Toolerax logoToolerax

The Toolerax Blog — Page 15

Practical guides and tips to get the most out of our tools — and the concepts behind them.

·6 min read

How Barcodes Work

What the bars actually encode, how scanners read them in either direction, how EAN/UPC check digits catch typos, and which format to use for what.

Read article
·5 min read

How CSS Minification Works

What a CSS minifier removes, why render-blocking stylesheets make every kilobyte count, how minification stacks with gzip, and when not to bother.

Read article
·7 min read

YAML vs JSON

YAML is built for humans, JSON for machines. The type-guessing traps (Norway problem, 3.10), what is lost in conversion, and how to pick.

Read article
·6 min read

How to Format XML

What good XML formatting looks like, which whitespace is safe to change, the errors validators catch, and when to minify instead of beautify.

Read article
·6 min read

How to Convert Base64 to an Image

Turn a Base64 string or data URI back into a viewable image, recognize formats by their magic-byte prefixes, and fix the five classic decoding failures.

Read article
·6 min read

How Fancy Text (Unicode Fonts) Works

𝗕𝗼𝗹𝗱 Instagram bios aren't fonts at all — they're mathematical alphabets hiding in Unicode. How the trick works and where it breaks.

Read article
·6 min read

Cups, Grams and Tablespoons Explained

A cup of flour and a cup of sugar weigh completely different amounts. The density problem behind cups-to-grams, the US/metric cup trap, and a conversion table.

Read article
·5 min read

Feet & Inches to Centimeters

The exact feet-and-inches to cm method (×2.54), the common 5'10" mistakes, a reference chart, and why 1 inch equals exactly 2.54 centimeters.

Read article
·5 min read

How to Read Military Time

Reading 24-hour time is one subtraction: past 1300, subtract 12 and say PM. Plus the midnight/noon edge cases and why hospitals and airlines refuse AM/PM.

Read article
·5 min read

How to Calculate Fuel Cost for a Trip

The two fuel-cost formulas — L/100km and MPG — worked through with examples, why the systems point in opposite directions, and how to split costs fairly.

Read article
·6 min read

How a Due Date Is Calculated

Why due dates count from the last period rather than conception, how cycle length shifts the estimate, and what the 40-week number really means statistically.

Read article
·6 min read

Hourly Rate to Annual Salary

Convert an hourly wage to a yearly salary and back: the 2,080-hour year, the double-it shortcut, and the assumptions that hide in offers.

Read article