Software engineer · product designer · digital transformation advisorhttps://omaralbeik.comenMon, 21 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://omaralbeik.com/en/blog/series/cloudflare/understanding-cloudflare-workershttps://omaralbeik.com/en/blog/series/cloudflare/understanding-cloudflare-workersUnderstand the Workers runtime, build a bilingual reading-time API with Hono, and follow it through local development, deployment, bindings, costs, and debugging.Mon, 21 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTinfrastructurehttps://omaralbeik.com/en/blog/series/cloudflare/understanding-cloudflare-dnshttps://omaralbeik.com/en/blog/series/cloudflare/understanding-cloudflare-dnsChoose a registrar, connect your domain, and understand the records behind your website and email. A practical Cloudflare DNS guide, with diagrams and troubleshooting commands.Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTinfrastructurehttps://omaralbeik.com/en/blog/series/cloudflare/introduction-to-cloudflarehttps://omaralbeik.com/en/blog/series/cloudflare/introduction-to-cloudflareHow Cloudflare's networking, security, compute, and storage services fit together, with Unblock Syria as a working example and a look at the five-dollar Workers plan.Mon, 07 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTinfrastructurehttps://omaralbeik.com/en/blog/link-previews-that-work-in-arabichttps://omaralbeik.com/en/blog/link-previews-that-work-in-arabicOne Open Graph image per route, built two ways: HarfBuzz and resvg at build time, satori per request. Then the part that breaks in Arabic — word order, letter joining, and measuring text the font draws differently than it measures.Mon, 31 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTtypographytoolingsoftwareengineeringhttps://omaralbeik.com/en/blog/syria-is-off-the-listhttps://omaralbeik.com/en/blog/syria-is-off-the-listSyria went on the American terrorism list in 1979 and came off it on Monday. I wrote the careful version for Unblock Syria. This is the one where I'm happy, and still angry.Wed, 26 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTsyriapoliticshttps://omaralbeik.com/en/blog/why-ai-gets-arabic-calligraphy-wronghttps://omaralbeik.com/en/blog/why-ai-gets-arabic-calligraphy-wrongArabic handwriting: 0.8% word error. Classical calligraphy: 45%. I went looking for the missing training data behind that gap and found the opposite — rules written down in the tenth century, and encoded in software in the 1980s.Fri, 07 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTcalligraphytypographyaisoftwareengineeringhttps://omaralbeik.com/en/blog/binding-libvlc-directly-from-swift-6https://omaralbeik.com/en/blog/binding-libvlc-directly-from-swift-6Four and a half months, twenty-five patches carried against VLC's own source, and one feature I still cannot ship. What it takes to own a C engine instead of consuming one.Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTswiftopen-sourcesoftwareengineeringhttps://omaralbeik.com/en/blog/namespace-your-swift-extensionshttps://omaralbeik.com/en/blog/namespace-your-swift-extensionsAdd a member to a type you do not own and it lands in that type's namespace, not yours. SwifterSwift hit this past five hundred extensions. Here is the wrapper that fixes it, and why you have to choose it before your first release.Sat, 19 Feb 2022 00:00:00 GMTswiftapi-designopen-sourcesoftwareengineeringhttps://omaralbeik.com/en/blog/enforce-ssh-instead-of-https-for-git-operationshttps://omaralbeik.com/en/blog/enforce-ssh-instead-of-https-for-git-operationsGenerate a key, register it, tell SSH which one to use — then have Git rewrite every HTTPS remote to SSH, including the ones inside other people's submodules and lockfiles.Mon, 23 Aug 2021 00:00:00 GMTtoolingsoftwareengineeringhttps://omaralbeik.com/en/blog/let-the-standard-library-comparehttps://omaralbeik.com/en/blog/let-the-standard-library-comparefirst(where:) instead of filter().first. Comparable tuples instead of nested comparisons. indices.contains instead of a hand-rolled range check.Mon, 16 Dec 2019 00:00:00 GMTswiftsoftwareengineeringhttps://omaralbeik.com/en/blog/property-observers-old-and-new-valuehttps://omaralbeik.com/en/blog/property-observers-old-and-new-valuewillSet and didSet already hand you newValue and oldValue without being asked. Then there are three situations where neither observer runs at all.Fri, 06 Dec 2019 00:00:00 GMTswiftsoftwareengineeringhttps://omaralbeik.com/en/blog/generics-in-typealiashttps://omaralbeik.com/en/blog/generics-in-typealiasName a completion signature once and spell it Handler<Post> at every call site. Readable, and a single place to change the error type. Documentation the compiler spell-checks, and nothing more.Thu, 05 Dec 2019 00:00:00 GMTswiftapi-designsoftwareengineeringhttps://omaralbeik.com/en/blog/safe-collection-subscripthttps://omaralbeik.com/en/blog/safe-collection-subscriptShould an out-of-bounds index crash, or come back nil? It turns on whether you produced the index or someone else did — plus one performance trap on collections that are not arrays.Fri, 12 Jul 2019 00:00:00 GMTswiftapi-designsoftwareengineering