Essays
When Selectel's transition to VXLAN threatened to break their traffic analysis system, they turned to eBPF to decapsulate packets at line rate. This article walks through the Linux network stack internals, eBPF hook points, and a production solution handling 6 million packets per second.
Essays
After 10 years with the same PC, the author documents a complete system rebuild in 2025, covering modern case design trends, cooling solutions, DDR5 memory, and whether the upgrade was truly worth $2,800.
Essays
A hands-on guide to building a Linux kernel TTY driver for an AXI UARTLite peripheral on a Xilinx FPGA connected via PCIe XDMA, complete with full driver source code, a Python direct-access alternative, and performance profiling.
Essays
Many developers start with SOLID and GoF patterns, but feel a gap in understanding responsibility distribution and domain modeling. GRASP fills this gap by providing a design methodology that precedes and complements SOLID.
Hardware
A hands-on investigation into the Energomera CE207 R7 electricity meter — certified as "domestic" under Russian law and winner of a nearly one-billion-ruble state tender — reveals that its supposedly Russian microchips are Taiwanese parts with the labels scratched off and replaced.
DIY
A detailed guide on building a large decorative gas discharge vacuum tube from scratch, featuring hand-cut Cyrillic letter electrodes that glow in argon gas, using recycled fluorescent lamp glass and a titanium getter electrode.
Programming
On September 20, 2024, at age 19, I became a member of the CPython core development team — the people who can merge pull requests into the CPython repository. Here is how that journey unfolded over roughly two years.
Essays
The incredible saga of Boeing B-29 Superfortress 'Kee Bird' — from its emergency belly landing on a frozen Greenland lake in 1947 during a secret Arctic reconnaissance mission, through ambitious multi-year recovery expeditions in the 1990s, to its tragic destruction by fire moments before its triumphant flight home.
Programming
A deep dive into Excel's bizarre date and time quirks, tracing how a simple formula like '1/2'+1 yields 45660 due to legacy date serial numbers and a deliberate bug inherited from Lotus 1-2-3.
DIY
A complete guide to building a hardware emulator of the iconic Soviet handheld game "Nu, Pogodi!" (based on Nintendo's Game & Watch) on the Raspberry Pi Pico, covering CPU emulation of the KB1013VK1-2 microcontroller, LCD segment rendering, PIO-based sound synthesis, and DMA-driven audio.
Essays
A detailed build log of a DIY tracked robot called 'Caretaker' featuring an ESP32-CAM, AI-assisted design with 1500+ generated images, custom 3D-printed chassis, SLA-printed housing, and Home Assistant integration for remote control and video streaming.
Essays
A hands-on experiment to restore a Haier 58 Smart TV MX with a failed display matrix by isolating damaged driver contacts on the T-CON board, using a custom switching board with DIP switches to find the optimal pin configuration.