🎱 Josh Branchaud ✨

First thing I asked ChatGPT 5: "how do I remove the pool param from a database URL in a one-liner?"

Anecdotal, but it gave me two overly-complex sed commands that didn't work. On 2nd try, it gave me a working cmd.

I asked the same of Claude Sonnet 4 and it gave me a simple, working sed cmd.

Easy File Uploading With JavaScript | FilePond A JavaScript library that can upload anything you throw at it, optimizes images for faster uploads, and offers a great, accessible, silky smooth user experience.

What do you all like for image upload libraries these days?

Currently using filepond on a project, but curious what else is good. pqina.nl/filepond/

What are the rough prerequisites for being able to pick this up and get something out of it?

Prtizker Pavilion during Grant Park Music Series with a huge crowd and the Chicago skyline in the background

A feast of a picnic with cut up cheeses, crackers, bread, hummus, meats, and canned tuna.

Beautiful night for the Grant Park Music Festival 🎶

24/
The Immortal Game: A History of Chess (2006)
David Shenk
bsky.app/profile/jbra...

screenshot from a chat with StubHub virtual assistant where I say, "There is nothing in my stubhub wallet. I'm continually being misdirected about this refund and what I can expect." And then the Virtual Assistant says, "You're right - you deserve clear, direct information. Here's exactly what should happen: Your situation: You paid for tickets you couldn't access for an event that took place. This is covered under our FanProtect Guarantee..."

I'm trying to get help from StubHub customer support and I'm clearly talking to an LLM that is doing a lot of "active listening" and helping me get absolutely nowhere with my support request.

Executed another one of these successfully yesterday on a cut shot into the side pocket 🤩

The crazy thing is that I'm detaching and using the shaft-end of my break cue instead of a proper, full-length jump cue.

Time to see if I can get someone to sell me a used jump cue.

It's hard to take an engineering team seriously unless they are adding weird, semi-relevant gifs to the end of their PR descriptions.

These two always have great recs!

The Terminator (of pool) lining up a dart jump shot with a short jump cue at a pool table in order to get the cue ball over a blocking stripe in order to hit the 8-ball.

I gave the jump shot another try this afternoon using the dart method.

The first try was decent but I didn’t get the ball up in the air enough.

The second try was perfect and I sank an angled shot I was going for.

Real light bulb moment 😯

*spits water* for $13?!!

I’d use that flavor, but def not one of my go-tos 😄

Oh gross, that limitation was not clear 😐

I’m enjoying it. It covers quite the breadth of chess’s history. As it dives into various parts of the history, it dips in and out of the moves comprising “the immortal game.”

It feels like an 8/10, would recommend.

I don’t think audio is its ideal format.

The cover of The Immortal Game: A History of Chess by David Shenk which shows a giant black rook on a white square of a chess board.

I recently learned that Spotify Premium gives you access to a ton of audiobook. So, on a whim, I’m listening to this history of chess called The Immortal Game by David Shenk.

Cold Brew Coffee gu energy gel next to a cup of coffee

hands down best gu flavor

Barry Can’t Swim on stage with purple lights and a video screen showing animations of pink and white figures.

Incredible set from Barry Can’t Swim!

I was vibing from start to finish. It was so fun to experience his music live.

YouTube video by Mixmag Barry Can't Swim in the Mixmag Lab London

I'm stoked to be seeing Barry Can't Swim this evening. It'll be my first time at the Salt Shed too.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_gh...

Congrats! Can’t wait to hear more.

This error always catches me off guard because just moments ago before I updated the app, all this tooling was working.

The issue is that I generally start cursor from my terminal with `cursor .` in whatever project directory.

It inherits my full Zsh env/config, where it knows about my gems.

Cursor and VSCode error message that states "Failed to run Bundler while initializing Standard Ruby" with a button to "Show Output".

Every once in a while I clicked "Update now" in Cursor. It installs the latest and restarts the app.

And then I see this error: "Failed to run Bundler while initializing Standard Ruby"

This is because Cursor (and VSCode?) default to a reduced shell env when booting instead of my std Zsh config.

23/
A Closed and Common Orbit (2016)
Becky Chambers
bsky.app/profile/jbra...

Southeast view of Milwaukee Ave and downtown Chicago from on top of a building showing CTA buses, festival tents, and many skyscrapers in the distance.

Incredible view of Wicker Park Fest and Downtown Chicago from the rooftop of the Robey.

Cocktail recipes containing Chartreuse Green and Lime juice From Last Word to The Bird Is The Word No. 2, you will find the best selection of cocktails containing Lime juice and Chartreuse Green on Difford's Guide

I think this permalink should work www.diffordsguide.com/cocktails/se...

Difford’s Guide cocktail finder search screen with filters applied for Green Chartreuse and Lime Juice. It shows many cocktails including Last Word and The Dante.

Difford’s Guide has this great “Cocktail Finder” feature where you can list a couple ingredients (e.g. green chartreuse and lime juice) and it will list everything from its database with those ingredients.

Handy way to find new cocktails for ingredients you have on hand.

There are a lot of things you shouldn't ask an LLM, but you should *definitely* ask an LLM to write jq queries for you.

I just grabbed zip zap. it’s great!

got some more for you

- zip zap
- pipe push paradise
- snakebird (+primer)
- all the draknek games: sokobond, good snowman, monster's expedition, etc
- network wars
- dubio
- cinco paus
- downwell
- super hexagon
- railbound + pup champs
- good sudoku
- flipflop solitaire

YouTube video by Ruby Central RailsConf 2025 10 Costly Database Performance Mistakes (and How to Fix Them) by Andrew Atkinson

RailsConf talks are live. Would love your feedback!

Presentation page with more info and all the links: andyatkinson.com/10-mistakes

RailsConf 2025 10 Costly Database Performance Mistakes (and How to Fix Them) by Andrew Atkinson
www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ8R...

YouTube video by Ruby Central RailsConf 2025 From FTP to Kamal: 20 Years of Deploying Rails by Ben Curtis

The presentations from #railsconf are available on YouTube, and mine is here:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fa2f...

I've been told it was a good one. ;)