Frequency dropping

2008-08-27 17:38 by Nailbar
Uuh.. Sorry about not updating that frequently. I've been saying yes to a lot of projects and this is when I suffer the consequenses. Now I have too much to do at the same time with deadlines approaching and whatnot. Well. I guess I've learned. Now I'm saying a lot of no all the time. No, or later. Sadly it's about stuff I would rather do, was I not busy with the other stuff.

Well anyway, I just added a few more links to my... [Links] page; This is the stuff I use when I want to be creative. I use Gimp a lot. Or should I say I gimp a lot? And lately I've begun experimenting with Inkscape, which seems very promising and quite powerful. Some times I feel like entering this third dimension, and my weapon of choice is usually POV-Ray. Maybe 'cause I like the control you get when you write all the stuff in code. I still suck at POV-Ray, though.

[Gimp] - Raster drawing program
[Inkscape] - Vector drawing program
[POV-Ray] - Ray tracing program

Then I added two more images to my galleries. Ta-daa!

The Slackware experience

2008-08-22 15:41 by Nailbar
I'm a Slackware user. Here's a little experience which confirms it; My computer was acting up, and I was using Ubuntu on a different computer as an experiment. At some point I was feeling pretty pleased with the ease of simply clicking about in the package manager to install stuff and the number of precompiled programs was impressive. So, it was time to clean up my computer, which I did. Then I installed Ubuntu on it.

After one day I was already missing my good old Slackware, and now Ubuntu is gone again, and Slackware is back in business. Things seemed to work better in Slackware, and configuring things beyond the wizards and GUI in Ubuntu is annoying.

The key to security?

2008-08-18 09:45 by Nailbar
Well... I've run out of things to say, I guess. Haven't made any new programs, any new drawings, music, whatnot. I'm basically just working and getting on with life. The only new thing for this week is that I have a sore throat *cough*.

When lacking in news, I can always go for old stuff. Got a whole bucket of old stuff I haven't blogged about; so let's take a look at my shiny anti-bot-and-anti-spam-commenting-system...

If you click the Add Comment link, you get the opportunity to add a comment without logging in, or writing any secret codes like captcha's, yet there are no spam entries anywhere. I belive the reason lies in that spam bot's usually don't bother with parsing JavaScript, or saving cookies. Here's the science:

Step one
You click on the Add Comment link.
The spam bot follows the Add Comment link.

Step two
A random number is stored in a session variable (cookies enabled).
The spam bot probably ignores the cookie and the number is not stored.

Step three
You write your comment and click Submit.
So does the spam bot.

Step four
As the form is submitted, a line of JavaScript adds the random number mentioned earlier to the submitted form data.
The spam bot probably skips the JavaScript stuff.

Step five
Before the comment is stored, the random number in the form data is checked against the random number in the session variable. If they match, you're good to go.
This will fail when the spam bot doesn't have the session variable to match with, or when the random number in the form data is missing.

This seems to work pretty well, except for one thing; if you browse my site in another tab or window, while entering a comment, the random number in the session variable will change, but the JavaScript assigned number will stay the same. This will make the authentication fail when you click submit and all you precious flaming will be lost. Sorry about that. But It does keep the bots out.

The Promised Land

2008-08-10 20:34 by Nailbar
And now I've made a song. It's my first song ever, so be gentle. Plus, I was feeling lonely, like, with my wife gone on a trip, so please don't get nervous about the cheesiness. Well, here it is; [Promised Land].

Off topic; I was thinking about adding a visitor counter to this fourth revision, but then I figured that would only make me depressed.

Revision 4

2008-08-10 15:31 by Nailbar
I didn't fix the IE6 bug, but I figured if people still use IE6, they should be punished with a sub standard browsing experience. What I did fix was some admin tools which I mentioned earlier; Now I can move blog entries around, create new blog pages (good for archiving), and clear and undelete thrashed blog entries.

The first twenty blog entries have now been archived and you'll find them [here].

Pling, plonk, TWANG!

2008-08-08 09:04 by Nailbar
Haven't updated in a while.. Haven't had that much output in the buffer to release. Normal 24h cycle have been Start, Work, Play, Sleep, Goto Start. I do have a few things to update on this blog for the next revision; The graphics don't look right in IE6 (no surprises there), and multiple spaces in entries should automatically get   in them so comments can have some kind of indentation. There's also the administrative thing with moving entries around. At this moment I can't move entries around in the list but have to do it manually by copying the stuff from one to another and vice versa. What else? Oh, yes. I can't create new blog pages yet. Need to log in to the server and do that manually. And there's no way of splitting a blog in several pages either. Oh noes! Too much!

Anyhow, todays blog entry will actually be about learning guitar. I've found my mom's old guitar somewhere on an attic. It was missing a string, and I knew nothing about guitars. So I bought a string and googled the Interwebs. This is what a now regularly use:

[Guitar Lessons]
[Guitar Chords]
[Guitar Tabs]

Um.. My fingertips hurt. Why?