index.md (2187B)
1 --- 2 title: "Weeknote for 2025-W20" 3 description: "Primers on WASM and R typography" 4 date: 2025-05-14T20:14:13-07:00 5 draft: false 6 categories: 7 - Weeknotes 8 tags: 9 - R 10 --- 11 12 I broke my streak of “weeknotes”[^weeknote] and missed last week’s update. Many 13 people will describe their lives as “busy” when pressed---I’m no 14 different---but I was juggling a few extra responsibility and chose to let this 15 one slide. If you’re gonna drop a ball, make sure it’s made of rubber, right? 16 17 ## An easy to follow WASM primer 18 19 I harbor some ambivalence about WebAssembly, like many of the technologies 20 underpinning the “modern web”. On the one hand, it’s amazing what we can do in 21 browsers now, and the me that was updating an official university website by 22 hand-coding HTML in 1999 would be amazed by it all. On the other, it breaks my 23 heart to know that so many CPU cycles are being wasted on surveillance and 24 advertising, or running apps “in the cloud” that could be replaced more 25 economically by lightweight native applications. This isn’t a novel complaint 26 in 2025, and I suppose anyone reading this has heard it all before. 27 28 Still, I’ve wanted to know more about how WASM actually works, and this is a 29 terrific primer. I doubt I’ll find myself writing a module in C, but if I ever 30 have an excuse to do so this is where I’ll start. 31 32 [ragman---Web Assembly Primer](https://www.ragman.net/musings/wasm-primer/) 33 34 ## Getting text right in R graphics 35 36 [It’s been a while]({{< ref "/posts/tufte-plot/" >}}) since I obsessed over a 37 typeface in an R graphic, but this primer recently published by the Tidyverse 38 team is a satisfying deep-dive on the topic. [This older post on plot 39 scaling](https://www.tidyverse.org/blog/2020/08/taking-control-of-plot-scaling/) 40 from the same blog is an excellent companion if you want to make figures that 41 look good for print and digital displays. Both lean on the [{ragg} 42 package](https://ragg.r-lib.org/), which I don’t currently use but feel like I 43 should. 44 45 [Thomas Lin Pedersen---Fonts in 46 R](https://www.tidyverse.org/blog/2025/05/fonts-in-r/) 47 48 [^weeknote]: I know that these aren’t _proper_ weeknotes in the indie web 49 tradition.