PZXC.com - Ruminations of a serial cyberentrepreneur

CNAME on a Domain Root Does Work, and It's Not Evil

Fri, 27 May 2011 18:18:00 EST

CNAME is a DNS record ("canonical name") that allows you to define a domain as an alias of another, such that the second domain determines needed information such as what IP address to connect to during an HTTP request. When you access a domain www.xyz.com and your DNS server finds a CNAME record for it pointing to www.abc.com, the DNS server takes note of the relationship and converts all future requests behind-the-scenes. This all happens in the background, and you never notice. Your browser still shows that you are accessing www.xyz.com even though the information is coming from somewhere else.

Jesus Christ, Use a Password Manager Already

Tue, 14 Dec 2010 18:03:00 EST

Another day, another website security breach. Fortunately for me, I didn't have an account at Gawker, but even more fortunately, it wouldn't have mattered to me much if I did. I use a strong password for every website account I have, and every password is unique for each and every account. So not only do I have strong passwords, but if one is compromised the damage is minimized because that password is not used anywhere else. This is standard password "best practices", but millions of people don't adhere to it.

How to Get Started with Bitcoins

Sun, 12 Dec 2010 16:41:00 EST

Bitcoins are a decentralized, peer-to-peer virtual currency. There are other digital currencies that offer an alternative to government fiat currencies, but the popular ones like e-gold tend to suffer eventual demise from gaining just as much momentum with money launderers and other nefarious characters as they do regular users. And they are all privately controlled, meaning they are subject to the control of a single entity, just like a government currency.

Learning Flash: Tips and Tricks

Tue, 2 Nov 2010 16:06:00 EST

Even though I'm an experienced programmer fluent in several languages, and even though AS3 is syntactically identical to Java/C++, there have been several things that have thrown me for a loop (or that I just stupidly overlooked) as I've been teaching myself flash game development over the last couple of months. This guide is to remind me what I've learned and hopefully to help others avoid some of the pitfalls I've encountered. Some of these things may seem obvious, even to people just getting started with flash programming. No doubt all of them will seem obvious to experienced flash developers. But they were epiphanies to me and now I can't imagine coding in ActionScript3 without them.

Loading a Scrabble Dictionary into Flash

Wed, 27 Oct 2010 18:12:00 EST

You can't make very many word games without using a dictionary or wordlist. Even finding such a dictionary took a bit of searching, but eventually I found a Scrabble dictionary text file. In it are the 80,000 or so words from the OSPD4 (Official Scrabble Player's Dictionary, version 4), one word per line. If you need a more inclusive dictionary you can find a similar version of SOWPODS (the international version) if you hunt around for it, but this one worked for me because it's pretty exhaustive and still includes tons of words that most people don't know. Embedding it into a flash game was a little trickier, though.

Old Google Ad Format Codes

Tue, 26 Oct 2010 20:11:00 EST

Some time ago, Google changed their adsense system such that newly created ads are stored in their system and assigned an ad ID. The code they provide you to put on your site references that ad ID, and has none of the inline configuration settings of the old system. To make changes to your ad -- such as changing the color, formatting or size of the ad -- you have to login to your adsense account and make the changes there. Ostensibly, this is a benefit because you don't have to dive into your website code to change the way your ads look.

ASP Paypal Integration: How to Automate Virtual Product Sales

Sun, 20 Jun 2010 00:00:00 EST

I sell a number of digital products like ebooks and databases through a website of mine, but I haven't looked at the code in quite a while and recently it broke completely, forcing the issue. I spent the day revising and refactoring the code to fix the issues, and here's what I did and how and why I did it. If you have any virtual products to sell or want to give it a try, here's how I implement Paypal integration to sell these products in a completely automated way, so it requires no human involvement. The visitor clicks "Buy Now", PayPal handles the transaction and sends back to my website the transaction info, and my website validates it, generates a download link for what they purchased, and shows it to them in their browser after Paypal redirects them back to my site (and emails it to them as well).

Some Abandoned WebApp Ideas

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 00:00:00 EST

I don't know if it's good or bad, but my history as an entrepreneur includes a lot of what I thought were good ideas that never got off the ground. Some of these were projects that were released but never took off (whether from a lack of market or a lack of marketing), some were projects that never got finished, and some never really even got started. Almost all of them are web applications, though, as that is what I really enjoy and happen to be pretty good at. But my road to success consisted of a lot of throwing things against the wall until something stuck.

ASP TDD: VBScript Test-Driven Development

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 00:00:00 EST

One of the most popular and most useful aspects of the agile development methodology is Test-Driven Development (TDD), the idea that you write code that tests planned functionality before you write the code that implements that functionality. The iterative process here is to write a test for a new feature (that fails initially because the feature doesn't exist), then to implement it in the simplest way that makes the test pass, then to refine the test (rinse and repeat).

13 Useful Command-Line Utilities

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 00:00:00 EST

Here's some handy little tools I use on my server when creating batch files, scripts, scheduled tasks, etc to keep everything running smoothly. A couple of them aren't actually command-line but they're all very small in size (less than 100kb each) so nice to keep around.

The Google Cheat Sheet

Wed, 7 Apr 2010 00:00:00 EST

Try googling this:

-inurl:htm -inurl:html intitle:"index of" mp3 "john lennon"

Or if you're lazy click here to see the search results.

Gizmo + Google Voice = Free Telephone Service

Tue, 9 Mar 2010 00:00:00 EST

You can do this on your desktop or laptop, or if technically minded even on your PDA, blackberry or iphone using WiFi. The cost is zero if you can successfully get everything working, or a minimal cost if you take a shortcut or two. The result is that you get a free telephone number, free incoming calls, free outgoing calls anywhere in the US, free voicemail with voice recognition transcription, free SMS (text messaging), oh and did I mention this all was free? And it is all thanks to Google and one of the little guys that Google just bought.

Top 10 Best Blogger Template Hacks

Tue, 1 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

You can spend a lifetime customizing your blogger site, but how many template hacks do you really need? Here are the top 10 best-in-category blogger template customizations that will turbo-charge your blog, balancing eye-popping aesthetics with optimum usability. From hiding the blogger bar to expandable posts to showing recent comments, these simple hacks will make your blog look great without taking a lot of your time to implement. Best of all, these blogger hacks are all inline, meaning they don't refer to external scripts so they don't slow down your page load time and they don't break when someone else's site changes or goes down.

Advanced Google Searching

Sun, 14 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST

Google is a powerful search engine, to be sure, but most of us use it for only the simplest of queries. Why? Because the true power behind the Google engine lies in special commands that you may not know. These special commands (called advanced operators) can take you to places in Google (and thus places on the web) that you would never find otherwise. Here are the most powerful of the advanced operators:

33 Causes of the Coming Depression

Sat, 13 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST

Times are always changing, and the grass always seems to be greener in the past (the "good old days"), but the future may be gloomier than you think. The enormity of the factors producing the pending financial crisis may surprise you, and more warning signs are showing themselves every day. Here are 33 reasons why you should prepare yourself for what is to come: