Indoor enthusiast. Co-founder of Stack Overflow and Discourse. Disclaimer: I have no idea what I'm talking about. Find me here:
I improved the ASP.NET CAPTCHA server control I mentioned yesterday: * Control respects all standard ASP.NET server control properties (font, border, accesskey, enabled, etcetera) * Hide ViewState property (it’s required!) * Added CaptchaLength property * Added CaptchaFontWarping property * Improve font sizing algorithm * Improve warping algorithm (more mild distortion, no more drawing
A few days ago, I found a really cool CAPTCHA ASP.NET code sample. I converted it to VB.NET and repackaged it as a full blown ASP.NET server control: It’s as simple as I could make it: a total drag and drop, set the (three) properties and
I was reading an interesting entry in Rocky Lhotka’s blog when something in the URL caught my eye: http://www.lhotka.net/WeBlog/PermaLink.aspx?guid=b28971dc-ac4b-4494-8a21-7a5105a39b07 I guess it’s a DasBlog thing, but good lord: a globally unique ID in a blog hyperlink? Has it really come
OK, the title is just, Why Your Code Sucks, but you know you were thinking it. The article may not be as grammatically (sp) correct as I would like, but it’s got some solid advice. My favorite is rejection of dogma: Your code sucks if it dogmatically conforms to
Of all the professional hubris I’ve observed in software developers, perhaps the greatest sin of all is that we consider ourselves typical users. We use the computer obsessively, we know a lot about how it works, we even give advice to friends and relatives. We are experts. Who could
I got into an interesting discussion today about that recently published report, Comparing Microsoft .NET and IBM WebSphere/J2EE. If you haven’t read it, there’s a summary at eWeek, but I definitely recommend downloading the full report for the details. If you’re too busy to do either
In my previous blog entry on some plan(s) for spam, I mentioned that I didn’t care for challenge/response “human-only” whitelists. I couldn’t put my finger on exactly why I felt that way... until I happened upon this John Graham-Cumming PowerPoint presentation: I don’t “do” Challenge/
I recently blogged about how pure object oriented programming is oversold. Well, evidently Paul Graham agrees with me: Object-oriented programming generates a lot of what looks like work. Back in the days of fanfold, there was a type of programmer who would only put five or ten lines of code
After struggling with spam e-mail for years the old fashioned way – highlight, DEL – I finally succumbed and installed POPFile on my server. POPFile uses a Bayesian Filter technique and it is amazingly effective. Within a day I had 95% accuracy; within a week I had 97% accuracy. Two months later,
As a student of UI design, I was always intrigued by the user interface used in You Don’t Know Jack. If you’re not familiar with the game, it’s a demented in-your-face quiz show game. The first version was released circa 1995, and at the time, I don’
I’m currently reading Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering by Robert Glass. It’s definitely a worthwhile book, although I do have two criticisms: 1. Someone really, really needs to buy Robert Glass a copy of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style. Or at least get him a
For quick and dirty HTML syntax highlighting, have you tried the Squishy Syntax Highlighter? By way of demo, here’s a little CRC32 routine I scavenged last year. Update 3/05: I am using client-side JavaScript highlighting. I noticed that VS.NET automatically translates the IDE highlighting into the RtfTextBox