James Gardner
I am a web developer based in Bedford in the UK. I specialise in Python, web design, accessiblity, usability, social software and the current technologies known as web 2.0. I create websites and online systems working either as a contracter or as part of 3aims.
Contact me for information or a quote.
Recent and Current Work
Thoughtplay Ltd, Institute of Child Health, Oxford Publishing Society, Torchbox Ltd, What Should I Read Next?, Biddenham Village Hall, Adeaas LLC, Shaw and Company Ltd, Pylons HQ, Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust.
Preventing Website Password Attacks
I was reading .net magazine today (which has an excellent article about Jon Hicks' new redesign by the way) and they have an excellent comment about preventing randomly generated password attacks; simply add a sleep(3) command after each failed attempt so that the hacker has to wait 3 seconds before trying again.
Of course they might just make lots of separate connections to the site so each connection can be trying a different password whilst the others are waiting but this too can be prevented if your authorisation supports account locking for a few seconds so that all attempts have to wait. Expect to see this new feature added to Pylons AuthKit soon.
Creating a Wiki with Pylons
I've written and released a complete tutorial on how to create a working wiki using Pylons and SQLAlchemy. The tutorial assumes you've read the installation and getting started guides and takes you all the way from defining the model, adding the templates and coding the forms to adding AJAX capabilities to delete pages by dragging them to a trash area.
Water on Enceladus
Scientists have discovered water vapour erupting from the surface of Enceladus, a 500 km wide moon of Saturn. We knew that there was activity which made the south pole hotter than expected, perhaps due to radioactive as well as tidal heating but the discovery of liquid water on another object in our solar system substantially increases the chances that life might exist somewhere in the universe.
