Utilities5 min read
Photographing a Card So the Centring Measurement Means Something
A skewed or badly lit photo produces a confident, wrong centring ratio. How to capture front and back so the border measurement is worth trusting.
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All articles, page 27
Articles 625–648 of 990, newest first. To read by subject instead, start from a category or a topic hub on the blog’s front page.
- Utilities5 min read
Picture-in-Picture on Android: When It Works and When It Does Not
PiP depends on the app declaring it, the device qualifying, and a per-app switch most people never see. A checklist for when the floating window never appears.
- Sports & GM5 min read
Height, Weight and Wingspan: Do Body Metrics Change an Archetype?
What the height, weight and wingspan fields on a career-sim creation screen are for, what the real sport says, and which choice actually decides a career.
- Sports & GM6 min read
Playing the Big Points: Break Point, 30-40 and the Second Serve
Which points in a tennis game actually decide sets, what the rules allow you to do on them, and how research describes decision-making under pressure.
- Education6 min read
How Polynesian Navigators Settled the Pacific
Wayfinding by stars, swells and birds, plus what radiocarbon dates and genetics now show about when the Pacific islands were actually settled.
- Sports & GM5 min read
Press Conferences in a Football Career: What Saying the Wrong Thing Costs
The media layer in a football career sim is a lever pulled off the pitch. What it connects to, why it exists in the real sport, and how to play it well.
- Education5 min read
The Printing Press and the Information Revolution It Did Not Start Alone
Movable metal type reached Korea before Mainz and woodblocks reached China earlier still. What Gutenberg's system changed, and what it did not.
- Education6 min read
Queen Nzinga of Ndongo and Matamba
A seventeenth-century ruler in what is now Angola, known mainly through hostile Portuguese sources, who fought and traded inside the Atlantic slave system.
- Education5 min read
Rapa Nui and the Collapse Story Archaeology Keeps Complicating
The Rapa Nui ecocide story is contested on almost every point. What the palaeoecology, satellite survey and ancient genomes actually show, side by side.
- Education6 min read
Ratios and Proportions Without Cross-Multiplying
Most proportion problems are scaling problems. Find the factor, apply it, and keep cross-multiplication for the cases where no friendly factor exists.
- Education6 min read
Reading a History App's Content Critically
Five questions that separate a well-built history app from a confident-sounding one, applied honestly to our own app and its gaps.
- Education6 min read
Average, Median and Fastest: Reading Your Response Time Numbers
Answer times are skewed, so the average is pulled up by a single long think. Here is what mean, median, fastest and consistency each tell you about a session.
- Languages5 min read
Reading Shanghainese in Characters When You Only Know Mandarin Readings
A character on the page is a written unit, not a pronunciation. What happens when you can read a Shanghainese sentence in Mandarin but cannot say it in Wu.
- Education5 min read
Recognition Is Easier Than Recall, and That Matters
Picking an answer from a list is a different job from producing it from nothing. Why the gap exists, and why multiple-choice practice flatters what you know.
- Education5 min read
Regnal Years: Counting Time by Who Sat on the Throne
Most pre-modern documents date themselves by a ruler's reign, not a calendar era. Here is how king lists turn that into chronology and where the chains snap.
- Education5 min read
Reliability and Validity: The Two Questions to Ask Any Test
Reliability asks whether a test repeats itself. Validity asks whether the conclusion drawn from the score is justified. Two questions to ask of any test.
- Education5 min read
Remembering One Long Number: Grouping, Rhythm and Rehearsal
Holding a number for thirty seconds is a different problem from memorising it. What the rehearsal loop can carry, and what reliably knocks a number out of it.
- Sports & GM5 min read
Why a Draft Pool Rotates, and How to Draft a Board You Cannot Memorise
A rotating draft pool changes which positions are deep on every run. Why designers rotate it, and how to draft a board you cannot memorise in advance.
- Sports & GM6 min read
Squad Rotation Over a Rugby Season: Depth, Morale and Job Security
How rotation, depth, morale and job security decide a 24-match rugby season, and how to plan a bench that still works in week fifteen.
- Education6 min read
Russian Peasant Multiplication, and Why Dropping the Remainders Works
Halve one number, double the other, discard remainders, then add the rows where the halved side is odd. It works because that column is binary.
- Education5 min read
Two Revolutions in One Year: Russia in 1917
February and October were separate revolutions eight months apart, and the October one happened in November. The sequence, the calendar trap and the debate.
- Education7 min read
Scholars of the Islamic Golden Age and What They Actually Wrote
Al-Khwarizmi, Ibn Sina, al-Biruni, Ibn al-Haytham and Ibn Khaldun: what their books actually contain, and why the period label is contested.
- Education7 min read
Scientists Who Changed the Record, and How Credit Gets Assigned
Discovery is usually distributed and credit rarely is. Documented cases from DNA, pulsars and nuclear fission show how attribution actually works.
- Sports & GM5 min read
The Combine: Which Drills Move a Prospect's Stock
What a scouting combine is, which tests make up the battery, and what published research says about how well those tests predict draft position and performance.