The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

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

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Archive for August, 2025

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Only a few years back I learned that CrystalDiskMark is using Microsoft MIT-licensed diskspd for the actual measurements

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/08/25

I was looking for a way to measure Windows disk performance from the console as I was used to using the [Wayback/Archive] CrystalDiskMark GUI measurement tool.

So I was glad to learn a few years back at the end of 2022 that [Wayback/Archive] CrystalDiskMark 8.0.4c is based on [Wayback/Archive] DISKSPD 2.0.21a. Which back then was an older version as [Wayback/Archive] DISKSPD 2.1 had been released fall 2021.

I found this out via [Wayback/Archive] Performance benchmarking with CrystalDiskMark on Nutanix: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019, Windows Server 2022, Windows XP | Tagged: , | Leave a Comment »

Inside a cheap set of eBay digital calipers – YouTube

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/08/22

The innards of these devices and how those work are so cool: [Wayback/Archive] Inside a cheap set of eBay digital calipers – YouTube

It should be noted that the quiescent current of these devices is around 18uA, even when off (the display goes off until movement is detected).
Some users are reporting a very short battery life, but a typical 100mAh (0.1Ah) button cell should be able to supply 0.00002A for a very long time. (Theoretically 100’s of days.)

The linear capacitive encoder in these units is very impressive. The physical encoder is seemingly very simple, with the bulk of the work being done by the ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit). It’s very similar in its cost optimisation to the cheap, but super-accurate weighing scales.

I’m really impressed by the accuracy of these units for their price. They are very common on eBay for as little as £5 (about $7 USD).

Via [Wayback/Archive] Discord | #3d-print-cnc-kleien-figuurzagen | Angrynerds Podcast

--jeroen

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in DIY, LifeHacker, Power User | Tagged: | Leave a Comment »

ArchiveTeam has finished archiving all goo.gl short links – hckrnws

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/08/22

Need to figure out where the ArchiveTeam will be uploading the below archive, as this will help me figure out which links in post blogs I will need to update.

Also, Google never got back to me with an answer what to do with various map and image related shortened URLs for which they themselves also use the goo.gl domain.

[Wayback/Archive] ArchiveTeam has finished archiving all goo.gl short links – hckrnws

Related:

Query: [Wayback/Archive] ArchiveTeam goo.gl at DuckDuckGo

--jeroen

Posted in Google, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Privacy Policy – Bluesky: august 2025 update on personal data collected including unencrypted Direct Messages

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/08/22

[Wayback/Archive] Privacy Policy – Bluesky

8. Personal Data We Collect

We process, or our third-party providers may process for us, different kinds of Personal Data:
  1. Personal Data you provide
    1. …
    1. Your Direct Messages. We store and process your direct messages so you can communicate directly with other users on the Bluesky App. These are unencrypted and can be accessed for Trust & Safety purposes.
    2. …

…

was part of an update set including these:

I tried using the Wayback Machine to compare these to previous versions, but that did not succeed. Check for instance this comparison.

--jeroen

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Fix a “Automatic Repair couldn’t repair your PC” on an UEFI system: when Windows cannot be located

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/08/22

I got the below error when booting a Dell Optiplex 7060 Micro, a machine not just supporting supporting UEFI but preferring it, on which I had copied a backed-up disk image, then moved the hidden Recovery partition to the end of the physical disk (to make room to extend either the OS or DATA partitions).

Fixing it lead me to a trip that was on the boundary of software archaeology, so this blog post has a truckload of archived links to information that is still relevant, but for which the original links have long vanished due to link rot or (often worse) part of the historic information got lost because of migration to new tooling forgot to cover important additions (especially in comments).

One thing that I had to unlearn was MBR disk basics, for instance the fact that on GPT disks a partition can be active (they can only be on MBR disks, but despite UEFI supporting both MBT and GPT, GPT disks are way more common and required). The same holds for partitions having a boot flag: that too only applies to MBR disks. For the same reason, bootrec is only useful for MBR disks. More details towards the end of this blog post. CSM (Compatibility Support Module) booting is the UEFI way to simulate BIOS boot for operating systems that do no support UEFI.

