Security, DevOps & Trading Tech — Practical Guides

I’ve been hashing things for years — verifying file downloads, generating checksums for deployments, creating HMAC signatures for APIs. And every single time, I end up bouncing between three or four browser tabs because no hash tool does everything I need in one place. So I built HashForge. The Problem with Existing… Read more →

Last week I needed to debug a nested API response — the kind with five levels of objects, arrays inside arrays, and keys that look like someone fell asleep on the keyboard. Simple enough task. I just needed a JSON formatter. **👉 Try JSON Forge now: [jsonformatter.orthogonal.info](https://jsonformatter.orthogonal.info)** — no install, no… Read more →

Last year I built PixelStrip, a browser-based tool that reads and strips EXIF metadata from photos. When I started, I assumed I’d pull in exifr or piexifjs and call it a day. Instead, I ended up writing the parser from scratch — because the JPEG binary format is surprisingly approachable… Read more →

I ran the same 10 images through five different online compressors and measured everything: output file size, visual quality loss, compression speed, and what happened to my data. Two of the five uploaded my photos to servers in jurisdictions I couldn’t identify. One silently downscaled my images. And the one… Read more →

The Pomodoro Technique — work for 25 minutes, break for 5 — has been around since 1987. The science backs it up: time-boxing reduces procrastination and improves focus. But here’s the problem: most people try it for three days and quit. Not because the technique fails, but because a plain… Read more →

EXIF stands for Exchangeable Image File Format. It’s a standard that embeds technical metadata inside every JPEG and TIFF photo. When you share a photo, this invisible data goes with it — including your GPS location. What EXIF Data Contains 📌 TL;DR: EXIF stands for Exchangeable Image File Format. It’s a standard… Read more →

I built 3 of these tools because I got tired of desktop apps phoning home. After 12 years as a security engineer in Big Tech, I’ve watched network traffic from “offline” desktop apps — the telemetry, the analytics pings, the “anonymous” usage data that includes your file paths and timestamps…. Read more →

Every time you take a photo with your phone, the exact GPS coordinates are embedded in the image file. When you share that photo online — on forums, marketplaces, or messaging apps — anyone who downloads it can see exactly where you were standing. Here’s how to remove it in… Read more →

You need to send a photo by email but it’s 8MB. You need to upload a product image but the CMS has a 2MB limit. You need to speed up your website but your hero image is 4MB. The solution is always the same: compress the image. But most tools… Read more →