Writings
Aug 11, 2026 The reddest red on your screen isn't #ff0000 Every hex colour you have ever typed was built for a 1996 monitor. Your screen stopped being that monitor years ago, and the browser keeps your colours there on purpose. Apr 14, 2026 Why a frozen page still scrolls Your scroll wheel doesn't wait for your code, unless you ask it to. Jan 27, 2026 The colour purple Your browser paints a visited link purple and tells your JavaScript it's blue, on purpose, and has since 2011. Nov 11, 2025 Why sixty-four connections lose to one One row in every transfer costs you eight ninths of your database, and more workers make it worse. Sep 9, 2025 The blur that switched sides The hint that keeps a panel smooth is the one that blurs its text. Jun 17, 2025 The noon that happened twice Your browser knows what time it was in New York in 1880, to the second. Apr 8, 2025 The layer explosion that never came Chrome merges the things you overlap into one layer. Layers multiply when you ask for them, one hint at a time. Feb 25, 2025 Do you know your divs? A div is one thing in DevTools. Inside the browser it is four. Jan 14, 2025 The Box That Didn't Move Why transform is cheap and margin-top is not. Dec 5, 2024 Do you know concurrency? Concurrent computing is fast but don't use it blindly Oct 6, 2024 On Trying things out The more you look at things through the lens of the familiar, the more you end up reproducing what already exists. Jul 20, 2024 Beyond Simple String Comparison It's not that simple Oct 12, 2023 HTTP Protocol history HTTP Protocol: Where we started, where we are, and how we got here Aug 3, 2023 Distributed Systems: Time How time works in a distributed system Mar 8, 2023 JavaScript's Execution Context Why do we care about the Execution Context? Jan 7, 2023 Leader Election in Distributed Systems How a cluster of machines picks one to be in charge, and what goes wrong when two think they are. Nov 17, 2022 Randomize iterables Randomize iterables in Python using sorted().