The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for February, 2012

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What’s new in .NET Framework 4.5? [poster] (via Heikniemi Hardcoded)

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/02/14

What’s new in .NET Framework 4.5? [poster] (via Heikniemi Hardcoded)I love the “Async ja Await equal to C#” in the picture and the copy-paste re-use in this blog entry from msguy.

Jouni Heikniemi originally posted “What’s new in .NET Framework 4.5 [poster]” on 20111029, then updated the poster on 20111116.

His original poster is Finnish, and his English poster contains a small translation glitch “Async ja Await equal to C#” (“ja” is Finnish for “and”).

Both posters are PNG filess, so msguy Anil made it into a textual document, including the translation glitch.

I love that, as it shows we are all humans :)

–jeroen

via: Bruno Leonardo Michels – Google+.

Posted in .NET, .NET 4.5, C# 2.0, C# 5.0, Software Development | 4 Comments »

Activation code for Philips SimplyShare Android App

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/02/13

From the English Philips HMP7001 User manual page 25:

 Install Philips SimplyShare on the Android device

  1. Make sure that you have connected the Android device to the Internet. EN 25
    [ Consult the user manual of your Android device for information.
  2. On the Android device, install  SimplyShare:
    a  Go to the Android Market;
    b  Search for, download, and install  SimplyShare.

Play media from the Android device

  1. Make sure that you have connected the player to the same Wi-Fi network as your Android device.
  2. On the Android device, go to  SimplyShare from the Home screen:
    SimplyShare, enter the activation code 74963893 as prompted.

Thanks Toengel for this info.

–jeroen

via: Philips HMP7001 User manual

Posted in LifeHacker, Power User | 18 Comments »

FlightAware > BOE236 787 drawing a Boeing logo on FlightAware

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/02/11

The start of the thread comments:

Karsten Liljegren about 24 hours ago

I was one of the Boeing pilots on this record setting flight. 19 hours and 22 minutes block to block (and 10408 Nautical Miles)… The longest ETOPS endurance test flight ever!

Air Traffic Control was fantastic and very accommodating. – Thank you!

The airplane performed flawlessly. As a matter of fact – we didn’t even top off the fuel tanks.

Karsten
Boeing Test and Evaluation

A few days after it flew from KPAE to KBFI, it took a 19+ hour ETOPS test flight from KBFI to KBFI and adding a new drawing to the list of previous drawings by other aircrafts.

Some links:

–jeroen:

via: FlightAware > BOE236 787 drawing a Boeing logo on FlightAware.

BOE236 787 drawing a Boeing logo on FlightAware

BOE236 787 drawing a Boeing logo on FlightAware

Posted in Opinions, Pingback | Leave a Comment »

Soms kom je online echt oude spullen tegen van jezelf: deze uit een computercollectief nieuwsbrief van september 1997; Tips en commentaar 290997

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/02/10

Helaas is het computercollectief in de oude vorm failliet, maar ik heb wel warme herinneringen aan hun gloriedagen in de jaren ’80 en ’90 van vorige eeuw.

Opgericht in 1979, is er nu alleen nog een door Mensys gerunde webshop  (op dit moment nog steeds in houde stijl, zou dat ooit gaan wijzigen)

Dit is een stukje van me uit hun nieuwsbrief van september 1997, toen het “internet” zoals we nu kennen net een paar jaar begonnen waren en de eerste zoekmachines nog in de kinderschoenen stonden.

