Archive for March, 2010
Columns, columns, get your columns here
March 27th, 2010 | 
Author: If you’ve ever wanted to import column based data from a file only to find that the columns varied on each and every “page” of data you know how frustrating it can be to write code to handle all the bizarre contingencies that may arise. You might be presented with this problem when you’re asked to read data that has been scanned from an image or converted from some other format like an Adobe PDF. Read the rest of this entry »
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ASP Form Obfuscation
Some time ago I received an email from a scammer looking to hijack my paypal account. I could tell that the URLs had nothing to do with PayPal but visually the phishing website itself was a dead ringer. I wondered just how many of the innocent unaware this filthy coward would steal from before he was stopped. I think thieves are the worst sort of people and they disgust me so I threw together a quick VB6 application that generated some very real looking data and posted it to the website though Internet Explorer as fast as the site would accept it. Shortly after I hammered 275,000+ form submissions in the site went offline. While Scammer Hammer will never make it to the downloads section the Classic ASP project it inspired can already be found there. Read the rest of this entry »
Scripting in Ancient Java
When Java Applets where all the rage I had the opportunity to work in a startup shop in Coralville, Iowa where Java was THE official language. Other than the stock charting server DLL I wrote in C/C++ you didn’t use Microsoft for web development you used Java. Read the rest of this entry »
Regular Expressions in Visual Basic 4
Way back in 1998 (the days of Visual Basic 4) I found myself needing an integrated solution to pattern matching. Prior to this I had learned regular expressions from a brief stint in a multiplatform programming shop where the all work was done on Solaris workstations. Unfortunately not much was available to the VB4 programmer who wanted regular expression matching – especially if that matching was required to take place on executables targeted at 16 bit Windows for Workgroups (3.1) and on the newly minted 32 bit Windows95b. Read the rest of this entry »
