dth by Joshua Wood

I had a realization earlier this week when someone I hadn’t talked to in years emailed me. We’d met on a design forum I ran as a teenager in the early aughts. Something he said made me realize just how long I’ve been building online communities:

the forum kinda kept me in tech probably made me who I am today, always appreciated the work you did way back in the day.

like, damn. I’m not sharing this to brag; I’d just honestly forgotten how important this has always been to me.

I think it’s part of why I’ve worked so hard to build the Ruby community first on Mastodon1, and now on Bluesky2. It was a really nice reminder. 🩵

  1. I think I gave away probably a hundred Honeybadger t-shirts to get people to move to ruby.social back in the day, and we were one of the first sponsors along with Mike Perham/Sidekiq) ↩

  2. My Ruby and Rails starter pack is currently the 5th most-used starter pack on Bluesky ↩

I’ve been using index cards to track priorities again. Every time I come back I don’t know how I lived without them. 📝

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but this has been a long week. It feels like seven thousand days.” —8yo

America’s doppelgänger just won the election. Welcome to the mirror world.

It’s so weird to experience reality warping to match the fringe shit I grew up with.

Feel free to tell me about Trump/Elon derangement syndrome when all our kids have measles.

Get ready to take notes as business and software leaders start to signal their assent. You could already feel the rightward shift in some communities; I guess this explains it. This will enable and empower the worst behavior. Pay attention and push back.

Currently at the stage of election coverage where I’m searching for “relaxing videos” on youtube

I just started going to this new gym that skews older and they aren’t playing election coverage but they are playing the andy griffith show. How concerned should I be?

Finally removed X/Twitter from the company website (and replaced it with Bluesky, of course)

A screenshot of a website footer with bluesky, mastodon, and linkedin social icons

My kids’ school scheduled parent-teacher conferences this week, and it’s a full week of half days. Not sure what they were thinking with that one.

my plan to handle the stress today is to catch up on my 2-year backlog of Foreign Affairs

I was born into the evangelical premillenarian dispensationalist “theology of despair” and this is dead on 🎯

The historian Randall Balmer called premillenarian dispensationalism a “theology of despair” because once it caught hold at the turn of the nineteenth century, evangelical Christians could look ahead to the Rapture and give up their previously held notion that the faithful should live better lives on an earth that would shortly be crisped to bits in the fire of Apocalypse.

Wes Bos on Bluesky:

How did you get into web development?

MySpace? Comp sci? Made the jump from print? Bootcamp?

GeoCities. 😅

Some of the first code I wrote was mIRC script for IRC chatbots and other utilities, and I made a website to share it. After that I always had a website and from there got into Perl (made guestbooks, photo galleries), then PHP, and ultimately Ruby. And lots of JS, obviously.

I did major in computer science at one point but dropped out. Then Multimedia & Web Design, also dropped out. I was already freelancing by the time I was in college, and never looked back.

I know that hasn’t been the story for everyone and I feel so fortunate to have had that head start and opportunity.

(I’m not sure I was actually making good money by then but I was happy if I didn’t have to get a “real job” lol)

I like that Nosferatu (1922 and remakes) made the Count more driven and monstrous rather than sexy/seductive, but I must admit that when I read the book I pictured someone more stately and less gangling vole.

Max Schreck as Count Orlok in the 1922 silent film Nosferatu. He looks lanky and rodent-like

I can’t wait for Willem Dafoe’s portrayal though.

I think I’ll reread the book before Christmas, I forget how it describes him now.

Trump has ravaged the GOP, metastasized, and we’re watching the death throes.

Festive Errors: Add some year-round holiday cheer to the Rails error page.

So, inspired by schwad, I made a thing:

Festive Errors is a Rails gem that spices up the Rails error page with fun holiday themes. We all like to do a little coding around the holidays. Get into the holiday spirit with Festive Errors!

A screenshot of the Rails error page in a web browser that displays an exception that was raise. The error message reads “Happy Halloween!” and there is a ghost emoji in the page heading.

Debugging an exception in the month of October.

