This is the blog of Gerd Riesselmann, a freelance software developer from Cologne, Germany. This site contains articles about software development and user interface design in general and object oriented programming in special, covering a set of programming languages from C++ and C# to PHP and Javascript. Additionally, you'll find code snippets and modules for Drupal, the open source content management system powering this site.
Sending spam through contact forms
There's a wave of contact form spamming going around and it hit the Comic Marktplatz, too. The main purpose of this attack is to figure out websites providing forms that can be misused to send spam, effectivly turning them into open relays. This affects not only contact forms, but also blog comments.
Internet update the wrong way II
Detecting and offering updates automatically on program startup generally is a very good feature. Especially for security related applications. But, people over at Zone Labs: Bringing up "Take a tour", "By the full version" and other nag screens after each update is simply annoying.
Anyone knows a newspaper CMS?
Does anyone know a CMS that is able to distinguish between an author of an article and the publisher? These two roles are commonly treated as the same, which is suitable for a blog or company site. However, for a newspaper this isn't the case.
You have been warned
If a compiler offers to talk to you, why not listen to it?
Using Randomized Blogroll Plugin on UTF-8 encoded pages
Malte Diedrich noticed, my Randomized Blogroll plugin causes problems on pages that are not ISO-8859-1. He's right.
Thankfully Malte already provides a simple solution. Just change the function getAnchorHTML() to look like this:
<?php
function getAnchorHTML()
{
return utf8_encode('url . '" ' .
'title="' . htmlspecialchars($this->description, ENT_COMPAT) . '" ' .
Comment Spam: I'm Sick of It
During the last days, I was heavily suffering from comment spam. And Spam Karma for some reason wasn't able to handle it.
Actually, I decided to no longer trust in anti-spam plugins but rely on security through obscurity. This is: I wrote my own simple but hopefully effective captcha. I decided to rely on simple questions rather than distorted images, since they bring up accessibility problems - it is impossible to read that image if you are blind.
Cash Dispenser User Interface
If your bank anounces it will improve it's internal banking software, is it wrong to expect some kind of improvement? Yes it is, at least when they start to change the software of their cash dispensers.
Internet Update the Wrong Way
Automated internet update how it shouldn't be: Downoad an update and hide it so nobody can find it.
Google Content Blocker
This gave me a good laugh: Google Content Blocker (via Yasblog).
Congrats To Shaun Murphy
22 years old Shaun Murphy won the Snooker World Chanpionchip yesterday. He's the first qualifier for 26 yeares to claim the title.
I didn't watch the final, unfortunately, but watched his match against Peter Ebdon - and I really like his offensive and carefree style. Congratulations, Shaun Murphy!
