https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/Recent content in Posts on johnmcostaiii.comHugo -- gohugo.ioen-usTue, 30 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2025-12-30-mythical-man-month/Tue, 30 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2025-12-30-mythical-man-month/Overview This post contains my notes on the book Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow by Matthew Skelton, Manuel Pais, and Ruth Malan. You can find the book on Amazon I’ll be adding my notes to this post as I read through the book. The notes will be organized by chapter and will include key concepts, code examples, and any additional insights I find useful. Chapter 1: The Tar Pit Programming Systems Producthttps://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2025-12-19-team-topologies/Fri, 19 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2025-12-19-team-topologies/Overview This post contains my notes on the book Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow by Matthew Skelton, Manuel Pais, and Ruth Malan. You can find the book on Amazon I’ll be adding my notes to this post as I read through the book. The notes will be organized by chapter and will include key concepts, code examples, and any additional insights I find useful. Chapter 1: The problem with org charts Overview:https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2025-08-10-chatgpt-mindmap/Sun, 10 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2025-08-10-chatgpt-mindmap/Overview I recently came across a couple of posts on LinkedIn12 that got me thinking about how I can use GPT to better understand my cognitive, emotional, and relational architecture. The post discusses how GPT can be used to create a mind map of your life, which can help you identify patterns and connections in your thoughts and feelings. I decided to give it a try and see what I could come up with.https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2025-08-09-hands-on-llms/Sat, 09 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2025-08-09-hands-on-llms/Overview This post contains my notes on the book *Hands-On Large Language Models: Language Understanding and Generation. You can find the book on Amazon I’ll be adding my notes to this post as I read through the book. The notes will be organized by chapter and will include key concepts, code examples, and any additional insights I find useful. Chapter 1: An Introduction to Large Language Models Chapter 1 introduces the reader to the recent history of Large Language Models (LLMs).https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2025-08-17-in-this-economy/Sat, 09 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2025-08-17-in-this-economy/Overview This post contains my notes on the book In this Economy? How money & Markes Really Work. You can find the book on Amazon I’ll be adding my notes to this post as I read through the book. The notes will be organized by chapter and will include key concepts, code examples, and any additional insights I find useful. Chapter 1: The Economic Kingdom Chapter 1 introduces the concept of the “Economic Kingdom,” which is a framework for understanding how money and markets operate in our society.https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2025-08-07-ai-ml-learning/Thu, 07 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2025-08-07-ai-ml-learning/Overview This post contains my notes on the book AI and Machine Learning for Coders - A Programmer’s Guide to Artificial Intelligence by Laurence Moroney[^1]. The book is a practical guide to building AI and machine learning applications using TensorFlow and Keras. It covers the basics of machine learning, deep learning, and neural networks, and provides hands-on examples of how to build and deploy AI applications. You can find the book on Amazonhttps://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2024-06-16-pragmatism-in-software-development/Sun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2024-06-16-pragmatism-in-software-development/Overview This post discusses pragmatism as a tool in Software Development. I consider myself to be pragmatic in my approach to software engineering, and wanted to explore the concept a little more. What is pragmatism? Pragmatism1 is a philosophical tradition that began in the United States around 1870. It is a way of thinking that focuses on the practical consequences of actions rather than on abstract principles. Pragmatists believe that the truth of an idea is determined by its usefulness in solving real-world problems.https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2024-03-21-how-to-rfc/Thu, 21 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2024-03-21-how-to-rfc/Overview There are a lot of positive benefits of being on a remote team. Finding ways to connect with your team and build relationships is important. One way to do this is to share your ideas and have discussions about various design topics. This is a great way to learn from your peers and to share your knowledge with them. It’s also a great way to build trust and a sense of community through the activity of writing and healthy discussion with your peers.https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2024-03-01-code-review/Fri, 01 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2024-03-01-code-review/Overview Code reviews are a critical part of the software development process. They help to ensure that the code is of high quality, that it’s maintainable, and that it’s secure. They also help to ensure that the code is in line with the company’s goals and values. Code reviews are also a great way to learn from your peers and to share your knowledge with them. Knowledge Sharing The code review should be a learning opportunity for