Most recent blog entries

Remote Installer for the Auto-Ban FTP Script

frijoles@gmail.com — Thu, 24 May 2007 07:00:00 GMT

Eric Greer has created a remote installer package for the FTP auto-banning script which I blogged about a few months ago.

Advanced Windows Vista Firewall Configuration

mutethis@gmail.com — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 13:46:00 GMT

How would you like to be able to turn your Windows firewall off when your on the domain and then on when your in public or private networks? Seems pretty easy, just open up and turn on/off at will, nope, it's easier than that, this can be automated. Wouldn't it be neat if you could step on program (iTunes maybe) at the office, but allow it access from public and private networks? Would you like to be able to configure some inbound and outbound firewall rules and you think the home user interface bites???

Wf.msc to the rescue! This is one snap-inthat makes me think that the Windows Firewall might not be as bad as it looks. Instead of only have rules on a per interface basis, you can set rules on a per network type basis. You can have simple stuff like, "when I'm on the domain, turn the firewall off", or you can be trickier and say "when I'm on the domain, deny iTunes access to the network". You can separately configure inbound and outbound on a per network type basis.

From this snap-in, you can also do exciting things like make rules that specify "only on domain and wireless", "only for this source and that destination address" and "only from this comptuer or user".

How cool is that?? Needless to say, the Windows Firewall is looking pretty stout to me right now. I'm still digging around in the firewall snap-in, but I also see a Monitoring node that needs to be explored!

Review: Oracle's BI Publisher

frijoles@gmail.com — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 07:00:00 GMT

This is a short review of my thoughts on BI Publisher, aka XML Publisher.

Creating an organization lookup sidebar gadget, part 2 of 2.

frijoles@gmail.com — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 07:00:00 GMT

This article finishes off the previous article about hooking a Vista Sidebar Gadget up to a webservice to create an OrgChart gadget. In this article, you'll create a UserData class, fill it up, and then search on it, and return the result to the gadget.

Irish Beer Troublshooting Guide

spthomas@nospam.codingfromanigloo.com — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 20:22:00 GMT

IRISH BEER TROUBLESHOOTING GUIDE
SYMPTOM	CAUSE	CORRECTIVE ACTION
Feet cold and wet	Glass Being held at incorrect angle.	Rotate glass so that open end points toward ceiling
Feet warm and wet	Improper Bladder Control	Stand next to nearest dog, complain about lack of house training
Beer unusually pale and tasteless	a. Glass empty. b. You're holding a Coors Lite	Get someone to buy you another beer
Opposite wall covered with fluorescent lights	You have fallen over backward.	Have yourself leashed to bar
Mouth contains cigarette butts, back of head covered with ashes	You have fallen forward	See above
Beer tasteless, front of your shirt is wet	a. Mouth not open b. Glass applied to wrong part of face	Retire to restroom, practice in mirror
Floor Blurred	You are looking through bottom of empty glass	Get someone to buy you another beer
Floor moving	You are being carried out	Find out if you are being taken to another bar
Room seems unusually dark	Bar has closed	Confirm home address with bartender. If staff is gone, grab a six-pack to go and hit the nearest fire escape door. Run
Taxi suddenly takes on colorful aspect and textures	Beer consumption has exceeded personal limitations	Cover mouth, open window, stick head outside
Everyone looks up to you and smiles	You are dancing on the table	Fall on someone cushy-looking
Beer is crystal-clear	It's water! Somebody is trying to sober you up	Punch him
People are standing around urinals, talking or putting on makeup	You're in the ladies' room	Do not use urinal! Excuse yourself, exit and try the next door down the hall. Try to get phone numbers (optional)
Hands hurt, nose hurts, mind unusually clear	You have been in a fight	Apologize to everyone you see, just in case it was them
Don't recognize anyone, don't recognize the room you're in	You've wandered into the wrong party	See if they have free beer
Your bedroom is painted gray, has a concrete floor and an interesting steel door. Toilet may be conveniently located next to your bunk	a. You're in jail b. You're in the navy	Sleep it off, you can always get out tomorrow. Don't talk to your new roommate, and under no circumstances sleep on your stomach
You are dancing to a Village People song, and your partner is wearing leather chaps	You're in a gay bar	Keeping your back to the wall, edge toward nearest exit. Do not accept offers for backrubs
Your singing sounds distorted	The beer is too weak	Have more beer until your voice improves
Don't remember the words to the song	Beer is just right	Play air guitar

Relieve yourself from Password Hell!

