Recently updated blogs

Setting up VS Code for Ruby on Rails development can be tricky, so I wrote this article to help. In it, I share different VS Code extensions for things like autocomplete, linting, formatting and more! I've even put together a handy extension pack to get you setup fast.

Hello! I am pleased to announce a new version of my Ruby One-Liners Guide ebook. Examples, exercises, solutions, descriptions and external links were added/updated/corrected. When it comes to command line text processing, there are several well known tools like grep for filtering, sed for substitution and awk for field processing. Compared to such tools, Ruby has a feature rich regular expression engine, plenty of builtin modules and a thriving ecosystem. …

We think of plywood as a modern invention, but is it? it is surprising to learn that the ancient Egyptians were already using plywood. In the 1933 edition of Annales du Service des Antiquités, there is a description of a coffin whose walls, and bottom were made of plywood, found at Saqqara and dating from the Old Kingdom (ca. 2700–2200 BC). There are six layers of wood, each 4mm in …

Contents Pricing & Availability What comes in the box? Design & Construction Size & Measurements User Interface Emitter & Beam Mode Chart Runtime Driver & Regulation Switch Carry & Ergonomics Batteries & Charging Competition Conclusion Pricing & Availability FlashlightGo sent me this light at my request in exchange for an honest review. Here is the product page on their website where you can see current pricing and purchase this light. …

Washington, D.C., circa 1901. "View of Eighth Street N.W., east side, looking north from D Street with Hoy's Hotel on the corner and the U.S. Patent Office building at the end of the street." 5x7 inch dry plate glass negative, D.C. Street Survey Collection. View full size.

I’ve openly proclaimed my dislike for current trends in AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) before: it’s being misused to genereate crap to put on the internet and the availability of hallucinated crap makes students’ learning painfully worse. So I’ve been wondering: can these ChatGPT-like systems be put to any real use? I think the answer is yes: here are two possibly interesting use cases. Case 1: Personal Knowledge Management …

Is it me, or is there a trend going on that's trying to tell us something? It starts with new products. In terms of new cameras, we're down from a peak of 21 new mirrorless models a year to something around 17 to 18. Coupled with no new DSLRs and very few new compacts, what used to be a vibrant "here's a new camera" followed by reviews of same seems …

Look: there are a lot of Tuesdays in a year. They can’t all be winners. This Monday was Presidents Day in the United States, a great reminder to Americans of how it’s an office of importance that should theoretically still be respectable. And how the whole idea of “anyone could grow up to be President of the United States” is supposed to be wholesome and aspirational, not an ominous warning …

The birth of the first great quintet. View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize Classic stuff and the birth of one of the most famous groups in jazz. The music is lovely as you would expect. A great early taste of this classic quintet and a milestone in the history of jazz.This is a second issue with NYC labels from 1957, …

PEOPLE Colin Shields, VP and executive director of global and international sales, is leaving Simon Schuster. Laura Perciasepe, formerly senior editor at Riverhead Books/PRH, is joining Summit Books/S&S as executive editor. Alessandra Balzer and Donna Bray will move from HarperCollins to Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group on April 15 They will set up a new iteration of the Balzer + Bray imprint with both having the title of SVP and co-publisher. …

The red planet officially returns to view with a little help from Venus.

New here? Hi, I’m Michael. I’m a software developer and the founder of TinyPilot, an independent computer hardware company. I started the company in 2020, and it now earns $80-100k/month in revenue and employs six other people. Every month, I publish a retrospective like this one to share how things are going with my business and my professional life overall. Goal Grades At the start of each month, I declare …

Today have a wonderful giveaway made possible by Bois de Jasmin’s reader Tamara. She would like to give away a nearly full bottle of vintage Miss Dior Eau de Toilette, 30ml (comes with a box.) She can send her package anywhere in the US or Canada (sanitized and well-wrapped, of course). “I found this perfume when I was cleaning out my aunt’s stash. It’s not at all my style and …

Today’s newsletter is about finding joy in repetition and the generative power of doing the same thing over and over again. You can read it here. I tried writing this letter a few weeks ago and couldn’t get anywhere with it. And then I remembered this image of stacked drawings by Kate Bingaman-Burt and everything sort of clicked into place: When I usually think about an artist’s body of work, …