everyone involved, this could mean as part of the review or historically when looking back at motivations and decisions.https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2024-02-08-the-5x15/Thu, 08 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2024-02-08-the-5x15/Overview I’ve found this less in smaller companies, but sometimes in larger companies, colleagues will take credit for the work of others. This is a toxic behavior that can lead to a lack of trust and a lack of collaboration. It’s important to recognize the work of others and to give credit where credit is due. While this wouldn’t be the only reason for doing so, one of the solutions I’ve found to help erode the toxic behavior is to use 5x15 reports to advodacte for the work of one’s self, project, or team.https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2024-01-02-resource-list/Tue, 02 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2024-01-02-resource-list/Overview This is a quick post on resources that I’ve come across this (or prior) year or that has been recommended to me. Noting them here for my future self and possibly others. I’ll add more as the year goes on. Books Terraform Up and Running The Software Engineer’s Guidebook The Staff Engineer’s Path Becoming an Agile Software Architect The Manager’s Path Blogs https://www.ybrikman.com/ https://blog.gruntwork.io/ https://www.martinfowler.com/ https://paulhammant.com/ https://www.kitchensoap.com/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/ https://www.etsy.com/codeascraft http://highscalability.https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2023-11-26-kubernetes-on-digitalocean/Tue, 05 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2023-11-26-kubernetes-on-digitalocean/Overview Recently, I’ve been working on a project, a part of which is to deploy a Kubernetes cluster. I was hoping to document the process so that it could save some time for my future self and maybe others. This post is the first in a series of posts which will document the process I went through to get a Kubernetes cluster up and running. In addition to documenting the process, I’ll be creating a repository which will contain the code I used to create the cluster.https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2023-11-26-kubernetes-hosting/Sun, 26 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2023-11-26-kubernetes-hosting/Overview When looking for a hosting platform for Kubernetes, I wanted to find a platform which was easy to use, had a good developer experience, and that was cost-effective. Easy to use is somewhat subjective and certainly depends on familiarity with the platform, domain knowledge, and other factors. Therefor, I’ll try to be as objective as possible when evaluating the platforms looking at Developer Experience and Cost Effectiveness. For others, there could be other dimensions which are more important.https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2023-11-20-pre-commit-framework/Mon, 20 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2023-11-20-pre-commit-framework/Overview Pre-commit is a framework for managing and maintaining multi-language pre-commit hooks. It is a great tool for ensuring consistency across a set of projects or a team. Not only can it help with consistency, but it can also help with formatting by automatically formatting files before they are committed. What is a git hook? Git hooks are scripts12 that run before or after certain git commands. They are stored in the .https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2023-11-18-my-coachee-checklist/Sat, 18 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2023-11-18-my-coachee-checklist/Overview After reading One Bold Move a Day I decided to create a checklist for my coaching interactions. This includes being coached as well as a template for those I plan to coach. This checklist is a work in progress and will be updated as I learn more about coaching and leadership. The 5x15 Weekly Update 12 Something I’ve been doing for a while now has been to provide a weekly update to my manager.https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2023-11-18-scaling-github-actions/Sat, 18 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2023-11-18-scaling-github-actions/Overview Platform engineering has become increasingly more popular in recent years. The idea of a platform team is to provide a set of tools and services that enable other teams to build and deploy their applications, ideally at scale. This allows teams to focus on their core competencies and not have to worry about the underlying infrastructure. There’s plenty of great resources out there that go into detail about what a platform team is and how to build one.https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2023-11-12-one-bold-move-a-day-meaningful-actions/Sun, 12 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2023-11-12-one-bold-move-a-day-meaningful-actions/Summary Hocking’s introduction starts with “Who do you want to become?”1. She reflects on where her journey started and how she got to where she is today. What really resonated to me was that she looked for someone to show her how to advance in her career, develop as a leader, and grow as a person. She goes on to explain how mindsets shifts will play a role in the process of showing up for yourself and others.https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2023-11-11-how-do-i-setup-multi-domain-github-pages/Sat, 11 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2023-11-11-how-do-i-setup-multi-domain-github-pages/Credit goes to this Stack Overflow answer, but note, not the accepted answer it’s the one currently below. Create an extra repository for your domain. I used the name of the domain as the