When putting 3D graphics on a screen, we need a way to express rotations of the geometry we’re rendering. To avoid the problems that come with storing rotations as axes & angles, we could use quaternions. However quaternions require that we think in 4 distinct spatial dimensions, something humans are notoriously bad at. Thankfully there is an alternative that some argue is far more elegant and simpler to understand: Rotors.

Recently I was building a small tool to help me do some processing on image files. Naturally this meant it needed to be able to open files, so I added a button that would launch the usual Windows built-in “Open a file” dialog.

That works, but it’s more clicks. Wouldn’t it be great if I could open files via drag-and-drop?

I have a home server that runs on TrueNAS (which is FreeBSD) using ZFS for its storage filesystem. I recently ran into the common issue of not knowing where my disk usage was going, discovered that disk usage accounting for snapshots is more complex than for regular filesystems, and thought I’d write it up. Hopefully others find it helpful and/or enlightening.

You may have seen that there was recently a submission to the Swift language’s standard library with an interesting title: “An optimal algorithm for bounded random integers” by Stephen Canon. I found the idea intriguing and this post is a summary of my little expedition into the world of bounded pseudorandom integer generation.

Recently I’ve been thinking about how I could reduce the compilation time of my C++ code (aren’t we all). I also recently saw some people discussing the so-called “hidden friend” idiom in C++ and its various benefits. One of the claimed benefits of hidden friends is that they simplify the compiler’s job, speeding up compilation. I thought I’d investigate.

I recently saw a small argument on the internet (shocking, I know) about whether it is important to care about memory alignment on modern computing hardware. One party claimed that alignment is not something you need to worry about in 2021 and that code which works to ensure it is correct is just getting in the way. The other party was arguing that such code is an important part of ensuring your program’s correctness.

In addition to the various computer-ey things that I do, I also like to play boardgames with my friends sometimes. One such game that I like to play is Machi Koro. Machi Koro will be the topic of today’s post so if you’ve never played it, you may want to watch a lets-play of it or something before continuing.