The cake really IS a spy!

Posted by Frank - January 30, 2009 - For everyone, For techies

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http://www.cakespy.com/2009/01/taking-it-to-sweet-cupcake-street-art.html Sure they’re handing out cupcakes instead of backstabs, but it’s still pretty hilarious. And awesome. If that doesn’t make any sense, play Team Fortress 2 and look for this spray in-game.

Encryption in your software without key pairs

Posted by Frank - January 30, 2009 - For techies

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Any discussion of encryption from a programmer’s perspective almost inevitably leads to public key encryption. This elaborate handshaking process ensures a totally private connection between two distinct parties, and is the basis for SSL/TLS encryption. The most common encryption programs are GnuPG and OpenPGP. However, what about when the only party involved is yourself? Ever [...]

What not to put on your homepage

Posted by Frank - January 24, 2009 - For entrepreneurs, For everyone, For techies

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I have a friend who showed me something on the WineAccess homepage tonight that just made me laugh. Check it out. See anything wrong with that picture? How about the “What You Missed” section at the bottom? It contains wine bottles that you can’t purchase, because they’re sold out. Hence the title. Worthless information with [...]

How to not suck at Left 4 Dead

Posted by Frank - January 23, 2009 - For everyone

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When I’m not coding, I’m gaming. Pretty standard formula. My latest gaming indulgence is Valve’s Left 4 Dead, offering the most original take on the first person shooter formula that I’ve ever seen (and I play a LOT of FPS). Okay, 30-second summary. L4D sets itself apart through its 4-man survivor team mechanic. Whether you [...]

Obama keeps his Blackberry

Posted by Frank - January 22, 2009 - For everyone

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Well this is interesting. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said security on the device has been “enhanced.” Reality-check: it’s still on the BlackBerry network (as far as I know), which means it’s still subject to the same points of access. And failure. Any one taking odds on how long it takes until someone has hacked [...]

Jeff Atwood still wrong about PHP

Posted by Frank - January 19, 2009 - For techies

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Jeff Atwood’s latest post on Coding Horror provides great insight into the history and mindset of one of the Computer Science greats, Alan Kay. It’s a good read for any computer professional looking to delve further into the advances that Kay worked on. Unfortunately, Jeff has a pretty strong distaste of PHP, and blindly jumps [...]

Loud sound effects in Mirror’s Edge

Posted by Frank - January 19, 2009 - For everyone, For techies

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FYI if you run Mirror’s Edge on your PC and the sound effects are all outta whack, check to see if you have a Realtek sound card installed. Their older high definition drivers don’t work properly with the game, and you’ll have to download the latest version. Now, chances are that your Realtek is built [...]

Extract email addresses from tags

Posted by Frank - January 15, 2009 - For techies

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Ran into another cool hurdle today for my Fwd:Vault development. When I grab the message content to archive it in the system, first thing I do is scrub it out to ensure that (a) it displays properly, and (b) there are no misbehaving characters. I grab both plain text and HTML email formats (if present), [...]

Keep perspective when solving problems

Posted by Frank - January 14, 2009 - For entrepreneurs, For techies

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I’ve been working furiously on the back end logic for Fwd:Vault for the past few weeks, specifically the logic that processes incoming messages/attachments, archiving them in the system, or returning stored data per user request. As I got into the final nitty gritty, I confronted a serious design issue: should the system use one email [...]

Windows Vista failures in one image

Posted by Frank - January 12, 2009 - For everyone, For techies

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From a recent post in the Signal vs. Noise blog… (1) Windows 7 Explorer vs. (2) Dance Dance Revolution. I’ve never seen an illustration, written or visual, that flawlessly encompasses everything wrong with Vista. Awesome. The author references the Windows 7 beta, but the interface is identical to Vista as far as I can tell. [...]