Recent content on Tom's Blog
Managing Humans Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager Author: Michael Lopp If you manage people, this book is worth reading. Rather than offering complete solutions, it presents the author’s gut feelings based on his experience with what works and what doesn’t. It’s written lightly, with plenty of humor and healthy doses of sarcasm that make it engaging…
Use Rosetta to run Terraform as x86_64 on Apple Silicon and avoid provider checksum mismatches.
Learn how to build impactful conference presentations by focusing on storytelling, narrative throughlines, and audience experience rather than just slides.
A quick guide on how to set the GPU-accelerated Ghostty terminal as the default on Ubuntu 26.04 using the new configuration method.
Team Topologies Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow Authors: Matthew Skelton, Manuel Pais Team Topologies is a must-read for anyone involved in building software at scale. It moves away from the “everyone should talk to everyone” fallacy and introduces a pragmatic, team-first approach to organizational design. By focusing on cognitive load and the flow of value,…
A story of how a team used “The Wall of Shame” to turn a bottlenecked PR review process into an engaging game.
Explore how to enable and use the x86-64-v3 optimized Ubuntu variant for better performance on modern hardware without sacrificing stability.
Prek is a Rust-based pre-commit alternative that maintains full config compatibility while delivering significantly faster hook execution.
2026 59 June 4 How to Setup a Local Coding Agent on macOS - Kyle Howells 2026-06-12 ai Docker Security Cheat Sheet 2026-06-11 security docker The original Website Carbon calculator 2026-06-05 fun Eyeball Game 2026-06-03 May 11 A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden 2026-05-22 digital-garen indieweb Blogroll - Elmar Klausmeier's Blog Auxiliary Pages 2026-05-21 blog osv.dev | An easy-to-use…
My journey of integrating IndieWeb principles into my Hugo blog-from microformats to Brid.gy syndication and building a custom Webmention renderer.
Radical Candor How to Get What You Want by Saying What You Mean Author: Kim Scott The general idea of the book is that great leadership means caring personally while challenging directly . When I started reading the book, I figured out it’s not that radical at all. It’s about feedback, mostly constructive: “Radical Candor” is about giving feedback that is both kind and…
Treating your personal website like a garden you tend continuously, not as a finished construction, but rather cultivated, authentic fragmented of web.
Learn how to disable the annoying pager for apt search results on Debian-based systems, and find the best permanent solution.
A developer’s journey of building a recursive descent parser in Go, from basic concepts to tackling left recursion with Packrat memoization.
Transmission on Ubuntu may be denied access to localized Downloads directories due to AppArmor profiles expecting English folder names. Here’s how to fix it.
Responding in anger undermines leadership. Learn how managing emotions leads to better decisions and healthier team dynamics.
Learn how to squash Docker images using Buildx to create smaller, more efficient images by consolidating layers.
Fix ZSH ‘illegal modifier’ errors with Git Conventional Commits by disabling the NO_BANG_HIST option.
Configure Windows to use UTC for the hardware clock when dual-booting with Linux, avoiding time synchronization issues and maintaining Linux defaults.
Snakes in Suits Understanding and Surviving the Psychopaths in Your Office Authors: Paul Babiak, Robert D. Hare I read the Polish translation titled “Psychopaci w pracy: Jak ich rozpoznać i jak sobie z nimi radzić” . Psychopaci w pracy Jak ich rozpoznać i jak sobie z nimi radzić
A detailed guide on shucking WD Elements 20TB drives, including testing, performance benchmarks, and stress testing.
A story of how I bought a digital photo frame, and how I created a tool to generate miniatures of my photo collection to fit them all on the device.
Reflections and practical tips from 20 years using Getting Things Done, plus a short workshop plan for leaders who want actionable routines.
Learn how to create beautiful slide decks with Markdown and Marp, a simple and powerful tool for presentations.
Learn how to run Google’s Gemini CLI in a Docker container to avoid installing Node.js and its dependencies directly on your system. This guide provides a simple setup, a recommended shell function for seamless integration, and usage examples.
Learn how to add an llms.txt file to your Hugo blog to make it more visible to AI agents and improve Generative Engine Optimization (GEO).
UNSCRIPTED Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Entrepreneurship Author: MJ DeMarco This book felt so similar to The 4-Hour Work Week that I experienced deja-vu several times while reading it. In the end, I didn’t finish it. The tone of UNSCRIPTED is lighter than Tim Ferriss’s book (or maybe I’ve just grown used to the occasional swearing), but it was probably just bad timing to start this one so…
Discover why traditional motivation techniques can backfire in tech teams and how leaders can foster intrinsic motivation through autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Learn actionable strategies to empower your team and boost engagement, based on insights from Daniel Pink’s “Drive.”
Escaping the Build Trap How Effective Product Management Creates Real Value Author: Melissa Perri This was the first book on Product Management I’ve ever read, and I’m glad I started with such a solid one. In my daily work, I collaborate closely with product owners, and I wanted to better understand their role: How do they work? What are their priorities? And how can our collaboration be more…
Learn how to automatically share your latest blog posts to Mastodon, Twitter/X, and other social networks using GitHub Actions and the crosspost tool. A simple way to regain traffic lost to search engines and AI.
