Tom Dalling

Goblin Dot Business

Mon, 18 May 2026 00:00:00 -0000

Business Goblin (left) is a character created by friend and colleague Matthew Grey (right). Originally drawn for an internal presentation, he represents greedy unscrupulous businesses selling fake AI hype without the ability to follow through on their promises. After the presentation, Business Goblin took on a bit of a life of his own, appearing around the office as a life-sized coreflute cutout.

Recently, after a couple of Friday evening beers, a small group of collegues and I asked the question: what if you could email Business Goblin and he actually emailed you back? I happened to be looking for an LLM-related side project, and so 24 hours later https://goblin.business/ was up and running.

Send him an email and see what he has to say.

Feedback Is Literally A Gift

Sat, 15 Mar 2025 00:00:00 -0000

Feedback is a gift.

Some gifts are little treats for you to consume. Think of a box of chocolates. You enjoy them and then they’re gone, but you remember the thought that was put into them.

Sometimes gifts are utilitarian, like getting socks for Christmas. They are not the most exciting thing to receive, but you kind of need them as part of your normal day-to-day life, and you’ll get use out of them.

Context, Costs, and Benefits

Wed, 20 Jul 2022 00:00:00 -0000

When is “measure twice, cut once” bad advice?

One of my hobbies is complaining about the tendency of software developers to view choices as binary, moralistic decisions. Measuring twice is obviously correct, and anyone who doesn’t do it is an unprofessional, evil wood waster. Either that or double measurers are a bunch of know-nothing shysters selling snake oil for exorbitant consulting fees. This black-and-white thinking is a mental shortcut that many animals take, but sometimes it’s nice to apply a little more intellectual rigour than a Pomeranian.

I’d like us to think less in terms of right and wrong when it comes to technical decisions, and think more in terms of context, costs and benefits.

Bleeting For Fun And Profit

Sat, 31 Oct 2020 00:00:00 -0000

Today I want to coin the term bleet. It’s a type of short-form writing somewhere between a blog post and a tweet.

What's Stopping You From Coding Like This?

Wed, 23 Sep 2020 00:00:00 -0000

I made a quick-and-dirty Ruby script that animates the GitHub contributions calendar, for the express purpose of making this satirical video:

Using Git For Hacky Archive Deduplication

Sat, 12 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0000

Have you ever wished that tar or zip would deduplicate files when creating an archive? Well here’s a hacky solution using git.