WTF is Kubernetes and Should I Care as R User?

Fearless to production

I’m going to give you a high overview of kubernetes and how you can make your R work shine in kubernetes. Are you, an R-user in a company that uses kubernetes? building R applications (models that do predictions, shiny applications, APIs)? curious about this whole kubernetes thing that your coworkers are talking about? somewhat afraid? Then I have the post for you! Many R users come from an academic background, statistics and social sciences. [Read More]

Running an R Script on a Schedule: Azure Functions (Serverless)

timer-trigger in Azure Functions

In this post I will show how I run an R script on a schedule, by making use of ‘serverless’ computing service on the Microsoft Cloud called Azure Functions. In short I will use a custom docker container, install required software, install required r-packages using {renv} and deploy it in the Azure cloud. I program the process in azure such that the it runs once a day without any supervision. [Read More]

Testing Azure Functions Locally with Azurite

Supplying secrets and simulating storage

I’ve been developing Azure Functions with R for the past week. There are some nice basic tutorials to run custom code on ‘Functions’, the basic tutorials all create a simple web app. That is, the docker container responds to http triggers. However, if you want to use a different trigger, you need to have a storage account too. There are two ways to do this: use the actual storage account you created on azure simulate storage with the ‘azurite’ container. [Read More]

Stability, Portability and Flexibility Trade-offs

I think a lot about moving single R scripts from someone’s computer to the cloud (another computer). One of the major questions you need to answer is: Can I give my solution to someone else in a way that it ‘just’ works? R is an high level language. This allows you to write out the steps you want to take and that the actual implementation is hidden (can you imagine writing all the steps your computer needs to take? [Read More]

Running an R Script on a Schedule: Docker Containers on gitlab

In this tutorial/howto I show you how to run a docker container on a schedule on gitlab. Docker containers are awesome because, once made, they run everywhere! It does not matter what type of computer (Though I believe there is a problem with ARM based vs other CPU’s). you have. Once I build a container you can run my container on a linux box, windows machine or mac. This is also why people love containers for production, you can finally truly pick up a container from development and hand it over to production. [Read More]

Tweeting daily famous deaths from wikidata to twitter with R and docker

A tweet a day keeps the insanity at bay

In this explainer I walk you through the steps I took to create a twitter bot that tweets daily about people who died on that date. I created a script that queries wikidata, takes that information and creates a sentence. That sentence is then tweeted. For example: A tweet I literally just send out from the docker container I hope you are has excited as I am about this project. [Read More]