Everyone has encountered a captcha system. Even if you dont know what it is… It’s that bit of really annoying obscured text used in registration systems for sites like MSN Hotmail, Yahoo etc… that tries to establish users as real people as opposed to bots creating accounts for spamming etc…

The trouble is OCR is getting better and better, and it’s becoming harder to make captcha graphics that they can’t crack.. This also means it’s becoming harder for people to read the increasingly complicated images.

Based on work by Stu Nicholls and Eric Smith, I have implemented a PHP script that generates “CSS Text”. This is text that could not be read by reading the source code of the web page, but yet appears perfectly legible to any person reading the page. This could easily be used in a Captcha system or, for example, to obscfucate eMail addresses to prevent spam bots harvesting them.

See the demonstration at http://www.iross.net/csscaptcha/

The photo gallery is now up at http://iross.net/photos/. It’s far from complete but it’s a start. It’s based around Gallery 2.0, an open source Image Gallery. On another note, aqueousGallery (my own gallery software) will reappear some time soon… in the code section of course.

As anyone who knows me knows.. I’ve been following the development of Apple’s latest generation OS with great anticipation. Spotlight is revolutionary, and dashboard which I thought at first was just a gimmick, is almost as useful as Exposé.

Speculation is that Tiger will be formally announced this friday and released in the next couple of weeks. Certainly before NAB, this is now looking increasingly likely… no doubt the shop will have to wait ages for our first copies to appear, but this is one cat that will be let out of the bag soon…. I hope.

PB on Table

Originally uploaded by mmdc.

New craze that seems to be right at home on flickr - will do one with my own machine(s) some time. Basically its NOT a photoshopped picture - the desktop background is REAL… it’s just clever photography … waiting to see Rory’s too I must add.

Well it’s back… of sorts… welcome to the new iRoss.net. There’s still a few bits missing here and there but theres already a fair amount of photos in the Gallery, and hopefully there will occasionally be something semi-interesting to read on here! :). P.S. if you do find something VERY broken (i.e. server error or something) please eMail me and let me know.

Geckos Like to Read Too

Originally uploaded by tankgirl.

The things you find on Flickr … a gecko reading Lord Of The Rings…

Welcome to the new look iRoss.net - much more bloggy than any of it’s previous incarnations but we’ll see how it goes… If you’re reading this then you almost certainly clicked a “Sneak Preview” link or something similar… with that in mind remember I do break things (too often) including my site

Have a look at http://www.iross.net/blog/oldsite for a more detailed explaination of the changes.

A rather nifty addition, that you can use already, are the RSS feeds (at the bottom of the page) to keep up to date with this site (assuming I actually update it). I also intend to play around with integrating flickr or similar services in weird and wonderful ways. so, as always, watch this space.