miniblog.

I'm writing ASCII diagrams for docs. It's not terribly pretty, but it's so easy to contribute to. I've seen so many beautiful architecture diagrams go stale because no-one wants to find the file and the GUI tool to keep it updated.

I'm increasingly persuaded that the best kind of architecture diagrams are ASCII text art. It seems to be the only format that others will edit. I keep seeing an antipattern where someone draws a comprehensive diagram and it keeps getting used even as it becomes less accurate.

Great introduction to the AV1 video codec, inter/intra frame compression, and exploiting correlations to save bytes: https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/av1/demo1.shtml The Xiph posts are always good with great explanatory diagrams/sample pictures.