Wilf

Turning coarse dirt into luscious green grass in Minecraft

Thursday 4th January 2024

Blog

I love playing Minecraft. It's my switch-off after a busy day.I don't tend to play it as it 'should' be played (i.e. fighting my way to the end and defeating the Ender Dragon) but I do always play in Survival Mode. Where's the fun without a challenge, hey? So, my main aim when playing Minecraft is to create a village. Sometimes villages become towns and on the odd rare occasion they become quite a bit bigger after weeks of modifications. I recently started a new world and walked, swam and rowed around 40,...[more]

Directory traversal

Wednesday 2nd August 2023 (updated: Monday 1st January 2024)

PHP

Research

Development

Cyber Security

Sometimes refered to as file path traversal. I have become fascinated with the techniques attackers may use to discover web server directories and files. Specifically, of course, those directories and files that are not intended to be obvious. A simple look at robots.txt in the root directory may unearth some resources that aren't meant to be viewed. By virtue of the fact they are listed in the .txt file the website owners don't want search engines indexing them. This is all above board and I'...[more]

http referer not capturing the query string from search engines

Sunday 23rd July 2023 (updated: Monday 1st January 2024)

PHP

Research

I recently created a small project to capture the URL of sites that have referred to my own website. Interestingly it seems that search engines have suppressed the query string part of the URL. e.g. for the URL https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=wilfs+corner I would expect to be able to capture this in its entirety using PHP's $_SERVER["http_referer"] What is actually sent from the search engines is just the root domain. e.g. https://www.google.com/ Frustrating but then ...[more]

Reverse IP lookup

Sunday 23rd July 2023 (updated: Monday 1st January 2024)

PHP

Research

Development

As an extension to my 'referer' project I also capture the IP address of the client as they arrive at my site using $_SERVER["REMOTE_ADDR"] I thought it would be an interesting exercise to see if I could do a reverse lookup on the IP address to identify any A (address) records held in each case. I found a useful and free service at ipwho.is. Using PHP's cURL is was able to provide any IP address and return some cool data. $id = $_POST["id"]; $ip = $_POST["ipaddress"]; $ch = curl_init('h...[more]

JavaScript Promises

Monday 24th July 2023 (updated: Monday 1st January 2024)

JavaScript

Research

Development

The whole concept of Promises in JavaScript I have always found useful. The action is handled asynchronously and the result is either a resolution 'resolve' or a rejection 'reject'. Where it started to mangle with my brain cells is with the async/await functionality introduced in later versions of ECMAScript. A simple JavaScript Promise can be defined as below: const myPromise = new Promise((resolve, reject) => { // Simulate an asynchronous operation (e.g., fetching data from a server) s...[more]

Vintage Weight Watchers Update Log

Wednesday 13th December 2023 (updated: Thursday 14th December 2023)

Development

Vintage Points Calculator

December 12th 2023 > Added a screen to estimate your daily points allowance > Fixed points values to use decimals. i.e. you can now specify 4.5 as a value. > Added "I know the value" to allow for manual input of points values.

My illustrated children's books

Tuesday 12th December 2023

Blog

A few years back (not that many years) I fulfilled I lifelong goal to write, illustrate and publish a children's picture book. That first book was called A Frog Named Bob and told the story of a young frog who didn't know what sound he should make. So, to find out exactly what sound a frog should make he hopped around his animal friends to see just what sound they made.  Of course, a neigh, a moo, an oink or a bleet weren't going to cut it so Bob pretty much gave up. Until that is, a girl frog sat be...[more]

Filling my skills gap

Monday 11th December 2023 (updated: Tuesday 12th December 2023)

JavaScript

PHP

Development

A list of things I really need to get a handle on. Some I'm used commercially and some I haven't. * React (probably my priority as it focuses on the V bit of MVC)* Vue (I like the idea of this one's simplicity)* Angular (probably a bit more involved as it is a full client-side MVC endeavour)* Laravel (the go-to framework for PHP MVC support)* Python (probably the lowest priority; more intrigue) I'm very much a vanilla guy. The HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript that I write is done without libraries (excluding, j...[more]

St. Wystan's church, Repton Derbyshire

Monday 28th August 2023 (updated: Wednesday 30th August 2023)

History

Blog

Not much to do on a bank holiday Monday so I took myself off to Repton to (finally) go and see the 7th century church of St. Wystan. I'd always been fascinated by the fact that the Vikings had raided and laid waste to much of the place, but ultimately there's so much more to the church and the settlement of Repton in general.  Repton is situated in the heart of the ancient kingdom of Mercia. As many notices around the town will tell you it was, in fact, the kingdom's capital. But that all changed fol...[more]

Invaders 2095 - JavaScript game in development

Sunday 23rd July 2023 (updated: Thursday 24th August 2023)

JavaScript

Development

Dev log - Development started December 2022 Oops. Appears I have a problem with the high score table. Investigating.  May 2023 - modifications Added touch control - can now be played using a mobile phone / tablet etc. Removed the high score table for touch control - too much faff for selecting the characters when entering your initials Touch control uses localStorage for saving the high score Lightened the playership's colour to avoid clash with environment - better for mobile play Raised th...[more]

Updates to the Vintage Points Calculator

Thursday 27th July 2023 (updated: Wednesday 23rd August 2023)

PHP

Development

Vintage Points Calculator

I have always wanted to expand my Vintage Points Calculator to allow for people to sign in and record their points progress. To that end I've started to put the framework in place to allow for registration. The features will be fairly simple: Record daily points against allowance Use points bank for 'over-spilled' daily points Administer daily points and bank amounts Password recovery The registration code is around 90% complete. Update: no complete and tested The authentication code is 100% ...[more]

Massively improving database INSERTs

Thursday 10th August 2023 (updated: Wednesday 23rd August 2023)

JavaScript

PHP

Research

Development

I use MySQL a lot. I run it locally using MAMP for a ton of data projects that never find their way online. My current development project involves a one-off operation to insert 1,000,000 rows of data to a small table. The table has 2 indexes - a Primary Key and a specific index on 2 columns. The project is driven by JavaScript that then AJAX's out calls to PHP which runs the database operation. The actual project is a pixel scanner which uses HTML5's Canvas API to examine a pixel, determine its RGBA val...[more]

Vintage Points Calculator

Saturday 29th July 2023 (updated: Tuesday 1st August 2023)

PHP

Development

Vintage Points Calculator

Updates to the Vintage Points Calculator are now live - Vintage Points Calculator. 1st August 2023 You can now request a new password - an email is sent out to you with instructions for changing your password 29th July 2023 Created ability to create an account to store points progress Fixed rounding issues on calculation - occasionally threw an error where there was no rounding required i.e. integers passed rather than floating point Created admin page to allow for manual adjustment o...[more]

What is the difference between bcrypt and Argon2 in PHP's password_hash?

Monday 24th July 2023

PHP

Research

Development

I asked ChatGPT the above question to help me with some research. Both bcrypt and Argon2 are secure password-hashing algorithms supported by PHP's password_hash function. They are designed to hash passwords securely and protect against brute-force and rainbow table attacks. Here are the key differences between bcrypt and Argon2: Algorithm and Security Strength: Bcrypt: Bcrypt is an adaptive password-hashing algorithm based on the Blowfish cipher. It is a widely used and battle-tested algorith...[more]

Defender 2095 - JavaScript game in development

Sunday 23rd July 2023

JavaScript

Development

Player's ship changing direction I have a few issues with the way the player's ship changes direction. In the original Defender the ship simply switched to face in the opposite direction and the ground and player ship shifted accordingly until the ship was in the exact opposite x co-ordinate. The way I have it at the moment isn't quite right and the ship 'swings' far too much. Needs some closer attention as currently it's fairly maddening to 'swing' and ...[more]