Gems, Jokes, and JavaScript

Remote Ruby

Andrew and Chris dive into issues with SMTP configuration on new Digital Ocean droplets, their experiences with various email delivery gems like Postmark and Mailtrap and go over some best practices for handling account creation and user associations in Rails applications. The conversation also touches on deployment automation, developing new features like the inbox on Podia, and the importance of having visual tools and browser extensions for effective debugging. They share some lighter moments discussing fun side projects, including Andrew's insult generator app and their humorous take on turning everyday developer annoyances into creative gem ideas. The episode wraps up with some Stripe announcements and TV show recommendations.

Links

• Judoscale- Remote Ruby listener gift
• Mailtrap
• Hotwire Dev Tools
• ActualDbSchema
• RailsCasts- Episode 288: Billing with Stripe
• ActiveSupport: Allow quick cast Boolean to integer #18552
• Our top product updates from Sessions 2025 (Stripe Blog)
• Developer Insult Generator by Andrew
• Shoresy
• Star Wars: Andor
• Star Wars: Skeleton Crew

• Chris Oliver X/Twitter
• Andrew Mason X/Twitter
• Jason Charnes X/Twitter

Bab

1. Gems, Jokes, and JavaScript (00:00:00)

2. DigitalOcean blocks SMTP (00:02:00)

3. Using APIs to send emails instead of SMTP (00:03:35)

4. Raspberry Pi auto-transcribing 150+ videos with Whisper.cpp (00:06:34)

5. Converting transcripts to prompts and Cursor rules (00:07:43)

6. Hotwire debugging browser extension (00:09:52)

7. ActualDbSchema gem (00:11:20)

8. Rails mailer preview routes (00:12:46)

9. In-browser dashboards for debugging (00:13:06)

10. Debugging ActiveRecord callbacks (00:16:00)

11. Class methods to wrap save (00:21:28)

12. Leaning towards DI (00:23:03)

13. Thread local variables and thread_mattr_accessor (00:24:45)

14. Monkey patchijng boolean to integer (00:26:14)

15. Developer insult generator (00:30:27)

16. Star Wars and Stripe Sessions (00:33:00)