devnulled: A stream for software developers and engineers

This is kind of interesting to me– DePaul University is now offering Python and Django classes. DePaul is one of the largest private universities in the US, and also has a pretty good Computer Science program. On a related note, Django has started a new branch to integrate SQLAlchemy after some recent Python framework comparisons showed that it was a better tool for complex tasks than Django’s built-in modeling system.

Coindentially, if grad school is in my future after I finally wrap-up the undergrad degree in Computer Science, an MS in Computer Science (perhaps with my research emphasis being in Distributed Computing) at DePaul is very high on my mental list of options. They used to have an MS in Distributed Computing but it looks like it was recently retired. D’oh!

I came across an interesting Security 101 type article about how many popular sites do not protect their users passwords with SSL titled Look At All of These Passwords!

If you use any number of popular web forums or even some commercial services like classmates.com, amazon.com, netzero.com or your provider’s webmail service, you may not be aware that you’re sending your credentials over the internet in the clear.

Some sites appear to secure your credentials, but they really don’t. Some offer SSL sign-ins, but don’t make them the default. Others don’t even make an attempt to use proper SSL encryption or any attempt to obscure the credentials.

Definately a good read and an eye opener as to how many popular sites out there do not implement proper security techniques for something as simple as a login process.

I’m proud to announce that I’m now part of the ColdFusion Developer’s Journal Editorial Board. We have quite an impressive list of experienced developers and evangelists in the community, and I’m honored to be part of the great group helping steer the magazine along with Jeremy and Simon.

I’ve always enjoyed writing and critiquing technical content, starting with being a Technical Editor on Inside ColdFusion MX, which now seems like a very long time ago. Since then the ColdFusion book market has been consolidated so I haven’t had the chance to work on a book again, but I have wrote a few things for the CFDJ, and occasionally post something on my blog which reaches a much larger audience than I expected. I think I have a fairly unique perspective on ColdFusion since I’m not a very typical CF developer, and hopefully I can bring an interesting and useful perspective to the group.

One thing which has already been discussed is some of the poor choices of aggregating blog entries as articles without author’s permission, and I have also been a bit critical of Sys-Con previously myself. As Jeff already posted, this is something which seems to be in the past and weren’t part of the daily operations of the print version of the CFDJ. However, I think the new board will continue the evolvement of the magazine since Simon took over as Editor in Chief, and we’d love to hear any additional feedback or suggestions (including article proposals of course) about the publication you’d like to provide.

After many obsessive discussions with my co-workers earlier this year about Snakes On A Plane, I decided to purchase the snacksonaplane.net domain in April. Recent events finally gave me a good reason to use it to create a Snacks On A Plane?!!? poster. Note: the f-bomb is used.

From del.icio.us, it looks like Yahoo! just created a Python Developer Center which looks to be a good resource on Python as well as tutorials on how to interact with various Yahoo! services using Python.

I’m glad to see that Python is also getting a bit more attention lately despite all of the hype behind Ruby On Rails. I know it’s also used at Google in it’s help system (note the .py in the URL) and also on Google Code among other places.

I’ve been trying to find a project to work on to contribute to the community for quite some time, and finally came across something missing that would be very valuable to anyone running a ColdFusion based blog. My blog has been using WordPress for at least a couple of years, and I’ve never really had any spam problems because of the many various spam solutions available for WordPress. The latest major revision of WordPress uses a new service called Akismet to help stop spam in it’s tracks, and it works /very/ well. I upgraded this blog to WordPress 2.04 on Friday, and since then it has trapped over 730 comment and trackback spams(!).

What is Akismet you ask? From the Akismet website:

Automattic Kismet (Akismet for short) is a collaborative effort to make comment and trackback spam a non-issue and restore innocence to blogging, so you never have to worry about spam again.

How does it work?

When a new comment, trackback, or pingback comes to your blog it is submitted to the Akismet web service which runs hundreds of tests on the comment and returns a thumbs up or thumbs down.

After seeing many posts in the community lately about problems with comment and trackback spam, I decided to write a ColdFusion interface to the Akismet API. I just whipped it up this afternoon and it seems to work as it should, though I’m unfortunately imperfect and I would not be surprised if I missed something, somewhere. Not to mention, I’m caged-up in the house trying to get over a cold. You can get more details about it on my CFAkismet Project Page. I’m also used to writing big applications using all of the fun OO buzzwords and not standalone components for bulk consumption, so if you have any suggestions, let me know.

I’d /highly/ recommend that ColdFusion blog software authors seriously consider adding this as part of a comment moderation system into their software. Since I don’t use ColdFusion blog software, I haven’t tried plugging it into anything yet.

Give it a try, and let me know if you need any help with it, have any questions, or find any bugs.