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My Recent Development Stack: OS X Tools

February 2nd, 2012

I made the switch to OS X about half a year ago now, and I must admit I’m going to find it rather hard to go back to using Windows or Linux on the desktop. The interface is way more user friendly, the OS is rock solid, and I find myself far more efficient than [...]

Why the MPAA and RIAA will soon be gone

January 22nd, 2012

I know this horse has been beaten to death as of late, but I just had to give my two cents. Louis CK recently sold one of his stand-up routines that he spent his own money recording and producing on his website. He sold each copy for $5, had zero copy protection, and was not [...]

Cobalt Calibur 3.0: Node.js, MongoDB, Redis, Backbone.js…

January 16th, 2012

Cobalt Calibur (1.x) first started as a way to learn Perl programming. I remember lugging around my 10 pound laptop with 133 Mhz and 160MB of RAM, Mandrake Linux 7.2 and Perl to some family reunion and hacking away alone in a corner (I would have been around 14 at the time, this was 2000). Making that [...]

The Joys of Working with Backbone.js from a Backend Developer

December 30th, 2011

A backend programmer’s take on the Backend.JS JavaScript MVC Framework.

Really simple SSH proxy (SOCKS5)

September 26th, 2011

SOCKS5 is a simple, eloquent method for getting yourself a proxified connection to the internet. All you need to get a proxy connection working is to run an SSH server somewhere, run a single command locally, and configure your software (or OS) to use this proxy.

Web Spidering

November 26th, 2009


Spidering, in its simplest form is the act of transferring data from one database to another. Spidering requires the use of Regular Expressions, the cURL library (if POST data or cookies are used), and the cron libraries (if we need to download information with a schedule).

Password Encryption, Hashing, Salting Explained

November 10th, 2009


Renowned Media has had several questions about password security, one way encryption, password hashes, salting hashes (not a food reference I swear!), the risks of having a database hacked, and the like. This non-technical article will go into detail about these concepts, and will contain a few examples but will not contain any code. Feel free to apply these concepts with any programming language you please.

Pagerank and higher search engine rankings explained

September 28th, 2009

Introduction People ask us all the time, how does Search Engine Optimization (SEO) work, what is Pagerank (or Alexa / Compete), and what can I do to get my website on the first page of a Google result? This blog post will attempt to explain as much of this process as we can. There is [...]

PageRank sculpting

September 20th, 2009

Here is a good article about Google PageRank and some general SEO techniques… The best way to increase your PR of a site (and boost your organic search results) is to have many people link to you. But, what happens when you link to too many people? Read on… PageRank sculpting

Running an Exploit Against a Server

April 16th, 2008

This paper was originally written by Thomas Hunter as an assignment for college. The objective was to hack into a supplied Linux server and gain root access. By typing the ip address of the server into a browser window, you are greeted with a default web server installation page. Reading some of the content reveals [...]

Data Hiding in a Word Document

February 25th, 2008

Originally written by Thomas Hunter as a homework assignment in college. The object of the assignment was to hide data inside of a word document. The Microsoft Word version that I used is 2007 as that is the version that I own. Several months I read an article about Microsoft’s attempt to turn its new [...]