Jay Hollingum - Works in IT

If you're a Google Website Optimiser user then you've probably already received and read the email below. If you've not, but do use Google Website Optimiser, then you may need to update your code to prevent an XSS attack. There's no mention of the fix or issue on  http://websiteoptimizer.blogspot.com/ , but in the interests of getting people up to speed as quickly as possible here is a copy of the email containing the fix needed, with thanks to Trevor Claiborne from Google. This applies to any scripts created before December 3rd, 2010. Dear Website Optimizer user, We are writing to inform you of a potential security issue with Website Optimizer. By exploiting a vulnerability in the Website Optimizer Control Script, an attacker might be able to execute malicious code on your site using a Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attack. This attack can only take place if a website or browser has already been compromised by a separate attack. While the immediate probability of...

Finally I've updated my own little piece of internet real estate. It's only taken 7 years to get round to it. As fun a project as it was, developing my own ActionScript 1.0 3D engine all those years ago, the old site ( www.uk79.com ) is a little dated now to say the least, with an entrance page, recommendations for processors and screen resolution, total neglect for accessibility and search engines, so on and so forth. It was all so cutting edge in the early 21st century, at a time when Flash and animation was going to rule the www, but it was definitely time to revamp and update. jayhollingum.com still needs a bit of work and a few tweaks to it, but it's going to be a hell of a lot easier to maintain and develop further.

A bit of old school SQL Server 2000 stuff that I had to delve in to, to resuscitate a dying database using sp_who2. Running the command sp_who2 gives details of the current sessions, users and processes running in an instance of SQL Server. It's an undocumented version of the sp_who command ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms174313.aspx ) but sp_who2 gives a bit more info as to what certain processes are doing. From this, you can get a feel for what sessions and processes are hanging the database, or are being blocked, or just generally causing problems in the current running sessions of the instance of SQL Server. Once the SPID (Server Process ID) is known that is causing issues, this can be used to get the sql_handle from sysprocesses. The sql_handle is a binary key that references queries in the procedure cache. After getting the sql_handle, the function fn_get_sql can be used to reveal the SQL statement that seems to be causing issues. DECLARE @Handle varbinary...

My better half forwarded on a link to me today, and now I have seen something that has made me question my future career on the web. I just don't think I can compete at this level and will have to retire to a life of solitude on a remote island devoid of all technology. http://superior-web-solutions.com/ Just one example from their portfolio:  http://industrialpainter.com/ Now I'm not saying I'm the best web developer/designer in the world but I'm glad to see companies are still out there keeping the web of the early 90s alive and kicking. It's important we hold on to these important technological cultural milestones, unless we've gone full circle and are now entering a whole new retro-flash movement? Think this is going viral by the stats on the bottom of the page (when it works properly): 3 views yesterday. Over 9800 today and still counting. In case anyone is interested, they do appear to be recruiting  http://superior-web-solutions.com/Broadba...

Adding HTML 5 to the choice of target schemas in Visual Web Developer 2010 Express (VWD 2010 Express) is fairly straightforward, thanks to a download from Mikhail Arkhipov which can be found on the Visual Web Developer Team Blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/webdevtools/archive/2009/11/18/html-5-intellisense-and-validation-schema-for-visual-studio-2008-and-visual-web-developer.aspx . Download the html5.zip at the end of the above post. Unzip the file. Copy the html_5.xsd file to "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\Packages\schemas\html". This is the default installation set up location. If VWD 2010 Express has been installed in another location, the file needs to be placed in the "Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\Packages\schemas\html" folder. This is where there is a slight variation in the instructions detailed in Mikhail Arkhipov 's post. To get VWD 2010 Express to recognise HTML 5 as an option for target validation, a change needs ...

The "semantic web" as a theory has been around for ages and I remember working with people, a decade ago, who were investigating how to build a semantic web. The semantic web, a term coined by Sir Tim Berners-lee, is a vision that would allow automated agents and software to access the Web intelligently, via machine-readable metadata embedded within content. There are a number of standards, tools, methodologies and technologies around that have been created to aid in the development of a semantic web, yet it is still unrealised and alludes the world. There are a number of reasons for this including the physical size of the web, the vastness of knowledge and how to categorise it all into suitable classes, and the completeness, consistency and standardisation of information, to name just a few issues to deal with. I imagine some even question whether it is truly possible due to the sheer scale and requirements involved. Probably the biggest impact of working towards a s...

So the time has come to move to a more advanced blog engine for my blog. blogger.com , Google's blogging service, has served me well. It's incredibly easy to use and to get started with, along with having some great features such as inbuilt stats; however now I need a few more advanced features and greater control over the blog. There's a vast array of blog engines out there, some free, some paid for, some hosted, some self-hosted, and picking which one is best or the right choice could be a little bit tricky. This article from Mashable lists most of the main options and bigger players -  http://mashable.com/2007/08/06/free-blog-hosts/ . There are a few parameters that I've kind of decided on Ease of installation/compatibility and support with web hosts Simple to use. I don't want to spend ages clicking around just to add a post or format it. Feature rich and well supported. Most blog engines should have a fairly standard set of features now such RSS/ATOM fe...