Information Camouflage

TFTP Is Not Trivial

bediger8@gmail.com (Bruce Ediger) — Sun, 17 May 2026 21:43:41 -0600

I implemented a Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) client from the specification, RFC 1350.

Double Star

bediger8@gmail.com (Bruce Ediger) — Fri, 15 May 2026 18:16:06 -0600

I just read Robert A. Heinlein’s Double Star. I had read it in Junior High or High school, sometime in the mid-1970s, and I don’t think I’ve read it since.

Why Did Thomas Harriot Invent Binary?

bediger8@gmail.com (Bruce Ediger) — Wed, 06 May 2026 18:40:14 -0600

Strickland, L.
Why Did Thomas Harriot Invent Binary? Math Intelligencer 46, 57–62 (2024)
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00283-023-10271-9

PDF

Paper Towel Holder

bediger8@gmail.com (Bruce Ediger) — Mon, 04 May 2026 06:45:22 -0600

Purchased a paper towel holder from Amazon. The installation instructions were a wonder, but actually installing the rack wasn’t that bad.

The Mysterious Affair At Styles

bediger8@gmail.com (Bruce Ediger) — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 20:55:15 -0600

Hercule Poirot’s associate, Captain Hastings narrates the book The Mysterious Affair At Styles.

Verifying Grime Dice Experimentally

bediger8@gmail.com (Bruce Ediger) — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 13:51:32 -0600

I got a set of non-transitive Grime dice from UK enterprise Maths Gear.

I have verified Grime dice with a monte carlo simulation, and calculated probabilities combinatorially, now I’m going to try to verify them experimentally.

Shipping Department

bediger8@gmail.com (Bruce Ediger) — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 21:41:25 -0600

Wow, so that’s where the shipping department is! I always wondered!

Airline Check In

bediger8@gmail.com (Bruce Ediger) — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 21:40:47 -0600

If you try to check in for your United return flight using the URL of your original United flight, you get the weirdest message.

Dobby's Dirt Disposal Bag

bediger8@gmail.com (Bruce Ediger) — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 05:31:09 -0600

I bought an iRobot i3+ Roomba with Clean Base Automatic Dirt Disposal in January of 2023.

Air Care don't care

bediger8@gmail.com (Bruce Ediger) — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 21:42:02 -0600

I had to take my car for emissions testing again. I visited Air Care Colorado Fort Collins this time. It was mildly better than the Greeley location.

How to ping and ssh with IPv6 Link Local in /etc/hosts

bediger8@gmail.com (Bruce Ediger) — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 19:59:28 -0600

My laptop’s /etc/hosts file has entries like this:

fe80::46a8:42ff:fe2d:c255 monarcheno1
# eno2 - 10.0.10.1
fe80::46a8:42ff:fe2d:c256 monarcheno2
# eno4 10.0.20.1
fe80::46a8:42ff:fe2d:c258 monarcheno4
# ens5 10.0.40.1
fe80::6a05:caff:fe4a:8ac7 monarchens5

kea-dhcp4 Failure

bediger8@gmail.com (Bruce Ediger) — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 17:34:40 -0600

A Dell PowerEdge 530 serves as my house network’s router, firewall, DNS and NTP server. Today, pacman -Syu updated the Kea DHCP daemon from Arch version 3.0.3-1 to 3.0.3-6. The updated daemon wasn’t serving DHCP.

Go Stack Allocated Variables Can Change Address

bediger8@gmail.com (Bruce Ediger) — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 16:35:43 -0600

Due to Go compiler and runtime subtleties, some Go variables storage is allocated on goroutines’ call stacks.

Verifying Veritasium's Markov Chains

bediger8@gmail.com (Bruce Ediger) — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 08:39:59 -0600

The Veritasium chap made a video about Markov Chains. Veritasium outlines Markov’s original text-based experiment. The experiment seems like something that could be educational to duplicate.

Go call stacks sizes and resizes

bediger8@gmail.com (Bruce Ediger) — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 08:35:13 -0600

You can decide for yourself that an unholy alliance of the Go compiler and runtime can allocate variables on the call stack. But doing so forces you to notice the small initial size of a goroutine’s call stack: 0x1000, or 4096 bytes.

Fortune Cookies, April 4, 2026

bediger8@gmail.com (Bruce Ediger) — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 20:45:00 -0600

One non-fortune and two true fortunes from the local strip mall Thai and Chinese restaurant.

Laptop Scanner Mystery

bediger8@gmail.com (Bruce Ediger) — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 20:46:28 -0600

I bought a refurbished Dell 7420e laptop to replace my aging Dell 7470. The 7470 has an S key that works irregularly.

In the past, I have used xsane to run an HP DeskJet 2600 All-in-One Printer flatbed scanner.

Dell Laptop Keyboard Illumination

bediger8@gmail.com (Bruce Ediger) — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 14:19:40 -0600

I bought a refurbished Dell 7420e laptop to replace my aging Dell 7470. The 7470 has an S key that works irregularly.

Dell laptops have a “backlight”, and the letters on the black-body of the keys can glow under the right circumstances. Very handy when positioning your fingers on the keyboard when in dim rooms. After installing Arch Linux, the 7420e keyboard would not illuminate. The keyboard backlight worked, the POST flashed it during reboots.

Dell Laptop Does Not Suspend On Lid Close

bediger8@gmail.com (Bruce Ediger) — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 08:17:27 -0600

I bought a refurbished Dell 7420e laptop to replace my aging Dell 7470. The 7470 has an S key that works irregularly.

After installing Arch Linux, the 7420e would not suspend when I closed the lid, it just stayed on, display lit up brightly.

There Is No Antimemetics Division

bediger8@gmail.com (Bruce Ediger) — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 19:27:36 -0600

There Is No Antimemetics Division
by qntm
Random House, 2025
ISBN 9780593983751