Scott Smitelli

Articles

This section of the site holds long-form content about whatever topic happens to be on my mind at any given time.

This is [my dead grandmother]’s special day!

Everybody has their own unique way of processing and dealing with grief. There’s not really any right or wrong way to do it. Except for Google Calendar—they are absolutely doing it wrong. More »

Tangentially, we can fix your raycaster.

A detailed look at a few different sources of visual distortion that commonly occur when developing a raycaster. Covers fish eye distortion, projection plane angle distortion, and outlines a technique to disentangle the rendered wall height from the screen’s aspect ratio. More »

The Lesser 2024 Olympics Rankings

Depending on how you interpret the numbers, you can make any country come out on top. More »

The Network Time Protocol: What Times Are It?

An exploration of the Network Time Protocol (NTP) message format, the interpretation of each of its data fields, and the underlying variables that time servers track to keep their clocks accurate. More »

Small WebGL Examples

Drawing onto a <canvas> element doesn’t need as much code as online tutorials and example pages might lead you to believe. This page contains a handful of demos that show exactly what you need and almost nothing that you don’t. More »

The Hidden Worlds of the Klein Tools TI250 Thermal Imager

A deep dive into hidden data encoded in the BMP files saved by the Klein Tools TI250 thermal imager. More »

To Apple ID or not to Apple ID, that is the security question.

An absurd tale of my experience trying to reset the security questions on an Apple ID account. More »

(This Song’s Just) 76,482 Tiles Long

I assembled and uploaded a video showing a timelapse road trip from Pittsburgh, PA to San Mateo, CA. Here I share the tricks and pitfalls I discovered in my work. More »

Fun with YouTube’s Audio Content ID System

A series of tests designed to try to thwart the audio portion of YouTube’s Content ID digital fingerprinting system. More »

You came and you gave without taking. Like a BitTorrent seed.

Determining the speed and tempo variations in Barry Manilow’s 1974 hit “Mandy.” More »