Semantic search

Modules are useful for highly specialized code that can be injected into other classes for fun and profit or for creating namespaces. An interesting approach is to use modules as an alternative to classical inheritance (without the usual trade-offs) : the core idea is to share an abstracted role that can be included in a …

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 …

Great news everyone! Ruby 2.2 preview 1 has been released ! I'm really curious about the Incremental GC and Symbol GC so let's run some quick Rails benchmarks on a normal Rails API app. Archive note (2014): Ruby 2.2.0-preview1 was prerelease software and must not be used now. Ruby 2.2 reached end of life on 31 March 2018; …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Back in the day (i.e. when Firefox's version was a single digit) font rendering was at its best on Mozilla's browser. I remember comparing Firefox's anti-aliasing to the new-kid-on-the-block Chrome : the difference was huge. Time went by and we all know what happened : most web developers found themselves using Chrome as …

This article describes a 2017 JRuby, concurrent-ruby, and RSpec setup. Current APIs, integrations, and behavior may differ, so the workaround below should be read as historical rather than current guidance. When I write an API, though I'm not a hard core TDD practitioner, I do like writing specs - especially request specs …

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, …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Editor’s note (2026): Here “NLP” refers to neuro-linguistic programming, not natural-language processing. Evidence reviews have found little support for claimed health outcomes. The HTTP-era links below may now be unavailable or changed. Source context Archived NHS introduction Do we really need them? I mean sometimes I …

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 …

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 …

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: …

I was reading this article , and it raises quite an unexpected question - "Can we consider logging as a code smell"? Clearly - the answer is more nuanced than that and whilst I do enjoy the event bus approach from the article - that seems like overkill for most applications. It's interesting that Aspect Oriented …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 — …

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 …

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 was thinking of the old conundrum of how we perceive the objective world or reality - it’s always through our limited sensory organs. Then it has to be processed: some small latency in the brain, maybe some evolutionary heuristics, our genetic background, etc. after all this we get a tainted fragment of the world. We …

​ 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 …