October 2025

Does anyone know a company hiring for remote staff-level ruby/rails folks? #GetFediHired #FediHire

My favorite was Allen Hatchcork’s “Fartigo”, followed closely by “Rear Window (wink, wink, nudge nudge, sir)”. https://garrison.su/@garrison/115465310486960402

#PleaseBoost - Do you have an #AltAccount?
#AskFedi #FediPoll #FediSurvey #NSFW #poll #survey

A question - if there was a newsletter for open source maintainers, in which maintainers could ask for specific help with specific issues, and subscribers would receive weekly or so - "this longstanding project is looking for help with this bug or this feature, here are the skills required" - would you care enough about that idea to subscribe?

I just finished my first job interview in five years (?) and it went alright! I don’t know how they think I did, or if I’ll get the job, but I did it, didn’t die, and had fun.

It's a shiny new blog post called: The Layoff Collection

https://lawver.net/2025/10/the-layoff-collection/

#work #layoffs

Sorry for the shouting but I CAN'T BELIEVE I'M SEEING SIGUR ROS LIVE IN A WEEK AND A HALF, AND DRIVING HALF WAY ACROSS THE COUNTRY TO DO IT!! Watching Heima again to get in the mood (I also have a roadtrip Sigur Ros playlist with all their studio albums on it to keep me company) https://youtu.be/_4v-dumTNqo?si=5Xx12Sob1on4LhxP

Got Spindrift’s “Cosnopolitan” flavor as a little treat this weekend and it’s good! It’s not raspberry lime, but it’s up there with it and mango orange and mojito.

Dear #lazyweb, I need a way to manage my mess of Apple Music playlists. I have a horde of folders, playlists, copies of playlists and ghosts of playlists from iTunes and the various streaming streaming services I've used over the years. I just want to be able to delete playlists without having to click three times on each one and move more than one at a time into folders. Heeeeelllllppppppp!

I have a job interview on Wednesday that I'm REALLY not ready for, but I emailed the recruiter back a pseudo pull request with updates to their repo README. Because even if I haven't coded like a professional in ... ummm ... a while ... I give good README.

Has anyone listened to Star Trek: Khan? Kind of excited to try out an audio drama on an upcoming roadtrip!

Talked to a former coworker yesterday about a potential job and he said they're on Heroku and not hyper-growth. I didn't expect it but I was physically relieved...

I designed a logo in Inkscape today and showed it to my wife, who asked if people would think it looked like boobs.

So, designers of the world, fear not. I am absolutely no threat.

Yes please. I feel this. I left my last job squarely on Empty and this post resonates with me hard. https://chaos.social/@slothrop/115390320144023997

This app name is so stupid, I can’t wait for the groans. You’re going to haaaaaaaate it.

Y’all have been super helpful with Linux app recs, let’s try #design! Anyone a huge #penpot fan? Use it with #rails and #bulma or other CSS framework? Anything I should look out for as a currently-one-developer-without-a-designer show?

I couldn’t get to sleep last night, but at least I came up with this terrible joke.

Moses comes down the mountain with Ten Commandments 1.0 and sees his favorite idiots doing idolatry with the golden calf. He throws the stone tablets down and yells, “Jesus Christ!”

A voice from the heavens whispers, “not yet, pal. I guess you should come on back up the mountain.”

Though I did find a fun color palette (and added them to my sass file but then couldn’t figure out why they didn’t then show up) and come up with some logo ideas.

I did a lot this morning on the thing, but not a lot to show for it... but that's how it goes sometimes.

Thank you @DyingWorld, @Torx, @Edent & @sixhat - Inkscape seems to be the instant winner w/ Gimp coming in second. Thanks, y'all!

#linux people, what do y'all use for creating images for web things? I need to create logos, little art thingies (hi, i'm not a designer), tweak colors and resize stuff. Vector with support for exporting to PNG, WEBP, etc would be :yay:

Just realized I named the thing I’m building after a bit on 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown. Only the best sources of inspiration. Only the best.

Got the CSS rendering things correctly and pipeline things building (why is this so much harder than it used to be?), which feels like enough for today. Is that... umm... video games calling?

Alright, #opensource #fediverse software pals, if you were starting a new project today, which license would you use and why?

