Geek Life....
photography, programming, site design, networking, computers, linux, windows, mac os x, application reviews...
Aug
08
CAPTCHA – Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.
All current CAPTCHA implementations are doomed to fail due to the persistence of developers to place the onus on client side technologies for validation. Whether you show the answer to the challenge (albeit after making recognition difficult), or have users spin a photo until it is upright, you are still giving the end-point everything they need to pass the test.
It’s time to rethink CAPTCHA, and move the means of protection server side where it can not be manipulated.
Jul
18
Every now and then I’m going to re-post some of my old photoblog photos. I do so in the hopes that it will somehow re-inspire me to get out there and get back into it.
Jul
18
Although Terminal.app is built into Mac OS X I thought it would make an excellent choice for my first software review. Terminal has been, and probably always will be the most used, most diverse, and most trusted application on my laptop.
Terminal is launched about 20 times a day, every day. I use it for simple tasks like verifying DNS configuration at a client site. I use it for more complex tasks such as creating multiple SSH tunnels through a network to get a problem on a switch or server. The terminal is probably the one and only tool that I could not live without on the Mac. From shipping files securely across the public Internet to watching traffic go through the attached LAN, I simply can not identify with anything else as being my swiss army knife in the professional world.
Helpful tips:
- Over time, Terminal tends to seemingly freeze for a second or two when opening. Delete (or move) /private/var/log/asl/* and Terminal will return to normal!
- I mapped AppleKey-Space to open the spotlight search. Pressing those two keys then typing T <enter> immediately launches Terminal. Who needs specialized launchers like QuickSilver when you have it right in the OS?!?!
- Install MacPorts to increase the usefulness of Terminal. This allows you to add custom builds of popular UNIX tools like Curl, WGet etc. Handy stuff.
Jun
14
I’ve always understood that running the latest release of any software generally is safer, faster, and more compliant with my needs and expectations than running otherwise.
Of course, there are times when you want (*need*) to wait a little before adopting service patches or security patches… i.e. production servers would do well to take a few days after Patch (or Black) Tuesday and let other people bear the brunt of any potential issues like this, this or any of these.
Jun
13
Browser Compatibility has come a long way in the past couple of years. That being said, still we find web developers hacking site code to produce acceptably similar results across the playing field.
Recently, most browsers are starting to really kick into high gear with the all new HTML5 and CSS3 support. This is a good thing. What isn’t so cool though is that once again, Internet Explorer and Microsoft in general have thrown a monkey wrench into what should have been next years end to cross-browser compatibility woe’s.
Jun
06
Welcome to the new site. I won’t bore you with a first post full of geek stuff…. here’s some of my old photoblog pics instead :) Clicking on them gives a full view with photo info.
The new site is a hand-coded (blood-curdling) theme running on top of the WordPress back end. Some day I will have to post some of the techiness behind designing, building and implementing such a beast. Lots of Photoshop, CSS, jQuery, html, etc etc etc.
Stay tuned for application reviews, network tech, programming, site design, photography, and much more nerdy crap than you can handle.
