Solar eclipses on other planets

As seen in the Earth’s sky, the Moon and Sun are very close to the same size. I’ve seen it asserted a handful of times that this situation is unique in the Solar System (example). But is that actually true? It always sounded a little suspicious to me, so I decided to take a closer look.……

Could all the planets fit between the Earth and Moon?

Maybe you remember that viral internet graphic from a few years ago showing how the other 7 major planets in the Solar System could fit neatly between the Earth and the Moon. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to be surprised by that, but it’s a mildly interesting coincidence that the distances are so close.……

The cpio trailer problem

cpio is an archive file format, similar in concept to ZIP or tar. It combines multiple files (which I’ll call the “member files”) together in a single .cpio archive file. It is an old format, designed to be useful with magnetic tape drives. Here’s a demonstration, using a Unix shell, and the GNU cpio utility.……

The curious case of small caps in Unicode

Small caps is really just a text display style, and as such it should be outside the scope of Unicode. But what if you want to Bᴇ Cᴏᴏʟ and use small caps in a post on an internet forum that supports Unicode, but not small caps styling? You could do that if Unicode had a special……

An insignificant GIF specification error

I study a lot of file formats, and sometimes I come across a quirk in a format, or its documentation, that isn’t worth making a fuss about, but which might still be interesting to two or three people in the world. I suppose this one doesn’t even meet that criteria, though it is in a……

We’re probably alone

I didn’t want my first real post here to be about file formats, so I’ll go with the next best thing: space aliens. I don’t know whether extraterrestrial intelligent life (ETI) exists in the observable universe. A lot of very smart people think it does. But based on humanity’s current observational and theoretical knowledge, it……

First post

Hello all you happy people.