Writing
Notes
Engineering notes. Systems, spatial data, native applications — and whatever else is worth taking apart.
01Burushaski and the problem of low-resource-language toolingA language isolate with no large corpus exposes how much of modern language tooling quietly assumes the data already exists.BurushaskiLanguage technologyLocalisation20 August 202602Serving spatial data with PostGIS, GeoServer and OpenLayersThe three-tier stack behind most biodiversity and environmental portals, and the decisions in it that actually matter.PostGISGeoServerOpenLayersGIS20 August 202603What a GLOF early-warning system actually has to doGlacial lake outburst floods give you hours of warning at best. The engineering problem is less about sensors than about what happens in the last twenty minutes.GLOFEnvironmental monitoringGeospatial20 August 202604Building software inside government constraintsPublic-sector systems fail for reasons that have little to do with code. Most of the engineering is in taking the constraints seriously.E-governancePublic sectorSystem architecture20 August 202605Building a cross-platform media player with Qt 6 and FFmpegQt gives you a window and an event loop. FFmpeg gives you frames. Everything difficult happens in the gap between them.QtC++FFmpegDesktop applications20 August 202606What securing an online exam actually meansSafe Exam Browser locks down the client. The interesting question is what you do about everything it cannot see.Safe Exam BrowserAssessmentSecurity20 August 2026