I put together a new web site dedicated to my viola career. It hosts my profile, repertoire, and contact information. Soon I will start a media gallery with photos and personal recordings.
Comments are welcome.
Out on my deck, I had this spider that wove a web that must have been 2 feet in diameter. My first instinct was to tear down the web and squash the little bugger. But I had some crisis of Buddhist-like conscience when I thought about how long it took to create the web. Every night like clockwork, this spider weaves this web to catch its dinner. And every morning it tears it down to start all over again. It made me think about how humans get up every day and go to work to proverbially catch their own dinner. Sympathy for the spider?
Here are some pictures of its artwork:
I mean, I understand we need spiders to control the insect population. But why in my “backyard”? Go climb up someone else’s deck. I did become comfortable with the little guy, as long as I kept my distance. Could this be a metaphor for my ability to coexist with those that I find strange and threatening? I mean, it’s not like this itty bitty spider is a real threat to me. I’m more of a threat to it.
Eventually, the rain came and washed the spider down the spout. It did make a come-back one night. But since then, I haven’t seen my new friend. I will miss him.
Whenever I bring a new case of soda home, I like to stick one in the freezer to get it nice and cold. Except yesterday, I forgot about it and went to bed early. At around 4 in the morning, I woke up to a “pop” sound from the kitchen.
What a mess.
Not to mention, I picked up lemon-flavored diet.
I had an occassion where I had to capture the “enter” key press in a text box and couldn’t quite remember how to do that. So, like the well-adjusted web developer I am, I Google’d for the answer. I was suprised to find how many different solutions there were and how some of them just plain didn’t work.
I turned to the tried-and-true Prototype library (because that’s how I remembered doing it in the first place). The bonus with using Prototype is that it will actually be browser compatible.
Here is the penultimate solution to capturing an “enter” keypress in an HTML input text box.
The HTML:
<input type="text" name="my_text" id="my_text" value="" />
The JavaScript:
<script type="text/javascript"><!--
function onMyTextKeypress(event)
{
if (Event.KEY_RETURN == event.keyCode) {
// do something usefull
alert('Enter key was pressed.');
}
return;
}
Event.observe('my_text', 'keypress', onMyTextKeypress);
//-->
</script>
Now, don’t forget to include the prototype.js script in the HTML page!
<script type="text/javascript" src="/js/prototype.js"></script>
The JavaScript must execute after the DOM elements are rendered. One way to do it is to put the JavaScript code in a SCRIPT element after the INPUT element. However, another way would be to put the following code in the SCRIPT element in the HEAD element:
Event.observe(window, 'load', function() {
Event.observe(Event.observe('my_text', 'keypress', onMyTextKeypress);
});
I like this method because all the JavaScript can be kept in the HEAD, or in a JS library file, instead of splattering the code throughout the document body.
Try it:
References:
Here is a more reasonable bike route that I plan on doing tomorrow. It’s 4+ mikes and I estimate it will take about 40 min.
Exploratory Biking is kinda like exploratory surgery - only more painful and it lasts longer. OK, so I set out on a bike ride last Sunday because I was bored. Unfortunately, my boredom lead me to get lost in West County and ended up riding for 1.5 hours - over 8 miles!!
The KeyStore API is code complete. Check it out at phpkeystore.org. The current development release can always be installed with PEAR using:
pear install http://phpkeystore.org/download/KeyStore-current.tgz
All that really remains right now is internal tweaking for best practices and performance.
To summarize the functionality, the key management functionality consists of:
And the key usage functionality consists of:
The current to-do list:
The following forty five (45) Internet/network security gotchas are taken from Firewalls and Internet Security - Repelling the Wily Hacker, Second Edition (ISBN: 0-201-63344-X) by William R. Cheswick, et. al.
Redirect messages can subvert routing tables./etc/passwd.Designing applications for the web requires an up-front security mind-set. It does not matter if the application takes credit card payments or if it hosts static web content. A public web site is just that: a public portal to computer assets that someone out there on the Internet will eventually find and will want to exploit for whatever nefarious reason entertains their interests, whatever it is.
The purpose of this post is to discuss the web application design and architecture security truisms that I have held true during my experience as a developer and architect. The following fifteen (15) security truisms are taken from Firewalls and Internet Security - Repelling the Wily Hacker, Second Edition (ISBN: 0-201-63344-X) by William R. Cheswick, et. al. These truisms are key to any security model - not just information security. For the purposes of this post, I will discuss how they relate to application design and architecture.
All this being said, secure web application design is possible, affordable, and necessary. It must be thought out and balanced against the needs of the application owner and deployment environment. As technology professionals, we are all responsible for the web applications that we design, implement, and deploy because, as any software being run in a remote hosting environment, we provide the gateway between our computer assets and the world wide web.
