The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

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

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Archive for 2023

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Day of the Year in Microsoft Excel

Posted by jpluimers on 2023/01/25

Given cell A1 is a valid date, I wanted to know the day of that date in that year.

My solution is =A1-DATE(YEAR(A1)-1,12,13)

I disliked the solution in [Wayback/Archive] Day of the Year in Microsoft Excel and [Archive] Day of the Year in Excel (In Easy Steps) (excluded from the WayBack machine), as it is unclear where the + comes from in their solution =A1-DATE(YEAR(A1),1,1)+1

So, here goes my solution, with explanation:

  • =YEAR(A1) is the year of A1
  • =YEAR(A1)-1 is year before A1
  • =DATE(YEAR(A1)-1,12,13) is the last day of year before A1
  • =A1-DATE(YEAR(A1)-1,12,13) is the day of the year of A1

The last step works because subtracting two dates in Excel returns the number of days between those two dates (in a similar way, you can add a number to a date to get a new date number days in the future; similarly you can add time portions as fractions of a day).

The linked solution uses:

  • =YEAR(A1) is the year of A1
  • =DATE(YEAR(A1),1,1) is the first day of the year of A1
  • =DATE(YEAR(A1),1,1)-1 is the last day of the year before A1
  • =A1-(DATE(YEAR(A1),1,1)-1) is the day of the year of A1
  • =A1-DATE(YEAR(A1),1,1)+1 is a simplification of the day of the the year of A1

[Wayback/Archive] excel days from start of year – Google Search

–jeroen

Posted in Excel, Office, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Some links I on Windows Memory Compression I want to check out

Posted by jpluimers on 2023/01/24

I’m not sure yet why sometimes my system is lagging with the combination of these four circumstances on a Windows 10 system with 32 gigabyte of memory:

  1. Process Explorer showing low (less than 10%) CPU usage
  2. Process explorer showing Memory Compression using more than 2 gigabytes of Working Set
  3. System Commit being larger than 20 gigabyte
  4. Lots of Chrome tabs open (no easy way to total memory usage, but likely 16 gigabyte or more)

Windows Compression was introduced in Windows 10 (back in 2015) and I’m still fairly new to it.

So here are some links I want to eventually dig into to make myself more familiar with it, and see if it affects Chrome runtime behaviour:

Thanks [Wayback/Archive] magicandre1981, [Wayback/Archive] peterh, [Wayback/Archive] Raymond Burkholder, and [Wayback/Archive] Falco Alexander for the above questions and answers.

From them, I learned that on a UAC elevated administrative command prompt, you can use these PowerShell for managing Memory Compression:

  1. Get-MMAgent shows the current Memory Compression state
  2. Disable-MMAgent -mc disables Memory Compression (requires a reboot)
  3. Enable-MMAgent -mc enables Memory Compression (requires a reboot)

BTW:

–jeroen

Posted in Chrome, Google, Power User, procexp Process Explorer, SysInternals, Windows, Windows 10 | Leave a Comment »

Learning github actions by creating a repository with a dynamic README.md for your profile information

Posted by jpluimers on 2023/01/23

TL;DR:

  1. Create a GitHub repository with the same name as your profile name
  2. Add a README.md with Markdown describing your profile
  3. In the README.md, add begin/end HTML comment markers <!-- and --> for various types of dynamic content
  4. In the Actions of this repository, add Workflows for each of the set comment markers that use them to refresh that part of the content using GitHub Actions learning some continuous integration/continuousc deployment (CI/CD) on the fly.

You can spice this up with all kinds of badges to make it look pretty.

HTML Comments in Markdown?

Yes, it is indeed odd to have HTML comments in Markdown where you could just as easy use Markdown comments, but hey: I didn’t define the way this works.

A Markdown comment looks like this:

(empty line)
[comment]: # (This actually is the most platform independent comment)

For explanation on why/how this works, see the below two great StackOverflow answers in this order:

  1. [Wayback/Archive] syntax – Comments in Markdown: concise example – Stack Overflow by [Wayback/Archive] Magnus.
  2. [Wayback/Archive] syntax – Comments in Markdown: explainer – Stack Overflow by [Wayback/Archive] User Nick Volynkin – Stack Overflow

Howto

The below two videos (also embedded below the signature) show how to do this. Thanks [Archive] Jesse Hall 🦸‍♂️ #vsCodeHero (@codeSTACKr) | Twitter for creating them!

