XML, WARP, JSON, Geany, EuroStack, Cloud, Zswap
XML - Lots of tinkering with one project which uses complex XML documents for data transfer. Classic design questions, how to create efficient, maintainable clean SQL data structure -> XML document mapper. I'm quite happy with my current solution which completely separates data access, data pre-processing, logic transform, and XML document building and validation. Of course several different format conversions, different boolean types. Structures which are joined, and or simply repeated in database with some flag indicating extension to previous record, etc. And that's not the worst part, some of the values are also different, requiring basically full logical transformation because the logical structure of the data isn't directly compatible either. - But no worries, I've done it so many times, I know it'll work and be good.
Cloudflare WARP (@ Wikipedia), enabled free VPN for a friend. I love it, it's simple quick and easy to setup, and after initial configuration standard wireguard package is all that it takes. I love it, clearly designed by professionals without all the bleeping consumer stuff many services, sites, software is full of.
JSON data in database, test setup for SQLite, MongoDB and PostgreSQL utilizing JSON document storage and efficient indexing of key and paths. kw: jsonb_ops, jsonb_path_ops, json_extract(), and with MongoDB it's all of course completely native. Just a half day play and test to refresh memory for upcoming projects.
Geany - No crash protection plugin. It's light and fast editor, and seems to lack crash protection completely which would save work done, if the system crashes. It's not rocket science. Just append changes (diff / delta log), which can be replayed if necessary. If not, whole log can be dropped after successful save. This also avoids saving the full file repeatedly, as well providing undo buffering and efficient change logging. - As example CryptPad is perfect example of alternate approach, where everything is log based.
EuroStack — studied its current state, if we can even call it that - is a classic EU operation. Fragmented and incoherent, just like most open source efforts. Sure, it has some pros, but mostly cons. Let's hope something good comes from it, but honestly, I'm ashamed to admit I'm skeptical.
Oracle Cloud - It seems that the password reset option also nicely resets 2FA data as well. Depending on viewpoint very nice and handy, or absolutely catastropic.
Driver Issues - Linux Kaboom - "UBSAN: shift-out-of-bounds in /build/linux-Id8hYh/linux-6.17.0/sound/soc/soc-dapm.c:380:15", "shift exponent 16384 is too large for 32-bit type 'unsigned int'". - System boot failed randomly, until I blacklisted the driver: "snd_soc_sst_cht_bsw_rt5645". Also it seems that it's confirmed bug, so maybe someday the audio will be usable again. Now my priorities mandate that reliable booting is more important than the sound side, disabling driver was no brainer in my use case. Yet this is kind of bad news for people whom would need sound AND reliable boot.
PasteBin / Binary Sharing - Got sick'n'tired how bad reputation many binary sharing sites got. Well, now I've got my own? ;) Thanks to Gemini 3 Pro, it took about 15 minutes to get the site fully up and running with all of the refinements to the HTML, CSS, Python code, Nginx configuration, cron jobs, etc... Yet it seems that harder than the server code was to create shell script code which would allow sending stdin data + attachment file + retention time stamp correctly to the server. First it tried with bash, figured out it's hard, then changed to python, had multiple bugs and logic issues. But got it all done, in a few iterations finally. But it clearly wasn't "immediate" single shot task. `echo "STDIO included as statically formatted CommonMark string" | share file days`
zswap / zram (@ Wikipedia) - Other zpool options than zsmalloc seem to be removed. Ok? That's fine. I just had references to the old ones, and wondered why those weren't working as expected. I did tend to use the z3fold but of course zsmalloc is better.
$ grep -v "XXX" zpool
zsmalloc
2026-04-26