I always thought it was an interesting story, drove out there one day many years ago when I lived nearby. It was a dreary day, which added to the strangeness of the place.

It's an interesting place because it's not that far from other towns, and you can drive right through it on a normal, maintained road. If you turn off and drive just a minute or two it's very different though.

I've been experimenting (over 130 test batches so far) with creating an all-purpose balm (lip, hands... stuff).

https://workingbalm.com

I wanted something more useful to carry than typical gooey lips balm full of petroleum and silicone.

Otel stuff always seems overly complicated to me, but it must just be the types of projects I generally work with. Feels like observability meets java.

I've dabbled in building a project that collects metrics from the logs for smaller projects. Everyone tells me it's a bad idea, but it seems to work well for me.

Open Telemetry is the XML of Observability, and is providing the same value XML did when it was first introduced: interoperability.

Eventually it'll have successors that are better in some way, more efficient, or whatever, but right now there are no alternatives at all. Open Telemetry is the first common standard that multiple vendors have signed up to.

I built a system for collecting metrics via logs and has worked well for my apps when I don't want to set up a whole separate system for it.

I'm working on a tool to make tracking business metrics easy. [0]

I've always had issues collecting business metrics like "signups per day" in observability tools, but using marketing type tools comes with it's own set of problems.

[0] https://flexlogs.com/

Since this is a timescaleDB topic, would timescale not work? (With a basic DB and a few continuous aggregates running in the background?)

I've been using TimescaleDB for a while as a metrics datastore. It's really proven to be great for aggregating data without a lot of hassle (using continuous aggregates, retention policies, etc).

I recommend it when you don't want/need to have separate sources for account data and your metrics/aggregate data.

I like using the em dash, but I try to limit it now—because chatgpt loves it even more. Maybe it's for the better, some people seem to have strong opinions about it.

I find it distracting, I think because I'm so used to humans using two hyphens as a substitute, sometimes with spaces around them, that a real em-dash used what I suppose is correctly looks too small and tight.

Yeah, understandable.

I’ve actually never been a fan of the “correct usage” that forgoes any spacing around it. I find it crowded and jarring.

I like to use a “thin space” around an em dash — it breaks it up without adding too much space.

As usual, isn't the next question... "What are you trying to build?"

I build most projects in Elixir/Phoenix these days, but wouldn't flinch at ROR if you are comfortable with it.

Right now, an AI tool that generates mockups for branding agencies. But I’m still validating the idea so who knows. Ideally, I would like a stack that would work for most SaaS I may think of building. Tempted to give Elixir Phoenix a try. I briefly tried it a few years back and it just felt right.

As it's just you I'd stick with Ruby on Rails 8[1] as you already know it and I think it could realistically easily achieve what you're proposing.

There's lots of libraries for calling out external AI services. e.g. something like FastMCP[2]. From the sound of it that's all you need.

I'd use Hotwire[3] for the frontend and Hotwire Native if you want to rollout an app version quickly. I'd back it with SolidCache, SolidQueue, etc

I'd use Kamal[4] to run it on cheap hosting using on something cheap from Hetzner.

1. https://rubyonrails.org/

2. https://github.com/yjacquin/fast-mcp

3. https://hotwired.dev/

4. https://kamal-deploy.org/

>What are you trying to build?

Indeed. Not everything even has to be a "web app" in the first place.

I love this, I've primarily been working in Elixir for a few years now and this is neat to see!