GitHub spam has gotten worse?
I can't remember getting spam issues and comments so frequently at any point in GitHub's run, so I'm not sure what's driving it now.
This morning I woke up to 40+ emails generated by a dozen or so issues splayed across a bunch of Standard Ruby's repos and initiated by five or six accounts. Unfortunately, the GitHub web UI doesn't make it easy to quickly report spam, delete issues, and block users in one fell swoop. Separately, I encountered a number of race condition bugs in their React interface that resulted in validation failures, so I wasn't able to block them all from the org. Alas.
Great way to start the day.
Senshu Park
This park in central Akita city is unusual in its scale, upkeep, and beauty. Outside Central Park, I can't think of another park that dominates such a huge percentage of prime real estate in a city and is so well-maintained and relied-upon by locals. If the leaves are changing colors, you gotta go. But even if they're not, you really should check it out if you're ever in Akita.
Apple Maps Stay Winning
I have always been willing to suffer Apple Maps in exchange for its tighter platform integration than its competitors, but at least in America and Japan specifically, it has really leapfrogged Google Maps in recent years. Not only in map accuracy, but also general usability. I only today realized I could plan out multi-stop journeys. This allowed me to plan a drive from rural Kanazawa to my adopted hometown of Hikone, an Anytime Fitness in a suburb of Nagoya, a nearby Babyface Planets for dinner (fantastic Omurice btw), before eventually landing at our hotel in Shinshiro.
I'm not super comfortable driving out here, so being able to plan this out in advance to break up the trip was a huge relief and helped me stay off my phone while driving. That's a pretty big UX win.
(The fact that you can't get navigation directions in Japanese without changing your primary system language makes it less than a clean victory, however.)
Currently recruiting friends for the Pokémon card game on iOS. Wish it wasn't so well made but here we are 1320731700089555
Japanese media has taken to calling Trump's election "またトラ" (mata tora), as shorthand for またトランプ (mata toranpu), meaning "Trump again".
草
PSA: the "GO" app (prev. JapanTaxi) finally added support last November for account registration with foreign phone numbers, which they'd previously been using to gate the service to Japanese residents.
Strongly recommend using GO over Uber for taxi dispatch in Japan—far better coverage and availability goinc.jp/news/pr/2023/11/10/4zow9wentngt9gjmlsebyn/
Sumibi Yakiniku Kyu
This Yakiniku place in Akita was so fancy that they charge you full price if you cancel within 14 days of your reservation. It's also got a 4.2 on Tabelog. So expectations were quite high… and they were absolutely met. Every plate in the course was perfectly cut, portioned, and arranged. The quality of the meat was great. Our waitress was still in training but was some of the best service I can remember having.
If you're ever in Akita, I strongly encourage calling and making a reservation.
My friend Nick has had a truly terrible year. First, he got kicked out of his brass band. Then they repossessed his instrument because he started missing loan payments. And now his wife is leaving him—says she doesn't want to be in a saxless marriage.
Fixing bugs in production when all you have is an iPhone
Noticed an issue with Beckygram yesterday where single-video posts weren't successfully syndicating to Instagram as reels if she didn't also upload a custom thumbnail ("cover") image—which Instagram's API doesn't require.
Even though I'm in Japan with nothing but a phone, a crappy LTE signal from Google Fi (that I can't believe they charge money for), and spotty hotel Wi-Fi, I was glad to find I had the tools to fix it:
- Log into my Mac Studio over SSH using Terminus
- Run
heroku run rails cto get into the production Rails console to reproduce the error - Clone the repository with Working Copy
- Fix the bug
- Commit & push
- Wait for it to deploy
It was a relief this whole ordeal didn't take more than 15 minutes or so to fix and it's encouraging to know that little one-line bugs won't require me to travel with an iPad or a Mac for supporting her app in production. Nice.
(Oh, and check out her little video of Akita being cute while you're here!)
Next election, pollsters should just ask their sample to show them the top 20 items in whatever For You feed they look at first every morning.
I was extremely skeptical about GM dumping CarPlay and hiring Baris Cetinok from Apple, and after listening to this interview I am almost certain it was a mistake. Dude can barely string together several concepts in a row in comprehensible English. Can't imagine him running a complex software organization theverge.com/24285581/gm-software-baris-cetinok-apple-carplay-android-auto-google-cars-evs-decoder-podcast
Check out this deep-fried egg sandwich
Tonkatsu-fried layered omelette sandwich.
Greatest country on earth. 🇯🇵
Whose brilliant idea was it to base carrier activation of eSIM on scanning QR codes that need to be loaded on a screen of a second device?
Really nice interview on IndieRails with my better half about her Build with Becky product. Was fun to compare and contrast her recap of year we spent building this thing with my own perspective.
Aside: Becky's got such a great speaking voice that it's a crime that I'm the one with a podcast. Maybe she'll remedy that someday. indierails.com/47
Jikasei Baizen Coffeeann
If you're ever in the mood for a more interesting experience than Starbucks, consider visiting a high-end traditional kissaten. For about $5 out the door had table service for a fantastic hand-ground pour over and the fluffiest, most perfectly buttered toast one can imagine.
TIL that 4 AM is way too goddamn early to record a podcast. Apologies if I'm more chipper than usual, that's probably the coffee talking.
Had some great e-mails this show. You should keep the streak alive and mouth off with your fingers at podcast@searls.co.
Savor this version, folks. Gonna be at least a few weeks until you'll have another one.
It is finished. As mentioned elsewhere, I gave my final conference presentation at Rails World 2024 in Toronto back in September.
The tremendous organizers did me a solid by humoring my request to provide the audio and video feeds they recorded of my talk, which allowed me to create my own edit in the same basic style I've used since discovering screen recording. You can view it on YouTube if you want.
Why watch this one when the official video is also on YouTube? Well, here's what the very exclusive and deluxe and never-before-seen Searls Cut gets you:
- No obstruction, hiding, or movement of the slides themselves—they're the star of the show, not me
- Myself off to the side (where I belong), manually center-tracked with minimal movements to keep me in frame
- Composed in 4K, with slides upscaled to ~1440p
- Same great audio track. I kept in all the umm's and uhh's to humanize me and also because I'm too lazy to bother fixing them
- Native software capture of my slides using Screenflow (as opposed to the conference's HDMI capture)
- Manual removal of the dreaded macOS green dot
- Gently-blurred wide-angle shot as the background instead of cutting between the two video feeds
- Correction of a slide transition where I missed a click on the remote (you can guess, but I'll never tell you which one)
Anyway, if you haven't seen the talk yet, I hope you'll give it a watch. The presentation summarizes a year of my work but it also embeds countless little things life taught me over the 15 years since I started speaking at user groups and regional conferences.
But this chapter of my life has now concluded. I'm excited to be moving on to other things. In the meantime, you can stay tuned to my podcast and subscribe to my newsletter while I get to work.
There’s a device in my office closet that makes a pairing beep every few days. No idea what causes it. Could be any of two hundred devices spread across thirty bins and cubbies.
I will die not knowing.