Weeknotes 221

The DHH Problem — Remains as relevant today as when it was first given. More so in fact. I don’t think I was ready to hear this back in 2014. Maybe I wasn’t paying attention. Maybe I didn’t fully grasp the situation. I have a firm grip now.

Rust is making baby steps into the git codebase

My broken tooth was finally fixed yesterday. I’m £240 down, but happy that it seems to be sorted albeit with some lingering discomfort.

A deep dive into Cloudflare’s September 12, 2025 dashboard and API outage

The API calls were managed by a React useEffect hook, but we mistakenly included a problematic object in its dependency array. Because this object was recreated on every state or prop change, React treated it as “always new,” causing the useEffect to re-run each time. As a result, the API call executed many times during a single dashboard render instead of just once.

React DOS-ing yourself is very funny.

From a job posting I saw this week.

A formal qualification in Ruby-based digital development is advantageous, but not essential.

Such as?

The :heading pseudo-class is finally here!

Thank. God.

Meet the GitHub MCP Registry: The fastest way to discover MCP Servers

This is your new home base for discovering MCP servers. Learn how we’re working with the broader community on MCP publication and discovery.

This whole Ruby Central thing is disappointing. Hopefully we find out what’s going on. One thing we do know, even with the most charitable interpretation, Ruby Central are terrible at communication, and I don’t think “we don’t have a PR department” really cuts it.

Elixir is not owned by Big Tech

Letter Club

Private group newsletters where the readers are the writers too.

This is an interesting idea.

Building personal apps with open source and AI

If open source is the foundation, AI has become the rocket fuel for personal software. Building something just for yourself used to mean wrestling with unfamiliar frameworks or spending hours debugging arcane errors. Now? AI can help you scaffold a project, troubleshoot issues, or even just explain a tricky codebase.

I managed to hold off buying a new phone, but I did splurge on some new AirPods Pro 3. They arrived Saturday and so far I think they were worth the upgrade. I’m still getting used to the fit, but I think it’s better. Some people apparently don’t like the sound, but me for it’s an improvement so far. And the most important feature, Active Noise Cancellation, is improved.

A friend of mine was telling me about how he recently saw Three Bean Salad (the finest podcast available on the Internet) live in Bristol and envy got the best of me. I managed to snag some not so great tickets to see them in Newcastle in a couple of weeks. I haven’t been to Newcastle in years, and only ever once before, so we’re going to make a weekend of it.

The Who Cares Era

…I don’t need to rehash it all. But the thing that is most disheartening to me is how at every step along the way, nobody cared.

Custom Phoenix generator templates – I had no idea you can just add templates into priv/templates/ and the Phoenix generators will use them. Very nice.

Be careful with this

for file in ../**/*.mkv
  mv $file .
end

Don’t ask me how I know 😭

(Ok, I’ll tell you since you insist. I ran this from the wrong directory and moved all my files from nested directories into the current directory. I then had to spent a lot of time manually moving all the files back to whence they came. ** is dangerous, and apparently so am I.)

Ollee Watch is a very cool idea

Turn your classic Casio watch into a smartwatch!

Notes on Managing ADHD

When I wake up, I do my morning routine, get some quick wins, and then I try to tackle the thing I dread the most, as early in the morning as possible, because that’s the time of day when I have the most energy and self-control. I get that done and I move on.

This is something I instinctively did this week. I needed to phone the garage to ask about an oil service I need.

(I loathe phoning people. I will happily Zoom you, Google Meet you, or FaceTime you – not Teams, I’m not an animal – I’ll chat in-person, no problem. But I hate the phone.)

So I phoned very first thing in the morning. I still didn’t want to, it was still hard and unpleasant, but, importantly, I did it. I mean, I didn’t get the information I wanted, but it still counts as a win.

ipod Classic (5th-7th Gen) Metal Housing + Buttons Kit

Oh god, stop me buying this.