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.

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.

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.

A quick guide on how to set the GPU-accelerated Ghostty terminal as the default on Ubuntu 26.04 using the new configuration method.

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 t…

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.

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.

Learn how to squash Docker images using Buildx to create smaller, more efficient images by consolidating layers.

Responding in anger undermines leadership.

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.

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.

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.

Discover why traditional motivation techniques can backfire in tech teams and how leaders can foster intrinsic motivation through autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

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.

Learn how to automatically share your latest blog posts to Mastodon, Twitter/X, and other social networks using GitHub Actions and the crosspost tool.

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.

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.

Learn how to automatically delete old Cloudflare Pages deployments using a Bash script and the Cloudflare API.

Discover the most influential management and productivity “laws”-from Murphy’s Law to Conway’s Law-that shape decision-making, leadership, and organizational behavior.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Learn how to recover data from a failing NVMe drive using ddrescue on Linux.

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 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.

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…

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.

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.

Why even consider templating Dockerfiles?