hrbrmstr's Daily Drop

  • Drop #734 (2025-11-20): Fast And Powerful

    Today’s Drop discusses three “fast & powerful” tools: hl, hk, and MPD. hl is a command-line tool for formatting and exploring logs quickly, hk is a high-performance Git hook manager that runs tasks in parallel to enhance Git workflows, and MPD is a music player daemon providing seamless audio management across multiple clients.

    hrbrmstr

  • Drop #732 (2025-11-17): Reliable Sources

    Today’s Drop explores the evolving landscape of coding tools and resources, particularly emphasizing AI’s impact on the decline of small npm packages like blob-util. It introduces Brimstone, a Rust-based JavaScript engine aiming for high ECMAScript compliance, and discusses optimizing DNS lookups to enhance website performance, recommending strategies like dns-prefetch and preconnect.

    hrbrmstr

  • Bonus Drop #103 (2025-11-15): Fingerprints, Fabrications, And Foolproof Family Support

    The Weekend Bonus Drop discusses a variety of security and privacy topics, notably a new ja4-mcp server for JA4 fingerprint analysis, critiquing AI’s role in cyber espionage operations, and presenting Tailscale’s effective use of Raspberry Pi for remote family network access.

    hrbrmstr

  • Drop #729 (2025-11-10): Publish Or Perish

    Today’s Drop expores tools for a project that involves curating and publishing content beyond a blog. Three systems—MkDocs Material, Trilium Notes, and Wiki.js—are evaluated based on features, ease of use, and security. Each platform has unique pros and cons regarding collaboration, performance, and the technological stack required for hosting.

    hrbrmstr

  • Bonus Drop #102 (2025-11-09): It Always Feels Like Someone Is Watching Me

    The (depressing) Weekend Bonus Drop discusses modern surveillance practices, highlighting a new tool that removes tracking links from Google Docs exports and showcases the Surveillance Watch map, which reveals the surveillance industry’s global scope. It also critiques how gaming companies collect player data under the guise of achievements, normalizing surveillance in entertainment.

    hrbrmstr

  • Drop #728 (2025-11-06): Fincky, Functional, Friday

    Today’s Drop looks at three tools: a local, browser-based detective map for free-form note-taking; a vintage, command-line reminder system that prioritizes privacy; and a guide on How to Obsessively Tune WezTerm.

    hrbrmstr

  • Bonus Drop #101 (2025-10-26): Really Random Resources

    The weekend Bonus Drop covers Typst 0.14.0 which introduces significant enhancements, including automatic tagging for accessible PDFs, improved HTML export, and character-level justification. We also link to Phil Gyford’s memoir that reflects on his nostalgic first experiences with the internet in 1995. Finally, it covers and provides a Dockerfile for Restring, a SvelteKit web app…

    hrbrmstr

  • Drop #714 (2025-10-06): Monday Morning Grab Bag

    Today’s Drop reflects on the “vibe coding revolution,” questioning its impact on resource creation for coders. It also introduces three projects: The Garage, an efficient object storage system; wxpull, a minimalist weather tool using open data; and faup-rs, a fast URL parser in Rust.

    hrbrmstr

  • Bonus Drop #99 (2025-10-04): Duly Noted

    THE DROPS ARE BACK! Today, we tackle three note-taking tools: Blinko, Piles, and Memos. Blinko is an AI-integrated self-hosted system with features for task management and Markdown support. Piles is a minimal web clipper lacking organization tools, while Memos offers a lightweight, self-hosted knowledge base focused on simplicity and data privacy.

    hrbrmstr

  • Drop #710 (2025-09-15): Monday Morning Grab Bag

    Today’s Drop discusses FFmpeg, Linkhut, and Peekaping. FFmpeg offers a detailed guide on media processing. Linkhut is a flexible social bookmarking platform, and Peekaping serves as a self-hosted uptime monitoring solution.

    hrbrmstr