  1. [Wayback/Archive] Next Level GitHub Profile README (NEW) | How To Create An Amazing Profile ReadMe With GitHub Actions – YouTube
  2. [Wayback/Archive] UPDATE: Next Level GitHub Profile README (NEW) | GitHub Actions | Vercel | Spotify – YouTube

The description of the videos contain all sorts of links to sites and underlying repositories for:

  • icons
  • shields
  • badges
  • youtube/blog/RSS and other feed actions
  • profile examples

You can see the effects at [Wayback/Archive] codeSTACKr/codeSTACKr in the [Wayback/Archive] raw README.md sources.

Enough to get you some experimentation (:

Watch your commits

One of the drawbacks of mixing manual and automated changes to a repository, is that the automated changes can cause a lot of commits.

This is OK as long as the automated changes add value to the changed content.

In this regard, having stable RSS feeds is important, and YouTube is kind of bad at this when you look at [Wayback/Archive] History for README.md – codeSTACKr/codeSTACKr: videos changing order or popping in/out of the last 5 is kind of annoying.

–jeroen

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Development, DVCS - Distributed Version Control, git, GitHub, GitHub Actions, Lightweight markup language, MarkDown, Power User, Source Code Management | Leave a Comment »

Some more Compuserve memories

Posted by jpluimers on 2023/01/20

Some years ago, I wrote CompuServe’s forums, which still exist, are finally shutting down on 20171215.

Getting older and various people passing away made me relive some of the CompuServe memories where I used to be [Wayback/Archive] “100013,1443”.

Semi-offline access software like TapCIS and later OzCIS and OzWin helped lessening the bill of mainly getting to the CompuServe forums BPROGA that hosted Turbo Pascal (and later PASCAL for Borland Pascal plus Delphi), BORGMBH (Borland Germany)  and PCVENB (for Turbo Power Software: a back then – large supplier of tools and libraries – later acquired by a casino software company) learned to know a few TeamB members and other (now) oldies like Neil J. Rubenking.

TeamB members coming to mind: Pat Ritchey, Kurt B. Barthelmess, Rudy Velthuis, David Nottage, Steve Fischkoff, Nick Hodges, Steve Schafer, Paul A. LeBlanc and others (I wish someone had a full list of past members).

Some links:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in About, borland, Compuserve, History, Personal | Leave a Comment »

Google Cloud Shell: tools, languages and “safe mode”

Posted by jpluimers on 2023/01/19

After publishing Free Linux cloud shell for Gmail users – shell in the browser that works in all locations I’ve been so far, the Google Cloud Shell got extended quite a bit.

There is now [Wayback/Archive] Safe Mode (which skips initialisation scripts):

If there’s a problem in your .bashrc or .tmux.conf files, Cloud Shell immediately close after connection. To resolve this, open Cloud Shell in safe mode by appending cloudshellsafemode=true to the URL. This restarts your Cloud Shell instance and logs you in as root, allowing you to fix any issues in the files.

To permanently delete all files in your home directory and restore your Cloud Shell home directory to a clean state, you can reset your Cloud Shell VM.

And there is support for way more [Wayback/Archive] tools and languages:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in .NET, C#, Cloud, Development, Go (golang), Google, GoogleCloudShell, Infrastructure, Java, Java Platform, JavaScript/ECMAScript, Node.js, Perl, PHP, Power User, Python, Ruby, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

veltman/clmystery: A command-line murder mystery; an interactive tutorial for learning the *n*x command-line

Posted by jpluimers on 2023/01/18

Since I’m on a series of interactive tutorial sites, yesterday’s The SQL Murder Mystery made me bump into a project by [Archive] Noah Veltman (@veltman) / Twitter: [Wayback/Archive] veltman/clmystery: A command-line murder mystery

There’s been a murder in Terminal City, and TCPD needs your help.

To figure out whodunit, you need access to a command line.

Once you’re ready, clone this repo, or download it as a zip file.

Open a Terminal, go to the location of the files, and start by reading the file ‘instructions’.

I did a quick [Archive] clmystery – Twitter Search / Twitter and found the first ever Twitter mention to be this one from 2013 (boy, have I been living under a stone <g>): [Archive] RoR Group on Twitter: “A command-line murder mystery (clmystery) …” / Twitter.

Cool things:

–jeroen

Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, Apple, Development, Interactive Tutorials, Learning/Teaching, LifeHacker, Linux, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Power User, Software Development, Terminal | 2 Comments »

The SQL Murder Mystery

Posted by jpluimers on 2023/01/17

After last week’s posts PostgreSQL Exercises and SQLZOO: Interactive SQL tutorials (no login required), I did a Twitter search:

[Archive] pgexercises.com – Twitter Search / Twitter.

This got me to [Wayback/Archive] The SQL Murder Mystery (which is fun!).

I got there via [Archive] Lætitia on Twitter: “@nthonynowocien I’d say pgexercises is a good start for SQL pgexercises.com Even though, the last exercises are not beginner level. The SQL murder mystery is more fun mystery.knightlab.com” / Twitter

–jeroen

Posted in Conference Topics, Conferences, Database Development, Development, Event, Software Development, SQL | 1 Comment »

Evan Kirstel #TechFluencer on Twitter: “😆 Your new job is to fix this. Where you do start? #DataCenter #avtweeps… “

Posted by jpluimers on 2023/01/16

Via: [Archive] Kristian Köhntopp on Twitter: “This is what happens in every enterprise. Understaff and underpay Infrastructure people, hiring with peanuts gets you monkeys, then this, and next up an AWS cloud migration. The AWS is much more expensive, because you no longer get to cheat on infra cost.… “

[Archive] Evan Kirstel #TechFluencer on Twitter: “😆 Your new job is to fix this. Where you do start? #DataCenter #avtweeps… “

–jeroen

Posted in Ethernet, Hardware, Network-and-equipment, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Working around Archive.is/.today/.ph/.li/.vn/.fo/.md eternal spinner “Loading” when trying to archive a page

Posted by jpluimers on 2023/01/13

I have had the below Archive.is spinner “Loading” without any progress indication on a couple of URLs the last few months and I think they are tied to having special characters in the URL-to-be-archived.

My usual workaround was to first archive in the Wayback Machine, then archive the resulting URL in Archive.is as it would automatically follow the path up to the original URL,

That of course failed when  https://web.archive.org/web/*/vx-underground.org did not want to save in Archive.is: either these would give an eternal spinner on the “Loading” page no matter the browser you were using either the escaped %2A or *:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in archive.is / archive.today, Conference Topics, Conferences, Event, Internet, InternetArchive, LifeHacker, Power User, WayBack machine | Leave a Comment »

SQLZOO: Interactive SQL tutorials (no login required)

Posted by jpluimers on 2023/01/12

[Wayback/Archive] SQLZOO has an extensive set of interactive tutorials spread over these topics:

  • basic SQL tutorials gradually getting more difficult (including some Covid-19 materials)
  • SQL “how to” style questions
  • More involved examples from easy via medium to hard
  • A White Christmas challenge

So the above is kind of a continuation of my series of games to learn software and database development PostgreSQL Exercises.

I found it via the first reaction to [Archive] Steve Polito on Twitter: “If you’re like me and want to level up your SQL game, give PostgreSQL Exercises a try. …” / Twitter (which initiated yesterday’s post):

[Archive] Loumarven Payot on Twitter: “@stevepolitodsgn I’ve also tried sqlzoo.net. Almost done with it. Next on my list are dataschool.com and selectstarsql.com” / Twitter

Which means I’ve more sites to try.

These will be the next: [Wayback/Archive] Learn SQL: Interactive SQL Book, from dataschool and [Wayback/Archive] Select Star SQL (which is an interactive book that I should be able to finish in a day full of reading and experimenting).

–jeroen

Posted in Conference Topics, Conferences, Database Development, Development, Event, Software Development, SQL | 1 Comment »

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