Rob Chartier — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 19:16:14 GMT

(this comes across as a product plug, but its well worth it - I try to give credit where its due)

As time goes on many of us find ourselves in knee deep in Password Hell. You know how it feels, you have about a gazillion web sites which you have signed up for at some point in time and you have no idea what credentials you used for each. Many people that I talk to start to consolidate their passwords to a single value, or a set of values and use them across all their logins. Ask any security guy about the implications for that and he is likely to slap you upside the head. Not to mention this doesn't play well with those sites which require fairly complex passwords and have policies set which you need to keep them changing after X number of days or whatever. Another way which I found myself doing quite allot was trying the password reminder function prior to registration. What a mess.

Recommended Tool

So whats my solution you ask? Well its quite simple: I use a password manager application. After quite a deep look in the market for the "best" manager out there I went with RoboForm.

Diligence & Pre-sales support

Whenever I do any sort of diligence on a product which I plan on spending my hard earned money on I usually do a number of basic checks. On of which is randomly contacting their support department and asking a somewhat silly support question. This is important for me because I like to see how they handle pre-sales support. If they are not willing to answer my question, or simply never get back to me I just dump them and move on. Support, for me, is quite an important part of the software lifecycle. No support, no puchase. Yes I have been told many times that I'm quite a binary person; there is usually no gray area for me.

That initial support request and every single support request since I actually made my purchase from RoboForm has been exceptional. Recently my USB flash drive was stolen and I was forced to upgrade (twist my rubber arm) to a new drive. Well with RoboForm you are allowed a certain number of activations, which I passed my limit. I hit their support site and within 4 minutes (yes 4 MINUTES), they responded to my inquiry and upped my activation count. I couldn't ask for anything better; exceptional service. I guess this is what prompted me to blog about it this morning.

More on RoboForm

I have become so reliant to RoboForm I simply cant see my online life without it. I use it to store my complete personal and professional profile and with one click of a button it simply fills out all the registration forms for me. I also force myself to ensure that my login information is stored in RoboForm once I complete the registration process. Then, in the future, when I stumble back onto the site RoboForm lets my login with a single click. I never have to remember if I have registered previously, and what my credentials were.

What else is there?

1. Well it has a flexible password generator. If you have have no idea what exactly constitutes a "complex" or "safe" password then you can use its tool.

2. It stores all data in DES, AES, 3DES, Blowfish, RC6 protected format, all with a single "master" password to unlock.

3. It integrates with Internet Explorer and Firefox

4. The Portable version runs on my pen drive (carry your passwords around with you)

5. You need to only remember your Master Password to gain access to all

6. The interface is somewhat customizable. Text labels, Icons only, Icons and text

7. AutoFill options (with and without asking)

8. Fill and Submit options

9. AutoSave for new passwords at new sites. It just knows what you need saved!

10. Import/Export IE, Firefox, Outlook, Gator, - saved passwords, favorites, contacts, etc..

11. Search tool bar (much like MSN's and Googles) for searching the web only

12. Customizable hotkeys.

13. Automatic version checking, notification, and downloading...

14. Customizable startup process (to show/hide the splash screen)

More Info

Reviews | Complete Feature set | Pass2Go (their portable version which I use) |

Lastly, you might want to consider GoodSync as well. I have purchased this as well, great product for synchronizing your pen to your primary machine for a backup. USB Thumb drives are somewhat unreliable and this tool has managed to save my but many times!

Creating an organization lookup sidebar gadget, part 1 of 2.

frijoles@gmail.com — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 04:00:00 GMT

This is a step-by-step article that shows how to A) Create a webservice, B) Create a Window's Vista sidebar gadget, and C) hook the two together. It's fairly long, so I will break it in to two parts.

New Version of iTunes!!!

mutethis@gmail.com — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 02:43:00 GMT

Great news everyone, iTunes 7.1 is now available for download. Good thing too, 7.0 had issues on Vista.

Automatically banning an IP address in IIS FTP

frijoles@gmail.com — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 07:00:00 GMT

IIS doesn't have any sort of ability to automatically ban an IP address for failed attempts at logging in. With zombie attacks, this would be some really handy functionality. This short article goes over how to use a VBS script (found via Google, link below) to achieve the ban we're after.

C# DayOfWeek as numeric

frijoles@gmail.com — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 05:00:00 GMT

This is very easy (just convert it to an int)... none the less, it took me a bit before I tried it. And for some weird reason, I couldn't find much help on Google.