Dave Babbitt: Development

Wed, 19 Mar 2003 15:19:25 GMT

Migrating to ColdFusion MX Overview by Macromedia; re: ColdFusion. [Macromedia - Designer Developer Center]
10:19:25 AM Comments

Python Desktop Server very similar in function to Radio Userland

Mon, 17 Mar 2003 14:10:04 GMT

Python Desktop Server very similar in function to Radio Userland

It doesn't have the outliner that Frontier, the THING THAT MADE RADIO WHAT IT IS TODAY, has, so I can't get interested in it. Cool article, though.
9:10:04 AM Comments

Fri, 10 Jan 2003 20:27:08 GMT

Bob Frankston: VoIP is a simple idea and simply works. In the Times article, the Verizon spokesperson said that the Public Switched Telephone Network has worked well for many decades. That's true by comparison to the alternatives -- no phone system at all. Now that we have alternatives the PSTN comes up wanting. [Tomalak's Realm]
3:27:08 PM Comments

Wed, 01 Jan 2003 13:25:10 GMT

O'Reilly Network: In-Room Chat as a Social Tool. Clay Shirky. For us, the chat served as a kind of social whiteboard. In this note, I want to detail what worked and why, what the limitations and downsides of in-room chat were, and point out possible future avenues for exploration. [Tomalak's Realm]
8:25:10 AM Comments

A Javascript Quine

Fri, 27 Dec 2002 02:23:39 GMT

A Javascript Quine

Wed, 25 Dec 2002 17:39:08 GMT

Here is some much needed advice for some of my fellow developers: Deleting Code by Ned Batchelder.
12:39:08 PM Comments

Thu, 19 Dec 2002 14:48:54 GMT

A cool new inter - face - I would like to see it tied to a genetic algorithm to optimize the feedback.
9:48:54 AM Comments

Tue, 17 Dec 2002 02:05:28 GMT

Check out Translucent Databases - in it, Peter Wayner describes methods to construct databases that use one-way functions to scramble data and shield it from prying eyes. Unfortunately his examples are all in the overly-long-winded Java language, and I don't have the time nor money right now to analyze his code. Can anybody translate his examples into Cold Fusion? Here are some of the case studies (take your pick):

A database that hides the position of Navy ships from enemies while simultaneously providing accurate information to those with proper authorization.
An anti-rape database that identifies trends without containing any personal information.
A babysitter scheduling service that matches parents with available sitters while protecting the sitters' identities and locations'.
A department store database that guards the modesty of customers.
A private accounting system that detects fraud without revealing information.
A poker game for the Internet that prevents cheating.
A pharmacy database for preventing dangerous drug interactions while keeping medical records secure.
A tool for travel agents to protect their clients from stalkers and kidnappers.
A stock exchange transaction mechanism designed to stop insider-trading.
A website logfile tool that provides accurate counts of visitors while protecting their identities.
A credit-card database for defending crucial e-commerce transactions.
A patent search tool that doesn't reveal the nature and focus of the search.
A conference bulletin board that routes messages without helping stalkers.
A tool for studying the radon concentration in homes without maintaining personal information.
An anti-money laundering database.

I know one trick where the password is hashed before it is stored in the database - an administrator can reset the password but can't tell you what it is. But this trick doesn't cover cases where the information needs to be displayed to certain people.

Know any others?

9:05:28 PM Comments

Sun, 10 Nov 2002 10:50:05 GMT

An Interview With Douglas Bowman of Wired News [Info Design]
5:50:05 AM Comments

Sun, 03 Nov 2002 10:31:56 GMT

ReactOS is an Open Source effort to develop a quality operating system that is compatible with Windows NT 4.0 applications and drivers.
5:31:56 AM Comments

Literate Programming

Wed, 09 Oct 2002 23:21:25 GMT

Literate Programming

The practitioner of literate programming can be regarded as an essayist, whose main concern is with exposition and excellence of style. Such an author, with thesaurus in hand, chooses the names of variables carefully and explains what each variable means. He or she strives for a program that is comprehensible because its concepts have been introduced in an order that is best for human understanding, using a mixture of formal and informal methods that reinforce each other.

