Blog
Guides to the math behind the tools — readability formulas, pricing your work, sizing a build, and planning a game world.
Wallpaper math: why pattern repeat changes how many rolls you need
How a pattern repeat forces every wallpaper drop to round up to the next full repeat length, cutting usable drops per roll — with a before/after example showing exactly how many more rolls it costs.
Epoxy garage floor coating: how many kits do you actually need?
Why epoxy coverage scales with number of coats and not just floor area, why kits always round up (never split), and when a primer coat is worth the extra cost — with a full worked example.
French drain materials: gravel, pipe, and fabric by the numbers
Why gravel volume must subtract the pipe it surrounds, why landscape fabric matters long-term, and standard depth and slope conventions — with a worked example converting trench dimensions into cubic yards, tons, and cost.
How much soil for a raised garden bed? Bags vs. bulk
Mel's Mix vs. a simple topsoil/compost blend, and the volume threshold where bulk delivery beats bagged soil on cost — with a worked example for multiple beds.
Sizing an LED strip power supply (and avoiding voltage drop)
Why you should never size a PSU to exactly your calculated load, the standard headroom convention, and when a long strip run needs power injection at both ends — with a worked PSU-size lookup.
What it actually costs to charge an EV vs. fill up with gas
Why a "75 kWh battery" costs more than 75 kWh to charge, the real price gap between home and DC fast charging, and a worked road-trip cost comparison against a gas car.
How to size a PC power supply without over- or under-buying
Why headroom above your calculated draw matters for GPU transient spikes, where PSU efficiency actually peaks, and a worked component-by-component wattage example.
What your 3D printer actually costs in electricity (including standby)
Why idle/standby draw quietly adds up over a month, the power difference between FDM and resin printing plus UV cure stations, and worked monthly and annual cost examples.
How long will a portable power station actually last?
Why usable capacity is well below rated capacity, how solar panel wattage determines recharge time, and the startup-surge caveat that catches out compressor devices like fridges.
RAID capacity explained: why your NAS shows less space than the drives promise
A breakdown of the TB-versus-TiB unit gap, how RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, and 10 each trade usable capacity for fault tolerance, and why RAID protects against a dead drive but not against deleted files, ransomware, or a house fire.
How much alcohol to buy for a wedding (without over-ordering)
How to translate guest count, event length, and drinking pace into exact cases of beer, bottles of wine, and bottles of liquor — using the same 12oz beer, 5oz wine pour, and 1.5oz liquor pour math a caterer would use.
How much food to order for a party: a per-person breakdown
Real per-person ounce figures for protein, starch, vegetables, and salad at a sit-down or buffet meal, and pieces-per-person-per-hour math for a cocktail party — with worked examples for both.
How to set your freelance rate (the math most freelancers skip)
Why billable utilization is usually only 50 to 70 percent, why a tax reserve has to be grossed up rather than added on top, and how to turn an annual income target into a defensible hourly and day rate.
The Raygor Readability Graph: grading text by letter count instead of syllables
Raygor works like the Fry graph but swaps syllable counting for a simpler question: how many words are long? Here is why that trade matters, how the graph is plotted, and when to prefer it.
Why your writing feels choppy: measuring cohesion and transitions
Flow is not a mystery — it comes from transition words, paragraph linkage, and pronoun reference. How a cohesion analyzer measures each one, and what to fix when the score comes back low.
How many minutes is my script? Words-per-minute math for voiceover and podcasts
A 1,000-word script can run six minutes or nine depending on pacing. The WPM presets pros actually use, why breaths and pauses add real time, and how to size a script before you record.
How to read the Fry Readability Graph (and why it still beats a single grade number)
The Fry graph plots two numbers instead of computing one formula. Here is what those numbers are, how the curved grade bands work, and why editors still reach for a picture instead of a score.
How to build a cloze test that actually measures comprehension
Interval blanking vs. random blanking, why excluding proper nouns matters, and the scoring bands language teachers use to turn a fill-in-the-blank exercise into a real comprehension signal.
Building a fantasy economy that actually holds together
Why "500 gold for a sword, 5 gold for a horse" breaks immersion, how anchoring every price to one baseline item fixes it, and how economic tiers let you keep the same coinage from a grimdark frontier to a wealthy trade hub.
Powers-Sumner-Kearl: the readability formula built for beginning readers
Why grade-level formulas built for high schoolers fall apart on primary-grade text, how the Powers-Sumner-Kearl formula was calibrated differently, and when to reach for it over Flesch-Kincaid.