Warehouse door

Circuits and Hacking

Could you hack it as a hacker? There’s one scene in the movie “Disclosure Day” where the paramilitary group is trying to get into a warehouse with a locked door, and I swear the “hacking device” used 2 alligator clips attached to the housing of the lock. You can correct me if I misremembered, but for some reason that image stuck with me because I cannot think of one scenario that would make this device plausible. ...

July 25, 2026 · 3 min
Milky Way space photo

Time Dilation Explained

Time Dilation Time dilation stems from Einstein’s theory of special relativity, which says that moving clocks tick more slowly by a factor (called the Lorentz factor). At everyday speeds, the Lorentz factor is approximately one, so the effect is negligible. Near light speed, it becomes dramatic. Here’s the Lorentz factor formula showing how the factor increases with speed: $$ \begin{aligned} &\gamma = 1/\sqrt{1 - v^2/c^2}\\ &\text{where}\\ &\hspace{1em}\gamma = \text{Lorentz factor}\\ &\hspace{1em}v = \text{relative velocity between two objects}\\ &\hspace{1em}c = \text{speed of light} \end{aligned} $$Project Hail Mary The ship in Project Hail Mary (the Book and Movie) travels at about 92% of light speed, so the Lorentz factor is approximately 2.55. In reality, the ship would most likely accelerate for half the trip and decelerate for the rest, but let’s keep it simple using constant velocity. One year on the ship corresponds to about 2.55 years outside it. That’s why a journey that feels like a few years to Grace can become more than a decade for Earth. ...

July 2, 2026 · 3 min
tv showing static

Why I switched to a Static Site Generator

Static Site Generators (SSGs) pre-generate all site pages at build time, producing plain HTML files that load almost instantly for users because there is no need for server processing. In contrast, Server-Side Rendering (SSR) renders each page on demand with every user request, which requires a running server (of course) and will lead to slower load times when the page isn’t cached. To add further contrast, Client-Side Rendering (CSR) usually causes the slowest initial load time because even when a page is cached, all dynamic content will need to be fetched and rendered by the client’s (your) computer. ...

November 1, 2025 · 2 min
a message in a bottle sitting on the beach

What Happens When You Send a Text Message?

This is quite a rabbit-hole that started when a message ended up getting lost, and I wondered why that tends to happen with text messages and not apps like messenger. TLDR: the difference is that text messages (SMS/MMS/RCS) are only forwarded from one phone to another, while apps like messenger centrally stores the data in a server. Below is an overview of the main messaging service types: SMS/MMS, RCS, and Messaging Apps. ...

March 17, 2025 · 4 min