Rob Lacey

Senior Software Engineer, Copenhagen, Denmark

There is no such thing as a Ruby Ninja

06 Jun 2026 22:10

Janteloven, fam.

Will write code for a Copenhell 2026 Ticket

31 May 2026 12:56

What with everything going on recently, and don’t get me wrong they are exciting things, I didn’t get round to buying a COPENHELL ticket and it will the first year in 8 that I won’t be going. No really. I’ll write code for a ticket. And. Yes Pustulant Flesh ate my dog’s homework

Getting ruby-libgd installed

10 Jan 2026 16:04

As per usual native extensions don’t always install 1st time. Damn…

bundle add ruby-libgd
Fetching gem metadata from https://rubygems.org/.........
Resolving dependencies...
Fetching gem metadata from https://rubygems.org/.........
Fetching ruby-libgd 0.1.9
Installing ruby-libgd 0.1.9 with native extensions
Gem::Ext::BuildError: ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.

The error is right there.

gem install ruby-libgd
Building native extensions. This could take a while...
ERROR:  Error installing ruby-libgd:
	ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.

    current directory: /Users/rl/.asdf/installs/ruby/3.4.6/lib/ruby/gems/3.4.0/gems/ruby-libgd-0.1.9/ext/gd
/Users/rl/.asdf/installs/ruby/3.4.6/bin/ruby extconf.rb
checking for -lgd... no
libgd not found

To see why this extension failed to compile, please check the mkmf.log which can be found here:

  /Users/rl/.asdf/installs/ruby/3.4.6/lib/ruby/gems/3.4.0/extensions/arm64-darwin-24/3.4.0/ruby-libgd-0.1.9/mkmf.log

extconf failed, exit code 1

Gem files will remain installed in /Users/rl/.asdf/installs/ruby/3.4.6/lib/ruby/gems/3.4.0/gems/ruby-libgd-0.1.9 for inspection.

Looks like libgd is already installed.

brew install libgd
==> Auto-updating Homebrew...
Adjust how often this is run with `$HOMEBREW_AUTO_UPDATE_SECS` or disable with
`$HOMEBREW_NO_AUTO_UPDATE=1`. Hide these hints with `$HOMEBREW_NO_ENV_HINTS=1` (see `man brew`).
==> Downloading https://ghcr.io/v2/homebrew/core/portable-ruby/blobs/sha256:1c98fa49eacc935640a6f8e10a2bf33f14cfc276804b71ddb658ea45ba99d167
##################################################################################################################################################################################### 100.0%
==> Pouring portable-ruby-3.4.8.arm64_big_sur.bottle.tar.gz
==> Auto-updated Homebrew!
Updated 4 taps (heroku/brew, mongodb/brew, homebrew/core and homebrew/cask).

---8<----

You have 125 outdated formulae and 2 outdated casks installed.

Warning: gd 2.3.3_6 is already installed and up-to-date.
To reinstall 2.3.3_6, run:
  brew reinstall gd

So I need to include the path the native libraries when installing.

gem install ruby-libgd -- --with-gd-include=/opt/homebrew/include --with-gd-lib=/opt/homebrew/lib

rl@loathsome fossa % bundle install
Bundle complete! 24 Gemfile dependencies, 125 gems now installed.
Use `bundle info [gemname]` to see where a bundled gem is installed.
1 installed gem you directly depend on is looking for funding.
  Run `bundle fund` for details

Ruby 2 - Time Intervals

07 Dec 2025 09:20

Old blog posts I never published, except I have now #12

Say we wanted to schedule a job but wanted to limit duplicate jobs running within a specific time period. We could set a time for a job to run and ignore duplicate requests in our queue. It appears Ruby’s Time object makes this simple for us. We can round up (or floor) to the nearest, time interval. Nice.

2.2.2 :012 > Time.now.floor(15.minutes)
=> "2016-02-29T17:15:00.000+00:00" 
2.2.2 :013 > Time.now.round(15.minutes)
=> "2016-02-29T17:30:00.000+00:00"

Ruby 4.0.0-preview2

06 Dec 2025 17:25

Ok, I’m doing it. Ruby 4.0.0 come at me brah

rl@macbookair personal % asdf plugin update ruby
Location of ruby plugin: /Users/rl/.asdf/plugins/ruby
Updating ruby to master
From https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf-ruby
   1ce84e2..8f28d3a  master     -> master
   1ce84e2..8f28d3a  master     -> origin/master
Already on 'master'
Your branch is up to date with 'origin/master'.
rl@macbookair personal % asdf install ruby 4.0.0-preview2 
ruby-build: using openssl@3 from homebrew
==> Downloading ruby-4.0.0-preview2.tar.gz...
-> curl -q -fL -o ruby-4.0.0-preview2.tar.gz https://cache.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/4.0/ruby-4.0.0-preview2.tar.gz
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100 22.3M  100 22.3M    0     0  17.5M      0  0:00:01  0:00:01 --:--:-- 17.5M
==> Installing ruby-4.0.0-preview2...
ruby-build: using libyaml from homebrew
ruby-build: using gmp from homebrew
-> ./configure "--prefix=$HOME/.asdf/installs/ruby/4.0.0-preview2" --with-openssl-dir=/opt/homebrew/opt/openssl@3 --enable-shared --with-libyaml-dir=/opt/homebrew/opt/libyaml --with-gmp-dir=/opt/homebrew/opt/gmp --with-ext=openssl,psych,+ --enable-yjit

Got a MySQL Process that appears to be stuck

02 Dec 2025 09:37

It’s not uncommon for Rails specs to kill our database in development. It appears that if a browser spec doesn’t close cleanly you can end up with processes just hanging and so the next spec run will just wait forever.

