The Pair's The Thing - Introducing PXP
How I learned to stop worrying and love the agent.
DWF’s Journal
A computer is just a BIG. PENCIL.
Latest posts
On Interviewing and Hiring Software Engineers
How to avoid the common traps when hiring engineers
Synology on Rails Part VI: An Improved Docker Registry
Adding UI to the Docker Registry now running on the Synology.
Synology on Rails Part V: Automate the Rest
Thanks to Luke Winikates, the rest of the deploy is now automated.
That Time I Interviewed Pat Gelsinger for a Bit
How to make a proto-Fortune-500 CEO the butt of a joke.
Interestings for Iterators Vol I, #7
Earn issue 7 by sleeving.
Interestings for Iterators Vol I, #6
Issue No. 6 of interesting links I found over the past two weeks
Interestings for Iterators Vol I, #5
Issue No. 5 of interesting links I found over the past two weeks
Interestings for Iterators Vol I, #4
Issue No. 4 of interesting links I found over the past two weeks
Interestings for Iterators Vol I, #3
Issue No. 3 of interesting links I found this week
Synology on Rails Part IV: Simplifying Deploys
Moving an app to Synology Container Manager Projects, which uses Docker Compose, is a huge improvement.
Synology on Rails Part III: Improve Deploying with a Local Registry
Manual deploy steps are maddening. Let's fix it.
Interestings for Iterators Vol I, #2
Issue No. 2 of interesting links I found this week
Interestings for Iterators Vol I, #1
Issue No. 1 of interesting links I found this week
Why Do We Miss Pivotal Tracker?
These two key features made your project run more smoothly thanks to Pivotal Tracker.
Synology on Rails Part II: Deploying
Digging deep in the terminal and figuring out how to use rake to deploy my containerized Rails app to my Synology NAS.
Synology on Rails Part I: Running
How I finally learned containers and got my Rails Meal Planning app up on running on my Synology NAS.
Dynamic Polymorphic Forms in Rails 7
Relearning Rails modeling, polymorphism, and dynamic forms.
Guest on Radio Free XP Podcast
I guested on a podcast!
Balanced and Empowered
How we got RelEng back on course, and I kept my job.
The Team is the Agent of Work
That time that somebody wanted me fired.
Improved 1-1 Note Taking
In which I adapt some of my note taking to Notion.
Three Cheers for Release Engineering
Using beer brewing to talk about Release Engineering and software complexity.
Curiosity and Impatience
Two under-valued behaviors that accelerate a team.
A Little More Yak Trimming
I did a couple more small things.
Anchor's Away
Saying goodbye to Anchor Brewing
Shaving The Blog Yak
All the details about the update and clean up this blog's code.
GoGaRuCo 2013 Storytime
A video from deep in the archives
3X but It's People
How I think about people when I think about 3X.
What Brown M&M's Taught Me About Software
Not all software experience is programming.
Job Search Journaling with Obsidian - updated
A small update to my Obsidian Notebook and templates for tracking a job search
What I Talk About When I Talk About Management
Agile teams and "management" do not have to be mutually exclusive. Management is essential the long term success of agile teams.
On Pair Programming
In which I talk about my experience and ideas on how to build a sustainable pairing environment for your team.
My Obsidian for a Job Search
How to use an Obsidian vault that tracks all of the research, interview notes, and status during a job search.
Cmd-O is My New and Old Friend
One keystroke for Obsidian search-or-create. This. Is. Awesome.
History of The Big Pencil
Whenever someone asks me about the bigpencil.net domain, I get to tell this story.
Thoughts on Vaults
When to Vault and when not to.
Community Plugin: Calendar
The calendar helps you build the daily journal habit.
Don't Sleep on the Command Palette
It takes me a while to learn new commands.
Obsidian URLs
Linking to Obs from other apps is power.
Note Taking in 1-1's
1-1s are a special type of note.
Using Links
Cross note linking that isn't Markdown is OK.
Using Tags
Tag it for easier search.
Core Plugin: Templates
DRY up your notes.
Core Plugin: Daily Journal
The Daily Journal is key to remembering things.
Driven to Tests
TDD all the things!
Start with Retrospectives
Every team improvement journey starts with a retro.
The Name Game
My contribution to this 'what you call me' meme from 2020.
Introducing The Continuous Delivery Test
The spice must flow… Frank Slootman’s Amp It Up advocates removing “slack” (the concept, not the app) from a team to get greatest productivity. There’s pushback that this approach is toxic and/or it leads to colossal burnout. I agree. Low slack is not the same as high productivity. Farhan Thawar shared a list of characteristics or practices that lead to productive teams. I like this list a lot. I…
COVID-19-Inspired Meal Planning
How I experimented to make weekly meal planning work well for our family.