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Practical writing about software, systems, and the small details that make products feel solid.

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Fresh from the notebook

Tech 12 Sep 2026 9 min read

What Shutter Speed Changes in Phone Photos

A moving person can look crisp in one phone photo and blurred in the next, even when both shots seem well focused. The difference often comes from shutter speed: the amount of time the camera gathers light for an exposure. Shutter speed affects more than brightness. It also determines how much movement can be recorded while the image is being captured. Once that connection is clear, many familiar camera behaviors make more sense, from blurry indoor photos to night shots that ask you to hold the phone still.

Smartphones Cameras

Tech 12 Sep 2026 8 min read

What Refresh Rate Changes on a Screen

A phone or monitor may offer settings such as 60 Hz, 90 Hz, 120 Hz, or higher. The larger number can make scrolling and animation look smoother, but it doesn’t make every part of a device run at that speed or guarantee that every video will show more detail. Refresh rate is the number of times a display can update its image each second. It is measured in hertz (Hz). A 60 Hz display can present up to 60 screen updates per second, while a 120 Hz display can present up to 120. That simple definition becomes more useful once you separate the display’s updates from the content being sent to it.

Displays Refresh Rate

Tech 12 Sep 2026 8 min read

What NFC Does When You Tap Your Phone

Tapping a phone against a payment terminal, transit gate, accessory, or small tag can trigger an action almost instantly. It feels simpler than joining Wi-Fi or pairing a Bluetooth device because there may be no network name, password, or visible connection process. The technology behind many of these taps is Near Field Communication (NFC). The useful mental model is that NFC creates a very short-range radio interaction between compatible devices. The tap itself is not transferring information through physical contact. Bringing the devices close together puts their NFC antennas in a position where radio communication can take place.

NFC Smartphones

Tech 12 Sep 2026 8 min read

What Dynamic Range Compression Changes in Everyday Audio

A film can have dialogue that feels too quiet, then jump to an action scene that sends you reaching for the volume control. Music, podcasts, games, televisions, and audio apps can produce similar changes. One feature that can reduce those jumps is dynamic range compression. Dynamic range compression changes the relationship between quieter and louder parts of an audio signal. It can make loud moments less far removed from the rest of the programme, which is useful when listening at low volume or in a noisy room. It is not the same as simply turning the volume down, and it is not the same as loudness normalization.

Audio Dynamic Range

Tech 12 Sep 2026 8 min read

What a Bluetooth Audio Codec Changes

Two pairs of Bluetooth headphones can connect to the same phone yet use different methods to carry the audio. You may also see codec names in specifications or device settings and wonder whether changing one will transform the sound. A Bluetooth audio codec is the method used to encode audio into a form suitable for transmission and decode it again at the receiving device. It matters, but it is only one part of the listening chain. The codec can affect audio quality, delay, radio usage, and power requirements; it cannot compensate for poor speakers, a weak recording, or every limitation elsewhere in the system.

Bluetooth Audio

Cybersecurity 12 Sep 2026 8 min read

Use CSP Nonces to Restrict Executable Scripts

Cross-site scripting becomes dangerous when attacker-controlled text reaches a browser in a form that the browser can execute. Context-aware output encoding and safe DOM APIs remain primary defenses because they stop data from becoming executable markup. A Content Security Policy can add another boundary: even if an injection flaw creates a script element, the browser can refuse to execute it unless the page explicitly grants that script permission. A nonce-based policy is a practical way to express that permission for server-rendered pages. The server creates an unpredictable value for one HTTP response, places it in the Content-Security-Policy header, and attaches the same value to script elements that the application intends to execute. A script inserted through an injection flaw does not possess the value and is blocked.

Cybersecurity Web Security

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