jesscoburn.com

Tidbits and thoughts on webhosting, web applications and just general cool geek crap.

Archive for the ‘The Cool Stuff’ Category

Introducing William Henry Coburn


Here’s William Henry Coburn, 8lbs 2oz, 19.5 inches (I’ll leave out the silly joke this time). Unfortunately my attempt to blog post from my cell phone via email failed miserably. But here’s a couple pictures from the first 24 hours.

First Williams Nursery (because I spent a god awful amount of time painting that darn thing)

nursery

Williams Very First Baby Picture (being held up by his mommy’s OB Dr. Newman)

williamsfirst

Daddy Snips the cord (not nearly as easy as it looks on TV but 10X more gross as you can see from the blood squirts)

daddysnips

Here’s the grandparents and Auntie Louise getting their first look at him (they still have those smiles on).

grandparents

Strike A Pose …

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Finally, Daddy doing for the first time what daddy is going to do the most for the next few years… changing the nappy…and dodging the stream of pee (he almost got me)

firstdiaper

3D Sonograph of the baby


I was attending The Parallels Summit this week and while up there the wife sent me a MMS picture on my phone.  The doctor had a 3D sonograph made so I give you the first 3D picture of our baby due sometime in June of 2008:

babyimage

SQL Injection Reversal Query Script


The folks over at Early Impact (makers of ProductCart) have released a tool to help remove JavaScript code from a SQL database that may have been hacked as part of the SQL Injection attacks taking place today on the Internet.  Here’s the details from their newsletter and a link to the SQL query you can execute.  Please be warned, I haven’t tested this so make sure you have a backup before executing it (just in case):

If your database is hacked

If your store is hacked (JavaScript code added to fields such as product names and descriptions), follow these steps

  • Turn off the store
  • Clean up the database by either:
    • Restoring a back-up copy
    • Running a query symmetrical to the offending query (download the SQL query here). Load the query in MS SQL query analyzer and run it multiple times until it says that “0 rows were affected”. Ask your Web master to do this for you, or open a support ticket with Early Impact. Note that this method might not be 100% effective.
  • Make sure that you have installed the updated files above (and any other files that might be released related to this Security Alert).
  • Re-open the store

I recently blogged about my new productivity device (AKA my new toy), an AT&T Tilt.  I’ve been using a Motorola Q for years and missed the capabilities of a PDA phone (like the Tilt) versus a a smart phone (like the Q).  The Q had superior voice quality and a better overall phone experience but the Tilt has a vast number of features and functionality that make it much more than a cell phone.

Introducing TrackMe, GPS tracking software

One of these great features the Tilt has is built-in GPS receiver. When you bundle a GPS with a Windows powered device and add on top of that a 3G data network, the creative applications start to flow and one such application is called TrackMe.  TrackMe records your GPS data every few seconds and stores it in a local SQL2005 compact edition database (I should note it’s written on the .NET 3.5 Framework).  It then creates data files that are compatible with Google earth. You can take it a step further and embed GeoCodes (gps coordinates) into your photos taken with your camera and provide not only the path you took but show pictures along the way.  But wait, it gets cooler.

You can also get a special tracking script that uses PHP and MySQL and load it on your website and let TrackMe feed your information back to your server in real-time.

Seeing the results of TrackMe

This weekend I was fortunate enough to be invited to the Telefonica Second Annual Fishing Tournament which was held as part of their Leadership Conference.  The fishing tournament was made up of about 30 people spread across 5 charter boats all fishing for game fish.  I decided that I didn’t that this would be the perfect oppurtunity to use TrackMe (in case our 3 hour cruise turned into a much longer trip ala Gilligan’s Island).

What was interesting on this trip was that immediately as the boat took off everyone fired up their GPS on the smartphone of choice and started tracking the co-ordinates of where the captain was taking us to!  (it didn’t do much good though the only fish caught on this trip was the 1 little 8lb king-fish I got).

Anyway, you can see my TrackMe results here.  You’ll want to select “none” under trip and click show and it will show all my data points out of Key Biscayne. You can also see Map view and satellite view (which is the more interesting of the two)

Here’s a few cool screen shots:

Our boat was actually in the third slip at the marina there.

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Here’s the path we took coming out of marina

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Here’s a bird’s eye view of the entire path we took. (I stopped taking measurements when the first fish started biting)

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Finally, if you click on any of the point it will give information regarding speed, etc.

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Unfortunately, I didn’t take any photos on this trip but there’s always the next blog post for that :)

Oh one last post, Christopher Columbus might have been the first to discover the world wasn’t flat but now I too have taken a boat ride off the edge of the world (albeit the google earth world) :) :

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Google and MSN both have a streetview product on their maps now. They have these little cars with 360 degree panoramic cameras driving down various streets taking digital pictures and then you’re able to view these street level pictures online.

To see an example of this take a look here:

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That’s the main entrance to the NAP of the Americas where much of our hosting infrastructure is housed. (I have some aerial pictures of this same facility in another blog posting).  I know what you’re think, big deal now I can see the front of the building. Well if click down the street a bit you’ll see the painting crew in action:

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Okay, that’s mildly entertaining. But you say, “Well Jess, what does this have to do with Crime Stoppers?”.  You see, we’re catching people in action, in their normal every day activities..

Cat Burglar caught mid air on Google Maps

So over in San Francisco, Here’s a guy caught mid air in what appears to be a little Breaking and Entering action:

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And if you live at the above address in San Francisco you’ll probably want to zoom in and see what our cat burglar looks like:

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Drug Dealers caught on Google Maps

Ron Johnson actually sent me the above image as well as one where an obvious drug deal was caught on camera too. Unfortunately those images have been pulled since then. But here’s a couple blogs with images that show just why Google pulled those images:

So there’s our google street view maps in action showing dubious activities.  You’re also able to see pretty interesting things from the normal Google Maps sky view too.

Tomahawk Missiles Caught Mid Air

One of my favorite sites for this type of information is googlesightseeing.com. There’s everything from nuclear subs and purported cruise missiles to post Hurricane Katrina images of New Orleans.  I’m told that the government has started shutting down some locations or limiting the detail at which they can be viewed but there’s still many sites on the Internet devoted to sharing interesting images that people have spotted on Google and Live/MSN Maps. Here’s a few links:

So there we have it, thanks to the Web 2.0 evolution we’re able to see everything from drug deals and B&E to locating WMD’s (well maybe not WMD’s, sorry George). But you get the idea.

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