The Desk

The Desk — Edition 91

Welcome to the 91st issue of the Desk. The Desk is my weekly newsletter covering newly published content and project updates.

Brandon Himpfen

09 Mar 2026 — 6 min read

Photo by Linus Mimietz / Unsplash

Welcome to the 91st issue of The Desk — my weekly roundup of newly published content and project updates. Whether you’re following along for tutorials, blog posts, GitHub projects, or curated reads, there’s something for everyone building or exploring in tech, content, and open source spaces.

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📝 New Blog Posts

In case you missed last week's The Desk edition:

Here is last week's posts from my blog:

Why Awesome Lists Still Matter in an AI-First Web: An analytical exploration of why curated Awesome Lists remain essential in an AI first web, focusing on structure, incentives, credibility, and the long term role of human judgment in knowledge systems.
How to Contribute to Awesome Lists (and What Makes a Good Contribution): A practical look at how Awesome Lists work, why contributions are reviewed carefully, and what signals maintainers consider when deciding whether to accept a new resource.

Here are last week's posts from my social networks:

LinkedIn Post: AI Changes the Cost of Starting, Not the Cost of Sustaining.

Digital Marketing

Recent analysis and reporting from Bold Outlook, covering search, platforms, and AI in digital systems:

WordPress Introduces Plugins for Integrating OpenAI, Google Gemini, and Anthropic Claude: WordPress has released plugins that integrate OpenAI, Google Gemini, and Anthropic Claude using the PHP AI Client SDK. The plugins allow developers to add AI capabilities such as text generation, image generation, and function calling to WordPress applications.
Google Updates JavaScript SEO Documentation, Removes Legacy Accessibility Guidance: Google has updated its JavaScript SEO documentation, removing legacy guidance that advised developers to design sites for users without JavaScript. The company said the recommendation was outdated due to advances in search rendering and assistive technologies.
Search Isn’t Dying. Discovery Is Fragmenting: Search is not disappearing. Discovery is spreading across social platforms, AI interfaces, internal platform search, and recommendation systems. This article examines how fragmented discovery is reshaping how information is found online.

Travel Blogging

Recent articles from Travel Bloggers Network, exploring sustainable growth, structure, and long-term publishing strategy:

Balancing Travel and Writing: Time Management Tips for Bloggers: Balancing travel and writing requires systems, realistic publishing rhythms, and long-term thinking. A practical guide to time management for sustainable travel blogging.

Solo Travel

New posts from Solo Traveler, centered on solo-first travel realities, safety, and independent decision-making:

How to Meet People While Traveling Solo: Learn practical, safety-conscious ways to meet people while traveling solo. Understand how to connect with others through accommodation choices, structured activities, cultural awareness, and responsible planning.
10 Tips for Staying in Airbnb Alone: Staying in an Airbnb alone can be comfortable and rewarding. Learn 10 practical tips to help solo travelers choose wisely, prepare thoughtfully, and stay confidently and respectfully in Airbnb accommodations.

Solo Travel Society

Community-driven reflections and analysis from Solo Travel Society, grounded in lived experience and shared insight:

How Solo Travelers Learn to Sit With Uncertainty: A reflective exploration of how solo travelers learn to live with uncertainty, build self-trust, and grow through the quiet emotional rhythms of traveling alone.

Substack Newsletters

New Substack posts published across my personal, travel, and technology newsletters:

Node Weekly Issue 155: Your weekly roundup of the most useful news, tools, tutorials, and discussions from the Node ecosystem.
React Weekly Issue 156: Your weekly roundup of the most useful news, tools, tutorials, and discussions from the React ecosystem.
The Travel Blogger “About Page” That Actually Converts: Why a clear, credible About page often matters more than your latest travel post.
Why Schema Helps Even When It Doesn’t “Boost Rankings”: Understanding the structural role of structured data in search, indexing, and content interpretation.

🚀 New Projects and Initiatives

This week I also pushed forward on a few new projects and initiatives. These are early-stage launches, new reference hubs, or first public versions that expand the broader content and open source systems I’m building across tech, travel, and publishing.

Travel Bloggers Network is expanding with three new Substack publications for travel creators. The new publications explore different dimensions of the profession: the business of the creator economy, the evolving travel media landscape, and the systems behind sustainable travel blogs.
OpenLearnNetwork is an open source ecosystem of structured, reference-first resources for learning programming and computer science.
Scientific Data Pipeline Toolkit: An open source Julia framework for building structured scientific data pipelines that ingest, transform, and process datasets for research and analysis.

🌱 Project Updates

This section tracks ongoing work across my projects. Some updates are small and structural, others are visible improvements but all of them reflect where time and attention went this week as the broader system continues to take shape over time.

Awesome List Template v2.1 has been released.
First Proof of Concept (POC) for FlightLang has been released.

New Code Snippets

As mentioned last week, I'm aiming to publish, on average, two code snippets per week. Here are this past weeks code snippets:

node-transform-jsonl-stream.js: Stream-transform JSONL/NDJSON in Node.js with filter/map style processing, stdin to stdout, and proper backpressure handling (no deps).
node-split-jsonl-file.js: Split a large JSONL/NDJSON file in Node.js into smaller chunks by line count or approximate size, using streams and backpressure (no deps).