Back to the error at hand:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Development, History, link rot, Power User, Software Archeology, Software Development, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista, Windows XP, WWW - the World Wide Web of information | Tagged: | Leave a Comment »

Ioan Popovici @ MEM.Zone on X: “The Inno setup uninstall switches are the funniest thing ever. SILENT, /VERYSILENT I knew about this but didn’t think that the silent uninstall registry keys would be just SILENT. I’ve fixed that in the bulk uninstall tool but man microsoft should have forced”

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/08/21

For my link archive: [WaybackSave/Archive] Ioan Popovici @ MEM.Zone on X: “The Inno setup uninstall switches are the funniest thing ever. SILENT, /VERYSILENT I knew about this but didn’t think that the silent uninstall registry keys would be just SILENT. I’ve fixed that in the bulk uninstall tool but man microsoft should have forced”

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Development, Inno Setup ISS, InnoSetup, Installer-Development, Power User, Software Development, Windows, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »

Redux: Which Windows Resource Editor do you use?

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/08/21

A long time I wrote about Which Windows Resource Editor do you use? containing a poll to choose between XN Resource Editor, IcoFX, ResEdit and Resource Hacker.

In the meantime and betweentime more than 10 years have passed and there seems to be little maintenance in (especially the non-commercial part of) Windows Resource Editor land.

From the poll back then, I also learned about a (for me) new [Wayback/Archive] Resource Editor | MelanderBlog which is still maintained every now and then. The download is at [Wayback/Archive] Downloads | MelanderBlog (at the time of writing [Wayback] ResourceEditor20190421b.zip).

More on that and download/install locations of various resource editors below a new poll.

This new poll adds Resource Editor and allows you to make multiple choices (in case you use more than one tool):

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in .NET, Delphi, Development, Software Development, Windows Development | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

Jeroen Wiert Pluimers @wiert@mastodon.social on X: “@_ObomheseR Since JavaScript is in the group of curly based programming languages influenced by the B programming language, integer constants starting with zero are tried first in octal base. 017 octal is 15 decimal 018 octal is not possible, so becomes 18.”

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/08/20

With the constant influx of JavaScript programmers, it keeps worth repeating that you should always run JavaScript in strict mode via "use strict"; (like in the past Visual Basic 6 developers should use option strict and option explicit) to forget risky JavaScript syntax like implicit ocal constants (which were removed from the documentation in the 2009 ECMAScript 5 specification for JavaScript), and every codeline should have a test code covering it, especially for comparisons involving non-strict behaviour like the use of leading zeros.

As of the succeeding 2015 standard (ECMAScript 6), octal numbers in JavaScript start with 0o or 0O followed by a series of octal digits.

Oh, and the history of octal in computing of course has to do with 6-bit systems and also lead to 6-six bit character codes including BCD character encoding..

My tweet back earlier this year: [WaybackSave/Archive] Jeroen Wiert Pluimers @wiert@mastodon.social on X: “@_ObomheseR Since JavaScript is in the group of curly based programming languages influenced by the B programming language, integer constants starting with zero are tried first in octal base. 017 octal is 15 decimal 018 octal is not possible, so becomes 18.”

Inhteritence:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in B, BASIC, C, Development, JavaScript/ECMAScript, MarkDown, Retrocomputing, Scripting, Software Development, VB6, Visual BASIC | Leave a Comment »

When Delphi cannot output the .exe file because it is locked

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/08/20

Sometimes Delphi cannot output the .exe file because it is locked. In even rarer times, Delphi itself keeps the .exe file locked (this has done it for decades and I think this is caused by a bug in the debugger).

A long time ago, I answered how to figure out where the lock comes from. A decade later a comment was added (thanks [Wayback/Archive] Server Overflow) with a command-line tool you can use for that too (but sometimes returns less results). Both are in [Wayback/Archive] compilation – Delphi does not generate any exe file – Stack Overflow Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Delphi, Development, Power User, Software Development, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »

The spring (a twig) components – How to improve the use of Delphi Frames – Stack Overflow

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/08/19

In [Wayback/Archive] components – How to improve the use of Delphi Frames – Stack Overflow (thanks [Wayback/Archive] Brian Frost for asking!) I referred to a blog post I wrote more than 15 years ago about registering Delphi frames as components in Delphi: Delphi – Frames as visual Components – don’t forget your Sprig!

It is still a technique few use, but it is very powerful as it resolves many design time issues that arise when using Delphi frames in a normal fashion especially:

Read the rest of this entry »

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

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