Field notes

Notes from
the workbench.

Build logs, decisions, and the things that turned out to be harder than expected. Written in Markdown, because prose belongs in plain text.

6 Articles

17 Tags

18 Minutes of reading

4.1k Words

Your 140 W charger probably isn't delivering 140 W

macOS reports a wattage that describes the adapter, not what your Mac is actually receiving. Building a menu-bar utility to show the honest number.

SwiftmacOSHardwareMenu bar

19 Aug 2026 3 min read

The brightness range macOS won't show you

XDR displays have headroom past 100%. Here's what it takes to expose it safely, and why the slider needs a warning label.

SwiftmacOSDisplaysMenu bar

2 Sept 2026 3 min read

Finding duplicates without hashing your whole disk

A three-stage filter that reads 64 KB from each file before committing to a full SHA-256 — and why 'size on disk' is the number you actually want to sort by.

SwiftmacOSPerformanceSwiftUI

23 Aug 2026 3 min read

Modelling a split-flap display in the browser

A mechanical flip board is not an animation, it's a state machine with a sound effect. Building one in vanilla JavaScript, with no frameworks and no build step.

JavaScriptCSSCanvasFun

14 Aug 2026 3 min read

AI summaries that ask permission first

A Zotero plugin built around a consent preview: what leaves your machine, to which provider, how much of it, and what might go wrong — shown before anything is sent.

JavaScriptZoteroPrivacyAI

4 Aug 2026 3 min read

Turning YouTube channels into a private podcast feed

Why podcast clients are so fussy about RSS, what it takes to bundle a whole Python media stack into a Mac app, and how to keep the feed on your own network.

PythonSelf-hostingDockermacOS

Notes fromthe workbench.