Ramin Hossaini (blog)

27Sep/090

New project: Blowfish encrypt/decrypt

Wrote a simple AJAX driven application to encrypt and decrypt text using the Blowfish algorithm. So if you're looking to encode your secret messages, this is just the tool for you :)

encrypt1

encrypt2

Possible additions:

  • More encryption algorithms
  • Emailing functionality

Let me know if you find any major bugs.

Blowfish encrypt/decrypt

25Sep/093

Flickr badges, awards, invites and other nasty stuff

If you use Flickr, you've probably encountered images, flashing GIFs and badges in people's comments:

award1

award2

Cheap. Nasty. Whatever you'd like to call it, they're an eye-sore. I delete them whenever I see them on my photos.

Then I ran into this:

trex-group

I have to admit, that's the funniest Flickr group I've ever seen - with a badge to match.

You can view the group here: Giant T-Rex Group

Tagged as: , 3 Comments
24Sep/096

How to get rid of your CAPTCHA and still avoid spam

CAPTCHAs. You hate them, I hate them. Everyone's seen them and everyone will tell you they're annoying.

captcha

I'll admit, I used to use a Maths CAPTCHA, cause I thought it'd be easier for someone to add 5 + 6 than to read some scew text-characters. Apparently this only annoyed people more though (there is an amazing aversion to Mathematics out there). I can't blame you, it really is annoying.

captcha2

And this one is very popular. Which apparently uses CAPTCHAs to help digitize books. That's great, but I don't feel like helping.

captcha3

Which all brings me to something I'd encourage more people to use.

Spambots fill up fields in a form and submit. If there's a CAPTCHA, advanced spambots actually solve it and enter a value. Which leads to more advanced (nastier-looking) CAPTCHAs.

Invisible Defender is an example of spam-protection that does things a little differently. Instead of displaying a CAPTCHA, it adds a bunch of generic fields to the form. These fields remain invisible/hidden from the typical user:

captcha4

(Most) Spambots don't realise this and fill up those fields too. The script detects if the fields were filled in and if they are, it shows an 403 error-page to the bots. I heard of this simple-concept about a year ago and thought it was such an eloquent solution. It almost seemed too simple to work.

Mind you, spambots are getting smarter, so some get past this too. But so far it's worked pretty well for me. I'm curious to know about your experiences too!

23Sep/090

Highlight comments by Blog-author (Wordpress)

If you'd like to distinguish your own comments from the comments of your visitors, here's how to highlight your comments with just a line of CSS - no extra plugins or unnecessary code.

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.bypostauthor { 
    background-color:#PLACE_YOUR_COLOUR_HERE !important; 
}

This works for Wordpress versions 2.7+

22Aug/090

Free full-res texture – 090822

As free as it gets. No attribution necessary.


texture_090822_thumb

Download texture_090822.zip (7.3mb)

Tagged as: No Comments
11Aug/093

Automatically insert rubbish Flickr-comments with Flickr-comment-generator

flickr-comment-gen-gm

I created an AJAX application that generates somewhat generic comments for Flickr. But I soon realised that people would not use it unless it was completely simple and automated.

That's where GreaseMonkey comes into action. I've created a GreaseMonkey script that automatically retrieves a random flickr-comment and places it into the comment text-field of a picture. You get to choose whether you would like to publish the comment or not.

If you notice any bugs in the script, or any improvements I can make to the script - please let know.

Go to Flickr-Comment generator

Or download the script directly

10Aug/094

Facebook lacks a simple feature

How do you search for all of your friends that are from or in a specific location (e.g. all my friends in Namibia right now)?

Sounds like a simple enough search.

Or is this feature already implemented?

Update:

It's not linked to from the front-page - only when you do a search: http://www.facebook.com/advanced.php

Update:

And as a commenter pointed out, http://www.facebook.com/advanced.php doesn't exist anymore!

Tagged as: , 4 Comments