Tag: english

Stuff that broke in Rails 6.1

December 1, 2021
valeblog
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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?

Railway tracks are suspended above the washed out Tank Hill underpass of the Trans Canada Highway 1 after devastating rain storms caused flooding and landslides, northeast of Lytton, British Columbia, Canada November 17, 2021. B.C. Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure/Handout via REUTERS
Rails in Canada and on Ruby share (un)surprising similarities (source)
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OpenTTD revisited

November 16, 2021
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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).

A junction that ended up way more complicated than intended
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Homeworld 2 (remastered)

November 10, 2021
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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.

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My tents

November 9, 2021
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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.

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Breaking bad, or versioning is hard

November 8, 2021
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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.

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Pink

November 4, 2021
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Sitting in the field

Title: Sitting in the field
Creator: PascalsProxy

Last tent hike of the year

November 1, 2021
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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.

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Dune

October 18, 2021
radiátor
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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.

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Training for Denali

October 17, 2021
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Of the Seven Summits, there are two I am (was) particularly concerned about. Puncak Jaya (the Carstensz Pyramid) because of how technical it’s said to be, got me to start bouldering and practice moving around on more “exciting” rocky terrain. The other is Denali.

Moving on snow in a rope team for crevasse safety isn’t the issue. Climbing up on steep slopes or along knife-edge ridges with fixed lines isn’t the issue. Those are skills that you can “just” learn and they become another useful wrench in your toolbox. Having the physical fitness to load carry up to the 14000 (feet) camp was what worried me.

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What’s the deal with types?

October 17, 2021
valeblog
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I’ve never used Haskell. I won’t claim I’m good at Rust. I mostly work with Ruby and Clojure, both dynamic languages where you don’t really need to worry about types. But then of course that’s not true. Even if you put Rails’s magic aside, it’s way too easy to write code that accidentally works (in an absolutely unintended fashion).

low-angle photography gray building
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