Thinking In Bytes

Thoughts On Technology And Small Business

  • Specify Hugo Version In Netlify

    Thinkinginbytes.com is generated using Hugo and hosted by Netlify. Netlify watches the site’s repo on Github and commits trigger a site build process. I’ll post more details about hosting a Hugo site with Netlify later. Site development is local. To view the site on a local machine, Hugo must be installed. It is likely that your local version of Hugo is versions ahead of the default Netlify Hugo version. This version mismatch may cause Netlify builds to fail. You may need to specify which version of Hugo you want Netlify to use.

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  • Thoughts On Choices And Life

    Occasionally, I see a social media post123 re-quoting:

    Hard Choices, Easy Life
    Easy Choices, Hard Life

    Hard Choices Easy Life Options
    Hard Choices Or Easy Choices

    NOTE: This phrase is also a common headline for LinkedIn profiles. Try searching LinkedIn for “Hard Choices, Easy Life”.

    This popular quote is attributed to Jerzy Gregorek 4. The post’s comments are filled with messages of agreement and confirmation. At first, this quote rings true. It sounds like a different form of advice I’ve been given many times.

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  • Proving Congruence For Fun

    Background

    I want to understand the math behind asymmetric cryptography.1 This field relies heavily on Modular Arithmetic.2 I bought an undergraduate math textbook for self-study. This article is a record of a proof exercise in the book. It is also a good exercise in writing math equations using LaTeX.

    NOTE: I asked ChatGPT to confirm the proof. No grades are being assigned here, the point is to learn.

    Problem

    Let \(m\geq1\) be an integer.

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  • A Piecewise Hashing Example

    NOTE: ChatGPT was used to create some portions of the code in this article. The words are mine.

    The Problem

    When cybersecurity analysts find malicious files, they share their finding with the greater security community. They run the file through a cryptographic hashing function and share the results of this function, called a hash. The hash is a kind of fingerprint that identifies the file based on the information contained in the file. Others can look through their environments, hash their files, and compare the results to hunt for the malicious file.

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  • Operate Versus Innovate

    Misunderstanding Continuous Improvement

    Early in my career, “Continuous Improvement” was a popular buzzword. Every company claimed to have some type of program that constantly looked to improve its processes. I misunderstood the concept of “Continuous Improvement”. In my mind, commitment to continuous improvement meant that, at any point during the completion of a task, if a potential improvement could be made then everything must stop while the process is updated. I wanted to change or improve a process while I was executing it. Every time I found an opportunity for improvement, the real work stopped and the work around how to improve it starts. Disrupting the work and creating inefficiencies instead of fixing them.

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