code and stuff
Here's a real-time remix — a dawless jam blended with a little DJing — of the dancehall hit " Go Down Deh ," recast as liquid drum and bass. I don't know if anybody in the world sees this as a logical pairing except for me, but I hella enjoyed making this. If you want to nerd out a little, I'll explain how it works. The first question I usually get from people who see this is "what was…
Here's how to get two Elm apps on the same page sending and receiving data via Elm's ports system. This isn't something you're going to want to do in every situation, but it's a useful way to learn how to use ports. I'll start with an optional video walkthrough, but feel free to scroll down for the code instead. Here's the code. The first Elm app is a copy of the basic counter called Buttons from…
I've built an app called Fork Freshness . In the process of building that app, I've learned some interesting things about how open source projects evolve over time. What Is Fork Freshness? A few years ago I needed to restore UPS shipping options to a Ruby gem called active_shipping , which calculates shipping costs. I wondered if anybody else had restored these same shipping options, since UPS is…
Here's a cover version from my desk, using a bunch of hardware synths and drum machines, of Children by Robert Miles, one of the trance anthems of the 1990s. Have to admit, I've lost over 50 pounds since filming this. I used Ableton Live for effects and to record the audio, so this isn't a true DAW-less set. But all the mixing is live, and all the sequencing happens in the Model:Cycles or the…
Technically a cover of the Doctor Who theme song. Performed in one take on the following gear: TR-8S, Model:Cycles, MicroFreak, Wavestate, Bass Station 2, 0-Coast, and a DSI Curtis Filter. Ableton functions as a mixer in this, and adds a few effects, some EQ, and some panning. It's on-screen throughout basically just so you can see that it's not doing anything else. My dog wanders in and out of…
I've come up with a new UI concept for probability-based drum machines. It's more intuitive than anything I've seen on the market. This process began many years ago, when I built a system to automatically improvise drum beats by programming them in Ruby as probability matrices. I showed this system at Ruby conferences a few times and it was a lot of fun. But obviously the UI was not intuitive at…
When a startup is just getting off the ground, it's not uncommon to build prototypes and put them into production. But sooner or later, you have to pay the price. I have a client which launched a business with devs working in silos. Some of these silo projects are still more effective as silo projects, but others are getting to the stage where they feel the predictable pains that are associated…
Recently I set up a Rails app with Cypress end-to-end specs on CircleCI. Capybara 's the Rails default for this, but Cypress is better. It's faster, more stable, and its in-browser spec runner is a much better experience than writing specs in Capybara. However, Cypress support is still a bit immature, so you have to do some manual tweaking. Let Capybara Wander Off To Nibble Grass In 2016, I argued…
People who work remote nonetheless share office space. But the office space is virtual, not physical, and its architect is Marshall McLuhan. The current worldwide experiment in remote work, forced by the pandemic and informed by very little advance planning , is going to be a lot less painful for people who understand this. Of course, for some people, remote work is not new. If you're a developer…
Here's a one-liner for changing a bunch of filenames all at once. Say you've got a bunch of .jsx files, but you agree with the React team that the .jsx file extension has outlived its usefulness . How do you rename all those files to end in .js ? Like this: For readability, on multiple lines it looks like this: This code works by embedding the output of subshells as strings . The first subshell…
I saw this comment online somewhere: "What I really don't understand is what exactly webpacking does." A lot of Rails developers feel that way. But it's easy enough to clear up. The Short Answer Do not ever use Bundler to install JavaScript or CSS of any kind. It was a great idea back in the day, it is a terrible idea now. If a tutorial tells you to install Bootstrap with Bundler, for example,…
Ever had text fill your entire terminal window when all you did was a quick git branch ? Here's a quick pair of scripts which solves that problem by making it a simple matter of muscle memory to keep your repo completely clean. The Idea You've probably seen much worse than this: When I'm in that situation, I type bin/clean-branches and I get this instead: Some of these branches represent blog post…