Published on 2025-11-20
]]>Published on 2025-11-20
Tags: javascript, protocol, til
Today at work I learned of the existence of Server Sent Events (SSE) and some transport layer/protocol facts about Websockets.
SSE is just a standardization of the old Comet model. The browser initiates an HTTP request, the server and the client keep the underlying TCP connection alive, with the server sending events-as-they-happen by adding more data onto a neverending HTTP response body.
Websockets also start life as an HTTP request to the server, but the initial request is to switch protocols, after which the server and client drop down to communicating in a binary frame-based protocol on top of the underlying TCP connection.
]]>Published on 2025-09-09
]]>Published on 2025-09-09
Tags: javascript, watch
Mechanical Watch by Bartosz Ciechanowski. An absolute masterpiece of simulation, modeling, explanation, and teaching. If you've ever wanted to learn the full details of how a mechanical watch functions, this page will teach you with an incredibly detailed breakdown of a normal mechanical watch, but simulated in fully-interactive 3d models, to go along with the English explanations.
If you're interested in going deeper, the Javascript driving the simulations is about 8500 lines of unminified code, though you'll have to use your browser to inspect the watch.js file.
Published on 2025-09-02
]]>Published on 2025-09-02
Tags: javascript, software
Came across this fun software project: The ASCII Side of the Moon. They calculated the possible views of the Moon, generated images using a Blender model of the Moon, converted the images to ASCII, and aligned the views with the current date. Very cool!
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^\+e%*_,<- ,_ _pK+
ggg$Z%92kyBWWyC /
wg@$E$$@@K@Rg$7QRvx$t,
a@@B$" ~~"WRux$$@g@@$}L
jLyA$@@$ "0@@@@s@KRM*W{
gyg^@@@R@> _ J X@#$@$@05&3x2=.
$@@@@y@@@@$ggg0= . 9@$P5$$gb#~ \M$.
0@@@@@@@@B$@@$@R'yy.^~ R@BK/ &)
@@@@@@@$@@@@$$$g@g@gw_ .w*y#@K_ }W
$@@$@@@@@@@@$@$@@$@@@gF/g@t='4@$$/O
@@@$@@$@@@@@@@@@$@$@$@ERF` ^~1.4/
@@@$@@@@@@@@@@B@@@@@E@$$gQ ]<W L
$@@@@$@@$@@$@B@@@$@@@@@sBFy_ ua9mm7W
M4R$$@@@@@$$@@@@@@@@@@$@@W@$@r&MMMx#
gg$@@@$$@@@$@@@@@$@@@R@$@@@E$$$0V$R
@$$@@$$@@@$$$$$@$@$$B@$@@$@22@$@t\
@@g@@@@@$$@@$@@@@$@@B$2R@@@$@Eh(`
$$@$@5$@@@$$$@$@$B@$@@@$gRRs5'
@$@@@$M@RM$g@@$@@%$N@R@5\R"^
@g@R@@Dg@$$@$$$@b0B@E@#^`
F@E#@@0$T@BE@#5@$?6m-,
4zR@5g$$EEgBngK"_>-~
MKqZR@Ds!=`(' `
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Published on 2025-08-10
]]>Published on 2025-08-10
Tags: article, java, javascript, ocaml, static-site
I like the idea of having search for my blog, to help readers find anything related to a specific topic, or something they'd read in the past. How do I make something as dynamic as search, but statically generated?
Published on 2025-08-06
]]>Published on 2025-08-06
Tags: article, css, html, javascript, static-site
Unfortunately I spoke too soon when I wrote the Building this Site post. I had a plan in place to use hilite, along with TextMate grammars and themes pulled from Shiki (which in turn gets its grammars and themes from TextMate/VSCode), but it fell through.
The plan was to grab lightmode and darkmode themes from Shiki's trove of themes, stripping out any extraneous styles (a lot of text-editor-specific colors are given) to arrive at two sets of colors for pre-determined class names. Shiki works similarly to hilite: during processing it tags portions of the source code with CSS tags derived from the grammars. All of the TextMate grammars employed by Shiki use a consistent naming scheme, ensuring themes always line up with the grammars, resulting in colored text. With a little adjustment of the theme CSS tags to account for any differences between Hilite's and Shiki's tagging, I'd have ahead-of-time syntax highlighting, with as many supported languages as VSCode.