Chris Tune's Blog

I've been spending so much time with Visual Basic and VBA code lately that my love of computer programming has risen up and pretty much taken over . . .again! The last time I felt this way was during my stay working at Falcon Cable TV companies. I made up numerous macro and design improvements to various spreadsheets while working there. I realized then that coding would be a fun profession, but I did not want to consider moving from one, relatively complicated profession--accounting--into another relatively complicated profession--programming. Now, I realize that programming comprises many different areas, including a very large training component, which I know I enjoy and a creative component, which I know I enjoy and has rewards that seem to match the "Edison Gene" type of personality that I seem to have. I guess the best next steps are to continue to use the books I've bought in Visual Basic and SQL and Access to create solutions to different problems. The more...

Since I've been writing VBA code and SQL and working in ACCESS and EXCEL a lot recently , I have been reading stuff on developer oriented sites. This article in a developer site strikes me as interesting. Apparently a new way of combining Java and XML called AJAX (that's the non-proprietary or "open" version anyway) provides for background processes of fairly unlimited capability to be running on your client machine during webbrowsing. This could lead to the development of keystroke loggers and similar snooping devices for use in commercial websites. Apparently it is not trivial to detect this kind of activity because there is no clear evidence in the embedded Javascript in pages. the XMLHttpRequest function can apparently create a conversation with the server while you are doing something else. . .like writing in Word, or entering info into a spreadsheet and so forth. . . I'm sure the NSA will like this. . . I guess I'll always be a little paranoid. . .wait! ...