It’s a simple Rails engine that hooks into the layout for the error debug page in dev mode. If it’s currently a holiday period, it adds some custom CSS using a content_for hook that Rails provides in the layout.

That’s it! Just add it to your Gemfile.

I tested this on Rails 7.1 and Rails 8, but it doesn’t have tests or CI yet. Themes are also limited both in supported holidays and design (they currently just add an emoji to the page H1).

It will also need some config options eventually for when there are concurrent holidays!

Let’s get festive (errors)

How cool would it be if users could submit alt text back to the OP if they forgot it (on social media, I mean).

Justin Jackson writes:

Telling someone they have “Trump/Elon derangement syndrome” is a pejorative way to dismiss and minimize destructive behaviors that have real consequences.

Yes. It’s the most ridiculous accusation given the reality and it tells me everything I need to know about the person who makes it.

We carved jack-o’-lanterns last night. One of us is much better at it than the others. 😸

Four carved pumpkins displayed on a concrete porch with greenery, potted plants, and a brick wall in the background. The second pumpkin from the left is especially ornate.

“We are all sufferers from history, but the paranoid is a double sufferer, since he is afflicted not only by the real world, with the rest of us, but by his fantasies as well.”

—Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics (1964)

make a Bluesky starter pack they said, it will be fun, they said. They didn’t tell us we’d be deciding who lives and who dies

May I suggest that Talia Lavin is doing capitalism right and “coats the soul in spray tan” is one of many delightful turns of phrase you will appreciate in her latest book on the rise of the Christian Right. Go get yourself a copy, it’s 20% off.

Inevitably, in the daily sordid grind of capitalism, the choices we make soil us. But some routes to a dollar are more befouling than others. We all sell something our time, our bodies, our words-but it’s the choice to sell hatred and its associated products that really coats the soul in spray tan.

Now is a great time to spend some reputation capital on a presidential endorsement (I endorse Kamala Harris for President in case it wasn’t clear).

Anyone who is not furious and dismayed by Trump and his party right now should seriously consider why they’re siding with fascists.

Hundreds of ballots possibly burned after Vancouver ballot box arson: FBI investigating

Apparently someone in my town is starting fires in our ballet boxes and burning the ballots. There was one in Portland too. 😦

Here’s MGP’s response:

I am requesting an overnight law enforcement presence be posted at all ballot drop boxes in Clark County through Election Day. Southwest Washington cannot risk a single vote being lost to arson and political violence.

If you’d like a peek into our local congressional politics here in Southwest Washington, I made a short photo essay on Marie Gluesenkamp Perez’s first campaign in 2022.

MGP’s opponent Joe Kent is a known associate of violent extremist groups including the Proud Boys.

Going to an “apocalypse” halloween party and I was going to wear my 9/11 was an inside job shirt but apparently that’s not the vibe we’re going for.

Freedom Caucus leader endorses radical proposal for North Carolina to hand its electoral votes to Trump

So let me get this straight: First they deny (accelerate) climate change, then they profit from it, then they use it as justification to subvert democracy.

Also this quote, lol (emphasis mine)

Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) told reporters on Friday he hadn’t heard about any plans for the state Legislature to take the steps discussed by Raiklin and Harris. Asked about Harris’ comments, McHenry said, “It makes no sense whatsoever to prejudge the election outcome. And that is a misinformed view of what is happening on the ground in North Carolina, bless his heart.”

I wonder if the nazis accused their opponents of having “Hitler derangement syndrome”

I don’t care who you are, or how long you’ve been around.

If you post anti-trans propaganda or support anti-trans causes, you will earn an instant block across all platforms I’m on.

I will never attend your talks.

I will never buy or support your products or services.

I hope that others will do the same. This is not acceptable behavior in a society. 🏳️‍⚧️

…and now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Great evening on Bluesky, so much Kesley Hightower in my mentions. 😊

Kelsey is a legend, I’ve been a big fan ever since I first saw him speak at Serverless Days in Portland in 2018. It’s awesome that he’s landed here.

My allergist told me that my pulmonary function is near-perfect, which is extra great news considering I had a lung collapse sixteen years ago.