Algorithms
Wed, Nov 11, 2026 - 7400 Words
How pictures should be resized, rotated and dithered, and how to judge the result. Three articles: expert notes with the mathematics, measurements and references; a plain-language summary
; and a checklist of best practices and gotchas
.
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Wed, Nov 11, 2026 - 13900 Words
What the numbers in a picture mean, from the CIE observers to HDR formats, and how they go wrong. Four articles: expert notes with computed figures and references; a general-audience summary
; a guide to best practices, gotchas and recognizing errors
; and reference tables
with formulas.
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Wed, Nov 11, 2026 - 2800 Words
What the sampling theorem promises, where each of its assumptions fails, and what replaces it. Three articles: expert notes with error budgets and references; a general-audience summary
; and a checklist of best practices and gotchas
.
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Sat, Sep 12, 2026 - 1300 Words
A monospace vector font for debug overlays: 95 ASCII glyphs of lines and quadratic beziers in 1.8 KB of data, a decoder you can read over coffee, and an anti-aliased pixel writer. Public domain.
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Fri, Jul 26, 2024 - 2700 Words
Derivation of a minimal size tree for playing perfect tic tac toe
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Mon, Aug 28, 2023 - 2700 Words
This is a note on the correct usage of alpha blending, pre-multiplied alpha, gamma correction, and linear colors for image processing.
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Sun, Jul 23, 2023 - 1100 Words
XCode corrupts PNG images for iOS builds. This post details the error.
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Sat, Jun 24, 2023 - 2300 Words
Variation among SSIM implementations make comparing results a mess. This version matches the output of the original, unlike most of those in common use as of 2023.
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Tue, Jun 6, 2023 - 2600 Words
This is a quick note for converting byte values colors in 0-255 back and forth to floating-point colors in 0-1 which avoids common errors.
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Tue, Nov 22, 2022 - 4800 Words
A robust, portable, extensible method for handling button presses when interfacing software and hardware.
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Fri, Aug 26, 2022 - 1000 Words
Notes on floating point issues, including lists of facts and theorems useful for algorithm development.
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Mon, Dec 7, 2020 - 4000 Words
I built a RTK-GPS gadget and wrote enough software to do basic GNS tasks such as finding distances, decoding GPS NMEA and RTCM messages, finding intersections, and doing boundary detection.
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Wed, May 15, 2019 - 100 Words
This is a 60 minute talk in which I tried to cover 30 algorithms and data structures in a concise manner. It covers all sorts of areas: sorting, string searching and matching, backtracking, randomness, skip lists, hashing, bloom filters, graph algorithms, space partitioning, concurrent and immutable data structures, cache oblivious techniques, compression, boolean satisfiability, and control theory.
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Mon, Feb 25, 2019 - 200 Words
These slides are from a talk I gave on many aspects of computing, starting with classical computing (Hilbert’s 10th problem, Church and Turing, Godel, boolean functions, complexity theory, transistors, Moore’s law and demise), then going through physics (relativity, quantum mechanics, quantum field theory), and finally into quantum computing basics (qubits, superposition, entanglement, no cloning, basic gates) and quantum algorithms (Deutsch, Simon, Shor, Grover).
Then I cover advanced quantum topics, such as quantum machines,quantum complexity theory, the Quantum-Church-Turing-Deutsch principle, graph isomorphism, quantum error correction, and quantum security. A final speculative section covers even weirder computation ideas (closed timelike curves, string computing) and how computing seems intertwined with the nature of reality (It from Bit, Simulation Hypothesis, Free Will Theorem).
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Sat, Jul 21, 2018 - 200 Words
This talk is an intro to wireless communications, starting with the basic physics of EM waves and how they interact with materials, then how antennas work, then on to antenna properties and design. Next modulation schemes are discussed, showing how data is encoded and transmitted over noisy channels via modulation, spread spectrum, time and frequency division, and other methods. Noise in the form of doppler, intermodulation, and other causes is covered. Information theory (channel capacity, Shannon entropy, error correction) is covered. Finally specific protocols are analyzed under this framework: FM, NTSC, remotes, WiFi, Bluetooth, ZigBee, satellite radio, GPS, and cellular formats.
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Mon, Apr 2, 2018 - 100 Words
This talk covers cryptography best practices as of April, 2018. Background on each area is covered, with each section ending with a best practices slide. Sections are Symmetric Encryption, Asymmetric Encryption, Key Lengths, Hashing/HMAC, Password usage, Key Exchange, Random number generation, Digital Signatures,
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Mon, Jun 19, 2017 - 100 Words
Here are slides for a long (3-4 hour) talk covering many aspects of cryptology. Topics include simple ciphers, breaking codes, private and public key crypto, block modes, stream ciphers, key exchange, random number generation, modern crypto design, hashing, password security, breaking (differential, higher order, many more..), out of band attacks (timing, cache, power, hardware, …), homorphic encryption, quantum protocols, and more….
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