Posts

Wine craft

2024 harvest season in Alsace
Philip I. Thomas Philip I. Thomas
Rainbow in Colmar, France

Earlier this month, I traveled to the Alsace wine region of France to explore the craft of wine. Their harvest season had just officially kicked off, so winemakers were beginning to pick grades and produce their 2024 vintage.

I love finding people that focus on mastery of one skill. Winemaking is one of the classic crafts, and the Alsace region is a historic region filled with tradition. Many of the winemakers came from a multi-generational lineage of producers.

Even amid the tradition and rules, I saw innovation. In a region known for its white wines, four producers had successfully lobbied for the government to award grand cru designations to their Pinot Noir wines. I visited some of these producers and felt their renewed sense of autonomy.

I brought a DJI Pocket 3 camera to document the visit and turned my footage into a little video about a day in Alsace. Take a look:

Watch the video on Youtube.

How I use data to optimize AI apps

A video collaboration between Find AI and Velvet
Philip I. Thomas Philip I. Thomas
Flower shop in Paris

At Find AI, we use OpenAI a lot. Last week, we made 19 million requests.

Understanding what's happening at that scale can be challenging. It's a classic OODA loop:

  • Observe what our application is doing and which systems are triggering requests
  • Orient around what's happening, such as which models are the most costly in aggregate
  • Decide how to make the system more efficient, such as by testing a more efficient model or shorter prompt
  • Act by rolling out changes

Velvet, an AI Gateway, is the tool in our development stack that enables this observability and optimization loop. I worked with them this week to produce a video about how we use data to optimize our AI-powered apps at Find AI.

The video covers observability tools in development, cost attribution, using the OpenAI Batch API, evaluating new models, and fine-tuning. I hope it's a useful resource for people running AI models in production.

Watch the video on the Velvet Youtube.

Is fractional work the future?

A conversation with Taylor Crane
Philip I. Thomas Philip I. Thomas
Soho House Copenhagen

Today, I'm sharing a conversation with Taylor Crane, founder of FractionalJobs.io. Fractional work, loosely defined as "ongoing part-time engagements," has been a growing trend in the technology industry.

The label "fractional work" is relatively new, but I've been interested in part-time work for years. In 2016, I built Staffjoy using part-time contractors. In 2017, I founded Moonlight to help companies hire part-time contractors. Last year, I launched the FRCTNL community for part-time tech workers. Today, my current company, Find AI, has an official fractional work program and works with five fractionals.

In this conversation, Taylor and I discuss:

  • Why companies hire part-time workers
  • What fractional workers do with the rest of their time
  • Productivity and whether 40 hour/week employment applies to knowledge work
  • Whether junior workers should pursue part-time work
  • How tech companies may structure themselves in the future to take advantage of fractional workers

Watch on Youtube. Listen to a recording of this conversation on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or other podcast players.

How to self-publish a programming book

Ayush Newatia shares his journey of making the Rails and Hotwire Codex
Philip I. Thomas Philip I. Thomas
Buckingham Palace, as viewed from its gardens.

Today I'm excited to share a conversation with Ayush Newatia, author of the Rails and Hotwire Codex.  He describes the project as “the most challenging and rewarding professional work I’ve ever done.”

I bought his book a couple of years ago to help me learn more about building full-stack applications with the Ruby on Rails and Hotwire frameworks. It bridges the gap between beginner-level tutorials and building Rails applications in a professional setting.

Ayush and I met in London last week to collaborate on some work with Find AI, so I thought it would be fun to record a chat about how and why he published this tome about full-stack development with Ruby and Rails.

We cover:

  • How he came from the iOS + Android mobile apps to Ruby on Rails
  • Why he decided to write a book unifying Rails + mobile apps
  • How he had never made a mobile app with Rails before starting a book on this topic
  • How he motivated himself to finish the book and get it shipped
  • Why writing is a superpower for programmers
  • The value of doing hard things without taking shortcuts
  • How doing hard things is the best way to stand out as a modern knowledge worker

Watch on Youtube. Listen to a recording of this conversation on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or other podcast players.