_______       _______ _______
|   _   .--.--|   _   |   _   |
|.  |   |_   _|___|   |.  1___|
|.  |   |__.__|  /   /|.  __)
|:  1   |       |   | |:  |
|::.. . |       |   | |::.|
`-------'       `---' `---'

About

The Author

Hey 👋 there! My name is Lucas and I currently reside in Portland, Oregon with my wife, my dog, Rusty and my cat, Chloe. I have been programming, since I was in High School and have been using Vim since my dad placed this O’Reilly book on my desk in 2004.

In my spare time I like to:

  • Cook
  • Golf
  • Garden
  • Play guitar
  • Collect Whiskey
  • Drink Wine
  • and sometimes read

The Site

The name of this site is not by coincidence…

0x7FFFFFFF is a hexadecimal number and in its decimal form is 2,147,483,647. This number 2,147,483,647 is the maximum value for a 32-bit signed integer, and it shows up everywhere in computing, often in unexpected and sometimes amusing ways:

  • GTA V players discovered this limit when trying to amass more than $2.14 billion in in-game currency
  • Minecraft had issues with players traveling beyond 2,147,483,647 blocks from spawn
  • The Y2K38 problem (also known as the Unix Millennium Bug) is perhaps the most serious real-world implication. Just as Y2K caused panic in the late 90s, Y2K38 is a ticking time bomb for systems that still use 32-bit timestamps. When these systems reach 03:14:07 UTC on January 19, 2038, they’ll run out of seconds to count since January 1, 1970 (the Unix epoch).

The number represents a perfect example of how arbitrary computer limitations become real-world constraints, affecting everything from video games to financial systems. It’s a reminder that even in our advanced digital age, we’re still bound by the fundamental ways we’ve chosen to represent numbers in computers. And even though numbers are infinite and boundless, computers can have boundaries and limitations.

And so, this blog, will be just that. A journey into the unknown, where coding meets its limits. A space where we explore not just technical limitations, but also limitations found in past projects and experiences with breakthroughs and solutions.

I hope you enjoy what you read and follow me on this journey.