I'm going to be making some Behind the Scenes videos leading up to @blueridgeruby.com this spring. This first one is some background on our CFP process and my advice on submitting talk proposals to Blue Ridge and other conferences. www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAy7...

I just booked Aloft, which is on a cool street a block and a half from the venue, and decently priced.

Happy New Year from RBQ Conf. There are 6 days left to submit a talk if you’d like to speak with us this March. Rare tickets are still available for a little longer. We’re excited for the year ahead and can’t wait to gather in Austin. rbqconf.com

The hidden cost of fixtures is the time spent trying to understand the ones you didn't create (or don't remember). Dropping into a test with extensive fixtures is like trying to make sense out of a scene from Harry Potter book 5, without the worldbuilding of the previous 4.

Man, if I wasn't planning @blueridgeruby.com, I'd be submitting a "hot takes" talk to @balkanruby.bsky.social. I've already got the outline for a spicy (for me) talk on Hotwire ready to go. 🌶️

I can't tell you how encouraging it is to see the first two week's of initial ticket sales, talk proposals, and sponsorship inquiries for Blue Ridge. And during the holidays, when everyone is busy! So pumped for spring in Asheville. ☺️

Has anyone else debounced job enqueuing like this before? Any issues with this? I had this weird situation where: 1. A controller action needed to enqueue an expensive background job for a resource 2. The action could be called quite frequently within a short time window …

It's not *officially* sanctioned, but I made a social icon SVG for @rubyevents.org to go on the @blueridgeruby.com footer. Kinda satisfying. 😌

A few notes on this… 1. Pumped to see Philly.rb bringing in-person events back! 🙌 2. Gotta say, that's a nice conference shirt. ☺️ 3. Haven't told him this, but if you're wondering why I have a mustache right now, it's because I was inspired by Mike when I saw him at SF Ruby.

RBQ Conf tickets go on sale today at noon. We’re opening Rare tickets a bit earlier and letting them run longer than usual, so folks can grab early pricing in the way that works best for them. Medium and Well-Done will follow later. Details: rbqconf.com#tickets

One thing I rely on heavily for everyday Rails development is a good database client GUI. I love Postico for Postgres, but haven't found a client of similar quality for SQLite. Which honestly leaves me feeling partly blind when developing with it.

Cool, people are already adding themselves as attendees for Blue Ridge on RubyEvents.org! www.rubyevents.org/events/blue-...

Alright friends, today’s the big day…we’re opening up tickets and CFP for Blue Ridge 2026! 🎉 We’re going to be at the YMI Cultural Center in downtown Asheville, NC on April 30 & May 1. We’d love to have you join us this spring in our favorite mountain town. ⛰️

I'm always saving the URLs for Claude chats in my note taking app. (I don't want to keep the whole transcript, just a reference if I need to go back.) For the same reason, I wish I could get a URL for Claude Code sessions right from the CLI.

Ok, now it feels real. 😌

It's actually happening! Gonna super busy for the next 139 days. 😄

RBQ Conf now has its official dates! We’ll gather March 26–27, 2026 at Capital Factory in downtown Austin. Our CFP closes January 7, 2026, so there’s still time to submit a talk. And tickets go on sale next Wednesday, December 17, 2025. Details @ rbqconf.com

Hey Ruby friends! 👋 Keep an eye out, we are hoping to make an announcement here in the next couple days. 🫢😊

Don't forget you have until January 11th to submit a talk for Blastoff Rails next summer! www.papercall.io/blastoff

It was great catching up with Ernesto! I was particularly interested in talking to him about DX and a product idea I had last year for measuring qualitative aspects of working in a codebase.

Long before the rush of nerves and excitement when opening up the doors on day one of a conference, there's the quieter (but no less significant) rush of putting 50% down on a venue for an event you haven't sold a single ticket for yet. 🥹

Do you ever miss the mountains? ⛰️

The new question Ruby conferences have to add to their registration forms now (in addition to t-shirt size) is "do you need a Ruby passport?"

