resets_session_but_its_ still_thursday_i_need _these.rb gist.github.com/searls/d3f5c90bf6310f5eafa5d59a2c61eff0
Was genuinely surprised Rails `reset_session` doesn't accept a list of exceptions · GitHub
Boy, have I got a great show for you today! I guess. You be the judge.
If you listen to the podcast, please rate it on a scale from Good Charlotte to My Chemical Romance at podcast@searls.co.
The following links are included with your subscription:
- Macrofactor app
- Butterfly keyboard checks going out
- My tutorial on real-time model broadcasts in Rails
- Aaron's pun
- Physical game sales are finally in decline
- Intel's processors are borked
- Flighty's latest update is an example of "Good" "AI"
- The M4 Mac Mini Mini
- Google banning accounts for CSAM when there may not be CSAM
- Loki is fine
- Deadpool & Wolverine is fiiiine
The new Mac mini will be the first major design change to the machine since 2010, making it Apple's smallest ever desktop computer. The new Mac mini will apparently approach the size of an Apple TV, but it may be slightly taller than the current model, which is 1.4 inches high. It will continue to feature an aluminum shell. Individuals working on the new device apparently say that it is "essentially an iPad Pro in a small box."
I can't be the only person thinking "I wonder if I could plug this into a portable USB power bank, throw it in my bag, and then use run Mac Virtual Display on my Vision Pro without needing to carry a laptop… can I?
Spot the N+1
In general, it's great that you can call array and enumerable methods on relations in Active Record, but the way that's implemented (cleverly querying on the relation instead of considering if to_a and doing the operation in memory would be more performant) is maddening at times.
Something must be done about the skyrocketing cost of college
What one must pass to includes() to include Active Storage attachments
If you're using Active Storage, eager-loading nested associations that contain attachments in order to avoid the "N + 1" query problem can quickly reach the point of absurdity.
Working on the app for Becky's strength-training business, I got curious about how large the array of hashes being sent to the call to includes() is whenever the overall strength-training program is loaded by the server. (This only happens on a few pages, like the program overview page, which genuinely does contain a boatload of information and images).
Each symbol below refers to a reference from one table to another. Every one
that descends from :file_attachment is a reference to one of the tables
managed by Active Storage for
keeping track of cloud-hosted images and videos. Those hashes were extracted
from the
with_all_variant_records scope that Rails provides.
I mean, look at this:
[{:overview_video=>
{:file_attachment=>
{:blob=>
{:variant_records=>{:image_attachment=>:blob}, :preview_image_attachment=>{:blob=>{:variant_records=>{:image_attachment=>:blob}}}}}}},
{:overview_thumbnail=>
{:file_attachment=>
{:blob=>
{:variant_records=>{:image_attachment=>:blob}, :preview_image_attachment=>{:blob=>{:variant_records=>{:image_attachment=>:blob}}}}}}},
{:warmup_movement=>
{:movement_video=>
{:file_attachment=>
{:blob=>
{:variant_records=>{:image_attachment=>:blob}, :preview_image_attachment=>{:blob=>{:variant_records=>{:image_attachment=>:blob}}}}}},
:movement_preview=>
{:file_attachment=>
{:blob=>
{:variant_records=>{:image_attachment=>:blob}, :preview_image_attachment=>{:blob=>{:variant_records=>{:image_attachment=>:blob}}}}}}}},
{:workouts=>
{:blocks=>
{:mobility_movement=>
[{:primary_equipment=>
{:equipment_image=>
{:file_attachment=>
{:blob=>
{:variant_records=>{:image_attachment=>:blob},
:preview_image_attachment=>{:blob=>{:variant_records=>{:image_attachment=>:blob}}}}}}},
:secondary_equipment=>
{:equipment_image=>
{:file_attachment=>
{:blob=>
{:variant_records=>{:image_attachment=>:blob},
:preview_image_attachment=>{:blob=>{:variant_records=>{:image_attachment=>:blob}}}}}}},
:tertiary_equipment=>
{:equipment_image=>
{:file_attachment=>
{:blob=>
{:variant_records=>{:image_attachment=>:blob},
:preview_image_attachment=>{:blob=>{:variant_records=>{:image_attachment=>:blob}}}}}}},
:movement_video=>
{:file_attachment=>
{:blob=>
{:variant_records=>{:image_attachment=>:blob},
:preview_image_attachment=>{:blob=>{:variant_records=>{:image_attachment=>:blob}}}}}},
:movement_preview=>
{:file_attachment=>
{:blob=>
{:variant_records=>{:image_attachment=>:blob},
:preview_image_attachment=>{:blob=>{:variant_records=>{:image_attachment=>:blob}}}}}}}],
:exercises=>
{:exercise_options=>
{:movement=>
[{:primary_equipment=>
{:equipment_image=>
{:file_attachment=>
{:blob=>
{:variant_records=>{:image_attachment=>:blob},
:preview_image_attachment=>{:blob=>{:variant_records=>{:image_attachment=>:blob}}}}}}},
:secondary_equipment=>
{:equipment_image=>
{:file_attachment=>
{:blob=>
{:variant_records=>{:image_attachment=>:blob},
:preview_image_attachment=>{:blob=>{:variant_records=>{:image_attachment=>:blob}}}}}}},
:tertiary_equipment=>
{:equipment_image=>
{:file_attachment=>
{:blob=>
{:variant_records=>{:image_attachment=>:blob},
:preview_image_attachment=>{:blob=>{:variant_records=>{:image_attachment=>:blob}}}}}}},
:movement_video=>
{:file_attachment=>
{:blob=>
{:variant_records=>{:image_attachment=>:blob},
:preview_image_attachment=>{:blob=>{:variant_records=>{:image_attachment=>:blob}}}}}},
:movement_preview=>
{:file_attachment=>
{:blob=>
{:variant_records=>{:image_attachment=>:blob},
:preview_image_attachment=>{:blob=>{:variant_records=>{:image_attachment=>:blob}}}}}}}]}}}}}]
By my count, that's 167 relationships! Of course, in practice it's not quite this bad since the vast majority are repeated, and as a result this winds up executing "only" 50 queries or so. But that's… a lot!
