The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

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

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Archive for 2013

A Consuming Experience: Windows – no disk Exception Processing Message c0000013 Parameters 75b6bf9c 4 75b6bf9c 75b6bf9c – fixed!

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/05/17

Sometimes I get messages like the below No Disk error on virtual machines, mainly in Windows XP and lower, but sometimes in more recent Windows versions too.

---------------------------
Windows - No Disk
---------------------------
Exception Processing Message c0000013 Parameters 75b6bf7c 4 75b6bf7c 75b6bf7c
---------------------------
Cancel   Try Again   Continue
---------------------------

The 0xc0000013 is a No Disk Exception.

Every time the solution has been to uninstall the floppy drive device from the VM image.

I never had it on physical hardware, but for that, disabling all unused removable and USB disk devices seem to work.

Somehow, lots of software thinks it should scan ALL media, even the removable ones that might not have media inserted.

–jeroen

via: A Consuming Experience: Windows – no disk Exception Processing Message c0000013 Parameters 75b6bf9c 4 75b6bf9c 75b6bf9c – fixed!.

Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Vista, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »

memories of the past: BitSavers.org just added a whole bunch CRAY documents

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/05/16

Nobody but very wealthy research institutions could afford CRAY machines.

They were the computing workhorse of their time. Now your smartphone is faster (:

BitSavers just added a bunch of CRAY documentation of the 1980s and early 1990s.

–jeroen

Posted in BitSavers.org, History, Power User | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

Great questions from Iris “Asking a ‘stupid’ question, every day for 365 days”

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/05/16

For 10 months ago, Iris started Asking a ‘stupid’ question, every day for 365 days.

Virtually all of them very valid questions that remind me of various stages in my software career, and will remind me during the stages still to come.

Her motto is “there is no such thing as a stupid question”.

I agree, and would go even further: keep the questions coming every day of your life, as it is the only way of learning.

Recommended reading!

–jeroen

via: For 10 months ago, Iris started Asking a ‘stupid’ question, every day for 365 days ».

Posted in Development, Software Development | 1 Comment »

Don’t pass interfaces between application architectures over a DLL boundary

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/05/15

It is unwise to pass objects allocated in one framework over a DLL boundary to a different framework.

In the case of Using C dll in delphi return nothing, someone tries to pass an Interface to some memory in the C side over to Delphi.

Unless that interface is COM based, don’t do that!

In a more general way: don’t pass memory allocated on the DLL side over to the client side, no matter what kind of client you have.

From the DLL, either pass simple types, or fill buffers allocated at the client side.

Edit:

There was a nice Delphi DLL return string from C# … .NET 4.5 Heap Corruption but .NET 4.0 works? Explain please? – Stack Overflow question explaining in detail what to do for strings in a specific case: use the COM heap on the Delphi side using CoTaskMemAlloc (actually it uses the OLE task memory allocator as the Old New Thing explains).

–jeroen

via: Using C dll in delphi return nothing – Stack Overflow.

Posted in .NET, .NET 2.0, .NET 3.0, .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, Delphi, Delphi 1, Delphi 2005, Delphi 2006, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi 3, Delphi 4, Delphi 5, Delphi 6, Delphi 7, Delphi 8, Delphi x64, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Development, Software Development | 5 Comments »

A few notes on Delphi, WSDL and SOAP: passing nil values, Document/Literal versus RPC Encoded

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/05/14

I had some notes on Delphi WSDL and SOAP peculiarities somewhere, but I misplaced them.

Luckily, I found some links that explain most of my notes well:

–jeroen

Posted in Conference Topics, Conferences, Delphi, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Development, Event, SOAP/WebServices, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Relevant files for ssh-keygen – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/05/13

Edit:

After writing this, DSA got deprecated then later removed. See [WayBack] Secure Secure Shell.

When working with SSH private/public keys (often because of ssh-keygen), and using DSA for auhtentication, these are the relevant files:

  • $HOME/.ssh/id_dsa:
    (on the local system)
    The $HOME/.ssh/id_dsa file contains the protocol version 2 DSA authentication identity of the user.
  • $HOME/.ssh/id_dsa.pub:
    (on the local system)
    The $HOME/.ssh/id_dsa.pub file contains the DSA public key for authentication when you are using the SSH protocol version 2. A user should copy its contents in the $HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys file of the remote system where a user wants to log in using DSA authentication.
  • $HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys:
    (on the remote system)
    The $HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys file contains authorized DSA public keys (each line is the contents of a $HOME/.ssh/id_dsa.pub file) of users on systems that are auhorized to login on the remote system.

