The month of July was a killer one!
Posted on 6 August 2009 | Comments Off
Here’s a short list of the business items that kept me from blogging as much as I would have liked to last month.
- Aanval 5.2 development and testing
- Aanval general support
- Dedicated time for several small Tactical FLEX clients
- Picked up two more professional services clients (Flex & AIR)
- Development and testing on liveSnort (new name not announced quite yet)
- Development on another personal AIR project (not announcing it yet)
- A few external information security / vulnerability assessments
… and this doesn’t take into account anything relating to personal life / family! It was a rough month, but still 100% enjoyable.
August is looking much more routine… Aanval 5.2 is to be released here very shortly, only a single audit, and the new consulting work picked up so far this month combined with last months projects creates a nice rhythm.
~moses
Microsoft Silverlight 3.0 Released… *cough*
Posted on 9 July 2009 | Comments Off
This is not so much an announcement as it is a warning!
Nice! The Silverlight install page has the following quote:
Don’t Worry! We won’t install a bunch of additional stuff on your computer or try to sign you up for unwanted email.
… yeah, that’s the reason I haven’t installed it.
If you think of yourself as some sort of masochist, here’s the link to install:
http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/
~moses
Make $300 a day and get 20,000 followers!
Posted on 3 July 2009 | 1 response
Stop! Seriously please, enough. We’re smarter than you think.
If you hadn’t guessed, this isn’t a posting on how to actually make any money, but more my personal rantings on the topic.
Here we go…
If you were honestly working 4 hours a week and making money as an Internet marketing entrepreneur then why would you be diluting your market by giving your ‘secrets’ away?
The truth being that “make money” schemes and lazy work ethics are super hot right now, especially while the economy is as unstable as it is and it’s quite easy to convince a few hundred suckers to follow you down this road.
The reason SPAM continues to be a problem is because it works. Regardless of whether it ends up in our inbox or Twitter client you ultimately wish for certain destruction to fall upon these evil-doers… I do. 
I absolutely have no doubt that one or even possibly two people have actually made $300 a day on Twitter and have successfully migrated their lifestyle to the ominous 4-hour work week. Great, good for you… well, good for the both of you.
The cheesy videos, the followers whose bio includes “Internet marketer”, the direct messages about 4-hour work… you get the point. It’s all a bit silly and I am hoping this is just one giant phase that will disappear like Tupperware parties. Oh — they didn’t disappear. Crap.
Why is it working? Simple, someone is clicking on their stinking’ links!
How do we stop it / them? Stop clicking the pathetic make $$$ tweet links, their Google Analytics will begin to suffer and they’ll eventually go back to their day job and give up on Twitter dreams and this lazy lifestyle concept that seems to have taken over our generation.
Long blog short. If we all ignore them, they’ll go away. But it takes all of us to do it. Just curious clicking is enough to bump their tracking statistics enough to keep them salivating.
~moses
iPhone WordPress App
Posted on 2 July 2009 | Comments Off
This little free WordPress App for the iPhone is pretty handy.
Going to make blogging so much easier… Although it’s not like it’s all that difficult now anyway.
But it does provide all of the key functions including image taking and uploading right from the iPhone.
Very nice…
~moses
Eclipse w/ Flex Builder Plugin, Flash Builder 4, Coda, etc
Posted on 24 June 2009 | Comments Off
For me, an average day of development routinely includes as many as a half-a-dozen languages and a good number of development environments.
Several times within the last week or so I’ve been asked what I use for the majority of my development and if I have any secret tips on applications that aid in my efforts and productivity.
The simple answer… no.
I have a tendency to choose standards and common practice over popular, hyped applications and utilities.
This is just a few notes on some of the most used applications on my primary development machine. Oh — and it’s a Mac.
Flex & AIR
Flex 3 development is of course as you can imagine done in Flex Builder 3. For the past month or so I’ve been using Eclipse 3.4 along with Adobe’s Flex Builder plugin. I’ve bounced back and forth between the Flex Builder plugin and the stand-along Flex Builder app, but found that the latest release of Eclipse along with the plugin work and play nicely together and are relatively stable.
One note I might mention — the few times that I have installed Eclipse 3.4 along with the Flex Builder plugin I have had to customize my perspective to include the launch and debug buttons for Flex. This wasn’t an issue in previous versions and isn’t really a big issue at all, but for new users, this could be confusing.
Flex 4 development is done in the stand-alone Flash Builder 4 beta. I chose this route only as a simple and quick method of having both tools available without worrying about interference between the two. Not to imply that there is, I just had better things to do at the time than risk an issue. No other reason.
