BXG Blog

Early Impressions of Rust

If you have any interest in programming languages, you’ve probably heard of Rust by now. I had been meaning to try it out for quite some time, since the claims that the borrow checker can make whole classes of memory errors impossible with zero runtime cost are very intruiging …

Type Systems vs Dimensional Analysis

Today I was enjoing the puzzle of figuring out which existing Haskell functions I could compose to make a specific new function. I suddenly realized that function design in a strongly typed language has a lot in common with dimensional analysis from physics.

Dimensional analysis is really useful for solving …

The Joy of Backwards Compatibility

Today I updated my blog generator for the first time since around 2015. After I missed a couple of releases, I had been afraid to touch it, since you never know how much of a time sink a major upgrade will be. Now that CentOS 7 supports python 3 and …

Too Many Thoughts

I haven’t written any articles in a while (in fact, almost exactly a year since the last non-recipe entry). This isn’t because I haven’t been thinking about anything. On the contrary, it’s because I have too many thoughts! Every time I sit down to write a …

Buttermilk Fried Cauliflower

A bit like fried chicken, except without the actual chicken. You won’t have grease running down your chin while you eat these, but they’re pretty tasty and kid-friendly.

Basic Red Chile Sauce

This is a basic red chile sauce that you can use in everything: enchiladas, huevos rancheros, chilaquiles, scrambled eggs, breakfast burritos, you name it!

Green Chile Enchilada Casserole

Whether you call these flat enchiladas or enchilada casserole, this is a classic New Mexican dinner. This recipe uses seitan instead of the traditional pork to make it vegetarian, but don’t worry: the final taste comes out great.

Backing up Backups

I’ve had what I thought was a fairly good backup system for a while: I use rdiff-backup to synchronize all my computers onto a central machine with a large disk, then I copy that machine’s backups to an encrypted external USB drive. The external drive is only mounted …

Asian Quinoa Salad

This is mostly a typical Asian-style salad with a peanut dressing. Adding quinoa gives it a bit of an interesting texture and some extra protein. This recipe calls for cooking the quinoa in an instant pot, but the results will be the same (albeit a few minutes slower) if you cook it the traditional way.

Linode IPv6 SLAAC Fix

Back in 2017, my Linode box stopped getting the correct IPv6 address from SLAAC. I opened a support ticket, but nothing ever came of it. I’ve been simply re-adding the correct IP after each reboot. That’s a hassle, but I don’t reboot often enough to work up …