Taming Firefox’s places.sqlite: A Weekend Performance Breakthrough
A bored-weekend side project turned into a tiny masterclass in database design. I rebuilt a “works-for-now” importer into a set-based, transactional loader and dropped runtime from 4 hours to under 10 seconds for 300k+ rows – on an average NVMe host with MariaDB. Same machine, same data, different architecture. Here’s the story, the thinking, and just enough code.
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Tag: #software
Taming Firefox’s places.sqlite: A Weekend Performance Breakthrough
A bored-weekend side project turned into a tiny masterclass in database design. I rebuilt a “works-for-now” importer into a set-based, transactional loader and dropped runtime from 4 hours to under 10 seconds for 300k+ rows – on an average NVMe host with MariaDB. Same machine, same data, different architecture. Here’s the story, the thinking, and just enough code.
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Why I Read 800 Headlines a Day (and Why You Don’t Have To)
Every morning and evening I skim ~350–450 headlines – roughly 800 per day – in 15–20 minutes per session. No doomscrolling, no algorithm. Just a calm, custom-built RSS flow that keeps me globally aware and leaves me with more time (and sanity) for deep work. Here’s how it works, why it’s not crazy, and how you can adopt a lighter version on your own terms.
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Windows 11 on unsupported PCs: Why I Upgraded Everything Anyway
Upgraded all my “unsupported” PCs to Windows 11—zero issues, no drama. This post unpacks why it worked, how Microsoft uses fear (FUD) to push upgrades, and what TPM 2.0 really means. Less of a how-to, more of a rational, systems-level reflection on tech, trust, and long-term hardware strategy.
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Digital Resilience in Your Pocket: A Strategic Guide to Backing-Up Wikipedia with Kiwix
When the network drops, regimes tighten their grip or a storm wipes out the fibre cabinet, uninhibited access to knowledge should not vanish with the signal. Kiwix lets you compress the cultural treasure-trove of Wikipedia — and thousands of other open resources — into a handful of ZIM files you can carry on a USB stick.
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RoboBackup: A Simple, Reliable Mirror Backup for Windows with PowerShell and Robocopy
Backups are essential – yet many solutions are bloated, expensive, or unnecessarily complicated. But there’s a simpler way: With PowerShell and Robocopy, you can create an automated, rsync-like mirror backup that runs reliably in the background, securing your most important data – all without third-party software!
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