Blog
Guides to the math behind the tools — readability formulas, pricing your work, sizing a build, and planning a game world.
Working backward from take-home: how to price an Etsy item to a target margin
Knowing what Etsy takes is only half the job. Here is how to run the fee math in reverse — start from the margin you need, and find the price that gets you there.
From board count to lumber order: waste, cuts, and choosing the right board length
A calculator tells you the exact boards a deck needs. The lumberyard order is a different number — here is how waste factor, seam placement, and board length turn one into the other.
Choosing soap oils: balancing hardness, lather, and conditioning
Why cold-process recipes lean on olive, coconut, and castor oil, what each one contributes to a finished bar, and how the blend — not just the lye math — decides whether your soap is hard, bubbly, and gentle.
French drain design: slope, depth, and where the water actually goes
Before you calculate gravel and pipe, get the design right — minimum slope, how deep to dig, which way the perforations face, and where the outlet daylights — because a perfectly built drain to the wrong place still floods.
Why your EV draws more kWh than its battery holds — charging losses explained
The two numbers that make EV running-cost estimates wrong: charging losses (you pay for more energy than reaches the battery) and real-world efficiency (mi/kWh swings with speed, cold, and terrain). Here is how each one moves your cost per mile.
How to run Pictionary without the argument over who wrote the words
The board game works until someone recognises their own clue or picks something impossible to draw. A random word generator with a built-in timer fixes both problems and keeps rounds moving.
Why tongue twisters trip you up — and how to actually practice them
The reason "she sells seashells" defeats your mouth is real linguistics, not clumsiness. Here is what makes a twister hard, and how a random generator with read-aloud helps you drill them.
How long does a 2000-point Warhammer game actually take?
Wargame nights overrun because points, player count, and experience all stretch the clock in ways a rulebook never tells you. Here is how match length really scales — and how to budget your turns.
Running a fair Scattergories round: letters, categories, and the timer nobody argues with
The classic party game lives or dies on setup. How rare letters, category difficulty, and the length of the timer quietly decide whether a round is fun or a coin flip.
Why a random writing prompt beats staring at the blank page
The blank page is a decision problem, not a creativity problem. How a random story prompt breaks the deadlock — and how to use one without letting it box you in.
Why your invented language's names don't sound like they belong together
A worldbuilder's fantasy names often feel like a random grab bag. The fix is phonotactics — a small set of syllable rules that make every coined word sound like it came from the same place.
How much disk will your game audio eat? The PCM math, explained
Voice lines and music are usually the biggest download in an indie game. Here is the exact formula for audio file size, why WAV explodes, and how much OGG or Opus actually saves you.
Sizing a webcam and overlay in OBS: the pixel math behind a clean layout
Where should the webcam go, how big, and what stays inside the safe area? The exact pixel calculations for a stream layout at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K — and how to keep aspect ratios honest.
Is your comic page too cramped? Reading panel, dialogue, and action density
Panels per page, words per panel, and action beats per page each have healthy ranges — and they differ for US comics, manga, and webtoons. How to spot a cramped or under-developed page before you draw it.
Why charades goes stale after ten rounds — and how a real word pool fixes it
Every group defaults to the same five charades words after two rounds. The difficulty-tier and category-pool design behind a word generator that stays fresh for a full party.
Why "a few weeks pass" breaks your campaign timeline — and the date math to fix it
Handwaving a travel montage feels harmless until the harvest festival happens twice in one in-game year. The day-count arithmetic behind building a custom fantasy calendar and converting durations into exact dates.
How a "simple" Game Boy homebrew blows through its cartridge in a week
Eight-bit hardware feels like it should make budgeting easy — the whole console fits in kilobytes, how hard can it be? The tile, map, audio, and code byte-costs behind an accidental over-budget cartridge.
How big should that terrain piece be? The scale math behind 28mm, HO, and 1:35 builds
A "two-story building" means a completely different physical size on a wargaming table, a model railroad, and a diorama shelf. The ratio arithmetic that turns real-world feet into miniature millimeters — and into foam-board layers.
How heavy is your dice hoard? The volume and weight math of polyhedral collecting
A dice collection grows one irresistible set at a time until the bag will not close and the strap digs into your shoulder. The per-set volume and weight arithmetic behind sizing a dice bag — and why metal sets change everything.
Why your pixel art eats megabytes: sprite sheet packing and VRAM math for 2D games
A 32×32 sprite looks tiny until it becomes forty frames of animation in an uncompressed GPU texture. The grid-packing and bits-per-pixel arithmetic behind budgeting texture memory for 2D animations.