DWF’s Journal

My experience with chat-based AI code generation in 2025 was…fine.

I didn’t understand why one of the hiring managers on my staff had turned down the candidate.

After a few months of pushing container images to my home grown registry, I was noticing that my server was filling up.

When last we left our intrepid heroes, the final couple of steps of the Rails app deployment to a Synology NAS were still manual.

“You think that Pat Gelsinger looks like Wayne Gretzky?!!”

I’m always looking for feedback about these posts.

Test-Driving HTML Templates - Martin Fowler tooted about this article which shares a model for writing HTML rendering tests, including examples in Go and Java.

Codex Updates A couple of updates on the Agility Resources/Practices page: I can confirm that Broadcom dropping their Miro subscription has not affected the Tanzu/Pivotal Labs contributions to the Miroverse.

I was “off” last week as I was at RailsConf 2024 in Detroit with several hundred other Rubyists on Rails.

Editor’s Note: I’m going to be in Detroit at RailsConf the week of May 6th.

Now that we have a local container registry running on the Synology NAS, how do we use it?

2024.09.25 UPDATE This article is superseded by Part VI, which starts up a registry and UI for that registry.

Welcome to week 2!

First, this is a newsletter experiment.

UPDATE: Some folks have started StoryTime, a forum to talk about the transition away from Pivotal Tracker.

This is part II.

Following my last post, I was ready to deploy an early version of my Meal Planning/Recording Rails app.

It was time to move my Meal Planning app from AirTable to a custom application.

For your weekend podcast listening pleasure - I was the guest on Radio Free XP this week1.

This article is a spiritual Part II to the post The Team is the Agent of Work.

Once, a VP walked into my boss’s office and said that I needed to be fired.

I spent the better part of 18 months getting really good at using Obsidian.

The first time I was on a modern Release Engineering team, I was skeptical.

Some years ago, during a particularly complex client engagement, we got thrown a curveball.

I continued to trim around the ears of this blog since last week.

I spent the summer of 1990 in Europe, mostly in Leicester, England, taking classes at what is now DeMontfort University.

I thought some would be interested in my blog “refresh” story.

Way back in 2013 I got a last minute request from Sarah Mei for a 10 minute talk during the Golden Gate Ruby Conference’s “Story time.”

Kent Beck’s “3X” model is an interesting way to think about software work over the life of a product.

I wrote this originally in 2013, and it’s been hosted on the Pivotal Labs, then Pivotal Software, and now VMware Tanzu blog ever since.

I wrote an article a few months ago about how I was using Obsidian to take copious notes during my job search.

I stepped in it (again) on Dev Twitter, jumping into a discussion about management on agile teams.

The internet had a bit of a buzz about Nat Bennett’s thoughtful post on their pairing experience.

My friends have been great about asking me how my current job search is going.

When I was a big nvALT user, I got very used to a specific set of actions whenever I needed to take notes on something I would… Cmd-Tab over to nvALT Cmd-L to get to the search bar Type the thing on my mind Scan the search results Choose a note Edit/Append

Whenever someone asks me about the bigpencil.net domain, I get to tell this story.

I have several regular meetings with a handful of people.

Obsidian’s URL scheme is fabulous.

While I’m still learning how to use Obsidian, I find the Command Palette amazing.

This plug-in works with the Daily Notes plug-in.

I keep nearly all of my notes in one Obsidian vault.

I am not a huge tag user.

For internal links, I use the [[wiki links]] style.

I enabled the Core plugin for Templates.

I use the Core Daily Journal plugin every day.

What are the signs that your software product team has experienced a big issue during development?

You have read The CD Test and it resonates with you.

From the “Can you pronounce my name” game/meme from Twitter early fall, 2020.

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.

Originally published as a tweetstorm, I expanded this one a little to make it more blog-worthy.