This seems like a cool opportunity in Amsterdam. "Deliver full‑stack features using Rails views, Turbo, and Stimulus, and contribute to the Ember.js to Hotwire migration." railshotwirejobs.com/jobs/full-st...

This was a great read. So many insights for launching something new. www.actiondigest.com/p/to-launch-...

Searows takes my top spot this year. And Freak Folk? Yeah, that sounds about right.

Dude, Robby's been on a tear lately. 👏👏 Another great post. robbyonrails.com/articles/202...

Just a friendly reminder... If you have a profitable US-based S-Corp, C-Corp, or partnership business and own your home, it's not too late to take advantage of the Augusta Rule for 2025 and save some money. You've got to do your year-end planning regardless. AugustaPlanner.com

A carpool poem for fall…

Going to be opening up spots for new fractional marketing clients in the New Year. 👀 If you’ve ever wondered about working together, let’s chat! ✨ Will be updating this soon but you can see my general services here: www.seafoam.media/services

As a huge peanut butter fan, this news is rocking my world. 😨 www.allrecipes.com/costco-kirkl...

Feels weird opening up Chrome DevTools to a notice that I've earned a badge. I can enjoy badges in apps where I understand it's gamified (e.g. Duolingo) or where I'm hoping to reach a goal (e.g. Transistor for podcasting milestones)…but DevTools? Like please, I'm trying to work.

This was a great conversation with Brian, we really covered a lot of ground! :) I've always admired his broad portfolio of projects, and it was fun to get a behind-the-scenes look at how he works. And from my POV, he's one of clearest voices on AI we have in the Rails community.

Just did a venue walkthrough in Asheville with Mark and Joe, and feeling really pumped about it!

Flew into SFO over a blimp?

Me? I just always travel with both my passports.

Came across two new job postings for Junior Rails positions in one day! jobs.lever.co/commonlit/7e... jobs.rubyonrails.org/jobs/8903-ju...

Been a while since I've worked closely w/ CanCanCan and maybe I forgot or hadn't paid attention, but for any given auth check, it instantiates the ability class and runs all queries necessary to perform auth checks for *any* object, whether needed for the particular check or not.

I always love talking about consulting, and this conversation with Wale was no exception! Also, I think we've now had 3 guests from Philly in 67 episodes...strong presence! ☺️

Hey, if you're going to SF Ruby, you should come biking with me and @kanejamison.com (he's hosting) on Day 3! luma.com/n1reh5hj

For Rails devs working with test fixtures, do you have any rules for yourself for when (if ever) you create one-off records within a test, instead of creating new fixtures?

Whoa, Big Cartel is hiring a principal Rails eng. It's been a while since I've seen a posting from them. jobs.rubyonrails.org/jobs/8334-pr...

Timely article related to this take. www.etsy.com/codeascraft/... Takeaways for me: - Prefetching is a last-mile optimization - Focus on common, high-traffic flows - Expect high waste (14:1 prefetch to navigated for them) - Speculation Rules API looks like the future

I gotta say, I'm not a fan of Turbo Prefetch as a way of improving performance. Reminds me too much of Hugh Jackman's magic trick in The Prestige. www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4Rr...

Do I know any Stripe developers looking for an opportunity? Might have something in the next couple weeks.

Today is the last day to grab a GA ticket for SF Ruby! Read our new blog post for a preview: evilmartians.com/chronicles/w...

After building for a year, and then building an Elixir Phoenix-based selling platform, full-stack.biz/products/act... is finally available for purchase. Spin your own Action Mailbox/Action Mailer MTA.

Ok, that's pretty fun. Also, I *wish* I had eyebrows that thick. 🥲

Ok, I’ve got the house to myself today and I’m going to see if I can build and launch this weird Rails app I’ve been thinking about by EOD. I’m going to try livestreaming it starting in 15 (first time, we’ll see how that goes). youtube.com/live/QA3NLx5...

I always want to give a thumbs up on Claude’s chat responses, not because I’m trying to give Anthropic any feedback, but to let my little buddy know he’s doing a good job.