The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

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

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Archive for May, 2025

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Apple Macintosh SE/30 monitors and video cards

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/05/30

This post covers some topics around one of the retro machines I have. They helped me form some thoughts on additions I might want to add to mine.

HDMI out on a Mac

Needs a Raspberry Pi, but looks very interesting.

256 shades of grey

Back in 2022, someone started doing an amazing thing: reverse engineering and rebuilding a 256-grey/color video card for the Macintosh SE/30 PDS (Processor Direct Slot).

A very interesting start of a long journey with the result that a few people could actually play around with it. Hopefully by now more have been produced, but be aware: this is a hobby of the designer, so unlike some other hardware: do not expect high numbers of these boards to become available.

Long thread in – for now – 14 pages of which I think below are the most important excerpts:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Apple, Classic Macintosh, Macintosh SE/30, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Why do we call it “boilerplate code?” • Buttondown

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/05/30

[Wayback/Archive] Why do we call it “boilerplate code?” • Buttondown (via [Wayback/Archive] Hillel on Twitter: “New newsletter! “Why do we call it boilerplate code” is a short history of the term, traced through the industrial revolution and rise of modern newspapers.”).

TL;DR: it is a combination of

  • boiler plate being a kind of sheet metal
  • in typesetting, the Linotype produced thin sheets of lead with letters

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Font, History, Power User | Leave a Comment »

On Hanslow Stellare e-ink labels: Using e-ink (epaper) Price Tags (Shelf Labels) for everyday needs – YouTube

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/05/29

Interesting video: [Wayback/Archive] Using e-ink (epaper) Price Tags (Shelf Labels) for everyday needs – YouTube

It linked these:

Queries:

--jeroen

 

Posted in Development, Hardware, Hardware Interfacing, IoT Internet of Things | Leave a Comment »

Barcodes van statiegeldflessen

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/05/29

Het overkomt te vaak dat barcodes beschadigd of overplakt zijn (hallo Too Good to Go, hallo “samen minder verspillen” van Jumbo en vergelijkbare acties)

Daarom wat barcodes van producten die je er overheen kunt plakken:

Gerelateerd: Generating EAN-13 barcode EPS files for your article numbers – die had ik al eerder bijgewerkt met gearchiveerde links.

--jeroen

Posted in Development, EPS/PostScript, LifeHacker, Power User, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

What is the Python 3 equivalent of “python -m SimpleHTTPServer” – Stack Overflow

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/05/29

Now that Python 2 has been dead for long enough (has it been unsupported for 5 years? yes it has: [Wayback/Archive] Status of Python Versions), it was finally time to change my alias for running a local web-server to serve files from a directory (:

So, from [Wayback/Archive] What is the Python 3 equivalent of “python -m SimpleHTTPServer” – Stack Overflow (thanks [Wayback/Archive] ryanbraganza, [Wayback/Archive] k.avinash and [Wayback/Archive] Petr Viktorin):

python -m http.server 8000, it will start the server on port 8000

Docs with the migration hints: [Wayback/Archive] 20.19. SimpleHTTPServer — Simple HTTP request handler — Python 2.7.18 documentation

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, bash, Batch-Files, Development, Power User, Python, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Bypassing ACLs with SeRestore privilege. And very simple User to LocalSystem elevation. – YouTube

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/05/28

This is cool and scary at the same time, especially since I knew about other privileges (SeDebugPrivilege comes to mind).

Granted you need to be local administrator for this, but still: for some tasks you do not need to elevate in the traditional way, but just give your current token more privileges.