Toen was ik al een power user en life hacker, en zaten er meer taalvauwdten in mijn teksten dan nu :)

Even een paar puntjes die ik bij mijn zoektochten op het internet gebruik:

  • zoeken valt vaak tegen; het duurt meestal vrij lang en het is niet eenvoudig te vinden wat je zoekt
  • de ‘traditionele’ zoek-engines (yahoo, alta-vista, etc) zijn goed voor het vinden van bedrijven en dergelijke, maar niet voor het vinden van personen, technische vraagstukken, etc
  • www.dejanews.com is een zoek-engine op (bijna) alle newsgroups. Deze werkt vaak veel beter dan de traditionele zoek engines. Je zoekt hier een paar threads die over je onderwerp gaan. Vaak staan hier al genoeg verwijzingen naar sites/personen/informatie die je zoekt.
  • hou een goede favourites list bij van sites waarvan je weet dat ze voor jou waardevolle informatie hebben. Loop de lijst af en toe door om te kijken of de sites niet verhuisd zijn en zo.
  • neem een abonnement op een paar goede nieuwsbrieven en kijk eens rond op news-sites (ik heb zelf een abonnement op onder meer de nieuwsbrieven comcol, broekhuis update, web-wereld nieuws, dutchmedia, daily planet en news-sites www.webwereld.nl, www.news.com, www.techweb.com, www.pcweek.com).
  • er zijn informatieleveranciers (bijvoorbeeld Encyclopedia Britannica) waar je een abonnement op kunt nemen. Kan erg handig zijn.

De praktijk leert dat het je zo een paar uur tijd kost om iets te vinden wat je zoekt. Vraag je van te voren af of het je die tijd wel waard is en alternatieven niet beter zijn (telefoontje naar iemand waarvan je weet dat ie het weet doet ook vaak wonderen).

Niet alle bovenstaande links bestaan meer, en ook niet alle bedrijven bestaan nog in hun oude vorm. Zo heet PC Week tegenwoordig eWeek, Deja news is tegenwoordig Google Groups, en Alta Vista is van Yahoo.

–jeroen

via: Tips en commentaar 290997.

Posted in About, Personal, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Very odd cause (and solution) for VMware View Client “Connect Desktop Failed”: Event Log could not start because of Access Denied error 5.

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/02/09

Lets start post 800 by mentioning it took quite a bit of time to solve the connection problem to VDI. I hope it will help others, and if I ever run into this again myself: now I know where to look :)

Some clients make heavy use of VMware VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) which moves the desktop into the VMs in the data center.

A while ago I spent most of the day tracking down a “Connect Desktop Failed” error with VMware View Client running on a Windows 7 x64 workstation to connect to a VDI VM. It would connect to the VDI server, authenticate, start the Desktop, but could not connect to the Desktop.

The amazing thing is that the VMware view client worked fine on an XP VM workstation (with and without SNX) XP physical machine with SNX, and another Windows 7 x64 VM workstation (also with and without SNX) and Windows 7 x64 physical machine with SNX.

Clearly something was wrong with this particular Windows 7 x64 workstation that is host of most of my development VMs so I didn’t want to do a re-install.

I tried many obvious things on the Windows 7 x64 workstation:

  1. reboot
  2. disable firewall
    (that would have indicated some of the ports required by VMware view were not open: in practice not all ports mentioned in the list are used)
  3. uninstall software from various vendors that might interfere with network activity
  4. disabled virus scanner
  5. step down from VMware View Manager 5 client to VMware View Manager 4.6 client
  6. circumvented SNX (CheckPoint SSL VPN extender) making sure I was on the same WAN and later LAN of the VDI
  7. verified twice I had indeed Windows 7 SP1 applied
  8. laughed about the SSE support required by VMware view client

Since the “Connect desktop failed” does not return many English search results, I started browsing the Russian ones. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Power User, View, VMware | Leave a Comment »

Batch file to detect Windows version number

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/02/08

Most Batch files for detecting Windows versions try to parse the either the [WayBack] output fromVER  or the [WayBack] output from SYSTEMINFO [WayBack], but forget that there many Windows installations are not English. Some even use WMIC, but [WayBack] WMIC is only available for administrators and not available some flavours like XP Home.

Languages issues are always important to watch for. The Dutch Windows XP returns Microsoft Windows XP [versie 5.1.2600] which is just one word different from the English Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]. Other languages may differ even more.

