Richard A. Lent, Ph.D.

All generalizations are false.

The Plain Text Workflow

Introduction What is Plain Text? Why Plain Text? An Example of the Plain Text Workflow Parting Thoughts Reading time: 10 minute(s) @ 200 WPM. Introduction The Plain Text Workflow is an alternative to writing with a word processor. Mind you, I said writing, not typesetting or formatting, which is a major part of what word processors do. The idea of the plain text workflow is that you separate the act of writing from that of producing a formatted, typeset final document.

R Markdown Test

Reading time: 2 minute(s) @ 200 WPM. Yes, it doth work. The blogdown package can nicely deal with R Markdown containing embedded R code for production of statistical analyses and graphics. But. It cannot deal with R Notebooks, which contain a special flavor of R Markdown allowing for interactive display of R code alongside the results they produce. R Notebooks, when rendered into HTML, produce a special file named *.

Google Search

Reading time: 2 minute(s) @ 200 WPM. Following the directions for Google’s Custom Search Engine, with additional help from How I added search to my static blog, I have added a local search function to this website. It’s on the sidebar menu, with an adorable magnifying glass icon from Font Awesome Icons, and it basically works. This search function will, in all likelihood, probably search only the specific content of richardlent.

Video test

Reading time: 1 minute(s) @ 200 WPM. We now attempt to insert into our R Markdown file, which Hugo then renders into HTML, an mp4 video of dragonflies (insect order Odonata, in case you’re wondering) that were congregating in my front yard a few summers ago. So I’m thinking, just insert it using a regular Markdown image tag, yes? Like this: ![](/mp4/Dragonflies.mp4). And so, that worked. To center this video on the page I am using the deprecated HTML <center> tag inside of my R Markdown.

Bossa Novish

An original tune of mine. This recording gets kind of screwed up in the middle, but hey, that’s how we know it’s live and not lip-synched, right? Guitar: Martin 00-18V (Click for larger image.) Tuning: Standard Listen/download: Bossa Novish

Making Maps with R

Making maps on a computer has traditionally required the use of desktop geographic information system (GIS) software such as ArcGIS or QGIS. An alternative is to use R, a free software environment for statistical computing and graphics. R has many features that allow it to read GIS data and produce both static and interactive maps. This document (which is an R Notebook) shows how to make maps with R and RStudio, using R base graphics and the maps and mapdata packages, in addition to the leaflet and tmap packages.