Java
Eclipse 3.4 is the Java IDE of choice. This shouldn’t be any surprise if you are a Java developer.
Nothing more to see here.
Cocoa / Objective-C 2.0
Well, unless you are a complete masochist, then you of course already know that this is done in Xcode. If you are not yet an Xcode user, then you can’t imagine what you are missing. It’s an excellent multi-language IDE and makes quick work of Cocoa applications. Although it does support a wide range of compiled and interpreted languages, it’s pretty much only used for Cocoa on my machines and most recently of course, iPhone app development.
PHP / PERL / Ruby & Python
All of my scripting development is done using Coda by Panic. It’s a great light-weight, multi-language development environment that uses the latest and greatest features of OS X to make endless hours of scripting more enjoyable.
It is missing a feature or two that I wouldn’t mind having (such as local function / method code hinting), but ultimately it’s not a deal breaker. I’ve easily logged a few million lines of code through Coda.
MySQL
I’m more of a purist here and have a tendency to do all of my MySQL jockeying through the command line. However, recently I’ve began using Sequel Pro for OS X and although it is lacking in a few areas, it does make it nice and convenient to quickly create and modify table column types as well as backup databases and tables to the local disk.
Backup
I do get asked quite a bit about backup policies, and of course it is mostly by clients. For backup on all of my development machines I use externally connected 1 terabyte drives and use Time Machine. Time Machine with OS X takes hourly snapshots of changes and automates the management of the data so I can focus on more important things. — I like that.
~moses
Snort, Interfaces, Budgets
Posted on 23 June 2009 | Comments Off
Snort
Snort is the worlds most popular signature based network intrusion detection and prevention engine available today.
Snort is an open source project managed by Sourcefire, Inc.
Details and the official Snort website are available at: http://www.snort.org/
Those who are not yet fully familiar with Snort may not know that in order to really take advantage of the engine, an interface or console is necessary for the viewing, reporting and / or managing of sensors and intrusion data.
Interfaces are a plenty and range from web-based solutions which are free, to dedicated desktop applications which can quite easily exceed $50,000 or more.
The popularity of Snort among small businesses has grown quite significantly over the past few years, however because of limited budgets and other fiscal restraints these markets are rather largely ignored by a good portion of Snort related product vendors.
Aanval
Aanval is a comprehensive intrusion detection and correlation console designed specifically for Snort and Syslog. Aanval 5 is the latest iteration of Aanval built upon 5 years of strong success along with a new and advanced graphical user interface.
When creating Aanval (http://www.aanval.com/) more than 5 years ago, we envisioned a console that allowed for storage and searching of huge data sets, advanced reporting and real time alerting — all designed specifically for the small to medium sized business budget.
Aanval 5 is the most powerful and feature rich version of Aanval to date and exceeds all of our original visions.
Cost
Today’s global fiscal situation makes cost effective Snort solutions even more relevant than ever before. Security budgets are tightening, alternative solutions are being sought after and all the while some of these organizations refuse to offer concessions or cost reductions to aid these small and medium sized organizations in finding solutions to protect their environments.
These freely available tools (those relating to Snort) in my biased opinion don’t offer the features, functionality or professional resources to be used effectively in a business environment. As inviting as this statement is for an argument, it’s the reason I believe organizations of all sizes continue to make Aanval a permanent part of their network security architecture.
Each week I find myself listening to foreign and domestic businesses frustrated with over-priced competing solutions that in their words are almost ridiculously out of touch with budget reality.
One particular challenge that we’ve had over the years is helping our potential customers understand that a price tag is just that, a price tag. Perceived value in the market place is critical, but puffed-up costs shouldn’t be aimed like a loaded cannon at investigating organizations as the “incentive” to purchase.
Details
Aanval’s licensing costs are extremely competitive, easy to understand and bring some balance back to the industry.
License purchase and pricing: https://www.aanval.com/purchase/
~moses
Twitter Winner!
Posted on 23 June 2009 | Comments Off
Last week, Ed Sullivan of Adobe picked a few names from his Twitter followers to receive a little prize… and as it turns out I am not a loser!
My particular prize showed up this morning via FedEx.
The Pocket Guide – “Getting Started with Flex 3″ by Jack D Herrington & Emily Kim
Pocket guide may be a little bit of a stretch… It doesn’t fit in any of mine, but still makes a great prize.
However, if you are tired of being a loser, follow Edward Sullivan on Twitter @esulliva
Thanks Ed.