I have been somewhat ashamedly following that very dictum - it's nice to see someone else believes in it too.

6:21:25 PM Comments

PDA Fast

Mon, 16 Sep 2002 11:12:21 GMT

PDA Fast

Saturday, I gave up my PDA to the technicians at Best Buy where I bought my 2 year service plan. A minimum of 10 days of incantations will be recited to it in a ritual known as "sending it out for service." At the end of this ritual I am hoping that it will be declared "unfixable" and they will consent to replacing it with the newer SL20 model.

In the meantime I am supposedly using my son's PDA, which I gave to him because it no longer synced. So much for that idea. Can't use my wife's PDA, either, because she's got it so full that nothing more can be put into it. So I'm going on an extended PDA "fast" and journaling the interesting bits of information along the way.

The first thing I have noticed is that the tasks at the edges of the schedule day are not getting done, due to my being in bed and away from the laptop, which contains my only source a scheduling information. I have not been taking my allergy pillules regularly, for instance.

6:12:21 AM Comments

Fri, 13 Sep 2002 14:23:39 GMT

Finally! I have been enlightened about Processing in the try, catch, and finally Blocks (9/13/2002). Do you know when program control is passed between the try, catch, and finally blocks? Learn what the triggers are for visiting each of these blocks. [JavaScript Tip of the Day]
9:23:39 AM Comments

Mon, 09 Sep 2002 17:26:39 GMT

Larry Walls Testimony: I expect a good deal of the problem is that you are busy disbelieving a different God than the one I am busy believing in.

Very interesting! He is "Shroedinger's cat in reverse".

12:26:39 PM Comments

Wed, 04 Sep 2002 19:11:15 GMT

Radio emerges from electronic soup.
2:11:15 PM Comments

Wed, 04 Sep 2002 18:55:11 GMT

Apple is internally running a complete, x86-compatible version of Jaguar, aka Mac OS X 10.2, which shipped last week.
1:55:11 PM Comments

Sun, 28 Jul 2002 19:49:35 GMT

OpenforBusiness Announces Winners for Open Choice Awards 2002 Best Linux Distribution: Mandrake Linux 8.2. By sticking to a very orthodox wizard-style interface you won't miss things that need your attention like you can in SuSE 8.
2:49:35 PM Comments

Another idea for a web application.

Sun, 28 Jul 2002 13:39:37 GMT

Another idea for a web application.

Students are given barganing chips according to some kind of award system. These chips are used to award bids placed by themselves in a special auctioning system. Bidders in this system would be local villagers who would try to convince the student that they are qualified to do the work and would place the lowest bid.

8:39:37 AM Comments

Cringely on Palladium

Sat, 29 Jun 2002 15:27:35 GMT

Cringely on Palladium

14. I, Cringely | The Pulpit (4.0 points). Palladium ... Cringely on Palladium ... Cringely [( blogdex : recent )]
10:27:35 AM Comments

A Caching Solution Example

Wed, 26 Jun 2002 13:55:22 GMT

A Caching Solution Example

As long as we're discussing rolling your own caching solution, I would like to share a solution which I find very satisfying both in its utility and its simplicity.

Basically you need to create a custom tag that converts your static HTML into a javascript source file that can be embedded in your page like this:

along with a mechanism that prevents the wasted effort of rewriting identical source files. The browser will then do its job by keeping a copy of this and not refreshing it as long as the mod date on the server stays the same, allowing you to use it throughout the application without having to create another copy.

