Grant McDermott
gmcd.bsky.social
Grant McDermott
@gmcd.bsky.social
Economics and data science | Former academic now working in the tech sector | Views my own | 🇿🇦 in 🇺🇸 | https://grantmcdermott.com/
This will be a decidedly unpopular Springbok view, but SA's level of scrum dominance can't be good for the game. I don't know how to "fix" it, but I don't think it's just a question of a better bench. It's starting from the off.
November 22, 2025 at 8:16 PM
Faz must have been apoplectic in the halftime change room.

First 20 min and setpiece aside, we were pretty poor TBH. Obviously, that's a reflection of the sheer grit from your lads. But I'm struggling to remember the last time SA played with such a lack of ambition.
November 22, 2025 at 8:12 PM
It's funny how this level of set piece dominance can ruin the game for both sides. I can't remember when SA last played with this lack of ambition.
November 22, 2025 at 7:34 PM
Huge JVDF fan tbh.

Minor 2024/25 form blip aside, and he looked back to his best over the weekend, just world class every game.
November 2, 2025 at 9:42 PM
<insert bad joke about him finally going through the gate>
November 2, 2025 at 9:39 PM
Thanks! I'm unreasonably pleased with it tbqh. Would dig to get your feedback.

Lots of additional material on the website. grantmcdermott.com/tinyplot/
tinyplot
grantmcdermott.com
October 30, 2025 at 10:27 PM
I gave this talk on an empty stomach and about three hours sleep. So I recommend watching it >1x playing speed...

(Also: please have pity on the tall people in your life, forced to stare directly into projector lights.)
October 30, 2025 at 5:57 PM
Hmmm, I wouldn't say the problem is the availability of binary-build channels. Alongside r2u (great albeit Ubuntu only), there's rspm and the Posit manylinux repo (both multi-distro). The problem is conda hijacking and/or overriding these channels, so that they don't work like normal :-/
October 3, 2025 at 3:27 AM
Yeah, unfortunately the inconsistency is the killer here. I've also run into a (related?) problem of missing pre-compiled binaries on some Linux distros that we use at work. So you end up having to install + compile everything from source ☠️
October 2, 2025 at 9:35 PM
RE: lack of love for conda-forge, see this thread by @jeroenooms.bsky.social fosstodon.org/@jeroenooms/...
Jeroen (@[email protected])
Is @conda for R completely dead now? Seems like all R package builds on conda-forge have been failing for months, and nobody cares?
fosstodon.org
October 2, 2025 at 9:00 PM
It's a constant stream of untaxed negative externalities that I can only assume are part of some cunning grand plan for language hegemony.
September 30, 2025 at 6:53 PM
Fair points. Still, if you feel like modifying / playing around... bsky.app/profile/gmcd...
Successfully nerdsniped myself into writing a little script for this. gist.github.com/grantmcdermo...

(Longer than it probably needs to be bc of annoying Wiki table formatting, but I'm too lazy to find another source.)
September 30, 2025 at 12:14 AM
Hmmm, I don't think so. If the state of the system hinges on a few critical units then I think you want to model those directly. To the OP, if we don't see much volatility of those marginal units over time then I don't think it makes sense to talk about "close" vs "big" victories, no?
September 28, 2025 at 9:39 PM
Not giving CM the inside ball at 1:30 (beautiful line!) was a legitimate gripe. But vanishingly few of those.
September 28, 2025 at 9:32 PM