[Wayback/Archive] Bypassing ACLs with SeRestore privilege. And very simple User to LocalSystem elevation. – YouTube

Via [WaybackSave/Archive] Grzegorz Tworek on X: “Friendly Reminder: If you have admin privileges but lack the necessary file permissions, you can leverage the SeBackup/SeRestore privileges directly from cmd.exe! There’s no need to elevate to LocalSystem, duplicate TrustedInstaller, or use similar methods. Simply enable the …”

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Posted in C, Development, Power User, Software Development, Windows, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »

b0rk: “debugging strategy: jump into a REPL” / Twitter

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/05/28

[Wayback/Archive] 🔎Julia Evans🔍 on Twitter: “debugging strategy: jump into a REPL” (more platforms in the replies to the Tweet)

title: jump into a REPL In dynamic languages (like Python / Ruby / JS), you can jump into an interactive console at any point in your code. Here's how to do it in a frontend Javascript program: 1. edit your code code: ``` my_var = call_some_function() debugger; ``` 2. refresh the page 3. play around in the developer tools console! you can call any function you want / try out fixes! How to do it in other languages: Ruby: `binding.pry` Python: `import pdb; pdb.set_trace()`

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Debugging, Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

0x00 – Introduction to Windows Kernel Exploitation //

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/05/27

On my reading list (plus read/watch the links it mentions): [Wayback/Archive] 0x00 – Introduction to Windows Kernel Exploitation // by [Wayback/Archive] wetw0rk (@wetw0rk_bot) / X ([Wayback/Archive] wetw0rk.github.io).

Hopefully by now, more episodes have been published.

Links from this one, including archived versions split in the same sections as the above article:

Via [WaybackSave/Archive] Alex Plaskett on X: “0x00 – Introduction to Windows Kernel Exploitation by @wetw0rk_bot …”.

--jeroen

Posted in Development, Infosec (Information Security), Red team, Security, Software Development | Tagged: | Leave a Comment »

Naming things isn’t hard: if it contains a number, include the unit in the name (your timeout might not be in nanoseconds)

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/05/27

This case, it was C# accessing a SQL back-end, but the responses to the Tweet how so many more examples not even related to software development.

Remember that plane crashing because they overloaded while they thought the fuel load numbers were in Imperial pounds where in fact they were in metric kilograms?

That’s why naming things that contain numbers should contain the unit in their name!

Related blog post: Watch “Felienne Hermans: How patterns in variable names can make code easier to read” on YouTube

Tweet: [Wayback/Archive] Nick Craver on Twitter: “Troubleshooting a hanging test suite and godDAMMIT. “In seconds”. Integer timeouts should be a felony offense punishable by an indeterminate amount of seconds/milliseconds/hours/fortnights/whatever the judge chooses.”

var csb = new SqlConnectionStringBuilder(TestConfig.Current. SQLServerConnectionString){ ConnectTimeout = 2000 }; int SqlConnectionStringBuilder.ConnectTimeout { get; set; } Gets or sets the length of time (in seconds) to wait for a connection to the server before terminating the attempt and generating an error. Returns: The value of the SqlConnectionStringBuilder, ConnectTimeout property, or 15 seconds if no value has been supplied.

var csb = new SqlConnectionStringBuilder(TestConfig.Current. SQLServerConnectionString) { ConnectTimeout = 2000 }; int SqlConnectionStringBuilder.ConnectTimeout { get; set; } Gets or sets the length of time (in seconds) to wait for a connection to the server before terminating the attempt and generating an error. Returns: The value of the SqlConnectionStringBuilder, ConnectTimeout property, or 15 seconds if no value has been supplied.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in .NET, Agile, C#, Code Quality, Conference Topics, Conferences, Database Development, Development, Event, Software Development, SQL, SQL Server, Systems Architecture | Leave a Comment »

Office suites trick I was unaware off: you can use images as background of shapes, then distort by moving the corner points

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/05/26

Video thumbnail

Video thumbnail

The below example is in Excel, but it holds for many other drawing tools in other office suites as well (like the ones in OpenOffice and successors like LibreOffice, Apple Pages in iWork, and others from the list of office suites):

  1. Insert a shape
  2. Move the corners so it covers the area you want a screenshot in
  3. Modify the shape background to contain the screenshot as background

(you can exchange steps 2 and 3 if you wish, and even go for more complex shapes – including ones where you can add corner points – to better fit the area where you want the distorted screenshot to appear).

Example in (typo was indeed in the tweet) [Wayback/Archive] Excel Dictionary on X: “Are you ready for this Excel tip? Get ready to learn how to easily scew images. 🤯”: Read the rest of this entry »

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

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