Author: brianhaddock

Sep 16

The jaw-dropping 3D murals by John Pugh

He works on a large scale in public and residential areas and his paintings can be seen all over the world from New Zealand to Hawaii – with many telling a story of the area where they are positioned. Pugh is used to people’s amazed reactions when they pass his murals. He said: ‘They say “wow did you see that. I thought that was real.” ‘Public art can link people together and stimulate a sense of pride within the community. ‘These life-size illusions allow me to communicate with a very large audience.

May 26

Computer built into the desk

A Dutch man built this and posted it on tweakers.net (a Dutch website but translates to English pretty good using Google Chrome). He took a gaming computer system that he had and rather than change out the case, built a desk around it. He mocked up the design using Google Sketch, had his friend weld the aluminum frame and desk, installed thick glass as the desk top, and assembled the computer hardware into the desk frame. I believe the cooling system is in the drawer section to the right.

May 21

How to hide entertainment system wiring

I ran across this photo and thought it was brilliant. A common problem, what to do with the entertainment center wires, and this guy took a tack I had never thought of – just hide the wires in plain sight but bend them in such a manner that the represent the angular lines of a circuit board. In essences, he’s taken the ugly mess of wires and turned them into “art”.

May 06

The Speed of the Internet at Google (Googleplex)

Recently Google hosted a thread on Reddit where they answered questions from the general public. The question of Internet connection speed at Googleplex came up. To put things in perspective, the average connection in European countries is 12 Mb/s and 10 Mb/s in the United States. Personally, my connection with U-Verse is a blazing, or so I thought, 25 Mb/s. Google’s pipe is a mind blowing 523 Mb/s!

Apr 15

Add delete confirmation to asp.net ListView control

The ASP.Net ListView control is a godsend for developers. Drop the control on the form, hook in a datasource, and you have complete, out-of-the-box view, edit, insert, and delete functionality. One thing missing though is a delete confirmation if the user clicks the delete button. The Delete button is right next to the Edit button so it’s fairly easy to mistakenly click it and with an accidental click, the record is permanently deleted with no prompt or warning issued to the user.

Jan 18

World of Warcraft – Level 19 Rogue Twink Notes

Back in the day, I build a level 19 Rogue twink that ruled in the World of Warcraft battlegrounds. Building the twink character was probably as hard or harder than leveling my Hunter to 80. Here are the notes that I gathered and used to level the twink to 19 (with the assistance of my Level 50 Druid and Level 80 Hunter).

Jan 18

Gaining Shell Access via Local File Inclusion Vulnerabilities

My firewall caught some odd injection attempts which lead to research on the intent of the hackers. Turns out it was an attempt to gain Shell access via Local File Inclusion vulnerabilities and injection of malicious code in proc/self/environ. Research lead to the following step-by-step instructions on what was being attempted (listed below).

Dec 29

WordPress .htaccess Tips and Tricks

.htaccess files (or “distributed configuration files”) provide a way to make configuration changes on your Wordpress site on a per-directory basis. A .htaccess file, containing one or more configuration directives, is placed in a particular document directory on your Wordpress site, and the directives apply to that directory, and all subdirectories thereof. Using directives in .htaccess, you can block spam, secure your website, and control other website actions.

Dec 28

Hardening WordPress Security

Wordpress out of the box is fairly secure but there are still some pretty big holes. In addition, hosting environments and installation requirements often introduce gaping security holes in the Wordpress framework. Below are a few best practices to help secure your Wordpress framework.