Tom Elliott
@telliott.me
Building @ocuroot.com, open source, distributed CI/CD with no YAML! Posts bi-weekly on https://thefridaydeploy.substack.com/, occasional public speaker.
Someone had too much fun
December 31, 2025 at 2:49 AM
Someone had too much fun
Started on a just-for-fun project yesterday. Rendering all the buildings in NYC in 3D.
opendata.cityofnewyork.us has a ton of great data sets, including this building data!
Learned a ton about optimizing scenes. Had to get creative with reusing and grouping meshes.
#buildinpublic
opendata.cityofnewyork.us has a ton of great data sets, including this building data!
Learned a ton about optimizing scenes. Had to get creative with reusing and grouping meshes.
#buildinpublic
December 29, 2025 at 4:42 PM
Started on a just-for-fun project yesterday. Rendering all the buildings in NYC in 3D.
opendata.cityofnewyork.us has a ton of great data sets, including this building data!
Learned a ton about optimizing scenes. Had to get creative with reusing and grouping meshes.
#buildinpublic
opendata.cityofnewyork.us has a ton of great data sets, including this building data!
Learned a ton about optimizing scenes. Had to get creative with reusing and grouping meshes.
#buildinpublic
Squirrel footprints on the scaffold! Magical.
December 27, 2025 at 7:49 PM
Squirrel footprints on the scaffold! Magical.
Reposted by Tom Elliott
This take is a bit outdated now. At its core it is still true, but lots has happened to improve LLMs as fact-retrieval tools, and I think they’re generally very good at it provided you, the operator, have your head screwed on and do the work to verify.
December 27, 2025 at 10:17 AM
This take is a bit outdated now. At its core it is still true, but lots has happened to improve LLMs as fact-retrieval tools, and I think they’re generally very good at it provided you, the operator, have your head screwed on and do the work to verify.
The more I watch The Traitors, the more Alan Cumming sounds like Moira Rose.
December 27, 2025 at 1:31 AM
The more I watch The Traitors, the more Alan Cumming sounds like Moira Rose.
If you're a typical Git user, you may not have heard much about Git trees. They're a key part of plumbing, but don't often show up to the end user.
So here's my overview. Don't worry, this particular tree won't leave pine needles all over your carpet!
open.substack.com/pub/thefrida...
So here's my overview. Don't worry, this particular tree won't leave pine needles all over your carpet!
open.substack.com/pub/thefrida...
Looking below the surface of Git - what the heck is a tree?
You may or may not have heard about trees in Git, but you've definitely worked with them! This post provides an overview of what trees are, how they fit together and walks through an example.
open.substack.com
December 26, 2025 at 3:15 PM
If you're a typical Git user, you may not have heard much about Git trees. They're a key part of plumbing, but don't often show up to the end user.
So here's my overview. Don't worry, this particular tree won't leave pine needles all over your carpet!
open.substack.com/pub/thefrida...
So here's my overview. Don't worry, this particular tree won't leave pine needles all over your carpet!
open.substack.com/pub/thefrida...
Low budget horror movie concept: haunted cootie catcher
December 26, 2025 at 3:49 AM
Low budget horror movie concept: haunted cootie catcher
Watching “The Holiday” with my wife. We put it on as background but forgot how much we enjoyed it. Now gripped. Cooking can wait.
December 25, 2025 at 7:20 PM
Watching “The Holiday” with my wife. We put it on as background but forgot how much we enjoyed it. Now gripped. Cooking can wait.
My bones are so brittle, but I always drink plenty of…
December 24, 2025 at 6:42 PM
My bones are so brittle, but I always drink plenty of…
Given chocolate drinks weren’t sweetened until the 16th century, Judy must have spent 800 years making some bitter-ass cocoa.
December 24, 2025 at 12:33 AM
Given chocolate drinks weren’t sweetened until the 16th century, Judy must have spent 800 years making some bitter-ass cocoa.
Reposted by Tom Elliott
Good grief this might be the most beautiful video I’ve ever watched. You’ll need to have some idea of how LLMs work internally to follow along, but the findings of the papers presented in this video are incredible.
youtu.be/D8GOeCFFby4?...
youtu.be/D8GOeCFFby4?...
