Technology Insights

cut – Represent A Tab As The Delimiter With Linux cut Command

InsightsLeave a comment

I have been using the cut command a lot recently to shed extra data from large text files. I typically use cut with a specific delimiter by activating the -d switch and I thought that the -d switch was required. It turns out that -d is not required and by default -d actually defaults to the delimiter being a tab. When you need to have a tab as the delimiter for cut you simply don’t specify the -d switch. Below I show a couple examples of a file trimmed down using cut with and without the -d switch as well as another way to convert tabs in a file to spaces which then will allow you to use the Linux cut command with the -d” ” switch.

Technology Insights

Screenshots – Configure Keyboard Shortcuts For Backtrack Linux

InsightsLeave a comment

Since I write a lot of articles about Backtrack Linux it is nice to have keyboard shortcuts for different screenshot commands. The two screenshot commands that I use most in Backtrack are “gnome-screenshot -w” and “gnome-screenshot”. The gnome-screenshot command will take a screenshot of the entire desktop while “gnome-screenshot -w” will take a screenshot of the active window only. Below I describe setting up  keyboard shortcuts for each of these commands on Backtrack Linux. The below information will work the same on Ubuntu 10.04 as it does on Backtrack Linux since that is what the current Backtrack Linux version (Backtrack 5 release 3) is built on.

Technology Insights

Static Source Code Audit On Terminal Using Bash Functions

InsightsLeave a comment

For anyone that has done a long source code audit is not about really finding the easy/low hanging fruit stuff that can be slow and sometimes a bit “frustrating”. I recently had a nice 660,000 lines of code source code audit to be done in less than 2 weeks, the language was Java, so the first thing that was to be done (they had already hit fortify and other tools with it) and were looking for a bit of more interesting stuff apparently. This raised some specific problems while working and finding the vulnerabilities and exploitability of them.

Technology Insights

MapPress WordPress Plugin – Change All Markers On A Single Map

Insights2 Comments

MapPress is a WordPress plugin that provides an interface to Google Maps and easily allows you to insert detailed Google Maps into WordPress posts or pages. We have a site that provides password auditing services called QD Tools and on the homepage there is a map that lists the city, state/province, and country of our customers. I have been using MapPress Pro for a long time because it offers lots of extra features and MapPress itself is such an awesome plugin I like supporting the developer. Anyhow the Google Map on the QD Tools homepage is has over 1,000 markers and continues to grow. I wanted to modify the default MapPress/Google Maps marker that was being used but there is no way in MapPress to retroactively change this so the instructions below explain how to do this.

Technology Insights

Mac OSX – Make Specific App Default File Opener

InsightsLeave a comment

I have been meaning for a long time to set some configuration parameters for specific file types including which applications open them by default. I deal with a lot of different file types and I am typically having to scroll through a long list of Mac applications to select the one that I want to open the file. Since its not easy to do this in one spot on Mac OSX Mountain Lion without adding a third party application I started looking around to see what was available and ended up with Default Apps by Rubicode. Below I describe installing Default Apps and how it works.