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Alex Ellis
Writing about tech, our minds, and how things work.
2024
Apr 28
Harry Chapin and RATM: the problem with bleeding interests
2023
Nov 18
All of the writing I did in a week as a software engineer
Jul 11
Brute-forcing the NYT Digits game
Apr 13
The dog hair and the computer mouse
Feb 26
Things that are hard to measure, things that are easy to measure
Feb 16
In the desert, no service, and your partner's late to the rendezvous. What now?
2022
Nov 1
Practice being a beginner
Oct 2
Learning by working on problems just outside of your reach
Sep 24
iPhones and action discoverability, or "How the hell was I supposed to know that?"
Sep 24
The hobby buyer's fallacy: "I'd really pursue my hobby if I just bought X"
Sep 11
Stubbornness and programming
Aug 28
Writing a toy WebSocket server from scratch
Aug 14
What happens if you point two CNAMEs at each other? Not much, really
Aug 6
Sharpening the axe for programming
Jul 30
Funny artifacts in a 3D house scan
Jul 16
My false start when learning to program
Jul 10
Work context, home context
Jul 3
How to break the Envoy CI at head
Jun 26
Long running pull requests
Jun 12
How far behind a plane is its noise?
Jun 5
I only care about the helpful notifications, not the promotional ones
May 28
Playing with a 3D representation of RGB color space
May 21
Wikipedia Over WhatsApp
May 14
A basic ear training note matching game
May 8
"I don't know the numbers": a math puzzle
May 1
Getting comfortable with being uncomfortable
Apr 17
Opinionated variable names
Apr 10
What is a minute, really?
Apr 3
The tech interview prep industry
Mar 27
Keeping a debugging lab notebook
Mar 20
Detecting pitch with the Web Audio API and autocorrelation
Mar 13
I prefer my biographies in chronological order, thank you very much
Mar 6
My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll
Feb 27
I miss easily seeing how my coworkers use tools
Feb 16
Morse Codle
Feb 12
Writing Morse code games in JavaScript using the Web Audio API
Feb 4
Little games to play with Morse Code in your browser
Jan 30
Writing a toy traceroute from scratch
Jan 22
(1) New Message: How websites catch your attention with JavaScript
Jan 17
How do you visualize code?
Jan 12
A Children's Book Story About Distributed Systems
Jan 8
Completing a Part-Time Master's in Computer Science While Working
2021
Oct 31
The Strange Path of Accepting How Your Brain Works
Apr 18
Writing an RPC From Scratch
Apr 16
You're Reading This in the Future
2020
Nov 10
Checking if the Pi is done
Oct 24
Building a Raspberry Pi Cluster for Building Toy Distributed Systems
Aug 23
Debugging a launch-blocking issue
Jun 3
Code Review and Criticism
Feb 17
Don't touch my clipboard
2019
Nov 16
Harnessing the Power of Shower Thoughts
Oct 24
Dark pattern for autoplaying videos: clickjacking pause
Oct 19
Clickbait Snail Mail
Feb 9
MapReduce in Simple Language
2018
Aug 27
Good Design: Double Sided Park Signs
Jun 8
Why does a spray bottle work?
Jun 6
Letting the User Guide You: Analyzing Store Design
May 26
Building a Simple Cache Server in Python
Apr 28
Investigating JavaScript's RegExp Lookbehind
Apr 1
JavaScript: Writing your own Array.reduce
Mar 19
typeof null: investigating a classic JavaScript bug
Mar 18
Investigating JavaScript Casting Behavior
Jan 6
Investigating a Bug in Moment.js
Jan 1
Connecting Arduino with a Node Server
2017
Dec 6
MBTA Bus Mirrors
Aug 13
Temperature Sensing with Arduino
Aug 5
Noticing UI: Shazam's loading screen