Scott Smitelli

You don't have to if you don't want to.

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

“In the year 5555, your arms are hangin’ limp at your sides, your legs got nothing to do, some machine doin’ that for you.” Zager and Evans sang these words in 1969. Now, thirty-five centuries ahead of schedule, it’s never been easier to tell the world “I didn’t care about this and I don’t care about you.” More »

Altoids by the Fistful

Sun, 21 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

“In evolution, a maladaptation is a trait that is (or has become) more harmful than helpful, in contrast with an adaptation, which is more helpful than harmful.” I went to Wikipedia to look that up, not a large language model. More »

If it cites em dashes as proof, it came from a tool.

Mon, 07 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

It’s a safe bet that most of us have encountered the age-old admonition to “never judge a book by its cover” at some point in our lives. There is a deep wisdom in that advice—wisdom that seems to go completely out the window as soon as a certain type of person spots a certain type of punctuation. More »

Et tu, Panera?

Thu, 15 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Toasted Frontega Chicken sandwich, no sliced tomatoes. There’s that feeling again, why are my teeth clenched? And a cup of Mac & Cheese. I remember getting locked out of my online loan servicing account a few years ago, that sucked. And a regular Dr Pepper. How long have my hands been shaking? More »

Shut Up and Dance

Thu, 24 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A human interest piece about a person who never existed, who has spent his entire adult life doing something I don’t know anything about. More »

Take This On-Call Rotation and Shove It

Thu, 27 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

At some companies, it is expected that certain engineers will serve as part of a formal on-call rotation. On paper, this seems like a reasonable way to ensure the reliability of the product. In practice, it is a miserable burden and you probably won’t even get paid for it. More »

Dirty, disgusting, filthy, lice-ridden boids.

Sun, 02 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Look up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s hundreds of thousands of birds! What are all these birds doing with my patio umbrella? And why do they all collectively believe that “scrappiness” is a good example of a corporate value? More »

The "No, But" Engineer

Fri, 28 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

When you’re improvising a comedy scene, the golden rule is to respond with “yes, and” to everything your partners say and do. This unwavering acceptance can produce riotous bouts of laughter. In an engineering team, it just creates unholy messes. More »

The Ideal Candidate Will Be Punched In the Stomach

Thu, 13 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The description suggests that this is some kind of extended metaphor about work. It appears to be written in that Choose Your Own Adventure style second-person voice, yet there are no choices to be found within. Against your better judgment, you follow the link. More »

An Unwilling Participant in Your Smart Fantasy

Thu, 30 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, where none of the light switches do a damn thing. And you may ask yourself, “How do I work this?” And you may ask yourself, “Am I right, am I wrong?” Same as it ever was. More »

The Mannheim Steamroller Version of "Deck the Halls" Is Insufferable and I Will Fight Anyone Who Disagrees

Fri, 20 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Join me on a brief foray into one of mankind’s most disreputable pastimes: Attempting to analyze and critique Christmas music. Today’s subject is “Deck the Halls” as performed by Mannheim Steamroller. You know, the 80s synthesizer version with that bad note in it. More »

Large Chainsaw Model

Fri, 22 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The powered chainsaw was developed nearly a century ago. Its rise in prevalence has fundamentally changed the shape of human work in forestry and logging industries. But when was the last time you personally needed to use a chainsaw in your daily life? More »

The Fake Fixation

Fri, 15 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Twenty years ago, it was not difficult to find songs that used the word “fake” somewhere in the lyrics. This is not nearly as prevalent in music today, nor was it all that common before that era. This article explores the phenomenon to try to see if there’s really something to it. More »

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

Mon, 30 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Fri, 13 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

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

Wed, 14 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

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?

Fri, 02 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

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 »

ScottSmitelli.com

Mon, 01 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This is the website you are currently looking at. More »

Small WebGL Examples

Sat, 29 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

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

Tue, 31 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

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

Cosmodoc

Mon, 13 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The semi-complete teardown of Cosmo’s Cosmic Adventure (1992). More »

Cosmore

Sat, 07 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

A reconstruction of the source code of Cosmo’s Cosmic Adventure (1992), using the original C compiler and x86 assembler from 1988. More »

Langolier

Thu, 01 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

A utility that removes tweets from Twitter after they reach a specified age. Because nothing good ever came from a ten-year-old tweet. More »

Windowbox

Fri, 01 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Windowbox is a photo-hosting website where I post pictures directly from my phone camera. More »

Salt

Thu, 01 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The configuration management code that automatically built this web server and everything running on it. More »

Scottfiles

Sat, 01 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Scott’s dotfiles. More »

leroux-cache

Wed, 01 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

A cache object that actually deletes the least-recently-used items. More »

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

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

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

Docroute

Sat, 01 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

A dynamic CMS for mostly-static content. This site was powered by Docroute from 2012 to 2024. More »

Is That Company Real?

Mon, 01 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

A web service that uses a proprietary and jealously-guarded algorithm to determine if a given company is “real.” More »

Internet Stapler

Sat, 01 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0000

It will soon be stapling time. More »

The Sort of Face

Thu, 01 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Inspired by the popular (and eventually debunked) Twitter account @horse_ebooks, The Sort of Face is my attempt at creating a Twitter bot that generates funny gibberish. More »

Trigger and Freewheel CMS

Sun, 01 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

The Trigger and Freewheel CMS powers a webcomic of the same name that I started drawing in 2008 and have been sporadically updating since. More »

(This Song's Just) 76,482 Tiles Long

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0000

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

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000

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

twanslationparty

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Working in conjunction with twitstash, twanslationparty corrupts the English text in one Twitter account’s timeline and posts the result to another account. More »

twitstash

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000

twitstash is a cron script that archives a Twitter user’s timeline into a MySQL database for search, data mining, or as a foundation for twanslationparty bots. More »

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

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000

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

Everybody Imitates Hypnotoad

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Synthesizing Futurama’s “Angry Machine” sound effect from scratch using a noise generator and a few filters. More »

Block Party

Sat, 23 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0000

A self-made block diagram for the Behringer SL2442FX-PRO mixer. More »

Hey Hey, Ho Ho, QuickTime 7.4 Has Got To Go

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

In January 2008, Apple released version 7.4 of QuickTime which had the unfortunate side-effect of breaking video rendering in Adobe After Effects. This article explores a method to revert the installed version of QuickTime back to 7.3. More »

0 dBFS for Vendetta

Sun, 19 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0000

A list of some of the loudest-sounding songs in my music collection, and a plea to bring back dynamic range. More »

The Armchair Audio Engineer

Mon, 05 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

An analysis of strange digital compression artifacting present on certain tracks of Chef Aid: The South Park Album. More »