Friday Funny: Sorry - Your Password Isn’t Not Long Enough June 27, 2008
Posted by Dale in : Funny Pictures, Humour, Security , Comments"Your password must be at least x characters; cannot repeat any of your previous x passwords; must contain capitals, numerals or punctuation; and cannot contain your account or full name. Please type a different password. Type a password which meets these requirements in both text boxes."
Yes, it’s that time of month again, where I retrieve the post-it note from under my keyboard, and write my NEW password down on it.
So we now have the illusion of security, while not actually having it. Which is a reason why, when your computer is seized, they’ll take the surrounding items as well.
I laughed until I cried when I saw this:
BabySmash June 26, 2008
Posted by Dale in : Freeware, Utilities, Web links , CommentsSeen over at Scott Hanselman’s site, Baby Smash:
As babies smash on the keyboard, colored shapes, letters and numbers appear on the screen. Baby Smash will lock out the Windows Key, as well as Ctrl-Esc and Alt-Tab so your baby can’t get out of the application. Pressing ALT-F4 will exit the application and Shift-Ctrl-Alt-O brings up the options dialog.
I wrote BabySmash! for my 2 year old and 5 month old so they could bang on the keyboards of my Windows machines without hurting anything. It’s a copy/homage of the very fine and free AlphaBaby for the Macintosh. BabySmash is free also and I’ll release the source code on my blog soon. Enjoy
On top of your game June 25, 2008
Posted by Dale in : People , CommentsIt is truly a pleasure when the phone goes *ring* *ring* and the following occurs:
“I’ve got a problem with a printer freezing.”, says the desktop support tech (Tina Brown).
Have you tried:
- reinstalling the printer driver?
- reinstalling the print driver?
- disabling all the unnecessary network protocols?
- locking the printer port to a particular network speed?
The answer back:
“Yes, yes, yes and yes”
Bugger!
I think to myself: ‘How am I supposed to get that FIGJAM coffee mug, if you know all the answers’
Ok, what do you think we should do next then?
“Upgrade the printer firmware, and then upgrade the print driver.”
Well ok, let’s do that.
It’s not that I’m particularly talented at IT, it’s just that I’ve been around long enough to be able to psychically debug most problems. Except when I meet someone who’s been in the trenches nearly as long as me.
9 Essential Rules for Writing User Documentation June 25, 2008
Posted by Dale in : Documentation , Comments- Identify your audience.
Identify the average person who will be using each piece of your documentation, and write for their experience level. Not your level of experience, but theirs. - The purpose
Write down why your average user would need to use your documentation.
User documentation is designed to help the user to do something. - Name it
Create titles for each of your documentation pieces. - Plan, create a:
* table of Contents for each piece of documentation
* estimate of number of the number of pages per document section
* sample layout of your document - Writing
Create the first draft as quickly as you can.
Do not get hung-up on spelling/grammar/”look and feel” at this stage. - Editing
Start only when you have finished writing. - Proofreading
Only when you think it is finished, ship it out for proofreading and reviewing. - Printing
Get it out the door. There will always be one more tweak.
Resist the urge to make it perfect, instead, get it published. - Maintenance
Set review dates for your documentation.
If your documentation is not being used, don’t keep working on it.
My next documentation post on Tuesday, will discuss the Four Key Pillars of Writing User Documentation.
Podcast: “Sorting out Internationalization with Michael Kaplan” June 24, 2008
Posted by Dale in : Code Cutting, Podcast , CommentsJust finished listening to the Scott Hanselman Podcast with Michael Kaplan.
It seems the four good languages to test your application for Internationalisation problems are as follows:
| Language | Test |
| Turkish | The Turkish “i” problem. (Turkish language has four i’s) |
| German | 30% -> 40% longer than the equivalent English words. |
| Arabic | Right-to-left language |
| Thai | Good test of how your application handles Uniscribe formatting. Particularly word-breaking. |
Another interesting test from Scott:
When I was doing internationalization, we were working in banking, we thought about the German example and we thought about more complicated examples. One of the things with one of the bugs that we wanted to catch was pushing UTF-8 code all the way through the system and back and making sure that as it move from web server to middle tier, from middle tier to database and back, that we didn’t screw something up. We didn’t go turning into block squares, testing the system all the way through to make sure that something wasn’t lost.
The Hanselminutes podcast is on my weekly listening list.
Tips for Web page & Blog graphics June 23, 2008
Posted by Dale in : AudioVisual, How To , CommentsUse only JPG or GIF graphics
… as these are the most web friendly.
I heard that there’s GIF87a and 89a. What are the differences?
GIF89a allows you to do GIF animations, and interlacing.