I got to say hi to a giant Burmese puppy at coffee this morning, so you could say my day is going aaaaaalright.

I’ve been trying to work on a thing since July - and today it finally clicked. I was trying to build the wrong thing. I made more progress in three hours this morning than I had in the last three months.

Yay, doing things!

So many windmills to tilt at, so few lances. What's a Quixote to do?

Someday, I’ll call my wife for a reason other than helping her find her phone. That day isn’t today.

It’s basically COVID: The IMAX Experience. I don’t really have it, it just feels almost exactly like I do.

I got the flu, COVID and pneumonia vaccines yesterday morning. Yesterday afternoon I was meh. Today it feels like I’ve been run over by a truck.

10/10, would vaccine again.

Bill and Ted must be very very disappointed in us. Forget excellent, we can’t even be decent to each other.

The best “our original host is too busy” podcast lineup shuffle I can remember is The Press Box. The addition of Joel Anderson has been great. It’s very dad, and I think is the only podcast I listen to that’s on that corner. I love it.

I think the committee should give the Nobel Peace Prize to everyone but Trump just to see if we can make him pop.

“How would you describe Mercedes’ current style?”
“The dancing hippos in Fantasia?”
“Perfect”

(Things I think about while driving)

Maple syrup in coffee is so good. Try it. You'll like it.

I’ve got a heart full of give a damn, but a body insisting that it needs another week off.

We talked about this at coffee this morning and it reminded me of an old idea I had: the hyperlocal ephemeral social network. I might build that first and see how it goes.

Thanks to my hardware store. New insult unlocked.

I haven’t finished it yet, but the case it builds is pretty inspiring: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/opinion/politics/how-to-save-the-american-experiment.html?unlocked_article_code=1.rU8.8O0F.Zm9lW9Hdlyr5&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare 🎁 link

How married am I? I’m playing a game where you can get romantically involved with an NPC. I got to that part of the game and feel really bad for having a video game girlfriend.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Tolkien.

It is often remarked that a central thesis of his books is that evil provides the means of its own defeat. Sauron crafted the One Ring that killed him, Shelob impaled herself of Sam’s blade, Smaug exposed his belly to Bilbo and let him see the weak point.

I think it is less often commented on that the corollary to that is that good must still act to use those weaknesses. The Ring did not cast itself into the fires of Mt Doom but was brought by the Hobbits. Shelob was only able to impale herself because Sam kept his arm strong and held it out. The black arrow still needed to be shot into Smaug’s belly.

And a final point that I don’t see often enough is that Tolkien clearly believes good only loses if it surrenders to hopelessness. Denethor’s suicide driven by fear would have broken Minas Tirith if not for the Fellowship, Frodo would have fallen to despair if Sam had not been there to carry him, if Bilbo had seen the shot as hopeless then he never could have warned of the weak spot.

But because in those cases someone provided hope, good triumphed.

I don’t know. I’ve just been thinking about that a lot lately for some reason.

I might have a slight addiction to Coral Island.

I’ve started this app three times - I think the fourth time with Hanami will the the charm. I need to get away from Rails, and this feels like a step or two in the right direction.

I'm writing a series of blog posts called "#hanami for Rails Developers"

Part 1 covering the "M" of "MVC" is here: https://ryanbigg.com/2025/10/hanami-for-rails-developers-1-models

I'm keen to hear any feedback from Rails developers who read this and don't understand a thing!

This was such a mind-blowing realization for me. Whiteness was invented. It was explicitly invented in order to define an “us” and the threatening “them” and who’s included in “us” has changed over time.

Whiteness shouldn’t exist. The systems that reinforce it should be dismantled and it’s up to those of us who continue to benefit from them to do it. https://dair-community.social/@KimCrayton1/115306462464524812

Highly recommended. This is the way to talk about the members of the Trump junta. https://www.wonkette.com/p/sexual-matador-goebbels-is-more-hardcore

The perils of being family tech support (just in case this old thing couldn’t run Windows 11, I brought a flash drive with elementary OS on it).

In related news, I somehow lost weight on the trip. I’ve now lost 97 pounds in the last three years. I still can’t believe it.

I keep planning on doing a "We did a 4800 mile roadtrip in Canada" blog post but I can't start it.