A personal recommendation for "Collide by Beats Antique," an album with minimal vocals and strong beats that helps with focus while coding. Also notes preference for Amazon MP3 over iTunes for the flexibility of MP3 files for backup and portability.

A Groovy script demonstrating how to use the StopForumSpam API to check email addresses against a database of known spammers. The script reads emails from a text file, queries the API, and reports how many times each email has been reported, showcasing Groovy's concise syntax for API integration.

A comprehensive guide to using the PF firewall on FreeBSD to block SSH brute force attacks. Covers enabling PF, creating a brute force table with tracking rules, and using pfctl commands to manage blocked IPs, providing automated protection against password guessing attempts.

A brief personal update about the web hosting company migrating clients to newer, more powerful servers with updated versions of PHP, MySQL, and other tools, including being a test subject with 128bitstudios.com as the first site on the new infrastructure.

A Groovy script demonstrating how to pull and parse character data from the World of Warcraft Armory. Uses XMLSlurper to fetch guild information and extract level 80 characters grouped by class, showcasing Groovy's cleaner syntax compared to Ruby for XML processing.

A personal post about a relaxing weekend spent working around the house and enjoying time with my fiancée, including a photo taken at Salem Willows looking toward Beverly, Massachusetts, and the Salem/Beverly bridge.

A practical guide to encrypting and decrypting files using OpenSSL with AES-256-CBC encryption. Covers basic file encryption/decryption, piping data through OpenSSL for processing, and using the same algorithms for consistent encryption and decryption operations.

A guide for creating SFTP-only users on FreeBSD that can transfer files securely but cannot log in via SSH to run commands. Covers creating a dedicated group, configuring sshd_config with chroot and ForceCommand settings, and adding restricted users.

A Ruby script demonstrating how to pull character data from the World of Warcraft Armory website. The code fetches XML from the armory, parses guild information, and extracts level 80 characters with their names, levels, and classes into a sorted list.

A quick tip for preventing SSH connections from dropping due to inactivity by editing the ssh_config file to send keep-alive packets every 30 seconds, ensuring stable connections on networks with aggressive timeout settings.