~moses
iPhone 3G [S] in…
Posted on 22 June 2009 | Comments Off
… BlackBerry 8703e out.
Yup. At 8:43PM on the 19th, we walked into the Lynnwood, WA Apple Store at the Alderwood Mall and made the switch to ATT from Sprint.
This being the first iPhone i’ve owned, I am extremely impressed. The 3GS seems to have everything that it needs, and I am not sure I would have been happy with anything less.
Also grabbed a Speck PixelSkin in black (pictured on right) along with the Crystal Film Set protective screen cover.
Personally, I think it’s silly to buy a device and baby it… If it’s that fragile. it’s worthless.
With that being said, the iPhone is a little delicate (at least more than a BlackBerry), so it needed the accessories.
Now it’s armored and ready for my regular level of device abuse.
~moses
Twitpocalypse! Run for your lives…
Posted on 13 June 2009 | Comments Off
Just before midnight last night @ 23:52 GMT (06-12-09), the total number of tweets on Twitter exceeded the value of a 32-bit signed integer.
Of course, as expected Twitter was not affected — after all, this is their game and they were well prepared. However, considering that the majority of Twitter users are using 3rd party tools to interact with Twitter, it is no surprise that problems have and will arise.
I awoke this morning and found zero new tweets to read as well as noticed the search functionality of my main desktop twitter client (Tweetie) was dead. This must be a complete coincidence and nothing more right?
Now I was speculating, that it just must be a beautiful Saturday morning throughout our little planet and the twittersphere was out enjoying the day away from the more than 2,147,483,647 (maximum value for a 32-bit signed integer) total tweets which are now part of history.
Tweetie search… confirmed dead.
Loren Brichter from atebits (@atebits / http://www.atebits.com), the creator of Tweetie confirmed this morning that Tweetie is in-fact suffering from twitpocalypse related injuries.
atebits: “Busted searches in Tweetie are Twitpocalypse-related. Hoping to find some Internet tonight so I can get an update out. Mea culpa.”
Tweetie’s broken search is a minor casualty, but I do speculate that this mornings eerie tweet silence is due to a few more Twitter clients dropping like flies in the face of integer overflows.
Visit http://www.twitpocalypse.com/ for the current total of Twitter tweets. As of this post the total was running through 2,153,991,662 tweets and growing at an average of 131 tweets per second. — surely it should be higher than 131 tweets per second…
This new age Twitter crowd is calling this the Y2K of their time and the buzz surrounding the newly coined term ‘twitpocalypse’ is getting rather fervent. Well, if by Y2K of their kind, they mean an over-hyped and exaggerated nothing… then yes, I will agree and folks this is like Y2K all over again!
UPDATE: Twitterific for the iPhone and iPod Touch are confirmed to be failing due to the signed integer trouble as well. The desktop version of the application is unaffected (so it seems).
UPDATE: Nambu is reporting they have replies showing up next to every tweet. They admit they did not make a wise integer selection and will have it resolved as quickly as possible.
UPDATE: Tweetie for the desktop has been updated (1.2.2) and Tweetie for the iPhone has been updated and sent for App Store approval; Thanks @atebits!
For me, I think I will go enjoy this rare but beautiful Saturday with my family.
Oh, and I think I should probably drop a link and an invitation to follow me on Twitter: @loyalmoses
~moses
Facebook’s digital real estate frenzy
Posted on 12 June 2009 | Comments Off
If you are a Facebook’r (which I am not), then you have no doubt heard of, or have already staked a claim on a vanity URL.
However, for those who may have just joined Facebook for a vanity URL after hearing of the announcement, you are completely out of luck! … well, for the next two weeks anyway.
Eligibility is limited to anyone who joined Facebook before usernames were publicly announced at 3 p.m. (EDT) on June 9, 2009. These users will have the chance to claim usernames at 12:01 a.m. (EDT) on Saturday, June 13, 2009.
This limitation is temporary. All users who joined Facebook after the cut-off will be eligible to claim usernames on Sunday, June 28, 2009.
Direct link to the Facebook help topic
Apparently, the reasoning is to prevent people from creating new accounts just to take advantage of reserving a username.
Hmmm… I would have guessed that a marketing and media campaign to release a hugely popular new feature was designed specifically to gather more users and gain additional market share. But, as I said above I don’t use Facebook and this might have contributed to me being completely wrong here.
Of course, I’m not completely dense. I understand their intentions in wanting to provide current users with a generous amount of time in which to take advantage of the vanity URL’s before all of those dirty rotten username squatters show up.
Regardless, it sounds a bit silly to me.
~moses
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