Tutorials and thoughts on software in the weirdest decade. https://danielsellergren.com/ Recently I've been working on a side project based around one of my favorite video game series of all time: Final Fantasy. More specifically entries I through VI, the ones I grew up playing on the NES and SNES. Recently they have been re-released in a beautiful format as the Pixel Remasters and I decided it was time to finally put my knowledge of the games on to the internet for no reason other than I love them and want to have a guide that is built my way to share with the world. Tue, 27 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://danielsellergren.com/blog/building-the-ugly-way-to-figure-out-what-you-want https://danielsellergren.com/blog/building-the-ugly-way-to-figure-out-what-you-want Hotwire is the new default front-end framework for Rails 7 applications. Using a combination of Stimulus and Turbo, it allows for significant speed increases due to the use of Ajax requests instead of page reloads, and provides the ability to easily build dynamic applications by slicing up pages and simply adding a few lines of code. Wed, 8 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://danielsellergren.com/blog/building-a-live-updating-list-of-items-in-rails-7-with-hotwire https://danielsellergren.com/blog/building-a-live-updating-list-of-items-in-rails-7-with-hotwire As a web developer, you may encounter situations where you need to disable user interaction with certain elements on a webpage. One relatively recent way to achieve this is by using the inert HTML global attribute. This attribute makes an element and all of its descendants non-interactive and un-focusable, effectively disabling user input events such as clicks, touches, and keyboard events. Sun, 5 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://danielsellergren.com/blog/the-css-inert-property-and-its-usecases https://danielsellergren.com/blog/the-css-inert-property-and-its-usecases Software engineering is a complex process that involves creating, maintaining, and updating code. Over time, the complexity of software can grow to the point where it becomes difficult and expensive to maintain, especially for teams of dozens or hundreds of developers. However there are two types of complexity, necessary and accidental, and understanding the difference between them is an important distinction. Mon, 20 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://danielsellergren.com/blog/necessary-vs-accidental-complexity-in-software-engineering https://danielsellergren.com/blog/necessary-vs-accidental-complexity-in-software-engineering The CSS accent-color property is used to set the accent color for form elements and controls such as checkboxes, radio buttons, range inputs, and progress bars. This property helps in providing a consistent theme to your user interface with minimal effort. Mon, 6 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://danielsellergren.com/blog/using-accent-color-for-simple-themeing-in-css https://danielsellergren.com/blog/using-accent-color-for-simple-themeing-in-css Git is a free, open source version control system (VCS) that is used by the vast majority of web developers to manage changes to source code, especially on projects being worked on by multiple programmers. Most developers know the basics of how to stage changes, commit them, push them to a remote repository, fix conflicts, and revert back to previous versions. However a much smaller percentage actually understand how Git works under the hood. Tue, 31 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://danielsellergren.com/blog/what-is-in-the-git-directory https://danielsellergren.com/blog/what-is-in-the-git-directory With more and more tech companies tightening their belts, reducing headcounts, and preparing for an upcoming (or already underway) global recession, I thought it would be a good idea to write down my thoughts on the best way to weather these times. Fri, 2 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://danielsellergren.com/blog/navigating-the-2022-2023-tech-layoffs https://danielsellergren.com/blog/navigating-the-2022-2023-tech-layoffs I'm using Homebrew as my local package manager but you'll need some basic things installed in order to run these initial commands. Mon, 12 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://danielsellergren.com/blog/stable-diffusion-on-macos-m1 https://danielsellergren.com/blog/stable-diffusion-on-macos-m1 One of the key skills of a higher level developer is being able to drop into just about anything and make contributions. It's one thing to be comfortable and highly knowledgable in one specific skill or set of skills such as Ruby on Rails, but it can be quite difficult to jump into an area you have no framework for and be able to work within it. Sun, 2 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://danielsellergren.com/blog/working-outside-your-comfort-zone https://danielsellergren.com/blog/working-outside-your-comfort-zone CSS Naked Day was started by Dustin Diaz in 2008 and was later hosted by Taylor Satula. It continued in 2020 and I submitted a pull request to update it for 2021 so hopefully that gets approved and merged. Fri, 9 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000 https://danielsellergren.com/blog/css-naked-day-gem https://danielsellergren.com/blog/css-naked-day-gem With many operating systems now supporting an option for dark mode, most modern browsers now support a CSS media property called prefers-color-scheme that allows you to customize your site or application to the stated preference of the user. It is very easy to use and provides a great user experience. Sat, 21 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000 https://danielsellergren.com/blog/using-prefers-color-scheme-to-support-dark-mode https://danielsellergren.com/blog/using-prefers-color-scheme-to-support-dark-mode Turbolinks began shipping in Rails 4 and while it has some advantages, it also comes with some complications that sometimes you just don't want to deal with. For this reason many developers choose to remove it, especially for simple projects where its benefits are negligible. Sat, 14 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000 https://danielsellergren.com/blog/how-to-remove-turbolinks-from-rails-6 https://danielsellergren.com/blog/how-to-remove-turbolinks-from-rails-6 There are times when it is useful to simply store an array of arbitrary strings or numbers inside of one column, for example a list of tags for a simple blog application. Here we will see an example of controlling this array with simple check boxes in a Rails form. Sat, 7 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000 https://danielsellergren.com/blog/serialization-and-check-box-tag-in-rails-6 https://danielsellergren.com/blog/serialization-and-check-box-tag-in-rails-6 The Knapsack Problem is an NP combinatorial optimization problem in which items that have both value and weight are placed into a "knapsack" with a weight limit. The goal is to maximize the value of the items while keeping the total weight of the items below the weight limit threshold. A maximized solution can be approximated using a genetic algorithm. Sat, 25 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://danielsellergren.com/blog/solving-the-0-1-knapsack-problem-with-a-genetic-algorithm-in-ruby https://danielsellergren.com/blog/solving-the-0-1-knapsack-problem-with-a-genetic-algorithm-in-ruby