Self-Hosting Your Own Cloud – Part 8: Monitoring Your Internet Traffic with ntopng

Recently, I discovered that a family member’s device on my home network had been DNS-hijacked. This was only brought to my attention because some sites on that machine were resolving to fraudulent servers. This made me concerned about what the other devices on my network may be up to. I decided to do some research […]

Business Development in a Coronavirus World

The focus of my work over the past few months has been business development. Our company is growing into a new geography, and it’s my responsibility to ensure that our team there will have work to do. That’s no small challenge, even in a world without coronavirus. But once the virus hit here in the […]

A Guide to Surviving Burnout, Part 1 – Learn to Identify Burnout

As an infinitely curious person with a (sometimes not) healthy dose of perfectionism, I often find myself taking on a bit too much. This eventually leads to a feeling of burnout. Over the years, I’ve learned that I’m not alone. In fact, in a recent Gallup study, 44% of people reported feeling burned out sometimes. […]

Abstraction Laddering – An Easy, Effective Problem Framing Exercise

Atomic helps clients solve all sorts of business problems with custom software. Unfortunately, most clients don’t know how to describe their problems in a useful way. They usually just list symptoms instead of getting to the root cause. These conversations remind me of a quote from Gino Wickman: When addressing issues, leadership teams spend most […]

6 Steps to Getting Started in Indie Game Development

There are more tools and resources available for indie game development than ever before. This means that indie game developers can create games that wouldn’t have been possible even a decade ago, but it can also make it very overwhelming to get started. To set you on the right path, I’ll share the process that’s […]

Creating More Palatable Color Palettes in Redash

I love using Redash to create and automate SQL queries that generate reports. Its dashboard feature lets me automate many of the reports I used to create manually in Numbers and Google Sheets. Redash saves me dozens of hours a year, and it lets me get real-time access to the data I need most. Instead […]

How I Learned to Stop Approaching Conversations as Contests

Earlier this year, I had a profound experience at a Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute (SIYLI) event hosted by the Center for Positive Organizations. SIYLI’s programs teach neuroscience-backed techniques for practical mindfulness and emotional intelligence. Over two days, I participated in dozens of immersive activities geared toward learning in these domains. The whole experience was […]

Developing from Home? Don’t Be Afraid to Ask Questions

I was recently given an Agile story that required me to set up the capability for database integration testing. I didn’t have much experience in setting up database connections and was feeling like I was in over my head. I was also still getting used to the extra effort it takes to communicate when you’re working […]

For More Effective Decision Making, First Align on Underlying Principles

Most team decisions involve a number of reasonable choices, each involving tradeoffs. If you’ve been thinking about a problem for some time, the underlying tradeoffs may be quite clear to you, and the best choice may seem obvious. So it can be a surprise when you present the options to your team but find the […]

Six Ways to Improve Your Listening Skills & Become a Great Consultant

If there’s one critical consulting skill that’s often overlooked, it’s listening. I’m talking about real active listening — hearing what the client is saying. Many consultants focus on impressing clients with the depth of their knowledge. They get so engrossed with their own knowledge, they don’t even realize that all they hear is their own […]

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