repository name. See https://GitHub.com/johncosta/johnmcostaiii.net. Create an index.html file in the root of the project. <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <title>Redirecting to https://johnmcostaiii.com</title> <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; URL=https://johnmcostaiii.com"> </head> <link rel="canonical" href="https://johnmcostaiii.com"> </html> Create a CNAME file in the root of the project.https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2023-11-10-new-blog-hosting/Fri, 10 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2023-11-10-new-blog-hosting/It was recently suggested by a mentor that I get back into blogging. I’ll create an entry dedicated on this topic, but the byproduct of this discussion inspired me to resurface and re-host the blog I had started over 10 years ago. Choosing the Static Site Generator Given I already had some content formatted in Markdown and the old site which used a version of Hugo, I didn’t really spend a significant amount of time re-considering a static site to drive it.https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2014-02-21-installing-newrelic-server-monitoring-within-docker-containers/Fri, 21 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2014-02-21-installing-newrelic-server-monitoring-within-docker-containers/The inspiration for this post is from a recent Stack Overflow question that I had answered when I had found the selected answer could be improved upon. You can find it here. I ran into a problem recently when working with Docker and New Relic Server Monitoring together. Using the directions found in the New Relic docs for Ubuntu/Debian, the Dockerfile additions I first came up with looked as follows:https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2013-04-21-django-projects-to-django-apps-converting-the-unit-tests/Sun, 21 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2013-04-21-django-projects-to-django-apps-converting-the-unit-tests/Recently I went through a process of breaking a large django project into smaller installable applications. Each smaller component could be reused from within any number of django projects, but wasn’t a django project itself. One of the issues I encountered was “What do I do with the unit tests?” Using the standard ./manage.py test no longer worked for me because my settings where in the master project. I had heard of py.https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2013-04-07-installing-redis-on-docker/Sun, 07 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2013-04-07-installing-redis-on-docker/I’m currently employed by dotCloud and had an opportunity to play around with our open sourced linux container runtime project called Docker. You’ll need to have an functional version of docker to follow these steps. I’ve included an overview of my notes for installation, however you can find additional installation instructions at the docker website. Introduction to Docker If you’ve already worked with docker, you can skip this part. You already have docker installed and probably are running your own containers.https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2013-02-20-django-view-decorators/Wed, 20 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2013-02-20-django-view-decorators/I recently worked on a project that required a standard account and profile system. django-userena is usually my goto project for this due to its ease of setting up and its extensibility. There’s a subtle nuance to using this project’s default urls patterns in that the majority of the url patterns require passing the user’s username in the url. The username is then used in the view to find the user, since usernames are unique to the user.https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2013-02-10-converting-my-blog-to-octopress/Sun, 10 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2013-02-10-converting-my-blog-to-octopress/Recently I started looking into migrating my blog to something that would be a little easier to maintain. My Django powered blog was nice, but there where a lot of moving parts and required a lot of resource overhead (apache, mysql, django, etc…). I enjoy exploring new technologies so I started looking into static site generators. What I was looking for: Easy to use and learn Straightforward development to live process Somewhat customizable A quick google search for static site generators pulls up quite a few.https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2012-07-16-how-do-you-document-code/Mon, 16 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2012-07-16-how-do-you-document-code/Its tough to talk about documentation: Can seem overly judgmental Boring. We already know how to do it We never have time to do it Why choose a sprint on ReadTheDocs and documentation? I want to learn best documentation practice (or really just better practice) Explore how to make it easier Overview: Consider why we document Consider where we put that documentation Introduce team to `Sphinx `_ Introduce team to `reStructuredText `_ Introduce team to `CashStar's ReadTheDocs Server `_ Why do you document code It's a simple question.https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2012-05-01-configuring-internal-readthedocs/Tue, 01 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2012-05-01-configuring-internal-readthedocs/Project Overview ReadTheDocs application to serve project documentation Simple and Straightforward, minimal overhead Modified to point to our domain, not readthedocs Restricted Public Access Technology Overview ReadTheDocs comes with the following technology stack: Varnish Nginx gunicorn postgres python/django solr (haystack search) Chef In an effort to align with some of the technologies I