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Encode-O-Matic: Guess Encoding

2010 Apr 4, 2:02

I've just updated Encode-O-Matic with a Guess Input Encoding feature. When you start Encode-O-Matic or when you use the 'Guess Input Encoding' menu item from the 'Tools' menu, Encode-O-Matic will try out various combinations of encodings and guess at which set seem to apply to your input. For instance given the following text, Encode-O-Matic will correctly guess that it is percent encoded, base64 encoded, deflate compressed text:

S%2BWqUEhLLMoFUulFpXnZQLogMa%2BkmCuPqxzILk%2FMyeHK4QIA
It should work fairly well for simple things but I did pick 'Guess' for the name of the feature to intentionally lower expectations. It doesn't currently apply to character encodings but that may be something to consider in the future.PermalinkCommentstechnical encodeomatic tool encoding

People's Republic of Interactive Fiction

2010 Apr 1, 2:42Its like a better version of what I was doing with my Web Frotz Interpreter. Its all client side javascript, HTML, & CSS to play Z-machine based interactive fiction games. They even do the saved game in a URL piece.PermalinkCommentsif interactive-fiction game web browser webapp

RFC 4627 - The application/json Media Type for JavaScript Object Notation (JSON)

2010 Mar 31, 7:59Defines the mime type for JSON as well as JSON itself.PermalinkCommentstechnical json mimetype mime javascript ietf rfc specification

Client-side Cross-domain Security

2010 Mar 31, 7:54"Summary: Exploring cross-domain threats and use cases, security principles for cross-origin requests, and finally, weighing the risks for developers to enhance cross-domain access from web applications running in the browser."PermalinkCommentstechnical msdn microsoft security xss XMLHttpRequest web browser

A Turing Machine Overview

2010 Mar 28, 4:37Mike Davey builds a Turing Machine drawing ones and zeros on tape. Pretty cool, but the tape length is only finite.PermalinkCommentsfsm turing-machine video technical

EricLaw's IEInternals : HTTP/HTTPS Port-Blocking in WinINET

2010 Mar 26, 5:16Interesting point that web browsers block HTML FORMs from submitting to some ports in order to avoid malicious servers from getting clients to do their dirty work. Of course it requires the host on the other side of that port to be able to interpret the HTTP request as something relevant to the protocol they actually expect.PermalinkCommentssecurity web browser ie http html form technical

mobster on the Behance Network

2010 Mar 25, 4:18UK graffiti by mobster
PermalinkCommentsmobster graffiti photos cultural-disobediance

"Weird: The Al Yankovic Story" from Eric Appel, Aaron Paul, Olivia Wilde, Al Yankovic, Patton Oswalt, Paul Scheer, BRIAN HUSKEY, and christiansprenger - Video

2010 Mar 23, 12:02"Trailer for the upcoming Weird Al Yankovic biopic. This film is sure to sweep next year's Academy Awards."
PermalinkCommentshumor video weird-al parody trailer

YouTube - The Lazy Programmer's Guide to Secure Computing

2010 Mar 23, 9:10Laziness is a virtue in programming esp. wrt. security. Marc Stiegler gives a talk at Google on the topic.PermalinkCommentsvia:kris.kowal programming security video google lazy

PDF Most Common File Type in Targeted Attacks - F-Secure Weblog : News from the Lab

2010 Mar 22, 8:40PDF overtakes Word as targeted attack vector of choice.PermalinkCommentssecurity office adobe pdf word powerpoint microsoft technical statistics internet malware

YouTube - Chatroulette Piano Ode to Merton.m4v

2010 Mar 21, 6:06Ben Folds sings to folks on Chatroulette during a concert. This is the best use of Chatroulette yet although I can only imagine this really working for Ben Folds concerts or They Might Be Giants concerts.PermalinkCommentschatroulette ben-folds music live awesome humor video youtube

Getting started with Google Calendar Sync - Google Calendar Help

2010 Mar 21, 3:22Google Calendar Sync is an Outlook plugin that syncs your Google and Outlook calendars (you get to pick 1way and direction or 2way sync'ing). This almost looks like what I want but perhaps my feature requests are too obscure for someone to have already implemented them:
Events marked personal added on my Outlook calendar should get full 2-way sync'ing with my Google calendar.
All other events added on my Outlook calendar should be assumed to have private company information and should get 1-way sync'ing with just the time and location - no attendees or subject or desceiption.
All events added on my Google calendar should get full 2-way sync'ing with Outlook and there should be marked personal.

