Ray marching a blob

A deep dive into rendering animated metaballs (aka blobs) with ray marching, PBR shading, shadows, and CPU driven simulation in WebGL and Three.js.

Random Mutation Hill Climbing (RMHC)

An exploration of how we approximate an image using an evolutionary strategy. One candidate, one mutation, accept if better. We climb the fitness landscape in real time with frame-budgeted rendering and converge on surprisingly good results.

Triple Buffering in Rendering APIs

A practical guide to triple buffering, how it improves smoothness and throughput over double buffering, when to use it, and how to wire it up in modern APIs.

Rendering the Mandelbulb

A deep dive into rendering the Mandelbulb fractal in WebGL using ray marching, distance estimation, orbit traps, and advanced shading techniques. We’ll explore the math, shader implementation, and how fractals like the Mandelbulb inspire cinematic visuals.

Implementing a foil sticker effect

A breakdown of how to build a custom Three.js shader that recreates the iridescent, sparkling look of foil stickers using vertex deformation, angle-based color shifts, and procedural flakes.

Redshift: The Cosmic Fingerprint of Light in Motion

Light stretches as it travels, shifting redward and revealing motion, distance, and even the chemistry of galaxies like record-breaking JADES-GS-z14-0

Polaris: The Celestial Anchor of the North

Polaris, has guided humanity for centuries thanks to its unique position in the night sky. This bright supergiant star serves as a reliable navigation aid, a symbol across cultures, and an intriguing triple star system studied by astronomers.

Understanding Unity’s Render Pipelines

Unity’s render pipelines, Built-in, URP, HDRP, offer different trade-offs in performance, visuals, and flexibility. Learn how they work, when to use each, and how to extend them with Command Buffers, Render Features, and Custom Passes.

The Andromeda Paradox

A slow walk on Earth can shift our view of what’s happening right now in a galaxy millions of light-years away. The Andromeda Paradox illustrates how special relativity warps our sense of simultaneity.

NGC6960: The Veil Nebula

A brief report in my latest astrophotography session, where I captured NGC6960, also known as the Veil Nebula.

A condensed guide to React hooks

A quick reference guide to React hooks. When to use useState, useEffect, useRef, useMemo & more. Includes comparison tablew, real examples, and common gotchas to look out for.

Simulating the Seestar S50 in Stellarium

Learn how to set up the Seestar S50 smart telescope in Stellarium using accurate sensor and telescope parameters. This guide covers both standard and 2x mosaic modes to help you simulate your field of view for better astrophotography planning.

Reviving the classic RTS “Z” with DOSBox

A step-by-step guide to setting up DOSBox on Linux to play the classic RTS game Z by Bitmap Brothers using your original game ISO.

Generating audio transcripts

This short write-up offers a quick overview of a simple method you can use to create a transcript from either a video or an audio file, which may be helpful in a variety of contexts such as documentation, content analysis, or accessibility.

Implementing a todo app, Part 1: The Backend

Part 1 of a blog post series on full stack development, where I walk through the process of building a simple task management app. This chapter focuses on implementation of the backend services.

Speech synthesis for web applications

I've introduced a feature that lets you listen to my blog's content being read aloud. This post explains how I implemented it using the Speech Synthesis Web API, which requires minimal code and works on most modern browsers.

Gameboy Development, Part 1: Hello World!

A step-by-step guide for creating a 'hello world' ROM for the Nintendo Gameboy in assembly

Working with encrypted file archives

A brief guide on encrypting and decrypting tar archives with gpg

ZEXMTE BT-506 in Debian

A guide on how to make the ZEXMTE BT-506 dongle work in Debian

Notifications Using Telegram

A tutorial on using telegram to generate notifications

Docker in Debian

Notes on using Docker in Debian

Getting creative with asciimg

A fun experiment in using text to render animated images in a terminal

Lossy Compression of Unsigned Float Numbers

Notes on a lossy unsigned float number compression technique

Shadow Mapping

This article introduces shadow mapping, a technique for creating shadows in graphics. It explains how to capture depth from the light’s view to find shadowed areas and outlines basic steps to implement it, including making and using shadow maps.

Peripage bluetooth printing via the terminal

A tutorial on interfacing a peripage printer via the command line

Using Yubikey FIDO2 to login in Debian/GDM

A brief guide on using Yubikey as an authentication method with GDM

Intel's Panel Self Refresh (PSR) Feature

Ai brief guide on resolving Intel's PSR issues

Midjourney

A brief post on generating images with Midjourney

Brachiograph plotter

Brief notes on building a brachiograph plotter

Normal Map Blending

A brief survey of normal blending techniques

Notes on Unreal Engine 5, Nanite

Nanite in UE5 is a virtualized geometry system that renders only visible detail, enabling film-quality assets with millions of polygons and minimal performance cost. It replaces normal maps, supports dynamic LODs, and uses a hybrid rasterizer for optimal efficiency.

