Semantic search

Editor’s note (2026): The first definition link is no longer a dependable source. The quotation is a broad summary of classical utilitarianism, not a definition shared by every utilitarian theory. “All abstractions are leaky” also echoes Joel Spolsky’s 2002 Law of Leaky Abstractions. Further context Utilitarianism — …

Editor’s note (2026): This essay uses information-theory entropy as a metaphor for uncertainty in life; it does not claim that the mathematical definition directly models a human life. The Forge38 and Twitter URLs below are retained as archival provenance and may no longer resolve. Background A Mathematical Theory of …

I like to use Rollbar 's default plan for small apps or prototypes that are works in progress. Getting production exceptions in my inbox can be quite useful but most of them are actually 404s - sure there are a multitude of ways for filtering out the noise (Fail2Ban , hand-written iptables rules , etc.) Historical note: …

There are words in programming that look like jokes. Zygohistomorphic prepromorphism is one of them. The first time you encounter it, you assume one of two things must have happened. Either someone lost a bet, or category theorists were left unsupervised for too long. Both explanations feel plausible. And yet the term …

This article reflects the 2016-era Rails asset pipeline—Ruby Sass, libsass, Compass, therubyracer, and Node.js 6—and is not current Rails asset guidance. We all know that for a rather large Rails app with a substantial front end, the asset pre-compilation and more importantly - development mode changes are far from …

Ruby 2.1 was released this Christmas, great news everyone! It sports a better GC (RGenGC — generational GC), hierarchical method caching, some small syntax changes and non-experimental refinements. All in all one can expect 5% to 15% performance increase which is quite awesome. Archive note (2014): Rubinius 2.2.3, JRuby …

It's been a while since I've posted, for obvious reasons a lot has changed in the realm of programming. LLMs, "agentic" coding et al. I've started using them almost from day one, when they were pretty bad and they could barely generate some readable text in their images. When it comes to coding, being in my late 30s, I'm …

On UNIX-like operating systems (e.g. Linux) there's the concept of process forking via the fork() system call. When one calls fork from a parent-process it will spawn a new child-process - that is a copy of its parent, then both processes return from fork. The child-process has an exact copy of the parent's memory in a …

I was cruising around my Github notifications and I found an interesting open issue created by Jim Weirich : “The Semantic Rule for { } vs. do/end” in the Ruby style guide repository . The semantic rule The semantic rule says use { } for blocks where the primary purpose of the block is to return a value, use do/end for …

Originally published after the 2023 Friendly.rb conference in Romania, this is an archival account of that talk. At the Friendly.rb conference in Romania, I explored an experimental blend of Ruby and the Lisp family, implemented here through Clojure. This journey was more about embracing the spirit of experimentation …

Almost five years since the last post about How to Web [0] - wow, that's a large slice of the space-time continuum. I recall I almost started this blog for stuff like this, good memories [1]. Archive note (2015): This is a contemporaneous conference diary; links, organizations, and social-media handles are preserved as …

I’ve been reading a lot about search lately: kNN, BM25, RRF and related ideas, both within Elasticsearch and in isolation. With the advent of LLMs, especially open-weight models, plus modern hardware, it feels like a good time to approach some of this in a pragmatic way. On the blog I'm already using a form of BM25 via …

As someone who finds solace in the rich nuances of sound, I often draw parallels to the world of development. Ponder this: Just as the quality of music affects the depths of my appreciation, the broad overview of a project offers a satisfying clarity. Yet, the devil, as they say, is in the details. In much the same way I …

Historical instructions (2010)—do not follow on a current machine. Ruby 1.8/1.9 and Rails 2.3/3 are unsupported and lack current security fixes. Manually copying DLLs into runtime directories is unsafe and brittle. The commands below are retained only as a record of the old environment; use supported Ruby/Rails versions …

Lately I've started to put my turntable back into working order. It's been disconnected from my main audio chain for about five years. The TT is a Rega RP3 with a bog-standard Rega Carbon cartridge. Why now one might ask? It wasn't my top priority and streaming Spotify to the WiiM Mini then via a DAC directly into my NAD …

After working with Rails for some time, you start nitpicking about how to improve it. This is the first in a series of articles on how to improve (even marginally) Rails's performance. Archive note (2014): This is Rails 4.1-era advice. Do not copy these dependencies, native extensions, or global monkey patches into a …

I can't even remember the last time I ran rvm implode, I'd reckon I've been using RVM for about three years. Sure: I always update it via rvm get stable but I never really clean up old Rubies or gems, I only run bundle clean --force in each repository from time to time since I don't always use bundle exec. In any case, …

I started out with Java as my professional language and before I discovered Ruby, PHP was my main programming language of choice for new projects. This was probably six to seven years ago or more. I had some pretty good times with CodeIgniter [0] and various libraries like HHMVC [1]. In any case, I digress - even back …

I'm not sure why RVM is still my default Ruby version manager, but the issue at hand should be reproducible on rbenv too. Historical note: this article reflects a Vim 8.0, JRuby, RVM, and macOS system Ruby setup from 2017; versions and defaults differ on current macOS systems. Let's add a bit of context to this: we have …

Historical note: these are macOS Sierra 10.12-era procedures. SIP paths, Karabiner, Notes, and photoanalysisd behavior may differ on current macOS releases. Most developers (myself included) usually wait for the point one release of the next major macOS upgrade. This is mostly in order so that all the related …

Archive note (2026): The conference URL and discussion refer to the 2010 event. HTML5 was unfinished then; W3C published HTML5 as a Recommendation in 2014, and HTML is now maintained as a Living Standard by WHATWG. Current context How to Web · HTML Living Standard Just got to Bucharest, tomorrow I’ll be at How to Web 2010 …

Editor’s note (2026): This describes a 2010 jQuery and script-loader setup. RequireJS and LABjs are historical tools, and the performance result is anecdotal because the promised graphs and test method are absent. Third-party CDN scripts also introduce availability, privacy, and supply-chain considerations. Current …

​ Lately I'm also running macOS virtualized for testing various apps. After some heavy usage the same problem popped up: the .vmdk uses way too much space on my quite small 256GB SSD. Currently is at around 70GB. The process is similar to what I did on Windows and Linux i.e. write a null file that is erased at the end …

As the host OS I use Windows 8 (just upgraded to 8.1), Well, why, one might ask? It is rather simple: Steam and after some dreadful searching and configuring tools I managed to install the basics for writing and deploying code: Vim, Git, PuTTy and a decent console replacement like Console2 [0]. Of course those aren't …

I love iTerm2, but it can be sluggish sometimes on my old late 2016 MacBook Pro. Plus, many of its features I never use. I had tried Alacritty before, but making it look and act like iTerm2 was a no-go. This time, I tried Kitty, and within two hours of work, it looked and behaved just like my iTerm2 configuration. This …

Historical and safety note (2026): Firebug reached end of life; its functionality moved into Firefox’s built-in Developer Tools. Adobe ended Flash Player support on December 31, 2020, and Flash is unsafe to install. Deleting a DOM node in Developer Tools is temporary and local: it does not change the server, undo requests …

I'm not really sure why taking screenshots in macOS defaults to PNG file format. I just googled this and the "answer" was: MacOS captures screenshots using PNG as the default image format, which provides lossless compression and preserves image quality while creating relatively small files. OK - I can understand somewhat …

Historical Windows/Firefox optimization (2010)—do not move a current browser profile using these instructions. RAM disks are volatile, so data disappears on shutdown or a crash. Moving the wrong profile path can lose history, sessions, cookies, or other user data. Back up the profile and treat this only as a dated account …