Brian Yandell’s Personal Website — Project Memory

Brian Yandell’s Personal Website — Project Memory

Project Overview

Personal portfolio and blog site for Brian Yandell (professor emeritus, UW-Madison Statistics, retired 2023). Tagline: “Life Beyond Retirement” (from Shakespeare’s The Tempest). Hosted at https://byandell.github.io.

Technology Stack

  • Static site generator: Jekyll (GitHub Pages compatible), based on Jekyll-Now template (v1.2.0)
  • Markup: Markdown (Kramdown with GitHub Flavored Markdown)
  • Styling: SCSS/CSS (style.scss, partials in _sass/)
  • Syntax highlighting: Rouge
  • Plugins: jekyll-sitemap, jekyll-feed
  • Dependencies: Gemfile (github-pages gem)
  • RStudio project: .Rproj file present; some content generated programmatically in R

Directory Structure

byandell.github.io/
├── _config.yml          # Site config: name, description, avatar, social links, URL
├── _layouts/            # HTML templates (default.html, page.html, post.html)
├── _includes/           # Reusable HTML components (analytics, meta, SVG icons)
├── _sass/               # SCSS partials (_reset, _variables, _highlights, _svg-icons)
├── _posts/              # Blog posts (Markdown, dated filenames)
├── pages/               # Thematic content pages and subdirectories
│   ├── ewing/           # Content about Bland Ewing and related science
│   └── sysgen/          # Systems genetics content
├── images/              # Image assets
├── style.scss           # Main compiled stylesheet
├── index.md             # Homepage
├── about.md             # About page
├── blog.md              # Blog listing page
├── AGENTS.md            # This file
├── Gemfile
└── README.md

Blog Posts (_posts/)

Files follow the naming convention YYYY-MM-DD-Title-Words.md. Some posts have pre-compiled .html counterparts (not source files). Current posts span 1982–2026, covering:

  • Data science, data models, data sovereignty
  • Indigenous data science and ESIIL research
  • Environmental and systems thinking
  • Personal reflections (Jaron Lanier/AI, Bland Ewing, Pope and AI, gravity/antigravity)

Thematic Pages (pages/)

File Topic
system.md Systems thinking and collaborative teams
eds.md Environmental Data Science (primary research focus)
indigenous.md Indigenous data science and sovereignty (ESIIL)
reflect.md Personal reflections and family
collaborate.md Collaboration and team development
software.md Software history: APL, Fortran, R packages (R/qtl, ewing, pickgene, pda)
coach.md Coaching
team.md Team development
sources.md Sources and references
envsys.md Environmental systems
covid19.md COVID-19 related content
ewing/ Bland Ewing biography and systems ethology science
sysgen/ Systems genetics

Key Content Themes

  1. Bland Ewing / Systems Ethology — Long-running project reconnecting with mentor Bland Ewing (UC-Berkeley, 1971–73), documenting his life story (cassette tapes being digitized) and formalizing his modeling ideas into the R package ewing and the draft book Systems Ethology.

  2. Indigenous Data Sovereignty — Involvement with ESIIL and Indigenous data governance frameworks.

  3. Environmental Data Science — Primary post-retirement research area.

  4. Personal/Professional Memoir — Reflections on 40+ years in academia (biostatistics PhD at UC-Berkeley, faculty at UW-Madison Statistics 1983–2023).

Site Configuration (_config.yml)

  • URL: https://byandell.github.io
  • Permalink: /:title/
  • Avatar: GitHub profile picture (https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/325732)
  • Social links: GitHub (byandell), LinkedIn (brian-yandell-62198620)
  • Disqus and Google Analytics are configured but currently disabled

Notes

  • Pre-compiled .html files exist alongside some .md sources in _posts/ and pages/ — these are build artifacts, not source files. Edit only the .md source files.
  • The .gitignore excludes about.html, index.html, and compiled page HTML, consistent with treating them as build artifacts.
  • RStudio is the primary editing environment.