“The world will look up and shout ’save us’…and I’ll whisper ‘no’.”

It was pretty insane. I was sitting in my living room at the time kind of mad that the sirens weren’t stopping despite the clear skies. Fortunately a friend who was coming over for a visit decided to call me to tell me why he was late saying, “Hey Josh, I’m not coming over right now…there’s a tornado right over your house.”

Fun times.

http://www.severestudios.com/Willmar-Minnesota-Tornado-Video

It’s a Powershell script, but I’m sure you smart people out there can make a neato interface for it with your Vb Script or C#, or even port it! You can get the source here.

Original posting: Whoops!: Or we are paid to be researchers not QA professionals

Download Scrawlr / FAQ.

What a weekend!

Pretty much anyone who runs a public blog/site (like Mark Langenfeld, Nick Davis, MySpace, Dream.in.Code, etc.) knows that spam can be a problem. Fortunately, there are ways to combat it. With Wordpress, there is Akismet which I’ve found very helpful in keeping my blog clean. My blog isn’t very big and doesn’t get many hits a month, so I can send off comments to a third party for review. But for larger sites with thousands of hits, the programmer in my wonders what could be done to minimize traffic, decrease waiting time all the while better filtering spam. Enter my idea which basically scrambles the form up for the client so that the various fields, options and values aren’t easily parsed by bots.

When a client requests a page, the server assigns the client a session ID, generates a mapping of form fields to random names, and stores the relation of random form field names to that session. Then sends the page with the randomized form fields to the client. The client now fills out the form and sends it back. Since humans can much more easily parse abstract structures (and they don’t know/care about the underlying code), the data should be consistent whereas a bot should only be able to guess (poorly) or fill out the same thing for each field. After that, validating each field then using a battery of tests of what it should contain would be fairly easy and should give a much better idea on what is legit and what is spam.

This is not without problems though. For one, the session might expire and so the server couldn’t remap the randomized form fields to their respective real names and thus the user couldn’t finish the process. For another, bots could eventually be made smarter and could better figure out a well known interface. For instance, the order in which the form fields occur, their relative position in relation to other document elements, and the things needed so that humans can understand it.

This being a rather new idea of mine, I’m still trying to figure out other strengths, weaknesses, and ways to address the issues. That and I don’t know if anyone has tried this before. I think that this could be a neat and effective way of filtering down spam if implimented well.

I have to say that this test was the first that I actually felt prepared for and felt I could do at. Previous tests I was really nervous about remembering things and getting them right. Granted I was still nervous, but I noticed I shook less.

Even so, for the next test, I’m really going to have to hammer down on a few things, 1) knowing my oral test material better, 2) counting while reciting (I had to list a specific number of details about the American Flag), and 3) remembering what I was told to recite when they aren’t well related topics (i.e. 3 details about the flag and then what the number 12 is in Korean).

Next up is the purple belt! Which should be pretty interesting as we’re going to be having to throw some neat looking kicking combinations!

Thank you all for your birthday wishes and calls! It seems that I’m getting a call or text every 5 minutes with someone wishing me well.

What a trip around the sun it’s been. I’ve completed two years of school, moved two (almost three) ranks up in Tae Kwon Do, became a fulltime employee, signed a lease agreement (actual move is in July), flew down to New Mexico, became involved with CAB, and made a bunch of new friends at points along the way as well cultivate existing ones.

In looking back over the last 22 years…well the parts I can remember, this past year I’ve seen a lot of change to myself. I’ve grown more confident in my gifts and can much more easily interact and relate with people. My relationship with my siblings and parents has strengthened so much that I am going to miss them when they leave for far off places.

Friends and friendship, have never been better.  Throughout my years, I’ve always been “uptight” and uncomfortable about social situations, but I’ve been able to “let go” this year for what feels the first time ever. Before my mind has always been a tempest of indecision with an inability to just do and have a good time and I think that this is part if not most of the reason for the relationship grown I’ve been seeing in friends (and family).

While some may differ, but I think that my “faith” has grown as well. Whether that be a lot or little I cannot say, but I find myself thinking much more about such things and how it impacts me and the others who inhabit this globe.  I use “faith” mainly as a placeholder here because I don’t think it’s quite strong enough to convey what I’m meaning. That is, what one could call faith is something I accept as fundamentally true, unshakable and no amount of arguing will dislodge it. (Which I suppose the definition of faith is?)

All in all, it’s been quite a ride, and so I leave you with parting gift on my 22nd birthday.