This batch file tries to circumvent the language differences, uses VER and works at least with Dutch and English Windows versions of XP and 7, most likely with many other languages and versions as well.

On a Windows XP SP3 machine, it lists WindowsVersion=5.1.2600 and on a Windows 7 SP1 machine it lists WindowsVersion=6.1.7601.

One possible addition would be to [WayBack] detect x64 or x86.

The detection assumes that VER will emit the version in [angle] brackets, and uses two batch file for loops to get the text in between them using the [WayBack] tokens and delims for loop parameters in the first for loop right behind the begin label and the second for loop right after the parse1 label.

Then it splits the remaining text using spaces at the parse2 label, and takes the right most portion using the [WayBack] shift command at the parse3 label.

Many thanks to [WayBack] Rob van der Woude for a lot of interesting batch file documentation. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Batch-Files, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Windows, Windows 7, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »

Outlook signature locations

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/02/07

When Google searching, most results for the Outlook 2003 Signature Folder Location AppData give you the wrong folder.

They mix environment keys like UserName, UserProfile, but should use AppData as that has been the base since at least Windows XP.

This is the correct folder for any Outlook version (2003, 2010, etc): %appdata%\Microsoft\Signatures

Making sure you use the right environment variable is very important, especially in large Windows based environments that often use roaming profiles and a mix of Windows environments.

For instance, at a client they have a mixed environment of Windows XP and Windows 7, with separate AppData locations for the two on a LAN:

  • Windows XP:
    \\server\DFS\share\Application Data
  • Windows 7:
    \\server\DFS\share\Application Data.v2

There is a very nice Wikipedia article on the Windows Environment variable that explains this situation in the synopsis.

–jeroen

Posted in Batch-Files, Development, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Windows, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »

I really need to take some time check out MediaMonkey, MediaPortal and XBMC for my HTPC

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/02/06

Software updates – MediaMonkey 4.0.2 build 1462 | Electronics | Tweakers.net Meuktracker.

Software updates – MediaPortal 1.2.2 | Electronics | Tweakers.net Meuktracker.

Software updates – XBMC Media Center 11.0 bèta 1 | Electronics | Tweakers.net Meuktracker.

Posted in Power User | Leave a Comment »

Mini-DisplayPort on New Dells: Resolving issues with output to projectors in Windows 7

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/02/03

Interesting observation at IronGeek on using hooking a Dell XPS L502X laptop to a VGA beamer:

After doing some playing around, I figured out it would not connect to a monitor or projector that did not send EDID or DDC2 info.

Lesson learned: if you run a Windows 7 laptop other than a Mac, and the laptop has a Mini DisplayPort adapter (like a Dell XPS L502X) and want it to connect to a VGA monitor, then get the StarTech model MDP2VGA adapter. It just always works, whereas a Mac Mini DisplayPort to VGA adapter won’t work on systems not providing EDID or DDC2 info.

–jeroen

via Mini-DisplayPort on New Dells: Resolving issues with output to projectors in Windows 7.

Posted in LifeHacker, Power User | Leave a Comment »

:: Strip HTML Tags :: Online Tools

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/02/02

Handy when copy-pasting stuff from the Web or Word Processor and your tools keep too much formatting:

HTML Tags Stripper is designed to strip HTML tags from the text. It will also strip embedded JavaScript code, style information (style sheets), as well as code inside php/asp tags ()

Edit:

John Kaster indicated that http://ckeditor.com/demo works nicely too, but I could not get their “paste from word” to emit nice clean un-styled HTML for me.

WordOff does work, and cleans away all the HTML tags (I with it didn’t clean structure tags and anchor tags, which you can keep with HTML Tags Stripper).

–jeroen

via :: Strip HTML Tags :: Online Tools.

Posted in Development, HTML, Power User, Software Development, Web Development | Leave a Comment »

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