have some experience with, I modified the technology stack slightly, its now as follows: * supervisor * gunicorn * memcached * nginx * python/django * mysql * whoosh (haystack search) * fabric Key Functionality Overview Built and versioned documentation (http://50.https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2012-04-12-my-notes-uploading-pypi/Thu, 12 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2012-04-12-my-notes-uploading-pypi/These are my notes for uploading to Pypi. Additionally, I've included some useful links that provide a lot of background. http://diveintopython3.ep.io/packaging.html http://wiki.python.org/moin/CheeseShopTutorial http://packages.python.org/an_example_pypi_project/setuptools.html Register at PyPI You can do so here: Register at PyPI create a .pypirc file in your home directory vi .pypirc [distutils] index-servers = pypi [pypi] username: < username > password: < password > </pre> </li> <li><p>upload your package to PyPI</p> <pre> cd < package root > python setup.https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2012-04-12-new-relics-python-app-public-beta/Tue, 13 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2012-04-12-new-relics-python-app-public-beta/I recently made the trek to Portland, OR for #djangocon. Demo'd there was New Relic's Real-Time Performance tool, complete with a new implementation for Python apps! This seemed like some fantastic software, but I was skeptical as to how easy it would be to install. As an experiment, I used their public beta invite on this blog. I'd like to first point out, that the documentation to configure the the app was excellent and abundant.https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2011-09-09-my-experience-python-gnupg/Fri, 09 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2011-09-09-my-experience-python-gnupg/I was working though some usage of python-gnupg with a co-worker and, in the hope of helping out others (or my future self), am posting my shell and bpython notes here. As time permits, I'll clean up the notes. I've broken out my notes into 4 parts: Manual Key Creation Sample File Creation Checking your keys & Writing your file Validating that it works Manual Key Creation I created some keys manually with gpg so that I would have a baseline to work with.https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2012-04-12-removing-mysql-osx-lion/Sun, 28 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2012-04-12-removing-mysql-osx-lion/Recently I’ve had to remove a version of MySQL 5.5 from my Macbook so that I could go back to a 5.1 version. However it appears that there isn’t an automatic way to remove and install an older version. A few google searches revealed a bulk of the removal process, but additional searching revealed a few more steps. sudo rm /usr/local/mysql sudo rm -rf /usr/local/mysql* sudo rm -rf /Library/StartupItems/MySQLCOM sudo rm -rf /Library/PreferencePanes/My* rm -rf ~/Library/PreferencePanes/My* sudo rm -rf /Library/Receipts/mysql* sudo rm -rf /Library/Receipts/MySQL* sudo rm -rf /var/db/receipts/com.https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2011-08-08-migrating-mercurial-repository/Mon, 08 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2011-08-08-migrating-mercurial-repository/When I first started playing with Python and Django, I was introduced to Mercurial. I had used Subversion for a while and once familiar with Mercurial, there was no going back (well...when I had the choice ;-) ). I've posted before that I use WebFaction as a host for my personal projects. This hosting also included setting up my own Hg server. I was happy, until Ken Cochrane turned me on to BitBucket.https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2011-07-17-django-deployment-webfaction/Sun, 17 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2011-07-17-django-deployment-webfaction/Recently I deployed a django application to WebFaction (this blog!). While this wasn't the first app I've deployed there, I did forget a few steps along the way which required a bit of research and experimentation on my part. To avoid this in the future, I've documented the steps I took to deploy the app here. I'm going to assume that you have a django app working for you locally. If you don't have one, feel free to use this sample project available for download in bitbucket.https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2011-07-17-django-sitemap-module-object-has-no-attribute-valu/Sun, 17 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2011-07-17-django-sitemap-module-object-has-no-attribute-valu/I ran into an issue trying to generate a sitemap.xml file with Django’s built-in sitemap view. After reading the documentation over a few times I still received the error: Django sitemap: 'module' object has no attribute 'values' For some reason, it wasn't obvious to me what the confusion was, but clearly others have encountered the issue as well. A quick google search turned up a question on StackOverflow. User KuB had asked a question which looked very similar to the one I had just experienced.https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2011-07-13-django-powered-blog/Wed, 13 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2011-07-13-django-powered-blog/I’m moved my blog from a canned wordpress site, to this new django powered blog. I’ve forked Josh VanderLinden’s django-articles to a private repo in BitBucket for personal development and married it with this free skin from FreeHtml5Templates.https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2011-07-13-work-progress/Wed, 13 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://johnmcostaiii.com/posts/2011-07-13-work-progress/Please bear with me as I work on site functionality. Thanks!