Elsewhere
Release TIL Research Tool Museum
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Tool
Sorting algorithms
— Visualize and compare different sorting algorithms as they organize data in real time. Watch each algorithm's approach through animated bar charts, tracking comparisons and swaps while learning how bubble sort, selection sort, insertion sort, merge sort, quick sort, heap sort, and Timsort differ in performance. Run multiple algorithms simultaneously to see which performs best on your chosen dataset size and speed.
Tool
SQLite Bytecode Explorer
— Explore SQLite's Virtual Database Engine (VDBE) by analyzing the bytecode that SQLite generates when compiling SQL queries. This tool runs the `EXPLAIN` command on your SQL statements and annotates each instruction with detailed explanations of what it does, from cursor management and table scans to index lookups and aggregate functions.
Research
v86 exploration
— Exploring the v86 Linux Emulator (see v86 Linux Emulator tool), this project evaluates a browser-based Buildroot 2024.05.2 x86 environment with a constrained 39 MB RAM, featuring BusyBox utilities, Lua 5.4.6 scripting, and core text-processing tools. Although it boasts comprehensive shell utilities, file management tools, and basic network utilities (curl, wget, links), actual internet access is unavailable due to the lack of a configured network relay.
Research
Luau WebAssembly: Browser Playground + Python wasmtime
— Luau WebAssembly explores compiling the Luau scripting language (used by Roblox) to WebAssembly for interactive browser environments and Python integration via wasmtime. By leveraging Emscripten, the project creates a streamlined WASM module that runs in the browser (with a playground and Pyodide integration) and server-side Python. Key technical adaptations include custom output capture, flexible WASM imports for wasmtime, and Python wrappers that handle C++ exception lifecycles.
Tool
MP3 Inspector
— Extract ID3 metadata and file information from MP3 audio files using this browser-based tool. Upload an MP3 file by dragging it onto the drop zone or selecting it through the file picker, and the inspector will parse and display all available tags including title, artist, album art, technical encoding details, and embedded URLs. The tool organizes metadata into categorized sections and provides a raw JSON view for advanced inspection of the complete tag data.
Tool
NICAR 2026 Schedule
— Browse the NICAR 2026 conference schedule with powerful search and filtering capabilities. This interactive schedule viewer lets you explore sessions across multiple days, filter by session type, track, and skill level, and save your favorite sessions for quick access. The schedule works offline using cached data and automatically syncs updates when you're back online.
Tool
GIF Optimizer (gifsicle WASM)
— Optimize animated GIF files using gifsicle compiled to WebAssembly, with all processing occurring directly in your browser without server uploads. The application offers preset optimization profiles ranging from lossless compression to aggressive lossy reduction, along with manual control over parameters like color palette size, scaling, and dithering methods.
Tool
markdown-copy component
— The `<markdown-copy>` component renders markdown content with built-in controls for viewing the rendered output and copying or viewing the source code. It provides an interactive interface with a menu button that allows users to toggle between the formatted markdown display and the raw markdown source, as well as quickly copy the markdown text to the clipboard.
Tool
Animated Word Cloud
— View animated word cloud visualizations that use an Archimedean spiral placement algorithm to position words on a canvas. Each word spirals outward from the center until it finds an unoccupied space, with grid-based spatial indexing accelerating collision detection to handle large datasets efficiently. Control the animation playback speed, step through frames manually, download the final result as a PNG, or paste your own text to generate a custom word cloud.
Research
Rust Word Cloud CLI
— Leveraging Rust’s performance and safety, this CLI tool generates PNG word clouds directly from text input using a custom spiral layout algorithm and efficient grid-based collision detection. It supports flexible options for image size, font scaling, color schemes, and background colors, with all core features—such as stopword filtering, spatial indexing, and layout—implemented from scratch without any external word cloud library.
Tool
Unicode Explorer — Binary Search Over HTTP
— View Unicode characters and their properties through an interactive binary search algorithm that makes real HTTP Range requests to fetch individual records from a binary database. Enter a character or Unicode codepoint to see each step of the search visualized in a network log, including fetch times and comparisons.
Research
Unicode Explorer — Binary Search Over HTTP
— By leveraging HTTP Range requests and fixed-width binary records, Unicode Explorer demonstrates efficient binary search for Unicode data directly from a static file with zero backend or dependencies. The client fetches only one 256-byte record per step, using signposts from `meta.json` to optimize initial narrowing, then performs real-time network-driven binary search, visualized in an interactive log.
Research
README Timezone Clarification
— Timezone mismatches in the project’s root README.md were identified due to inconsistent git commit author dates—some in UTC, others in US Pacific time—displayed without timezone clarification. The listing was generated by a cog script that extracted dates using `git log`, then formatted them without standardizing to a common timezone, causing confusion across 39 project directories.
Research
WebMCP + Chrome DevTools Protocol Demo
— WebMCP is a proposed browser API that enables web applications to expose structured, callable tools for AI agents, reducing the need for unreliable UI automation. This project demonstrates how to register and interact with WebMCP tools using a Python client over the Chrome DevTools Protocol (CDP), providing a bridge to discover and call these tools programmatically.
Release
datasette-endpoints 0.1
— Plugin to add a /-/endpoints debug page listing all configured endpoints