Important:

Be sure to transfer the contents of the local $HOME/.ssh/id_dsa.pub file to the remote system in a secure way.

–jeroen

via ssh-keygen – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Posted in *nix, Apple, Cygwin, Endian, Linux, Mac, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Mac OS X: editing ~/.bash_profile using TextEdit

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/05/10

Finder on your Mac by default does not show hidden files, and the console has vi, which lots of people find awkward to use.

There is an easy trick to open a hidden file like ~/.bash_profile (for instance to add an alias) with a visual text editor.

Just execute this in your terminal:

  • Always with TextEdit
    open -e ~/.bash_profile
  • For the default text editor (usually TextEdit)
    open -t ~/.bash_profile
  • For a specific text editor (in this cast TextWrangler)
    open -b com.barebones.textwrangler ~/.bash_profile

The man open(1) page has more information on the parameters you can pass to open.

–jeroen

PS: You can teach Finder to Quickly show and hide hidden files | Finder, Terminal | Mac OS X Tips.

Posted in Apple, bash, Development, Mac, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, MacBook, MacBook-Air, MacBook-Pro, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, Power User, Scripting, Software Development | 6 Comments »

Time for a golden oldie: Pragmatic Software Development Tips

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/05/09

From the century start era of The Pragmatic Bookshelf | The Pragmatic Programmer, a – still valid – list of Pragmatic Software Development Tips.

From Care About Your Craft, via DRY, Some Things Are Better Done than DescribedKeep Knowledge in Plain Text, Work With a User to Think Like a User, Find the Box, and many others till Sign Your Work.

–jeroen

via: The Pragmatic Bookshelf | List of Tips.

Posted in .NET, C++, Cloud Development, COBOL, CommandLine, Delphi, Development, Fortran, iSeries, Java, Pascal, RegEx, Scripting, Software Development, Web Development, xCode/Mac/iPad/iPhone/iOS/cocoa | 3 Comments »

What programmers font (monospaced!) do you like best?

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/05/08

Lucida Console Sample (thanks Wikimedia!)

Lucida Console Sample (thanks Wikimedia!)

I’m in search to see if there is a better programmers font than the monospaced Lucida Console mainly to be used in Visual Studio, Delphi, the Windows console, Xcode and Eclipse. What I love about Lucida Console design is the relatively large x-height combined with a small leading (often called “line height”). This combines very readable text, and a lot of code lines in view. Lucida has two small drawbacks, see the second image at the right:

  • The captial O and digit 0 (zero) are very similar.
  • Some uppercase/lowercase character pairs are alike (because of the large x-height)

But, since the font hasn’t been updated for a very long time, lots of Unicode code points that are now in current fonts, are missing from Lucida Console (unless you buy the [Waybackmost recent version that has 666 characters from Fonts.com) Well, there are dozens of monospaced fonts around, so I wonder: which ones do you like? In the mean while, I’m going to do some experimenting with fonts mentioned in these lists:CcKkOoSsUuVvWwXxZz are much alike.

A few fonts I’m considering (I only want scalable fonts, so raster .fon files are out):

I have tried Adobe Source Code Pro about half a year ago. That didn’t cut it: problem with italics in Delphi, and not enough lines per screen. [WaybackNew Open Source monospaced font from Adobe: Source Code Pro.

–jeroen

Posted in .NET, Adobe Source Code Pro, Apple, Delphi, Delphi 2007, Delphi XE3, Development, Encoding, Font, Lucida Console, Mac, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Power User, Programmers Font, Software Development, Typography, Unicode, Visual Studio 11, Visual Studio 2005, Visual Studio 2008, Visual Studio 2010, Visual Studio and tools, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows XP, xCode/Mac/iPad/iPhone/iOS/cocoa | 43 Comments »

Taking pictures from space

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/05/07

Just came across this: Astronaut Chris Hadfield: how to take photos from the ISS

Great stuff!

–jeroen

Posted in About, LifeHacker, Opinions, Personal, Photography, Power User | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »