Avi Flombaum

Homebaum

Every new tab is a trap. Take back your browser time

A chrome extension that replaces your new tab with a Zen focus tab with your top priorities for the day.

Theory

We Are All Artists

“In the age of artificial intelligence, where algorithms can compose symphonies, write novels, and even paint portraits, it’s easy to question what this means for us as human beings. If ma...

Why I Started Coding

My mom was an elementary school teacher. Every day after school she’d tutor her students, and I’d have to wait around for her for two hours, playing with my school’s one computer (this was...

PromptEngine

Design Previews for Ruby on Rails

I Ran GPT-5 Against My MacBook. The Laptop Won.

I just watched a $3,000 laptop beat OpenAI’s best model at something that actually matters. Not at generating poetry or philosophical musings. Planning a real trip to Ecuador that you could book t...

Project Launching

VCMatch.ai

AI-powered investor matching

Upload a pitch deck, get matched with VCs whose thesis aligns with your startup in 30 seconds.

Leadership

Principles vs Values

Letters

A Message of Gratitude

I wrote this for a particular group of people in my life but wanted to share it with all of you all too. Good morning and happy Monday! During my gratitude practice thi...

ActionVersionPreview

Preview design iterations in Rails

Preview multiple versions of your Rails views simultaneously. No feature flags, no database, no configuration. Just file names and URLs.

Theory

Cosmic Creativity: The Mystical Oneness of Everything

In the age of artificial intelligence, I've come to realize that art is not a fixed thing, but a constantly evolving conversation. A piece of art — whether it's a paintin...

Post

An ActiveStorage S3 Direct Uploader: Part 3: Upload Progress

Project Beta

Railspress

Ruby on Rails

An ActiveStorage S3 Direct Uploader: Part 2: Direct Upload to S3

In Part 1 we created a Rails app with ActiveStorage and S3. We also built an uploadzone component that can handle the files and prepare to pass them off to something to upload them. That's where we...

Ruby on Rails

ActiveStorage S3 Direct Uploader: Part 1: Drag and Drop Interface

You want a fast fancy uploader to be an easy thing to implement. But it gets tricky. I'll do my best to explain how I built the Uploader for Musicbase using ActiveStorage and Direct Uploads to S3. ...

Socratic Tutor

Generating Audio Waveform Images in Ruby

Audio waveforms allow us to visualize the waveform of an audio file - displaying the amplitude of the audio signal over time. They are often used in audio editors and music players to show...

Why I Joined Revature

My Revature Story: Knowing Your WhyWhen I think about motivation, I often turn to a boxing match that took place when I was six. The year was 1990, and Mike Tyson was rid...

Slaps.video

Find the video that slaps

A parlor game for finding the best video.

Perfect Poetry

Graduating Flatiron School

Project Live

MatchMaker.chat

Online dating in an AI age.

No profile. No chat. Just dates.

Why Teach and Learn Ruby?

As the Co-Founder and Dean of Flatiron School I thought it important to write a response to the recent implication that because a school switched their curriculum focus from Ruby to Java that means...

Speeches

Fear Nothing.

shadcn-rails

A port off shadcn/ui to rails

Beautifully designed components based on shadcn/ui that you can copy and paste into your apps. Accessible. Customizable. Open Source. Now for Rails

Letters

Thank You Ben Brown and Uber.nu

Header Image: Flombaum.com circa 2002 At the turn of the second millennium I was a sophomore in an NYC high school. I remember having a handful of interests: movies, fiction, gaming, comp...

Letters

A Birthday Letter to My Dad

I wrote this letter to my dad on his birthday 3 years ago. I’m sharing it today to honor him on Fathers’ Day and put a bit of gratitude out in the world. Hi Dad, I’m writing you a letter...

JustFuckingStopAlready

What I Wish I Knew Before Teaching Myself How to Code

My Favorite Moments in My Career in Technology

I’m going to turn each of these into their own posts, but for now. Plus, I’m playing with Medium. 1. Building My Own Fax Server 2. Discovering Open Source and Asterisk ...