The most complex model we actually understand
YouTube video by Welch Labs
youtu.be
December 20, 2025 at 6:00 PM
Good grief this might be the most beautiful video I’ve ever watched. You’ll need to have some idea of how LLMs work internally to follow along, but the findings of the papers presented in this video are incredible.
youtu.be/D8GOeCFFby4?...
youtu.be/D8GOeCFFby4?...
Hear me out: Mobile Zoot Suit Gundam
December 20, 2025 at 4:33 PM
Hear me out: Mobile Zoot Suit Gundam
Can you use Git as storage for a REST API? Over the past few weeks I've managed to get something that works and is even kind of performant. This week I've been trying to handle concurrent requests. Let's see how well it fares when things are busy!
open.substack.com/pub/thefrida...
open.substack.com/pub/thefrida...
Can Git back a REST API? (part 3 - concurrency)
Now the Git-backed REST API is a bit more performant, I focus on what happens when you have multiple users at once.
open.substack.com
December 19, 2025 at 3:15 PM
Can you use Git as storage for a REST API? Over the past few weeks I've managed to get something that works and is even kind of performant. This week I've been trying to handle concurrent requests. Let's see how well it fares when things are busy!
open.substack.com/pub/thefrida...
open.substack.com/pub/thefrida...
GitHub announced they're going to charge for self-hosted runners. I can see the why, given they still run the control plane. There's still benefit to self-hosting if you have larger runners, but with the other price cut, it's potentially a big change for some.
resources.github.com/actions/2026...
resources.github.com/actions/2026...
Pricing changes for GitHub Actions
GitHub Actions pricing update: Discover lower runner rates (up to 39% off) following a major re-architecture for faster, more reliable CI/CD.
resources.github.com
December 16, 2025 at 6:10 PM
GitHub announced they're going to charge for self-hosted runners. I can see the why, given they still run the control plane. There's still benefit to self-hosting if you have larger runners, but with the other price cut, it's potentially a big change for some.
resources.github.com/actions/2026...
resources.github.com/actions/2026...
Part 2 of my attempts to back a REST API with a GitHub repo. After seeing painfully slow performance with the CLI, I went a little lower-level and started messing with the server protocols directly. The results were surprising, in the best way!
open.substack.com/pub/thefrida...
open.substack.com/pub/thefrida...
Can Git back a REST API? (Part 2 - git protocols)
Running a REST API off of the Git CLI tool was slow to say the least. Can I make the API a little faster by interacting with the Git server more directly?
open.substack.com
December 12, 2025 at 3:22 PM
Part 2 of my attempts to back a REST API with a GitHub repo. After seeing painfully slow performance with the CLI, I went a little lower-level and started messing with the server protocols directly. The results were surprising, in the best way!
open.substack.com/pub/thefrida...
open.substack.com/pub/thefrida...
Git is great for storing code, and maybe the occasional image or two. It also makes it easy for teams to collaborate and deal with fine-grained changes. But could it be used as a more arbitrary data store?
open.substack.com/pub/thefrida...
open.substack.com/pub/thefrida...
Can Git back a REST API? (Part 1 - the naive approach)
Git is basically a fancy file store with history, so can it be applied to use cases other than source control? Come with me as I try to repurpose Git into a backing store for a simple REST API
open.substack.com
December 5, 2025 at 3:15 PM
Git is great for storing code, and maybe the occasional image or two. It also makes it easy for teams to collaborate and deal with fine-grained changes. But could it be used as a more arbitrary data store?
open.substack.com/pub/thefrida...
open.substack.com/pub/thefrida...
How did a terrible movie like “The One” end up with a sound track including “Down with the Sickness”, “Bodies” and “Last Resort”?
Incidentally watching in 2001 it was the first time I heard at least one of them.
Incidentally watching in 2001 it was the first time I heard at least one of them.
December 4, 2025 at 4:34 AM
How did a terrible movie like “The One” end up with a sound track including “Down with the Sickness”, “Bodies” and “Last Resort”?
