November 24, 2004

What's new?
A new layout, new host, new ads - just about new everything. Why, do you ask? Well, thanks to a recent hack-attack, my trusty old web server is now history. It had a good run - over 6 years of serving up my personal blogs and a few other sites for friends. It all started out as a small computer lab experiment back when I was taking classes at UVa. Then it became a form of entertainment - watching the server logs - seeing what kind of attacks were launched upon it. I guess someone finally decided it was time to trash it and take it down.

But from that arises a phoenix, the new randompsycho.

Ok, yeah, I'm pretty much full of it. LOL

October 04, 2004

I told you so...
I just knew that eventually someone was going to find a way to infect/hack your computer with a Jpeg graphic (theoretically, the idea has been out there for awhile).

Well, now Microsoft has issued a "critical" update: September 2004 Security Update for JPEG Processing (GDI )

September 03, 2004

The next big thing...
I haven't even upgraded to XP yet but there's a new client OS coming down the road.
Microsoft: Longhorn Coming in 2006

July 01, 2004

When you are looking from some good internet statistics The Pew Internet & American Life Project can help. Anything from who is online to which ones are using VoIP.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project is headed by Madeleine Korbel Albright, former Secretary of State... ok maybe that should be left well enough alone. In any event, it is a great site aside from it's new CSS which sucks and is a good example of how CSS is difficult to use across multiple platforms and browsers. Site looks great in NS6+ and Firefox but is quite lame in IE. I am very taken back that an organization that has the statistics of more than 85% of Internet users are on IE broswers and why they would disenfranchise those users for design :(

Check out their reports. I have not found one that they are charging for yet and they are good ammo for any statistical battle you might get yourself into.

May 24, 2004

Just when you thought it was safe to open your e-mail, along comes the InformationWeek > Lovegate Worm - which propagates by replying to any unread messages in your Outlook or Outlook Express inbox. Joy.

May 19, 2004

When I get a round-tuit

I've been wanting to redo the layout of this site for months now. Nowadays, page layouts done in HTML tables is so 90's and something just had to be done. So, thanks to a CSS layout from glish.com there's now something a little more modern in place until I find time to hammer out a new style sheet of my own. The layout looks great on my iMac and Safari and fairly decent in Internet Explorer 5 and 6 (sorry folks, haven't tested it in anything else).

Other things yet to be done: redesign the archives section to match the home page and Blogger has a new comments system I want to integrate into the site (although, nobody ever leaves comments around here, ahem).
More .NET tips

Now that Windows 2003 Server is out, there are a few tricks to getting your web site up and running: Running ASP.NET 1.1 with IIS 6.0

May 11, 2004

I don't think this has been mentioned on here before... I'm really digging the CSS Zen Garden (www.csszengarden.com). I've learned lots of neat tricks over the past few months looking at the CSS code that's up there.

April 01, 2004

P3P, Cookies and IE6.0: A Case Study: MS has redefined the way the browser reacts to cookies, based on the new w3c (World Wide Web Consortium) standard for P3P (The Platform for Privacy Preferences Project).

December 05, 2003

Print this Page...please
I've seen a few different ways to make an "Print this Page" script. This one from "4 Guys from Rolla" shows a simple method that could easily adapted to most sites: How the 'Print this Page' Script Works

And here's a way to do this with a Javascript Print Ready Page Script on About.com.
People are basically...Good or Bad?
It's the age old question, if given the chance, are people basically good or bad? Well, when it comes to user input on a web form, the author of this article warns us to expect the worse: Encode User Input Before Outputting it to a Page - Or Else!

December 01, 2003

And for those that just want to jump straight to the November 2003 Cumulative Security Update: 824145 - MS03-048: November 2003 Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer

Enjoy!
10 Reasons not to surf the web...

Seriously though, if this keeps up, people will just stop looking at web pages, especially with Internet Explorer. I heard some some talk about this on IRC and now it's in the news: 'Critical' IE Security Warning Released

It just gives us that develop web sites a bad name.

November 29, 2003

Something new, not necessarily blue...

Ever wanted to add a comments section to your Blogger page? Here's one way of doing it if you are hosting on IIS: blogcomments, an ASP based commenting system for weblogs

I have tested blogcomments on this site and it is easy to setup and utilize. Give it a try and leave a comment.

Updated May, 2004 - Sorry, I removed this example of blogcomments in favor of the new comment system being implemented by Blogger. More to come on that topic.

November 20, 2003

I came across this page recently...some of these are no-brainers, but all are pretty important things to keep in mind when working with CSS. I've found it helpful.

CSS Crib Sheet

November 15, 2003

Automate your CSS

Using different style sheets to match the reader's browser could help fix some design flaws and make your site appear more consistant. Of course, you have to know what browsers support which CSS rules. Unfortunately, not all of the web browsers like to place nice with the W3 standards (I'll resist naming any one particular company).

Displaying Stylesheets Dynamically

October 22, 2003

Page hit counters made simple

It never ceases to amaze me how many little "easter eggs" there are hidden in Internet Information Server. For example, I was reading up on how to implement a hit counter in ASP. There are lots of ways involving writing to a text file or a database. Who would have guessed that IIS 5 has a Page Counter Object? Apparently there's little documentation on it, but it is found in the IIS Resource Kit.

To read more, check out this article by 4guysfromrolla.com: Recording Page Hits with Microsoft's Page Counter Object

October 20, 2003

Free stuff!

For all you Visual Basic .NET coders out there, Microsoft has released a free resource kit. I've ordered mine on CD, so it will be a few days before I can post any comments. But, there's also a download option for those that need instant gratification: The Visual Basic .NET Resource Kit

October 13, 2003

End of an era?

On the heels of media ownership battles at the FCC, the "ownership" of certain segments of the Internet may be the next target of debate: FCC policies threaten Internet

October 02, 2003

Fool me twice, shame on me

Ok, I'll admit, a long time ago I clicked on a link that was in an e-mail message and that led to a web page exploit that took advantage of a security hole in Internet Explorer 5 (hangs head in shame).

Now there's a flurry of new e-mails crafted to look very much like it came from Microsoft and supposedly has a security patch as the attachment. Well, of course, that attached file is infected (the one I got contained the 'Swen' virus).

What really tips it off to me is the poor grammer and lack of proper capitalization in the body of the message. I mean, really, would a large corporation like Microsoft send out such a poorly written message?

How to Tell If a Microsoft Security-Related Message Is Genuine