justin․searls․co

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:

  1. Log into my Mac Studio over SSH using Terminus
  2. Run heroku run rails c to get into the production Rails console to reproduce the error
  3. Clone the repository with Working Copy
  4. Fix the bug
  5. Commit & push
  6. 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!)

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