I doubt I'm going to find a pre-made app to do this so I guess I should get coding. Otoh, if they ever bring the updated Android OS that has Exchange support to my G1 maybe none of this would be necessary...PermalinkCommentsgoogle calendar outlook microsoft tool free technical

API Overview Guide - Google Calendar APIs and Tools - Google Code

2010 Mar 21, 2:59Google's reference docs for their calendar apis.PermalinkCommentsgoogle calendar api programming reference technical

Douglas Crockford Facts

2010 Mar 18, 7:23Right behind Bruce Schneier, Douglas Crockford now gets his own Facts page including awesome facts like "Crockford is the sole user of the super-strict equality operator (====), which either returns true or kicks you in the balls."PermalinkCommentsdouglas-crockford humor javascript nerd technical

Where's Walden? » Whole-text DOM functionality and Acid3 redux

2010 Mar 18, 7:15This article describes the largest problem with the Acid3 test: "Acid3 often didn’t test things web authors wanted, but instead it tested things that were broken or not implemented regardless whether anyone truly cared."PermalinkCommentsacid3 web browser html dom test technical

webfinger enabled for all gmail accounts with public profiles - WebFinger | Google Groups

2010 Mar 13, 5:27WebFinger is finger but for the Web...PermalinkCommentswebfinger web google finger http metadata url technical

Easy: Connect your RSS or Atom feed to Google Buzz

2010 Mar 12, 1:28

It was relatively easy, although still more difficult than I would have guessed, to hook my bespoke website's Atom feed up to Google Buzz. I already have a Google email account and associated profile so Buzz just showed up in my Gmail interface. Setting it up it offered to connect to my YouTube account or my Google Chat account but I didn't see an option to connect to an arbitrary RSS or Atom feed like I expected.

But of course hooking up an arbitrary Atom or RSS feed is documented. You hook it up in the same manner you claim a website as your own via the Google Profile (for some reason they want to ensure you own the feed connected to your Buzz account). You do this via Google's social graph API which uses XFN or FOAF. I used XFN by simply adding a link to my feed to my Google profile (And be sure to check the 'This is a profile page about me' which ensures that a rel="me" tag is added to the HTML on your profile. This is how XFN works.) And by adding a corresponding link in my feed back to my Google profile page with the following:

atom:link rel="me" href="http://www.google.com/profiles/david.risney"
I used this Google tool to check my XFN connections and when I checked back the next day my feed showed up in Google Buzz's configuration dialog.

So more difficult than I would have expected (more difficult than just an 'Add your feed' button and textbox) but not super difficult. And yet after reading this Buzz from DeWitt Clinton I feel better about opting-in to Google's Social API.

PermalinkCommentstechnical atom google buzz rss social

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2010 Mar 12, 11:11"All of the sculpted noses on the planet Viltvodle VI were fashioned after Douglas Adams' own. The creators used a 3D model he had created for the game Starship Titanic." The noses mentioned in the previous sentence were depicted in the movie in a church. The religion of this church maintains that the universe was created by their god sneezing out the universe and so they have statues of their god's nose throughout the church. Of course this is intended to seem absurd, however based on the previous sentence -- that the nose belonged to Douglas Adams -- then they really were worshping the nose of their creator.PermalinkCommentsdouglas-adams book hhgttg movie religion nose

Eschuk comments on If you became the last person on Earth, what would you do? Realistically.

2010 Mar 12, 10:03Eschuk has fairly detailed strategy for last person on Earth scenario. Humrous comments follow.

itdest1983: "I hate to be a debbie downer and question this incredibly awesome and very intelligent plan, but my question is: Why? Other than sustaining life simply to avoid death, why? ..."

Eschuk : "Then someones got some existential shit to hash out. ..."PermalinkCommentshumor reddit strategy apocalypse

Post mortem - Charlie's Diary

2010 Mar 12, 9:20Charles Stross on the business and technical aspects of writing and selling a series of books - specifically The Family Trade series for which the next in the series is due out soon.PermalinkCommentscharles-stross family-trade book literature business
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