
and more!

rdmweekly.substack.com/p/rdm-weekly...

Timestamp Issues Timestamp With Time Zone Promotion Casts Working with time zones in SQL can be quite confusing at times. For example, when filtering to a date range, one might try the following query: SET timezone = ...

🕐 🤔 Timestamps and time zones can be confusing! 😵

💡 To help you make sense of time zones in SQL, Richard Wesley wrote a short guide that covers some typical pitfalls: duckdb.org/docs/stable/...

Does Jenny Bryan #VibeCode? 🤔

She shared on the Hangout that she's been thankful that she gets to learn #rust and #typscript in the age of #AI and these are her thoughts on #LLM use. (We really need a #RubberDuck emoji 🦆)

#rstats #databs #VibeCoding #DSHangout #python

Amazing! I really enjoy your writing! Looking forward to you being a part of the class!

Really looking forward teaching again with @3mmarand.bsky.social: all sorts of good stuff, including:

🐝 getting started with functions
⚡️ writing functions with tidy evaluation
🏃‍♀️iterating over columns of data frames
🐈 intro to functional programming with purrr

Hope you can join us!

This is awesome: a "WKRP in Cincinnati" fan created a three-hour Johnny Fever radio block, by using clips from the TV show and dropping in the full songs on his intros and outros, plus commercials and Les Nessman news breaks.

this is my TS album drop 🤩

I have drifted from Observable lately, and I could use a distraction today.

I've got my morning coffee, let's do this!

Posit We’re happy to announce that we’re supporting Typst by funding one of their full-time engineers.

At Posit, we love @typst.app:

⚡ Make PDFs in milliseconds, not minutes
✨ The power of LaTeX with today's technologies
✍️ Modern typography (including emojis!)
🧠 Clear mental model

So I'm thrilled to announce that we're now supporting its development: posit.co/blog/posit-a...

#rstats

Leon Draisaitl taking the Clarence Campbell Bowl back to the Oilers' locker room.

Mad Men finalé: Peggy Olsen taking her box of stuff to her new office

same energy

YouTube video by NHL Connor McDavid ANSWERS in Game 5!

Connor McDavid in the elimination game against Dallas, 2025: www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRoj...

YouTube video by SPORTSNET Gotta See It: Connor McDavid Shows Off Sweet Moves to Bury Goal

Connor McDavid in the elimination game against Dallas, 2024: www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-ea...

This is a fun piece on denominators to share with your friends, written with my @wakeforest.bsky.social colleague Jeff Camm!

mutable, Python argument-defaults are... docs.astral.sh/ruff/rules/f...

Robert “Ed” Smylie, the NASA official who saved the Apollo 13 crew in 1970, has died at 95. He cobbled together an apparatus made of cardboard, plastic bags and duct tape after an explosion crippled the spacecraft as it sped toward the moon. nyti.ms/3Sbusb3

Common Gotchas — The Hitchhiker's Guide to Python

(repeat to self) Python argument-defaults are mutable, Python argument-defaults are mutable, Python argument-defaults are mutable... docs.python-guide.org/writing/gotc...

Rep. Laurel Libby, R-Auburn, recently used my second-place finish in the 1,600-meter run, and that of my teammate in the 800-meter run, to malign Soren Stark-Chessa, the trans-identified athlete who finished first. One of the reasons I chose to run cross-country and track is the community: Teammates cheering each other on, athletes from different schools coming together, and the fact that personal improvement is valued as much as, if not more than, the place we finish. Last Friday, I ran the fastest 1,600-meter race I have ever run in middle school or high school track and earned varsity status by my school’s standards. I am extremely proud of the effort I put into the race and the time that I achieved. The fact that someone else finished in front of me didn’t diminish the happiness I felt after finishing that race. I don’t feel like first place was taken from me. Instead, I feel like a happy day was turned ugly by a bully who is using children to make political points. We are all just kids trying to make our way through high school. Participating in sports is the highlight of high school for some kids. No one was harmed by Soren’s participation in the girls’ track meet, but we are all harmed by the hateful rhetoric of bullies, like Rep. Libby, who want to take sports away from some kids just because of who they are. Anelise Feldman Freshman, Yarmouth High School Yarmouth

this is a letter to the editor from a high school track runner who came in second to a trans girl in a race. her state house rep in maine started talking about it. so she wrote this: www.pressherald.com/2025/05/14/r...

SveltePlot logo with the website address https://svelteplot.dev and a few example plots in the background

Last week I had the pleasure of finally releasing the #SveltePlot alpha version during my talk at the #SvelteSummit in Barcelona. It's a new visualization framework for @svelte.dev that I've been working on for the past 18 months, so it's about time for a 🧵

As promised.