paperhurts https://paperhurts.com/ A post for each project: what it is, why it happened, and what I learned building it. Why https://paperhurts.com/posts/why/ https://paperhurts.com/posts/why/ Wed, 07 Oct 2026 21:56:00 GMT Are logical pixels and physical pixels so infuriating.

]]> Heresy https://paperhurts.com/posts/heresy/ https://paperhurts.com/posts/heresy/ Sat, 26 Sep 2026 02:16:00 GMT Saint Katherine does not approve Thy name is humidity.

I’ve been wanting to paint for some time, which means I’m using https://paperhurts.dev/coatcheck/

But what fun is a progressive web app specifically designed to be a simplistic guide to when you can paint minis if it doesn’t have cute little sprites declaring heresy?

I guess it’s just One more commit at one AM again.

]]> Why clouds are white https://paperhurts.com/posts/volumetric-clouds/ https://paperhurts.com/posts/volumetric-clouds/ Fri, 25 Sep 2026 21:30:00 GMT Let every photon bounce exactly once and a cloud renders as dirty gray smoke. Everything white about a cloud is light that bounced more than once. Drag the first slider to zero and watch.

Volumetric clouds. Open it on its own page
]]> Caustics in shallow water https://paperhurts.com/posts/shallow-water/ https://paperhurts.com/posts/shallow-water/ Fri, 25 Sep 2026 21:20:00 GMT The bright ripples on the bottom of a pool are light squeezed together by a wavy surface. This one computes them instead of painting them on, and runs the whole refraction three times so the edges pick up a rainbow.

Shallow water. Open it on its own page
]]> Plasma, the way a 486 did it https://paperhurts.com/posts/plasma/ https://paperhurts.com/posts/plasma/ Fri, 25 Sep 2026 21:10:00 GMT The field is computed once: four sine waves per pixel, folded into a byte. After that, the only thing that moves is a 256-color lookup table. Your eye sees flowing liquid; the pixels never change.

Plasma, 320×240, 256 colors. Open it on its own page
]]> The ten minutes after a storm https://paperhurts.com/posts/after-the-storm/ https://paperhurts.com/posts/after-the-storm/ Wed, 09 Sep 2026 19:24:00 GMT The best air of the day comes right after the rain quits. Everything drips, the road steams, and the frogs start up like someone flipped a breaker. I've stopped trying to be useful in those ten minutes. I just go stand in them.

]]> How to draw rain with a for-loop https://paperhurts.com/posts/rain-with-a-for-loop/ https://paperhurts.com/posts/rain-with-a-for-loop/ Sun, 30 Aug 2026 13:24:00 GMT Every drop falling behind this page is one line: a start point, a length, a speed, and a little wind. A few hundred of them, recycled forever. Weather, it turns out, is mostly a lot of small, simple things agreeing to fall at the same time.

Here's the whole idea, minus the drawing:

for (const drop of drops) {
  drop.y += drop.speed * dt;
  drop.x += drop.speed * wind * dt;
  if (drop.y > height) recycle(drop); // start over
}

The part that makes it feel like weather rather than a screensaver is that rain only starts once the clouds are thick enough to hold it. Clouds roll in first, the sky goes gray, and then it rains. Nobody notices that rule until it's missing.

]]> Things to enjoy https://paperhurts.com/posts/things-worth-keeping/ https://paperhurts.com/posts/things-worth-keeping/ Wed, 22 Jul 2026 18:12:00 GMT A running list, updated whenever.

  • The smell right before a storm.
  • Code that deletes more lines than it adds.
  • Friends who tell you the truth and then stay for dinner.
  • The first page of a new notebook, before you ruin it.
]]> Building in the margins https://paperhurts.com/posts/building-in-the-margins/ https://paperhurts.com/posts/building-in-the-margins/ Mon, 08 Jun 2026 10:12:00 GMT Almost everything I've made, I made in the gaps: lunch breaks, the hour after the house goes quiet, the ten minutes a build takes. Margins are underrated real estate. The rent is cheap and nobody checks on you.

]]> Why this blog has weather https://paperhurts.com/posts/why-this-blog-has-weather/ https://paperhurts.com/posts/why-this-blog-has-weather/ Thu, 14 May 2026 21:54:00 GMT Most websites look the same at noon and at midnight. That always felt a little dishonest for something that's supposed to be a journal. People have weather. So does this. Sometimes it rains while you read, and that isn't a bug.

How it works

Every post sits at the hour it was written. Scroll the front page and you're scrolling through a day: early posts under a sunrise, late ones under the stars. The weather does its own thing on top of that, the way weather does. The mechanics of the rain are in How to draw rain with a for-loop.

Posts written after midnight stay in the night they belong to, instead of jumping to the top of the next morning. See One more commit.

Writing one

A post is a markdown file with a title and the time you wrote it:

---
title: The ten minutes after a storm
date: 2026-09-09 19:24
---

That's the whole ritual.

]]> One more commit https://paperhurts.com/posts/one-more-commit/ https://paperhurts.com/posts/one-more-commit/ Thu, 02 Apr 2026 01:10:00 GMT Nothing good has ever been committed at one in the morning. I say this as someone who has committed a great deal at one in the morning.

The fix is obvious. It will still be obvious after sleep.

It was not, in fact, obvious after sleep. But at least I could see why.

]]> Start before the sun https://paperhurts.com/posts/start-before-the-sun/ https://paperhurts.com/posts/start-before-the-sun/ Tue, 03 Mar 2026 06:24:00 GMT There's a quiet at six in the morning that belongs to whoever shows up first. It isn't productive quiet. It's permissive quiet: nothing has asked for you yet, and nothing has broken. Most of what I like about my days, I can trace back to protecting about forty minutes of it.

The trick isn't getting up early. It's not spending those minutes on anything that has a notification attached. Coffee, a notebook, the window. Everything else can wait for the part of the day that's built for it.

]]> The afternoon slump is a load case https://paperhurts.com/posts/afternoon-load-case/ https://paperhurts.com/posts/afternoon-load-case/ Wed, 11 Feb 2026 15:30:00 GMT I used to treat three o'clock as a character flaw. Now I treat it like a load case. You don't blame a beam for deflecting; you size it for the load it actually sees. So: hard thinking before lunch, easy wins after, and nothing important on the calendar at 3:15.

]]> Tools that fit in one hand https://paperhurts.com/posts/tools-that-fit-in-one-hand/ https://paperhurts.com/posts/tools-that-fit-in-one-hand/ Mon, 19 Jan 2026 07:45:00 GMT The software I love most does one thing and forgets me the moment I close it. A timer. A notepad that opens before I finish thinking. A unit converter with no account. Somewhere along the way we decided every tool should grow up to be a platform. I'd like to un-decide that.

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