The Recipe for Modern IT In the traditional world of IT, setting up a server was a craft. A sysadmin would log in, click through menus, install packages, and tweak settings until everything worked. I know, I did this job for much of my early career. But much like a chef cooking a complex signature Read More …
OIDC – OpenID Connect
Adding Identity to the Authorization Layer In the journey through information security, you will frequently encounter OAuth 2.0. While OAuth is excellent at authorization, it was never actually designed for authentication. To solve this, OIDC, or OpenID Connect, was created. Think of it this way: OAuth 2.0 is the key to a hotel room, while OIDC Read More …
The New Gospel of the Gilded Calf
It has been remarked by men wiser than myself that the Good Book is like a mirror: if an ass looks in, you can’t expect an apostle to look out. These days, however, it seems a whole congregation of folks have looked into the Gospel and somehow mistaken the Beatitudes for a business prospectus. I Read More …
Automating Infrastructure Visibility with dig
In modern cybersecurity, you cannot protect what you don’t know exists. Traditional DNS tools often give you fragmented data. You get an A record here, an SPF record there, but connecting those to an owner (WHOIS) or a risk profile (Shodan) usually requires manual effort. A Solution: One Script to Rule Them All I’ve consolidated Read More …
The Digital DNA
A Beginner’s Guide to Music Metadata You’ve finished the mix, the master sounds huge, and you’re ready to share your music with the world. Before you hit “upload” on your distributor’s dashboard, there is one invisible step that determines whether your career takes off or stays stuck in the bedroom: Metadata. Think of metadata as Read More …
THE SOUND AND THE SURGE
A FRAGMENT OF THE UNCONQUERED DARK By William Faulkner It was not the machine but the wanting of the machine, the cold, calculated, and inexorable expansion of a thing that had no blood but possessed a terrible, circulating hunger for the lightning. Kevin sat there. He was a small man, a man of Tiers and Read More …
OCF – Operating Cash Flow
In the technical world, we often distinguish between “allocated memory” and “active throughput.” A system might have plenty of resources reserved, but if the data isn’t actually flowing through the pipes, the system just stalls. In finance, Operating Cash Flow (OCF) is that throughput. It is the actual cash moving into and out of the Read More …
PKCE – Proof Key for Code Exchange
Securing OAuth 2.0 for the Modern Web In the world of Information Security, acronyms often act as gatekeepers to critical concepts. One of the most vital for modern identity management is PKCE (pronounced “pixie”), which stands for Proof Key for Code Exchange. If you are new to the field, you likely know that OAuth 2.0 Read More …
How to Talk to a Robot: A Guide to Prompting
If you think of an AI like a giant, digital brain, Prompting is simply the art of asking the right questions to get the best answers. Again let’s think of the AI as the brilliant but literal intern. If you give a vague instruction, you’ll get a vague result. If you give clear, clever instructions, Read More …
The Ultimate Farm-to-Table Vanilla Bean Custard
My obsession with real frozen custard started with a friend from Wisconsin, the undisputed capital of dairy. But it wasn’t until I started raising my own chickens that this recipe truly leveled up. There is nothing quite like using fresh-gathered backyard eggs to create a custard that is impossibly creamy and naturally golden. If you’ve Read More …