Here’s the process list. It’s sleeping on the job.

MariaDB [(none)]> SHOW PROCESSLIST;
+-----+-------+-----------------+------------+---------+------+----------+------------------+----------+
| Id  | User  | Host            | db         | Command | Time | State    | Info             | Progress |
+-----+-------+-----------------+------------+---------+------+----------+------------------+----------+
| 357 | painy | localhost:52732 | painy_test | Sleep   |  563 |          | NULL             |    0.000 |
| 358 | painy | localhost:52733 | NULL       | Sleep   |  565 |          | NULL             |    0.000 |
| 363 | painy | localhost:53036 | painy_test | Sleep   |  384 |          | NULL             |    0.000 |
| 364 | painy | localhost:53037 | NULL       | Sleep   |  436 |          | NULL             |    0.000 |
| 381 | robl  | localhost       | NULL       | Query   |    0 | starting | SHOW PROCESSLIST |    0.000 |
+-----+-------+-----------------+------------+---------+------+----------+------------------+----------+
5 rows in set (0.000 sec)

sql

Probably just best to kill these processes and get on with our lives.

MariaDB [(none)]> KILL 357;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.000 sec)

MariaDB [(none)]> KILL 363;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.000 sec)

sql

Rails Custom Error Messages

01 Dec 2025 09:18

Old blog posts I never published, except I have now #11

Rails.configuration.exceptions_app.call({'REQUEST_METHOD' => 'GET', 'PATH_INFO' => '/404', 'rack.input' => ''})[2].body

Face

30 Nov 2025 07:16

Old blog posts I never published, except I have now #10

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Plenty of not right going on

28 Nov 2025 12:15

Old blog posts I never published, except I have now #9

I, [2015-01-22T07:15:59.225481 #30041]  INFO -- :   Rendered api/characters/_character.json.jbuilder (0.0ms)
I, [2015-01-22T07:15:59.225700 #30041]  INFO -- :   Rendered api/characters/_character.json.jbuilder (0.0ms)
I, [2015-01-22T07:15:59.225951 #30041]  INFO -- :   Rendered api/characters/_character.json.jbuilder (0.1ms)
I, [2015-01-22T07:16:00.561068 #30041]  INFO -- :   Rendered api/characters/_character.json.jbuilder (1307.7ms)
I, [2015-01-22T07:16:00.561527 #30041]  INFO -- :   Rendered api/characters/_character.json.jbuilder (0.1ms)
I, [2015-01-22T07:16:00.561772 #30041]  INFO -- :   Rendered api/characters/_character.json.jbuilder (0.1ms)
I, [2015-01-22T07:16:00.561993 #30041]  INFO -- :   Rendered api/characters/_character.json.jbuilder (0.1ms)
I, [2015-01-22T07:16:00.562210 #30041]  INFO -- :   Rendered api/characters/_character.json.jbuilder (0.0ms)
I, [2015-01-22T07:16:00.562425 #30041]  INFO -- :   Rendered api/characters/_character.json.jbuilder (0.1ms)

Blocking Chinese Bots from your Shopify store

23 Nov 2025 11:59

After realising that Bot traffic originating from China takes up significantly more hits to a store than normal traffic, we’re taken steps to try and block traffic to get analytics back in good order. Here are the CloudFlare rules we’ve gone with.

Block CN + Other Regions

Blocks all traffic that Cloudflare sees as coming from China according to GeoIP.

(ip.geoip.country in {"CN" "RU" "KP" "SY"})

Block China Unicom ASNs

AS 4134 is the “ChinaNet Backbone” (China Telecom).

ip.src.asnum in {4134}

Block China Unicom ASNs

These are several ASNs owned by China Unicom. For example, AS 4837 is a well-known Unicom backbone. Cybercrime Information Center. AS 133118 and other ASNs (136958, 134543, 135061) are also associated with Unicom.

ip.src.asnum in {4837, 133118, 134543, 135061, 136958}

Block China Mobile / CMCC ASNs

AS 9808 is commonly associated with China Mobile.

ip.src.asnum in {9808}

Challenge Suspicious / Low-Reputation Requests

Uses Cloudflare’s threat scoring + bot detection to challenge likely bot traffic. Good for reducing automated “dead” sessions.

cf.threat_score > 20 and cf.client.bot

Fingers crossed this give us some respite.

Block CN + Other Regions

Block China Unicom ASNs

Block China Unicom ASNs

Block China Mobile / CMCC ASNs

Challenge Suspicious / Low-Reputation Requests

Block CN + Other Regions