IT lists

 # Urchin Web Analytics: A Rigorous Technical and Historical Analysis ## Executive summary Urchin was an on‑premises (“run it yourself”) web analytics system whose historical significance is twofold: it popularised scalable server‑log analysis for organisations that needed control over data, and it provided major technical and organisational DNA for the hosted service that became Google Analytics. A founder of Urchin, entity["people","Paul Muret","urchin founder; google eng"], dates Urchin’s beginnings to 1998 and describes an early product-market fit around making web traffic “tangible” to site owners. citeturn30view0 entity["company","Urchin Software Corporation","web analytics firm"] offered analytics in multiple delivery modes—hosted service, installable software, and via large hosting providers—before being acquired by Google. citeturn29view0 Google agreed to acquire the company on 28 March 2005, stating an in...

 # MSX Art Examples and Visual Constraints ## Executive summary MSX “typicality” in graphics is less about any single palette and more about **a specific set of hardware-era constraints that shape composition**: the **TMS9918A “Graphics II / MSX SCREEN 2”** character-pattern system (256×192 active pixels, 32×24 tiles) with **two colours per 8×1 pixel line**, hardware sprites with strict per-scanline limits (notably **4 sprites per horizontal line**), and an output chain that often ends in **analogue video softness** (blur/bleed) rather than perfect pixels. citeturn39view2turn41view0turn42view0 Across commercial games, demoscene productions, and modern “retro-native” works (MSXdev/homebrew and fan pixel art), recurring visual strategies emerge: **bold silhouettes and outlining**, **dithering and patterning to imply extra colours/materials**, **carefully managed colour boundaries aligned to the 8×1 attribute granularity**, and **sprite layering that either embraces or works arou...