Tracing a Year of Twitter Explainer Projects

For people who aren't glued to my Twitter feed, keeping up with everything I post there is basically impossible. This is a consolidated look at the comics, experiments, and announcements I've put out so far this year, with most links pointed at non-Twitter destinations.

Comics: Debugging and Writing

The bulk of my output this year has been comics, starting with a large series related to a debugging zine I'm still working on (wizardzines.com/zines/bugs). The overarching themes cover practical advice on the debugging process:

  • Learning from bugs and sharing your debugging stories.
  • Using tools like spy tools and checking your assumptions.
  • Working with others to investigate bugs and trying to reproduce them.
  • Maintaining a good attitude, understanding a bug before fixing it, and taking breaks.

I also published a couple of comics on writing, centered on highlighting main ideas and writing for a single person. Those ran in mid-May.

Computer Science and Systems Comics

A pair of comics covered classic computer science territory: binary search and how hash functions work. A much larger series focused on Linux and systems internals, which may become a sequel to Bite Size Linux. Topics included inodes & hard links, assembly, CPU scheduling, terminals, libc, shells, clock_gettime, file locking, and network protocols.

Beyond those, a few one-off comics covered IMSI catchers (fake cellphone towers) and a pull-request tip about asking when unsure.

Zines: Debugging and Writing Tips

A smaller set of writing-related comics focused on two principles: highlighting the main ideas when writing, and always writing for a single person.

How Containers Work

A significant chunk of the year went into a series on containers, which mostly became the How Containers Work zine. The project started in January with comics on capabilities and cgroups, and expanded through February and March with frequent installments.

The prelimary comics explain foundational concepts like why we use containers and how they're different from VMs, and then dive into the kernel mechanics: namespaces, chroot, and seccomp-bpf. They also cover broader ecosystem components, such as container images, registries, and networking. As is typical for these projects, the final zine was edited heavily; some early comic versions were rewritten or cut entirely. This series also included a well-received comic explaining that "containers aren't magic."

Projects: From Flashcards to Questions

The year started with a series of "flashcards" experiments on flashcards.wizardzines.com. I created sets for topics like container basics, Linux memory and signals, DNS, reverse proxies, and SQL. However, I eventually iterated on that idea and developed a new direction that I preferred, which became the questions site. While the flashcards site won't be updated further, the concept evolved into the project at questions.wizardzines.com.

That new site, launched in mid-June, presents structured "questions about X" pages. The topics covered so far include fundamental internet and system protocols. It started with UDP and sockets, then expanded to HTTP headers, git, TLS certificates, and CORS. By early July, it covered event loops, IPv4, and DNS.

Video Experiments

Early in the year, I experimented with screencasts and published four short videos. The topics included a fast algorithm for the greatest common factor (Euclid's algorithm), how DNS works, demos of making HTTP requests with curl, and a quick look at HTTP status codes. It was a fun experiment though I haven't created more this year.

Business and Announcements

On the business side, I wrote one thread about how I think about the zine business, sticking to fundamentals. I also announced two new zines: Become a SELECT Star in late January and How Containers Work in late April.

I run periodic Twitter giveaways for people in countries where the $12 USD price is comparatively expensive, aiming to give away one copy for every sale. This year saw massive giveaways for Bite Size Linux and Bite Size Command Line, and multiple rounds for the new How Containers Work zine.

Finally, I put out occasional calls for input, asking people what container problems they hit in practice and which man pages they'd recommend for learning about containers.

What's Next

Given the volume, I'm considering doing a monthly summary here of my Twitter activity. We'll see if that happens.