Drupal 6 Module: Status Messages Alter

In January 2010 I released Status Messages Alter, my first Drupal module released to the community. I’ve created many modules over the years, I finally had the time to give something back to my fellow Drupal enthusiasts. I’m very excited about this.

What does this module do?

The module provides developers with a new hook called hook_message_alter. This hook comes handy when you have annoying messages being displayed and you want to get rid of them, or if you want to have your own custom code fire off when specific messages occur. This is an api module and does not offer any kind of theming. You’re allowed to override that yourself. I’ll explain that later.

How do I install the module?

Simply place the module in your modules directory and enable the module. If you’re upgrading from a previous version, you may see a warning message. This warning message is there to notify you that you may have to check your other enabled modules that implement hook_message_alter for compatibility. This isn’t really going to be an issue because only a few people downloaded that first release :)


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How to send files easily with Droopy!

There comes a time when you’re working with someone, or talking to a friend or family member on the phone, and something comes up and they want to send you a file. Now this isn’t just any old file, it’s a large file. A file that will be annoying to send via the inbox, and a file that may crash your instant messenger window.

Droopy to your rescue! Droopy is a mini Web server whose sole purpose is to let other people send files to your computer. People spend a lot of money on these types of things. Why? There’s a free one out there for you, and its name is Droopy :)

Of course, the downside is you’re going to need to know a little bit about computers to install it. Be happy, I’ll help you out for a small investment on your part. We can work out the details, talk to me: 801-787-3237, or use my contact form.

You may find and download Droopy by using the following button:


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The History of Hacking

History of Hacking

I came across a pretty cool image of the history of hacking from a site I like to read. I thought I’d share the image with you. It’s pretty neat. Hope you enjoy it.

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A handful of Social Monitoring Tools

Have you ever wanted to monitor your social media buzz? Maybe you have or maybe you haven’t, regardless, you’ve wanted to keep track of something, a search term, a product, etc. A great of way of doing that would be to use one of the following 5 social monitoring tools:

  • socialmention offers Real-time social media search and analysis
  • BlogPulse is a great tool to search blogs and current trends
  • Omgili is a forum search engine that lets you find communities, message boards, discussion threads about any topic
  • Google Alerts is a real-time/daily email alert tool that can be configured to track any search phrase using Google indexing
  • Twitter is very handy for tracking real-time buzz

There are more tools available if you search hard and long enough. If you’d like to have any others listerd here, just give me a shout! Thanks.


C# 4.0 & Optional Parameters

When writing a method in .NET (C# or VB), you typically have to overload that method if you want to provide default or optional parameters. Now, thanks to C# 4.0 and VB 10, you can use optional parameters.

For example, prior to C# 4.0, you had to do the following:

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// Assume we're using a class and the following stuff is from our class

// no parameters
public void myMethod()
{
    myMethod("optional");
}

// one parameter
public void myMethod(string str)
{
    // STUB
}

As you can see from the preceding code, you need to type more than one function. To each their own. Some people like doing this, some people don’t. I like how it works in PHP:

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function myFunc($optional="hello world!") {
// STUB
}


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How I’d Hack Your Weak Passwords
How I'd hack Your Weak Passwords

A little article from the people at Lifehacker explaining how easy it is to hack simple passwords. Hopefully this scares you into creating more secure passwords.

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Best Jobs in America 2010

I came across an article about the best jobs in America. Systems Engineer won it; keep in mind that Systems Engineers are not System Administrators.

The following image shows the list. Be sure to click on the image for the full image.


Smashing Magazine & Website Security

I wish I was Digg.com because I found a great article from SmashingMagazine.com about Website Security. It’s very long and comprehensive – which I like. This article touches on a lot of things. It lists the ways your website might be vulnerable and it gives you solutions. Furthermore, it also gives you some links to help you check if you’re site is vulnerable. This article is definitely worth checking out.

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