mdworks / Guides
Guides
Longer explanations behind the tools: how the things they measure work, and how to get more out of them. Written and checked by hand.
Music
- Running cadence and music: how to pick songs that match your strideWhat running cadence is, how to measure yours in a minute, why songs at half your step rate work too, and how to use music to change your cadence safely.5 min read
- How music charts work: Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube and Deezer comparedWhat each streaming chart actually counts, why the same song can be number one on one service and missing on another, and how to read a country's chart without being misled.4 min read
PostFinder
- x.com search operators: a practical cheat sheetEvery useful x.com (Twitter) search operator with examples: exact phrases, accounts, dates, engagement, media, language and replies, plus how to combine them.3 min read
- How to find an old post on x.com you only half rememberA step-by-step method for finding an old tweet when you remember only who, roughly when, or what it was about: your own likes and bookmarks, search operators, your archive and outside tools.3 min read
Earshot
- How to tell where a radio station is from, just by listeningThe clues that give away a radio station's country: language and accent, the time, weather and traffic, adverts and prices, phone numbers, music and the way presenters talk.4 min read
- How internet radio works: streams, formats and finding stationsWhat actually happens when you press play on an online radio station: Icecast and SHOUTcast streams, HLS, MP3 and AAC, now-playing titles, and how open directories like Radio Browser list tens of thousands of stations.4 min read
Mazework
- How to solve any maze: wall following, Trémaux and the shortest pathThe methods that solve mazes, explained simply: the wall follower and when it fails, Trémaux's marking method, dead-end filling on paper, and how to find the shortest route.4 min read
Everything else
- Where to find free old photos of your city, and how to use them legallyThe best archives for old photographs of cities that you can reuse for free, what public domain, CC0, CC BY and CC BY-SA mean in practice, and how to credit a photo correctly.4 min read
- How to check that a web tool really keeps your data on your deviceMany web tools say your files never leave your computer. Here is how to check it yourself in a few minutes with the browser's developer tools, an offline test and a look at the permissions it asks for.3 min read