Simon Willison’s Weblog

Migrating Mess With DNS to use PowerDNS (via) Fascinating in-depth write-up from Julia Evans about how she upgraded her "mess with dns" playground application to use PowerDNS, an open source DNS server with a comprehensive JSON API.

If you haven't explored mess with dns it's absolutely worth checking out. No login required: when you visit the site it assigns you a random subdomain (I got garlic299.messwithdns.com just now) and then lets you start adding additional sub-subdomains with their own DNS records - A records, CNAME records and more.

The interface then shows a live (WebSocket-powered) log of incoming DNS requests and responses, providing instant feedback on how your configuration affects DNS resolution.