Notes from the build.
Practical guides, deep dives into the tools we ship, and what we're learning as we grow.
Your photos are leaking your home address (and how to stop it)
Every photo your phone takes can carry the exact GPS coordinates of where you stood. Here's how to see what's hidden in your images and strip it before you post.
8 June 20265 min readprivacyexifmetadataReadYAML vs JSON — when to use which, and converting between them
Why config files love YAML and APIs love JSON, the indentation traps that bite everyone, and how to convert cleanly between the two.
8 June 20263 min readyamljsonconfigReadWhy %20 keeps showing up in your URLs — URL encoding explained
What percent-encoding is, when you need it, the difference between encoding a whole URL and a single value, and how to parse a query string.
8 June 20263 min readurldevencodingReadUnix timestamps, explained — what 1717000000 means and how to convert it
Where epoch time comes from, how to tell seconds from milliseconds at a glance, the 2038 problem, and how to convert timestamps both ways.
8 June 20263 min readtimestampdevdatesReadHow to test a regex without breaking everything
Why you should never debug a regular expression in your head, the building blocks worth memorizing, the flags that catch people out, and how to test one live.
8 June 20264 min readregexdevdebuggingReadHow to split a PDF or pull out specific pages — free, no upload
Need pages 3 to 7 of a contract, or one chapter out of a 200-page report? Here's how to split a PDF in your browser without handing it to a random website.
8 June 20265 min readpdfsplitextractReadStop posting ugly code screenshots — turn code into a real image instead
A raw screenshot of your editor looks rough in a tweet or a slide. Here's why, and how to turn a snippet into a clean, shareable image in a few seconds.
8 June 20265 min readcodedeveloperscreenshotsReadHow to rotate a PDF (and have it actually stay rotated)
Why a PDF looks sideways, the difference between viewer rotation and real rotation, and how to fix the orientation permanently in your browser.
8 June 20263 min readpdfproductivityprivacyRead