dnscontrol has got to be one of my most beloved “DevOps” tools out there. Possibility of describing DNS in a config file (even though, for whatever reason, javascript was chosen for syntax) gives me huge peace of mind. It can integrate with plethora of different providers through their APIs and almost every major release brings even more of them. Ever since I learned about its existence I use it all the time, everywhere I go. Just smash it into git, ensure some review takes place and roll it out, everything fully automated through CI piepelines. If that doesn’t sound beautiful I don’t know what does 🤷🏻‍♂️

I must admit that I never was a great fan of Photoshop. Sure, there was a time when I knew my ways around it, but back then I was already user of the alternative – GIMP. I still have a softspot for it in my heart and I applaud efforts of having fully fledged open source image manipulation app, but on macOS there are so many great alternatives that it really makes sense to go native. One of my all time favorites, and with the relase of version 2.0 even more so, is Pixelmator Pro. With the introduction of the ML-based features built-in these days, it’s hard to find anything that even compares.

I’ve been looking for a native Mac video client for a long time. For the most part, let’s be honest, VLC fits the bill. But this one is cross-platform and not really a native solution. That’s where IINA comes to play (literally). It’s a gorgeous, modern Mac app that integrates and supports all the things you’d expect from this kind of application. It comes, among others, with the built-in support for Safari, Touch Bar, Dark Mode, Picture-in-Picture etc. If you were missing a well made Mac app to play your videos, or other sorts of multimedia for that matter, look no further.

There I was, wanting to write these every six months… Maybe I will better outline them now that I discovered the absolutely fabulous¹ app named Folding Text. It’s been already over a year after last status post and boy, oh boy, a lot has happened during that time. I’ve got the impression that last eight months everything accelerated so much that it’s hard to keep up.

A new and shiny major release of my favorite backup software. There I was, hoping for the magical 1.0, but hey, it’s not the version number that counts in the end. Last time, back in November last year, I said the following:

This release brings no spectacular changes nor features. Which is good, I don’t want my backup solution to have exciting releases – I want bug fixes and small changes and minor enhancements to its matured, stable state. 0.9.6 bring exactly that[…]

And it’s exactly right – the only thing I forgot was that it was already sixth minor version of the 0.9 release – of course there were no ground breaking changes 🤷🏻‍♂️ This time it’s slightly different, there are plenty of bug fixes squeezed in as well as tons of enhancements and new features. I’m not going to list them all, their release notes are exhaustive enough, but I’ll say this: I’m really excited for the multiple speed optimizations coming in.

Enh #1680: Optimize restic mount
Enh #2195: Simplify and improve restore performance
Enh #2598: Improve speed of diff command
Enh #2773: Optimize handling of new index entries
Enh #2786: Optimize list blobs command
Enh #2790: Optimized file access in restic mount
Enh #2840: Speed-up file deletion in forget, prune and rebuild-index

Meanwhile restic remains my favorite backup solution that I default to use in production and otherwise.

Here’s for the great new release! 🎉