Reviving old software to run on a modern machine

A short case study on how to bring old software back to life

Creating floppy disk images in Linux

A short guide on creating floppy disk images in Linux

The De Moivre theorem

Theory and implementation of the De Moivre theorem

Macro-Photography with a Mobile Phone (Part 2)

Another way to turn your mobile phone into a macro camera

Macro-Photography using a Mobile Phone

A simple way to turn your mobile phone into a macro camera

Classic Demo Effects, Twister

The classic demoscene effect explained and implemented in GLSL

Irradiance, Spherical Harmonics

Spherical Harmonics are a type of Spherical Radial Basis Function that can be used to encode signals defined on a sphere in a compact way. This makes them an excellent fit for encoding a variety of datasets commonly used in real time graphics."

Irradiance, Ambient Cube

In Half-Life 2, a directional ambient term is precomputed across the environments and stored in the ambient cube lighting encoding. This post goes over the theory behind the ambient cubes technique and presents an implementation in GLSL.

Generative art

Generative art is an algorithmic approach to creating unique and dynamic works of art. As technology progresses, it continues to evolve, allowing artists to explore new forms and patterns beyond traditional methods.

Full Screen Pass Without Explicit Geometry

A brief explanation on how to render a full screen pass efficiently in OpenGL and DirectX

Elementary Cellular Automaton, Rule 126

Wolfram's infamous rule 126 explained in plain terms

Classic Demo Effects, Fire

The classic demoscene effect explained and implemented in GLSL

OpenGL Geometry

A brief survey of various ways OpenGL can draw geometry

Half-Space Test

An explanation of the math behind half-space testing

Distributed Ray-Tracing

An overview of how distributed ray-tracing enhances realism by addressing the limits of traditional ray-tracing, using Monte Carlo sampling to simulate effects like soft shadows, gloss, depth of field, and motion blur.

Historical Computer Generated Animations

A listing of CGI films, that played a pivotal role in the history of computer graphics

Lindenmayer Systems

L-Systems are a mathematical framework for modeling organic structures and fractals. They generate complex patterns and are used in graphics, biology, and procedural generation. In this blog post I share some examples and how to implement them.

Interpolation Methods

A collection of useful interpolation methods, theory and implementation

Optical Illusions, Lightness Constancy

Lightness constancy allows us to perceive surface brightness as stable despite changes in lighting. The Checker Shadow Illusion highlights how context, shadows, and spatial cues trick the brain into seeing identical shades as different.

BTRFS, Quick Start

A brief guide on using BTRFS

Useful Functions for Graphics

A listing of useful math formulas and their plots

Generating Stereo Anaglyphs with ImageMagick

How to generate stereo anaglyphs with ImageMagick

Raytracing, Ray-Plane Testing

Ray to Plane intersection testing, theory and implementation

Sampling a Disk, Vogel's Method

There are many ways to spread points across the surface of a disk but doing so in an even distribution can be challenging. Vogel’s method solves that problem elegantly. In this blog post, I explore the underlying math and show how to implement it.

Visibility Culling

A listing of visibility culling techniques

Sprite Encoding / Decoding Using Literals

A simple approach for sprite texture encoding

Edge Detection Using the Sobel Operator

The Sobel operator explained and implemented in GLSL

Matrices: From Linear Algebra to Graphics

Color Grading, An Artist Driven Approach

A simple method of implementing color grading

Law of Reflection

The physics law of reflection, theory and implementation

PostFX, Pixelize

Implementation of pixelization effects in GLSL

Anti-Aliasing, FXAA

A high level explanation of FXAA and how to implement it in GLSL

NCF, A Minimalistic Meta-Language

A short guide on NCF specification and how to use it in your own projects

Metaballs

Metaballs, what are they and how to make them

Pseudo 3D Tunnel Effect

The classic demoscene effect explained and implemented in GLSL

From Geometric to Coordinate Form: Understanding the Dot Product

This post shows how the geometric dot product, lengths times cosine of the angle, can be converted into the coordinate form by summing the products of corresponding components, proving both forms are equivalent.

Conway's Game of Life

A GPU implementation of Conway's game of life

Fractals, Mandelbrot & Julia Sets

Theory and GPU implementation of the Mandelbrot and Julia fractal sets

C/C++ Embedded Files

A summary of different approaches for embedding files within c / c++ code

Primus Under Debian/Sid

A short guide on enabling and using Primus under Debian Sid

GNU Make, Parallel Processing

Parallel processing with GNU Make