You might happen to use the wicked_pdf gem for PDF output in your Rails app. You might happen to use the wkhtmltopdf-binary gem to provide the required binaries. You might want to get the above to work on the latest (at this point 3.0.3-bullseye) Ruby docker image. Short answer: give up. A bit longer answer: it’s easier than you think.
Patching delayed_job for Ruby 3
Monkey patching is bad. That’s where you should start from. It can cause trouble where you’d least expect it, conflicts with libraries you’d least expect in ways you’d least expect. And yet here I am sharing code for patching the delayed_job gem to (more or less) work with Ruby 3. Doesn’t this violate my own policies? There are a few choices.
- give up upgrading to Ruby 3 altogether
- monkey patch delayed_job as an emergency fix and make time to figure out what to do
- contribute to delayed_job making sure the gem is solid on Ruby 3
- get rid of all the
.delaycalls and switch to another async job library
Stuff that broke in Rails 6.1
Rails uses a “shifted” “semantic” “versioning” which pretty much comes down to the following. Major version: “we’ll most definitely break everything you ever depended on, half of them without warning.” Minor version: “we’ll probably break many stuff you depend on, some of them without warning.” Patch version: “we might accidentally some core APIs, but we promise it’s not intentional (or documented).” Knowing that, I still embarked on the grand endeavor of upgrading from Ruby on Rails 6.0.4.1 to 6.1.4.1. What could possibly go wrong, right?
OpenTTD revisited
OpenTTD is the open source clone of Transport Tycoon Deluxe. It’s an amazingly addictive time sink that you absolutely should not start playing unless you’re ready to come to half a day later realizing it’s 5am and you haven’t gotten any sleep yet. It’s fun just playing around too, but things get real when you set a goal like “connect every primary industry.” I haven’t played against AI or people, but I’m not that interested in that either just yet. This is actually my second time playing—I spent insane amounts of time on the game during university (too).
Homeworld 2 (remastered)
I had fond memories of Homeworld 2 from my childhood. Mostly along the lines of “it was pretty,” but fond nonetheless. (I must’ve not played the campaign then…) The remastered edition lived up to my expectations regarding the visuals. The various colorful areas of space with occasional clouds of dust and massive runs of massive things, with my massive (though tiny in comparison) Mothership cruising comfortably are a rich source of pretty screenshots.
My tents
The first time I spent nights in the mountains was back in 2018, when I hiked from Mt Kobushi all the way to Mt Mizugaki. At that point I was staying in mountain huts, so I didn’t need a sleeping bag or mat. I think my first time sleeping in a tent in the wild was actually in the foothills of Elbrus in 2019 (not counting sleeping in a tent during summer festivals back in Hungary). Then it was even later, the summer of 2020 that I first stayed in my own tent during a multi-day trip. It was soon after that I actually hiked up a mountain, Mt Kai-koma to stay in a tent at altitude.
Breaking bad, or versioning is hard
Rich Hickey will tell you that breaking changes are horrible and versioning is stupid. The idea is nice. No breaking changes, ever. You get the API design of whatever you’re building perfectly at the first try. Oh wait. Obviously no one can do that, and no one could ever do that.
The question then becomes just how long exactly are you willing to carry the dead weight of code you don’t really want to carry anymore. Or rather even, how long exactly are you able to pay the costs of maintaining a possibly very problematic old API design.
Pink
Title: Sitting in the field
Creator: PascalsProxy
Last tent hike of the year
For literally years now I’ve been wondering how could I get up on Kasagatake. This mountain in the northern Japanese Alps is right above Shin-Hotaka. You get a really good view of it from the ropeway up Nishi-Hotaka and you hike by its trailhead on the way up to Sugoroku. The problem is that it’s a long, tough and steep straight climb which means doing it in one day is not fun. I didn’t know of a way to get there for an early enough start either unless I stayed a night in Shin-Hotaka—until now. Once you learn of the Mainichi Alpen-go (and manage to secure a seat) things get much easier.
Dune
I read some of the Dune books back in high school. I enjoyed the setting of the world, the vast desert of Arrakis, the ruthless political scheming, the cool tech – but at the same time I really disliked the idea of genetic memory and all the plot devices that arise from it, and I felt that the use of gholas is a very cheap writing trick. I was still looking forward to the new Dune movie directed by Villeneuve, mostly because I was impressed by the trailer and also because I loved his Arrival.
