jostein.kjønigsen.net

Now featuring tags

I've updated the code and DB and what not so you can use the awesomeness of tags on my site.

Like pretty much every other site on the net these days. Yay!

Got Unicode?

Let's get this straight: I'm a unicode-whore, I'm proud of it, and I think I have plenty of reasons to.

Here's our scenario

One planet, one internet, a gazzilion different nations, god knows how many languages, and unfortunately, more character encodings than any sane person can memorize. Does this make any sense?

A few examples

As long as you stick to a single language only while on the net, this shouldn't present any problems what so ever. The troubles come when you try to combine different languages.

Want to quote a german person on a norwegian page? I'm sure there are a character encoding that allows for this. Out of the blue I would assume ISO-1-8859-4.

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Fun with wireless

Some people don't mind others using their wireless network. Others setup insane security measures to prevent leeching.

Or some go to insane measures to have fun with the people leeching their wireless.

If you haven't seen it, take a look ASAP. Even if you don't get the technical Linux bits, those screenshots are gold.

Irc framework in C# / .NET

Background

Some time ago we had a YahtzeeBot on NekoNet, but it didn't have any cool statistics nor database backing, so getting any useful statistics was impossible.

Eager on some proper stats, I decided to write a bot from scratch just to get that sweet, sweet database backing that would allow me to generate all kinds of amusing numbers from the actual games played.

Never having written any IRC-code outside clients like BitchX and irssi, I quickly realized that if I wanted to do this in C#, I would have to write a complete framework for the IRC client-server interaction. So that's what I did.

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A minor loadtesting (aka the Fark-test)

So... Anyone who is seriously into forums know all about the wonders of imageshack. They have enormous bandwidth and host your images for free.

What's great about that is that way you can link up whatever picture you feel like in a post, without ever worrying about your server catching fire or your pipe getting clogged.

So... Today I was bored at worked and decided to do some Photoshop trolling over at Fark. I felt a bit cocky, so I linked the images from my own domain, and not imageshack for once.

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Securing your network

If your network is in any way connected to the internet, it is by default threatened. Script kiddies or blackhats will eventually hit your network, so keeping security in mind and being prepared is crucial.

Here is a giant chart showing some of the different angles a possible attacker may use. As you can clearly see, those aren't few.

Any sane company should test their own network to ensure it's safety, and I think this chart could be helpful in that process.

And, yes, as you may have figured: You might need some Linux-knowledge to do proper testing.

Securing your website

Indepenedent of what platform you are running, independent of what database system you are running, the number one threat to most websites is SQL Injections.

Ofcourse, if you are a .NET developer, using Parameterized Stored Procedures will in most cases protect you from this.

However, knowing how SQL Injections work is never a bad idea, and will help you understand some of the basics needed to write secure code.

This article shows how an injection attack takes form and why it works. Interesting and recommended reading.

Yay for google!

I have a shitty ISP. A shitty ISP that blocks general usage of port 25.

Their explenation is that its to prevent spamzombies from pestering the internet, which is sort of fair and a good initiative. However they refuse to unblock for anyone regardless of competency.

Yes. I see the problem of determining actual competency, but for me it means I can't host mail on my own domain. To me, this is a major let down.

So yay for google!

Why is that? I got google hosted email today. Which means GMail will be handling all my email needs for my own domain, without any crappy ISPs getting in the way. And its free.

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RSS

By actual request, I have now added an RSS feed to this page. Took me a whooping 5 minutes.

Regarding the BBcode

Since I mentioned you can use BBcode-ish syntax in comments, I though it might be in place to explain what that actually means, and what is actually supported.

Styling

Bold: Writing [b]something[/b] will make something go bold.

Italic: Writing [i]something[/i] will make something go italic.

Underline: Writing [u]something[/u] will make something go underline.

Images & links

To use images, use [img link to image here]alt-text here[/img]. yes you need the alt tag, or it will break my XHTML validation. *grin*

To make links use [url]. There are two syntaxes.

[url]link here[/url] will make a link with the linktext the same as the actual linked adress.

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