I won’t be updating this blog anymore, new stuff will be at http://joelsand.com
See you there!
I recently had the need to generate pronounceable, random passwords in .NET. First, I looked at the built-in ASP.NET method for generating random passwords, but that makes them completely unreadable with crazy symbols and numbers. After looking a bit more, I could not find an easy solution – so I wrote this class. Feel free to use it for whatever you like. But if you have improvements, please let me know in the comments so I can update it!
—
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
namespace RandomPasswordGenerator
{
public static class RandomPassword
{
private static Random rand = new Random();
private static readonly char[] VOWELS = new char[] { ‘a’, ‘e’, ‘i’, ‘o’, ‘u’ };
private static readonly char[] CONSONANTS = new char[] { ‘b’, ‘c’, ‘d’, ‘f’, ‘g’, ‘h’, ‘j’, ‘k’, ‘l’, ‘m’, ‘n’, ‘p’, ‘q’, ‘r’, ’s’, ‘t’, ‘v’, ‘w’, ‘x’, ‘y’, ‘z’ };
private static readonly char[] SYMBOLS = new char[] { ‘*’, ‘?’, ‘/’, ‘\\’, ‘%’, ‘$’, ‘#’, ‘@’, ‘!’, ‘~’ };
private static readonly char[] NUMBERS = new char[] { ‘0′, ‘1′, ‘2′, ‘3′, ‘4′, ‘5′, ‘6′, ‘7′, ‘8′, ‘9′ };
/// <summary>
/// Generates a random, human-readable password.
///
/// </summary>
/// <param name=”numSyllables”>Number of syllables the password will contain</param>
/// <param name=”numNumeric”>Number of numbers the password will contain</param>
/// <param name=”numSymbols”>Number of symbols the password will contain</param>
/// <returns></returns>
public static string Generate(int numSyllables, int numNumeric, int numSymbols)
{
StringBuilder pw = new StringBuilder();
for (int i = 0; i < numSyllables; i++)
{
pw.Append(MakeSyllable());
if (numNumeric > 0 && ((rand.Next() % 2) == 0))
{
pw.Append(MakeNumeric());
numNumeric–;
}
if (numSymbols > 0 && ((rand.Next() % 2) == 0))
{
pw.Append(MakeSymbol());
numSymbols–;
}
}
while (numNumeric > 0)
{
pw.Append(MakeNumeric());
numNumeric–;
}
while (numSymbols > 0)
{
pw.Append(MakeSymbol());
numSymbols–;
}
return pw.ToString();
}
private static char MakeSymbol()
{
return SYMBOLS[rand.Next(SYMBOLS.Length)];
{
return NUMBERS[rand.Next(NUMBERS.Length)];
}
private static string MakeSyllable()
{
int len = rand.Next(3, 5); // will return either 3 or 4
StringBuilder syl = new StringBuilder();
for (int i = 0; i < len; i++)
{
char c;
if (i == 1) // the second should be a vowel, all else a consonant
c = VOWELS[rand.Next(VOWELS.Length)];
else
c = CONSONANTS[rand.Next(CONSONANTS.Length)];
// only first character can be uppercase
if (i == 0 && (rand.Next() % 2) == 0)
c = Char.ToUpper(c);
// append
syl.Append(c);
}
return syl.ToString();
}
}
}
I started using Greybox for one of my web projects recently. I like it because it’s a little different that plain old lightbox.
BUT, there was a problem. In Firefox, after viewing a image and closing it, the back button would no longer work. The workaround was found by Jani at http://amix.dk/blog/viewEntry/19039
Hello,
Regarding the issue with the back button in Firefox, i think i found a solution.
First i came with this suggestion:
http://efrtw.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!68A490680B58FBDC!139.entry
I did tweak the script a bit more, and now it seems to work fine in firefox.
Here is the new script for version 5.53:
The new gb_scripts.js file worked great!
I ran across this site today:
It’s a remote/web-based operating system that gives you a desktop with Office programs, calendar, web browser, games, and more. Not sure how useful it would be – but it looks cool! Try it out 
Screenshot below…
I’ve been working on a new website for our product, and I wanted to run a spell checker on the whole thing. I found this one that worked pretty sweet:
http://www.furtheronline.co.uk/free-website-spellcheck/
You have to register with them for it to crawl your whole site, but hey, it’s worth it – I found lots of spelling errors 
Here are some neat “Web 2.0″ sites that I’ve found recently. Mostly, I found them through go2web20.net.
- Zenbe.com – This is basically a web-base e-mail/calendar/contact manager. I like it because it consolidates my e-mail and calendar into one app. I’ve never liked webmail – or desktop mail clients – but this one pretty takes the good from both and puts in into one app. You can download mail from any POP3 mail server
- Powerset.com – This search engine uses “natural language processing” to figure out the meaning behind sentences, rather than just using keywords. I’ve been following this site for quite a while because it really sparked my interest. As of this writing, it only search Wikipedia but they plan to expand that, hopefully, to the entire Internet.
- ribbit.com – Visual voicemail, like on the iPhone but for any phone. Supposed to convert the voice to text. Not released yet, but I can’t wait to try it because I would love being able to visually see the list of voicemails, who they’re from, and read them, rather than listen through them all.
- filemail.com – easy way to send large files over the Internet. It’s not really very secure, but it is very easy to use.
