Ninite

I found a real treat the other day.

I find myself installing Windows on machines repeatedly during a week, sometimes 10 times or more!

The hassle comes with installing the latest freeware/open source basic software to get the machine ready for consumer use.  I’m talking about Anti-Virus/Security, Browsers, Media Players etc…

Ninite makes this task easy!

It allows you to pick and choose from a great list of free/open source apps and provides an unattended downloader/installer which you can leave running.

It installs apps while saying “no” to browser toolbars and other junk.

I have made use of the software on Windows XP, Vista & 7 and it work’s flawlessly!

Find it here ninite.com

Long time no see

Unfortunately the blog hasn’t seen any action in a few months due to a very busy summer!
I am pleased to announce the launch of the new “Portfolio” section on New Forest Computing.
Take a look!

Slax Linux Live

Out of all the Linux distributions I’ve experimented with, I never found the perfect portable live OS that suited my needs.

However this all changed when I discovered Slax Linux.

From just navigating their beautifully simple website, I could tell straight away that this was just what I was looking for.

The USB and CD ISO version are compact @ 190Mb.

I was able to boot into the OS quickly and with no trouble at all. The best part is the fantastic hardware support.

I am constantly finding myself using computers of vastly different specifications and age, but Slax hasn’t failed me yet!

Only today, I was working on a Dell Inspiron Laptop desperatly in need of a format & reinstall of XP.

But one problem was backing up user data onto another machine. A bug had caused the OS to lose it’s IP configuration and the built in ethernet, although visible in device manager, was not present in the operating system.
After trying in vain to resolve the issue following Microsoft’s KB article, I thought why keep wasting time when I can just boot into Slax!

I didn’t have a copy on me, but It quickyl downloaded on the customer’s 10Mb cable connection. I had it burnt in no time!

Booted into it and all hardware was present and correct. I found the hard drive mounted in the usual way inside the /mnt/hda2 directory. After connecting to the MacBook target machine using SMB, I had the files copied in no time at all.

Slax saves the day again!

I strongly recommend it as a great portable Live OS. It can be downloaded here

HomePlug

HomePlug (The term for the group responsible for ‘communication over powerline technology’) is something I’ve known about for a couple of years, but the cost has always been prohibitively high to implement in consumers homes.

Things have changed now and a set of 2 Ethernet-over-Powerline adapters can be picked up for about £40.00

After setting it up in my own home, I can’t praise the technology enough!

I’m not a big fan of wifi, and try to use wired solutions if at all possible and HomePlug devices avoid the need for messy wiring and make use of the existing electrical infrastructure in a building

HomePlug Diagram

Big names like Netgear, Devolo and Commtrend have manufactured reliable kits for use in any situation.

I’ve found them to be fantastic for connecting an outside office to an internet connection within the main house.

It also is a great tool in buildings where the walls are made of such dense materials that wifi just doesn’t work through different floors and rooms.

It is a very modular solution, and adapters can simply be added to the setup in any room that requires a network connection.

I don’t think HomePlug can ever be a replacement for standard Cat5 networking methods, but it is great, robust solution for house with no network infrastructure and poor wifi reception.

One disadvantage (a rare one albeit) is that it doesn’t always work in houses with 3 phase power supplies like ours.

The third floor coudn’t be linked because it runs on a separate supply.  But for most houses. it works great, plus it’s secure!  (Unless your neighbour is stealing your power supply, in which case - you have bigger problems )

Form Spammer

It’s amazing how quickly a site can get targeted by spambots

Lita Kaye Antiques has been online less then 3 weeks when today I woke up to 200 emails saying someone has added entries to the “feedback” section of the site.

The feedback setup is simply a HTML form and PHP processor that saves the data in a MySQL database and returns the rows on the “View Feedback” screen.

In my rush to get the site online, I neglected to put in any SQL injection protection or Captcha protection.

The following two easy solutions solved the problem immediately

To prevent SQL injection and generally clean up form input, the following code from Yvoschaap.com works nicely


function cleanArray($array){
if(is_array($array)){
foreach($array as $key=>$value){
$value = eregi_replace("script","scrip t",$value); //no easy javascript injection
$value = eregi_replace("union","uni on",$value); //no easy common mysql temper
$value = htmlentities($value, ENT_QUOTES); //encodes the string nicely
$value = addslashes($value); //mysql_real_escape_string() //htmlentities
if($key == "UserID" || $key == "PageID"){ //List variables that MUST be integers. Look at your mysql scheme and find every int(*) field.
$value = filter_var($value, FILTER_SANITIZE_NUMBER_INT); //Forces an integer
}elseif($key == "CountryCode" || $key == "StateCode"){
$value = substr(trim($value),0,2); //Forces a max two character string
}elseif($key == "arrivalDate" || $key == "departureDate"){
$value = substr(trim($value),0,10); //Forces a max 10 character string. Could be also be tested by regular expression for a date value.
}else{
$value = substr($value,0,100);
$value = trim(filter_var($value, FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING, FILTER_FLAG_STRIP_LOW)); //All weird chars will be stripped. I usually also limit the characters to (alpha)nummeric, spaces, and punctuation.
}
$array[$key] = $value;
}else{
return false;
}
return $array;
}
cleanArray($_GET);
cleanArray($_POST);

To prevent a bot from repeatedly submitting the form I employed the fantastically simple Securimage PHP Captcha from phpcaptcha.org

All you need to do is insert a couple of lines of code to render the Captcha image within your form:

<img id="captcha" src="/securimage/securimage_show.php" alt="CAPTCHA Image" />

And a text box for user input

<input type="text" name="captcha_code" size="10" maxlength="6" />

Then the following code inserted carefully within your PHP form processor makes the decision to accept or reject the user entry

if ($securimage->check($_POST['captcha_code']) == false) {
// the code was incorrect
// handle the error accordingly with your other error checking
// or you can do something really basic like this
die(’The code you entered was incorrect. Go back and try again.’);
}

More info on Securimage can be found in their quickstart guide Quickstart

Easy!
Fixed