justin․searls․co

I'm happy to share that I'll be speaking at Rails World 2024. Everything I heard about last year's event was overwhelmingly positive, and my interactions with Amanda give me every confidence that this year's event in Toronto will be great, as well. Japan's RubyKaigi—which has grown to 1400 attendees and attracted dozens of corporate sponsors—has set a high bar for any conference that aims to blend community-building, professional development, and in-person collaboration to push a technology forward, but every indication suggests Rails World is on the right track.

My topic? Glad you asked.

In keeping with the "one-person framework" motif, I'm calling it "The Empowered Programmer", as a sort of sequel to my 2019 presentation, The Selfish Programmer. I'll be talking about the Rails 7 app I've been building this year, in support of my wife's eponymous Better with Becky business.

A few themes that might emerge:

  • The value of proving out the app's basic plumbing with a lower stakes proof-of-concept, so as to avoid packing one's most naive, unconventional code into its most important "MVP" features (in this case, by building Beckygram before breaking ground on the more important strength-training system)

  • Why to adopt and how to get the most out of relatively recent Rails-ecosystem tools like Hotwire, Active Storage, and Solid Queue—many teams skip omakase stack stuff out of habit or because they're upgrading an older app, but staying on the rails has greatly accelerated my productivity as a solo developer

  • The various (mis-)adventures I've had with GPT-4 as my only pairing partner

  • How nice it is to not have React or Webpack anywhere in my codebase. Seriously, Stimulus and Turbo really feel like the "JavaScript sprinkles" we should have had all along, and the amount of pain they can spare you from trying to balance a single-page JavaScript app with a Rails backend is profound

  • Plenty of other takes, served hot

I made a video from the random live photos and video snippets I assembled after visiting the PayPay Dome in Fukuoka for a Softbank SeaHawks game on May 21st.

Enjoy.

(Also, before anyone writes in: users don't get to pick out the thumbnail images for their Shorts, because Youtube knows it can maximize engagement by just scanning your video for any stills of girls. Neat.)

This iOS Home Screen

I've perhaps had too many idle hours this month riding trains by myself this month, as it's led to silly micro-projects like this: carefully weeding out everything from my iPhone's Home Screen but the most essential apps, each expressed as a monospace link with a name that evokes the styling of my web site's navigation.

Kudos to the Dumbify app for facilitating it and to dumbph.com for the inspiration.

Kino, a new video camera app (from the makers of Halide, an established photo camera app) just launched, and they're offering it at an introductory one-time purchase price of $9.99. Bought it sight unseen, because the demise of Filmic Pro (whose team was summarily dismissed last year) left the App Store without a single notable "pro" video recording app apps.apple.com/us/app/kino-pro-video-camera/id6472380172

‎Kino - Pro Video Camera on the App Store
Breaking Change artwork

v12 - LIVE from Japan

Breaking Change

[Update: if you're reading this, then you're listening to an updated version of this episode with a more aggressive denoise filter, to try to combat the karaoke jingles playing incessantly in the background 🎤.]

Welcome to the rhetorical Bemusement Park that is the Breaking Change podcast! This episode was recorded in Japan, the recording of which was an ordeal that you will hear all about if you choose to press play and listen to this version of the podcast.

I have failed you all, however, because I had to duck out of my "recording" "booth" ahead of schedule and I didn't get to any items from the mailbag. That means now's your chance to skip the line ahead of all those other mailbaggers by rapid-firing off an e-mail to podcast@searls.co for inclusion in a theoretical, unannounced, unsure-if-it'll-even-happen version 13.

Heard people liked URLs so I hallucinated some for you:

Show those show notes…

Beef Club Noel

I first visited this yoshoku-style steakhouse in December 2019, then again with Aaron in February 2020.

Four years later, I made a three-hour round trip out of my way to find that the master had handed the business down to his son, and (thankfully) that he was every bit as talented at preparing matsusaka-gyu as his father.

Anyway, here's what 300 grams and ¥15,000 of Japanese sirloin (ロース) steak looks like:

Same as ever. Best steak I've ever had. And compared to Orlando's prices, an absolute steal at $95.

If you like your steak prepared in an American style (that is to say, thick cut, cooked for you, and eaten with a fork and a knife), then this might be the very best way to experience what many consider to be the highest-quality beef in Japan. Super glad I made the trip to come back!

Ohmicho Fish Market (近江町市場)

I first visited Kanazawa's incredible fish market last year, including this silly video about my hunt for a fresh fish bowl (kaisen-don):

Well I came back today with the intention of getting there early enough to visit the shop I'd originally intended to go to. Last year it was sold out by the time I got there (noon?) and when I told the chef the story this morning he congratulated me on coming back for a "revenge dish".

So here it is, a crab rice bowl (kani-don):

Would recommend! 🦀

Computer Bldg.

I walked in to give them a piece of my mind, but the elevator button didn't do anything no matter how many times I pressed it.