Incidentally watching in 2001 it was the first time I heard at least one of them.
Incidentally watching in 2001 it was the first time I heard at least one of them.
"AI slop", "slop bowls" and now I'm seeing "slop" used as a generic description for a not good thing. We've reached peak slop slop.
December 3, 2025 at 3:54 PM
"AI slop", "slop bowls" and now I'm seeing "slop" used as a generic description for a not good thing. We've reached peak slop slop.
Now we're past the extra-long weekend, getting down to a fun little side project with Git. More updates tomorrow.
#openstandup #buildinpublic
#openstandup #buildinpublic
December 1, 2025 at 3:34 PM
Now we're past the extra-long weekend, getting down to a fun little side project with Git. More updates tomorrow.
#openstandup #buildinpublic
#openstandup #buildinpublic
When working with IaC platforms, there's usually some infra you need to configure to get them working. With Terraform, you need somewhere to keep your state, for example. How do you configure this infra? Are you stuck doing it manually, or could you automate it?
www.ocuroot.com/blog/iac-boo...
www.ocuroot.com/blog/iac-boo...
Blog | Navigating the IaC Bootstrap Problem
When working with IaC platforms, there's usually some infra you need to configure to get them working. With Terraform, you need somewhere to keep your state, for example. How do you configure this…
www.ocuroot.com
November 27, 2025 at 3:02 PM
When working with IaC platforms, there's usually some infra you need to configure to get them working. With Terraform, you need somewhere to keep your state, for example. How do you configure this infra? Are you stuck doing it manually, or could you automate it?
www.ocuroot.com/blog/iac-boo...
www.ocuroot.com/blog/iac-boo...
Watching some older sci-fi movies. Is the main character getting drunk/high and watching home movies while acting out their side a common trope or did Minority Report just rip off Timecop?
November 25, 2025 at 8:25 PM
Watching some older sci-fi movies. Is the main character getting drunk/high and watching home movies while acting out their side a common trope or did Minority Report just rip off Timecop?
Some thoughts on the recent run of internet-breaking cloud provider outages. Are they symptoms of a change in the industry at large, or just a run of bad luck?
open.substack.com/pub/thefrida...
open.substack.com/pub/thefrida...
What's with all these cloud outages?
Some thoughts on the recent run of internet-breaking cloud provider outages. Are they symptoms of a change in the industry at large, or just a run of bad luck?
open.substack.com
November 21, 2025 at 3:15 PM
Some thoughts on the recent run of internet-breaking cloud provider outages. Are they symptoms of a change in the industry at large, or just a run of bad luck?
open.substack.com/pub/thefrida...
open.substack.com/pub/thefrida...
Breakthrough! Addressed most of the bugs and got all the end-to-end tests passing...most of the time. Just a little flaky error handling to deal with.
#openstandup #buildinpublic
#openstandup #buildinpublic
November 20, 2025 at 4:05 PM
Breakthrough! Addressed most of the bugs and got all the end-to-end tests passing...most of the time. Just a little flaky error handling to deal with.
#openstandup #buildinpublic
#openstandup #buildinpublic
Bit of a bug whack-a-mole yesterday with concurrent Git interactions. Feels like I'm close, but imagine I'll uncover a few more shortly 😅
#openstandup #buildinpublic
#openstandup #buildinpublic
November 19, 2025 at 4:02 PM
Bit of a bug whack-a-mole yesterday with concurrent Git interactions. Feels like I'm close, but imagine I'll uncover a few more shortly 😅
#openstandup #buildinpublic
#openstandup #buildinpublic
All across the land, teams fiercely debated the pros and cons of bypassing a CDN. Calculating bandwidth, weighing the chance of a DDoS. Then Cloudflare came back up and it was all moot. They'd also forgot that they're using Workers pretty heavily.
November 18, 2025 at 3:33 PM
All across the land, teams fiercely debated the pros and cons of bypassing a CDN. Calculating bandwidth, weighing the chance of a DDoS. Then Cloudflare came back up and it was all moot. They'd also forgot that they're using Workers pretty heavily.