Broadcasting real-time database changes on a budget
While building Becky's (yet unreleased) app for her strength training business, I've been taking liberal advantage of the Hotwire combo of Turbo and Stimulus to facilitate dynamic frontend behavior without resorting to writing separate server-side and client-side apps. You can technically use these without Rails, but let's be honest: few people do.
Here are a few capabilities this broader suite of libraries give you, in case you're not familiar:
- Rails Request.js offers a minimal
API for sending conventional HTTP requests from JavaScript with the headers Rails
expects like
X-CSRF-Tokenhandled for you - Turbo streams can send just a snippet of HTML over the wire (a fetch/XHR or an Action Cable socket) to re-render part of a page, and support was recently added for Custom Actions that sorta let you send anything you want over the wire
- The turbo-rails gem adds some very handy glue code to broadcast model updates in your database and render Turbo streams to subscribers via an Action Cable socket connection
- Stimulus values are synced with the DOM as data attributes on the owning controller's element, and Object serialization is supported (as one might guess) via JSON serialization. Stimulus controllers, by design, don't do much but they do watch the DOM for changes to their values' data attributes
Is your head spinning yet? Good.
Making bad analogies
This is a copy of the Searls of Wisdom newsletter delivered to subscribers on August 4, 2024.
Last month I talked about the power of pressuring yourself instead of letting the world do it for you. This month, I can report that I followed my own advice and managed to get a metric shitton of work done on the app I'm building. Sure, I fell behind on other goals, I only left the house a handful of times, my to-do list has become a stress-inducing mess, and I can't say I had much fun. And I'll admit, there were times I questioned what the hell I was doing with my life. But think of the productivity! I successfully stimulated my work ethic gland and I hustled hard.
Maybe a little too hard. This was the least blurry of all three pictures taken of me this month:
In order to protect user privacy, Apple Vision Pro does not trigger hover state on UI controls other than native visionOS applications. As a result, successfully clicking links and buttons requires the user to take a Tap of Faith that they're looking at them just right.
As a result, my click failure rate is like 30%. This is so dumb. Let me turn off gaze privacy.
All 14 animated music videos for Daft Punk's Discovery album. You are welcome: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEPP5ddwMnT3pZR63WyemBtwFlvbRorqS
Daft Punk-Discovery, Full Album - YouTube
A lot of people are surprised that I pronounce my last name in Japanese as サールズ ("saaruzu") instead of something that looks more like Searls (せアルス). Here's why:
In English, Searls is pronounced like "Pearls" but with an "S" instead of a "P"
So I reverse-applied the same mnemonic to Japanese: start with katakana for pearls (パールズ) and replace パ ("pa") with サ ("sa"). That way in both languages, it's "Pearls with an 'S'"
I hope you like stories about moaning during a couples massage, bugs with Apple's Home Key system, and when it's OK to duplicate code in software. Because that's most of what I got this time.
Not enough of you are writing in, and if you don't start soon I am going to CANCEL this PODCAST production PERMANENTLY: podcast@searls.co. (Write in or else.)
Some proof of work:
- Aaron's pun
- SearchGPT
- The Crowdstrike thing
- Windows Kernel access to third parties
- Pete Buttigieg reads angry Delta tweets
- Legitimate LLC
- The Boys (I failed to explain what this show is or the basic premise, so here's a Wikipedia link. Whoops!)
- Gary Larsen's The Far Side comic