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Thoughts on tech projects, cybersecurity, infrastructure, and things I'm learning.
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Thoughts on tech projects, cybersecurity, infrastructure, and things I'm learning.
Get a weekly email with what I learned, summaries of new posts, and direct links. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
How I built a subscriber-gated comment system with thumbs up/down reactions, admin moderation, and a one-time welcome email blast, including the PowerShell quirks and Vercel WAF rules that nearly blocked everything.
How I built a full newsletter system for this site with secure subscriptions, HMAC-verified unsubscribes, branded HTML emails, and a Vercel Cron that sends a weekly digest every Monday. Includes the WAF rule that broke everything and the firewall tightening that followed.
I've managed firewalls for years. When it came time to add WAF protection to my own site, I evaluated Cloudflare's free tier against Vercel's built-in WAF. Here's the comparison, the implementation, the config that broke the build, and the curl tests that proved it all works.
How I built a custom analytics system with interactive visualizations, IP intelligence, and a Leaflet world map, using Next.js, Neon Postgres, and Claude Code. Includes the full Vercel Analytics integration and why custom tracking fills the gaps.