This guide explains how to split a mono-repo into smaller repositories, keeping the git history for selected files.
Learn how to benchmark Docker registry performance using the Hyperfine CLI tool. A simple way to compare image pull speeds between registries like Artifactory, Harbor, Docker Hub, and Quay.
Practical guide to the Harvard Negotiation Model - the four principles of principled negotiation, how to use BATNA, responses to common hard-ball tactics, and actionable tips for reaching win‑win agreements in leadership and teams.
Learn how to run a Personal User Manual exercise with your team to boost connection, improve communication, and foster a positive team culture. Includes a ready-to-use template and practical tips for success.
Discover the most influential management and productivity “laws”-from Murphy’s Law to Conway’s Law-that shape decision-making, leadership, and organizational behavior. Learn practical applications and scientific backgrounds to boost your effectiveness at work.
Learn how to automatically delete old Cloudflare Pages deployments using a Bash script and the Cloudflare API. Keep your account clean and reduce clutter by removing outdated deployments.
The 4-hour work week Escape 9-5, live anywhere and join the new rich Author: Timothy Ferriss This book’s title feels like a joke at first, but once you start reading, you realize Ferriss is absolutely serious about it. He breaks things down step by step, challenging the default assumptions about work and life. He defines the “New Rich” as people who have rediscovered what being…
Antifragile Systems and Teams Author: Dave Zwieback This is a short read, but it does a solid job of capturing an important idea: that the healthiest systems and teams aren’t just resistant to change, they actually get stronger through it. Zwieback contrasts fragile organizations - those that try to lock things down and prevent every possible failure - with antifragile ones, which use volatility,…
Getting to Yes Negotiating an agreement without giving in Authors: Roger Fisher, William Ury, Bruce Patton I’ve often heard about the “Harvard Negotiation” method, but I hadn’t read Getting to Yes until recently. To my surprise, much of the content felt familiar - not because I had read it before, but because I had already been using many of its principles, unknowingly picked up from…
Learn how to resolve the “Hotkeys unavailable - Another app has enabled secure keyboard input” issue in iTerm2 on macOS Sequoia 15.5 by adjusting Input Monitoring settings.
Learn about the optimal UEFI BIOS settings for the Asus TUF Gaming Z790-Plus WIFI motherboard, including configurations for RAM, power management, virtualization, and more.
Jak w kilku krokach Odnaleźć Zespół Trochę inna opowieść o przywództwie zespołowym Author: Piotr Jankowski I really enjoyed this book, despite it’s not widely known or even available to buy, but I’ve been working with it’s author, Piotr. I was participating few sessions/trainings with Piotr and reading this book was for me like I’ve heard him again next to me.
Learn how to recover data from a failing NVMe drive using ddrescue on Linux. This guide covers step-by-step backup instructions, handling read errors, and restoring your files safely.
Psychologia szefa Szef to zawód Authors: Wojciech Haman, Jerzy Gut I’ve read many books about leadership, but none quite like this one. The first two chapters followed a familiar pattern-a brief introduction to a manager’s responsibilities followed by guidance on planning your approach. Then came the third chapter: Punishment! I was surprised the authors began with this topic rather…
The First Trading Manual Foundation Course and Strategies by Trader Tom Author: Tom Hougaard I read The First Trading Manual by Tom Hougaard in just a couple of days. Lately, I’ve been diving into high-frequency trading and exploring algorithmic trading, and this book provides the essential knowledge needed to start trading these instruments. While much of the content was familiar to me, I…
The Man Who Broke Capitalism How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America and How to Undo His Legacy Author: David Gelles David Gelles’ The Man Who Broke Capitalism resonated with me on multiple levels, as both an employee and an investor. Working in a company recently acquired by private equity funds, I see firsthand the same profit-maximizing tactics Jack Welch…
Learn how to resolve the “ata1.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED” error on Ubuntu by adjusting SATA power management settings.
Getting Started in Chart Patterns Author: Thomas N. Bulkowski Lately, I’ve been focused on improving my skills as an investor and trader. While the past year was one of my best, I still underperformed compared to the broader market-meaning I didn’t make the most of the opportunities available. Some of my biggest mistakes included failing to set stop losses after dividend payouts, only to…
Best Loser Wins Why Normal Thinking Never Wins the Trading Game - Written by a High-Stake Day Trader Author: Tom Hougaard Tom Hougaard’s “Best Loser Wins” offers a refreshingly honest look at the realities of trading. It’s not a traditional “how-to” guide packed with technical analysis or a magic formula for success. Instead, it’s an introspective journey of a trader,…
Why even consider templating Dockerfiles? Dockerfiles revolutionized the industry with their simplicity. Each instruction creates a new layer in the image, which is automatically cached. This process integrates well with SCM, where you “commit” the results of one stage and move forward with other changes. The process can be easily parameterized with ARG instructions, similar to ENV but…