An honest job description

by jk 10. March 2009 07:22

I found the text below in a Monster.com job posting...I like the honesty in stating "Screen Scraping" is a required skill.  I haven't seen any certification tests or books on it.  Maybe there is an untapped training/authoring niche to fill in Screen Scraping™?

Minimum of 2 years experience in Microsoft .​NET; Microsoft SQL Server 2000/​2005.​ Preferred experience includes 5 years C# experience, 5 years SQL Server 2000/​2005; exposure to Screen Scraping, SQL2008.​

Please don't screen scrape my feed; subscribe to the RSS/ATOM feed instead! :)

jk

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Random text feature of Word 2007

by jk 2. March 2009 15:27

Check out this new feature of Word 2007 - you can now add random placeholder text!  I can already smell the productivity gains :) - Thanks for the tips Logan!

cheers

jk

6. Add random placeholder text.

Sometimes you need to add random text to a document as part of a demonstration or to get a feel for a new layout. The designer's standby is lorem ipsum, a block of Latin derived from Cicero's De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum (On the Ends of Good and Evil).

The lorem ipsum text has no meaning for modern readers, which makes it perfect for not being distracted by what the text says, so you can instead focus on what it looks like.

Place your cursor where you want the random text to start and type:

=lorem(x,y)

where x is the number of paragraphs you want to insert and y is the number of sentences each paragraph should contain. When you hit Enter, Word will insert the desired chunk of text. For example, =lorem(1,4) generates this:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Maecenas porttitor congue massa. Fusce posuere, magna sed pulvinar ultricies, purus lectus malesuada libero, sit amet commodo magna eros quis urna. Nunc viverra imperdiet enim.

Prefer your dummy text in English? Word 2007 will also insert English text, drawn from a Word 2007 tutorial, by replacing lorem with rand, like this:

=rand(1,4)

(Interestingly, in earlier versions of Word, the =rand function inserts repetitions of the classic typesetter's dummy sentence, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." The tutorial text that Word 2007 uses is longer and more varied.)

   From:  http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=Software&articleId=9128449&taxonomyId=18&pageNumber=3

 

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Faking digital signatures

by jk 2. January 2009 11:29

A coworker (thanks James) found this article about how to fake a digital cert on a web site.  The quote below is from a related article: Researchers Use PlayStation Cluster to Forge a Web Skeleton Key 

A powerful digital certificate that can be used to forge the identity of any website on the internet is in the hands of in international band of security researchers, thanks to a sophisticated attack on the ailing MD5 hash algorithm, a slip-up by Verisign, and about 200 PlayStation 3s.

"We can impersonate Amazon.com and you won't notice," says David Molnar, a computer science PhD candidate at UC Berkeley. "The padlock will be there and everything will look like it's a perfectly ordinary certificate."

stay safe out there :)

jk

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Turk the bastey - or - how not to prepare a Thanksgiving turkey

by jk 22. November 2008 11:02

Here is my personal favorite Thanksgiving joke, re-posted here for convienence... :)

enjoy and happy Thanksgiving!

jk


How To Cook a Turkey

  1. Go buy a turkey
  2. Take a drink of whiskey, scotch, or JD
  3. Put turkey in the oven
  4. Take another 2 drinks of whiskey
  5. Set the degree at 375 ovens
  6. Take 3 more whiskeys of drink
  7. Turn oven the on
  8. Take 4 whisks of drinky
  9. Turk the bastey
  10. Whiskey another bottle of get
  11. Stick a turkey in the thermometer
  12. Glass yourself a pour of whiskey
  13. Bake the whiskey for 4 hours
  14. Take the oven out of the turkey
  15. Take the oven out of the turkey
  16. Floor the turkey up off the pick
  17. Turk the carvey
  18. Get yourself another scottle of botch

 

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Friday fun time - What American accent do you have?

by jk 21. November 2008 12:29

Time for some friday fun --  What American accent do you have?


What American accent do you have?
Your Result: North Central

"North Central" is what professional linguists call the Minnesota accent. If you saw "Fargo" you probably didn't think the characters sounded very out of the ordinary. Outsiders probably mistake you for a Canadian a lot.

The Midland
The West
Boston
The Inland North
Philadelphia
The South
The Northeast
What American accent do you have?
Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

 


The funny thing is, I _hated_ the movie Fargo, not for the accents, but just for it being such a stupid story (I never did get that 98 minutes of my life back...grrr) :)

enjoy the quiz and happy friday!
jk

 

 

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jk on Tour!

by jk 18. November 2008 21:38

only if it is on the XBOX 360 :)

I picked up Guitar Hero World Tour over the weekend and finally played it tonight (see this post for more detail).  So far so good; the game play is consistent with previous versions of GH and similar to Rock Band.  The singing is fun, they give you points for 'vamping' and I LOVE the new wirless guitar; the strumming is very solid and 'feels' good.

I've only played a few songs on guitar (level = hard) and sang 2 songs (level = hard).  'Beat It' had some suprisingly fun riffs to play and 'About a Girl' was fun to play guitar and sing on.  I also crooned out 'Band on the Run'.  Hopefully my XBOX will stay on the up-and-up :)

cheers

jk

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XBOX 360 Freezing issues - notes

by jk 18. November 2008 21:01

The last couple days my 360 has been freezing up on me (checked screen and total lockup).  I'm writing this just in case someone else runs into similar issues...

It is amazing how many articles about freezing are available online via your preferred search engine.  I've had this system almost 2 years now with very few problems to-date.

some theories -

1. Overheating system - i purchased a cooling system (the 3 fan variety), while that didn't help me directly i'm sure it is part of the issue and i plan on keeping it.  My system and power supply were moved into a more enclosed tv stand a few months ago; that + it being cold in MN and the furnace running might also have an effect.

2. About the same time I moved TV stands, i changed from the standard R W Y cable to the R G B cable.  I read someplace online that increasing from 720 to 1080 (or whatever the common dpis are) makes the system work harder and can contribute to overheating as well...so tonight i moved back to the standard component R W Y cable.  we'll see how that goes.

3. The Microsoft support link below said to perform 'maintenance' by following some arcane settings...i did that and it _may_ have helped?

4.  I had a couple of stalled downloads of demo games.  i deleted all of those from the hard drive as well..

i'm considering moving the whole thing to the basement which should help it stay cool...i just don't want to move my TV down there too :)

some articles i found:
- http://support.microsoft.com/kb/907586
- http://pardontheinteraction.wordpress.com/2007/03/21/xbox-360-freezing-problem-how-do-we-fix-this/

I'll write more once i give this some time and find out more... :)

cheers

jk

 

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Favorites from smashingmagazine

by jk 17. November 2008 11:29

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Rejected versions of Guitar Hero

by jk 15. November 2008 10:38

This one came across on Twitter yesterday and I had to pass it along...my personal favorite here is the one for 'The Polyphonic Spree'

http://listoftheday.blogspot.com/2008/11/6-rejected-versions-of-guitar-hero.html

Rock on!

jk

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Flying cars!

by jk 13. November 2008 16:40

We've been promised flying cars for a long time...the reality is getting near :)

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/11/darpas-flying-c.html

jk

 

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