So what’s interlacing?
Simply put, the image builds up as the end user is watching the download. Sort of like a preview.
(image courtesy of webdesign.about.com)
So what about JPEG?
Well GIF8x, as good as it is, is limited to 256 colours. JPEG, 16,777,216. You can see why it’s popular for photos.
It does compression just like GIF, but you can select how “progressive” it is. Look at the image below, it demonstrates the effect of more compression across the photo.
(image from wikipedia)
Lets sum it up in a table:
| GIF87a/89a | JPEG | |
| Colours | 256 | 16,777,216 |
| Compression | Minimal | Good, but at cost of image quality |
| Animation?, interlacing? | Yes & Yes | No & No |
| Best use | Line drawing, cartoons | Photography |
List posts by category June 22, 2008
Posted by Dale in : How To, Wisefaq , CommentsYou might have noticed a new page (Category list) when you visited today:
Category list lists the title of all my posts by Category. Mainly put it there for my own use, but you’re welcome to use it as well
Since we are talking about pages …
Home
the front page of this blog.
About Dale
lists some of my experience, aka the "FIGJAM" or the "I love me wall" page.
Useful links
webpage links I find useful enough to bookmark on one page, so I can retrieve when I’m working.
Category list
list of blog post titles by category. (modified) PHP script from David Sanchez
Update: it didn’t last long, as there were
some bugs in itenhancements I wanted that I didn’t have time to code further. So I grabbed a replacement from www.dagondesign.com. I’m very happy.
Your computer security is just keeping honest people out. June 20, 2008
Posted by Dale in : Podcast, Security, Web links, WhichBank , Comments… And just buying time you time with the dishonest ones.
Which is the great truth. Security just buys you time. If a burglar really wants to get into your place, they will.
But more often than not, they’ll move on to the easier target.
We saw this in the 1990’s, when banks installed anti-hold-up security screens. The criminals just moved on to easier targets, such as Petrol / Gasoline stations.
So it is with computer security. You want to do as much as you can, so the bad guys want to move on to the next system.
Sure, the things you do ARE going to devalue over time. New vulnerabilities will be discovered in your security measures*, so you need to regularly assess what else can be done to improve your computer security. Microsoft recognised# this when they developed the SDL, and they use it to this day. You can see the benefit of this by looking at a comparison between Vista and XP right here.
Which brings us to “Security by Obscurity”+. Yes, it’s a good thing in my opinion.
Why? Because it gives you a layer of defense against dishonest people (primarily taking about script kiddies here). But it had better not be the only layer in your computer security plan.
Want to learn more about security? "Well here’s the deal!", as the man said. Invest some of your time in Kai’s security Webcasts. I’ve blogged about them before.
Update: Or perhaps it’s "Aggressive Kindness"
~~~
Dale’s past experience includes performing risk assessments for desktop systems, reviewing desktop security audits, and working on a holdup alarm desk in the retail banking industry.
He knows there’s no money in robbing a bank.
* The discovered flaw with anti-hold-up screens was the staff entry door next to the bank teller counter. A 14-pound sledgehammer made for quick/effective entry. Until bank security fixed that flaw.
+ IBM relied on this with the MVS system. If you had access to a terminal, you could cause a denial of service. The security risk assessment didn’t take into account publicly accessible terminals (think public libraries).
# what they recognised was that a number of their products were not designed well from a security point of view.
references:
Australian Institute of Criminology - No. 253 - Bank Robbery In Australia
Microsoft Office Paperclip - Do not go gentle into that good night … June 18, 2008
Posted by Dale in : Funny Pictures, Humour, Other Blogs , Comments
Saw this at the Microsoft Office Offline blog. The Office Offline blog
… regularly features wry observations about Microsoft Office and other Microsoft products. The characters in the comic spend much of their time discussing how they use and misuse technology, forming the basis of the humor in the comic. Other themes include software development, marketing, management, and personal relationships. The comic also sometimes refers to philosophy and art.
The amazing thing is that is actually a blog BY Microsoft. Our friend Clippy is one of the characters featured.
Bits and Pieces - Project Management June 17, 2008
Posted by Dale in : Humour, Project Management , CommentsPost Implementation Review
A lot of time, money and energy went into the "project". At times things were difficult but the result was a quality deliverable.
But at the end of the day the thing that most impressed the users bore no resemblance to their original requirements.
85 miles there, 85 miles back, a severely depleted budget and all they want to do is chase an artificial turd down a pipe.
Frankly if you don’t think this is a good analogy for software development then I don’t know what is!
The Lighter Side - Life is like an analogy (David Poole talks about the software development process)