I break up this task in a series of surrounding custom tags. The inner most tag converts the HTML to JavaScript by first escaping all back slashes, single quotes, and tabs and converting to document write lines like this:

ThisTag.GeneratedContent = ListChangeDelims(ThisTag.GeneratedContent, "');" & Chr(10) & "document.writeln('", Chr(10) & Chr(12) & Chr(13));

ThisTag.GeneratedContent = "document.write('" & ThisTag.GeneratedContent & "');";

The next inner most tag saves the javascript output (and any additional javascript you want to squeeze in there) to a unique file. This takes the file suffix ("js" in this case) and the file name as attributes, and assumes a special cache directory to save the file to. If not supplied with a file name, I just create one with CreateUUID() like this:

Variables.CacheDirectory = Left(GetBaseTemplatePath(), Len(GetBaseTemplatePath()) - Len(CGI.SCRIPT_NAME)) & 'cache';

if(Len(Attributes.FileName)) {

Caller.CacheFile = Variables.CacheDirectory & Attributes.FileName & '.' & Attributes.FileSuffix;

}

else {

Caller.CacheFile = Variables.CacheDirectory & CreateUUID() & '.' & Attributes.FileSuffix;

}

</CFSCRIPT>

<CFFILE

ACTION="WRITE"

FILE="#Caller.CacheFile#"

OUTPUT="#ThisTag.GeneratedContent#"

ADDNEWLINE="Yes"

</CFCASE>

</CFSWITCH>

The real power, though, is in the ability to pass a hash of the uniquely identifying qualities of the HTML you wanted to cache in the first place. (Yes, this is the mechanism I was talking about.) In my case, I'm only calling this tag inside of another tag, so I just smoosh all the simple attributes (and a unique value list or two of the complex ones) together, hash that, and pass it to the tag as the file name attribute. (Of course, you would want to see if the file with that hashed name already doesn't exist before you bother to run the tag. :-)

In some cases, of course, you are able to avoid converting to a .js file and stick with .htm files, but the caching solution is just that much simpler.

8:55:22 AM Comments

Wed, 26 Jun 2002 12:58:46 GMT

5. Boxes and Arrows: Computer Human Values (3.0 points). Computer Human Values ... designing for people [( blogdex : recent )]
7:58:46 AM Comments

Wed, 26 Jun 2002 12:40:46 GMT

Microsoft is trying to kill the GPL.
7:40:46 AM Comments

Sat, 23 Mar 2002 23:48:37 GMT

PayPal Takes Aim at Developers. Hoping to make its eCommerce solutions more developer-friendly, PayPal teams with Macromedia and launches a developer portal. [internetnews: Web Developer]
6:48:37 PM Comments

Sat, 02 Mar 2002 10:19:16 GMT

I have this strange problem: after running an Excel Web Query to a Cold Fusion template on a server, some browsers refuse to not cache certain pages on that server. First I mucked up my laptop, then I mucked up the Development Server, now the Production Server is mucked up. Thanks to my inattentiveness on the matter, some of our clients are logging on to our application from mult-user pcs and seeing the previous users personalization!

At first I was distracted by the way Excel cf authenticates - on our application a wddx cookie is set containing some personal information after a simple login. So I concentrated on getting the Excel Web Query to send the proper name and password.

I successfully developed a custom tag that just needs to be placed where you want the link to show and creates an iqy file which automatically opens in Excel and sends all form and url data needed to query the same page you are on. The only thing Excel asks for is your password.

Beautiful, huh? But, basking in my success, I am now able to see what happens on servers which many people are using. Couple of questions:

How do I find out what header info Excel is sending to my Cold Fusion server? I inserted the custom tag at the bottom of the developer's version of the site wide error handler, which just cf dumps all the structures that exist on the Cold Fusion server, and ran the web query to there, but I can't see any differences. The http user agent is Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0; Q312461), but that isn't any different than the browser. Even the cf token and cf id are the same!
How do I get the browser cache on certain machines to work normally again? I have scads of no-cache header tags, uuids in my url, etc., my these are just work-arounds. The underlying problem still remains.

5:19:16 AM Comments

Fri, 01 Mar 2002 14:29:10 GMT

All my queries use SQL joins for multi-table queries. But, for the speed gains, I've been switching backing to comma-delimited FROM statements. The reason I was using them is because the database was so corrupt (it was a straight copy from the development server) that I needed to ensure integrity. And besides, Enterprise Manger will automatically turn your query requests into inner joins. [WebDeveloper.com]
9:29:10 AM Comments