The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

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

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Archive for 2025

Some internet speeds during our holidays

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/07/24

I forgot to record a few locations, but here are some of the speedtest results during our holiday in Germany, Denmark and Norway.

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Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Important debugging strategy from b0rk: “after the bug is fixed: write a postmortem”

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/07/24

[Wayback/Archive] Julia Evans on Twitter: “after the bug is fixed: write a postmortem”

title: write a postmortem For very tricky bugs, writing up an explanation of what went wrong and how it was fixed is an amazing way to share knowledge and make sure I really understand it. Ways I've done this in the past: * complain about it in the internal chat! (so people can search for it!) * write a quick explanation in the pull request description * write a fun blog post telling my tale of woe! * for really important work bugs, write a 5-page document with graphs explaining all the weird stuff I learned along the way

–jeroen

Posted in Conference Topics, Conferences, Debugging, Development, Event, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Overlay of commands / shortcuts / keys pressed – Screencast Mode · Issue #981 · microsoft/PowerToys · GitHub

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/07/23

This is a reminder to check if this below late 2019 proposal inspired by Visual Studio Code Screencast mode¹ already made it: [Wayback/Archive] Overlay of commands / shortcuts / keys pressed – Screencast Mode · Issue #981 · microsoft/PowerToys · GitHub which mentions some tools that can already do this

Here is a list of FOSS apps that currently do this (sorted by stars):

To add to this list (unsorted):

In the meantime, I am using Key-n-Stroke as it is the only still supported one I found that is easily turned off/on when typing sensitive content like passwords:

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Posted in .NET, Development, Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, KVM keyboard/video/mouse, Power User, PowerToys, Software Development, vscode Visual Studio Code, Windows | Tagged: , | Leave a Comment »

The CAT files that prove Windows driver files are signed: some links on decoding them

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/07/23

Maybe in the future I have enough energy to play around more with the Windows .CAT files that are catalog files with digital signatures for Windows driver files (.sys) that can be installed via Windows information files (.inf).

Some links for that:

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Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11 | Leave a Comment »

GitHub – minvws/horsebattery: A password generator inspired by https://xkcd.com/936/

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/07/22

[Wayback/Archive] GitHub – minvws/horsebattery: A password generator inspired by https://xkcd.com/936/

Inspiration: [Wayback/Archive] xkcd: Password Strength

Curated Dutch word list: [Wayback/Archive] horsebattery/config/nl/word-list.txt at main · minvws/horsebattery · GitHub

Via: [Wayback/Archive] Discord

--jeroen

Posted in Development, Passwords/manages, PHP, Power User, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Windows Data Types (BaseTsd.h) – Win32 apps | Microsoft Learn

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/07/22

A while ago, I had to figure out the field sizes for some Windows API functions. In the distance past, the base data types used to be defined in windows.h, but  over the decades that file has been split into various other files as there are far more than just the BOOL, int, UINT, DWORD, HWND, LPARAM and WPARAM data types. Currently the data types are defined in [Wayback/Wayback] Windows Data Types (BaseTsd.h) – Win32 apps | Microsoft Learn.

Note that C++ allows to specify bit field sizes for fields in struct composite data types, so under some circumstances, fields my have a different number of bits than you might expect from their data type.

Via [Wayback/Archive] c++ dword uint size – Google Search.

–jeroen

Posted in C++, Development, Software Development, Visual Studio C++, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »

DNS/web options: How to verify your Bluesky account – Bluesky

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/07/21

Just in case I ever want to bind a BSKY handle to a domain name I own:

Via:

--jeroen

Posted in BlueSky, Development, DNS, Hosting, Internet, Power User, SocialMedia, Software Development, Web Development | Leave a Comment »

Disabling the ever returning screens after Windows install/upgrade, and advertisements/feeds

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/07/21

This started out ad a post to make things easier for my mentally brother, but then I figured it makes it so much easier for myself as well: getting rid of the evern returning Windows nag screens. Not just the ones after logon during initial Windows install that get back about every other Windows 20H update (thank god they stepped away from 19## version numbering that felt so, ehm, last millennium), but also the various “suggestions” in start menu, on the taskbar and elsewhere.

I understand that basically giving Windows 10 and 11 for free to many Windows 7/8 licensed machines or Windows-preinstalled machines induces Microsoft to see Windows as an advertising environment, but hey: many users can do without these distractions.

It is hard to solve, as even the underlying registry settings seem to be reset every once in a while, and solving it globally is not an option: the settings are a per-user one. Which means you need to run script early during every Windows logon to overwrite these settings.

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Posted in Batch-Files, CommandLine, Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, Event, Power User, PowerShell, PowerShell, Registry Files, Scripting, Software Development, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11, Windows Development | Tagged: | Leave a Comment »

Mercedes R171 SLK 2006 fuse box locations

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/07/18

Needed to check some of the fuses on the Mercedes-Benz R171 SLK of my better half.

Found them with [Wayback PDF View/PDF View] [Wayback/Archive] SLK R171 Fusebox layout.pdf through [Wayback/Archive] R171 Fuse Allocation Chart | Mercedes SLK World.

That forum thread also referred to [Wayback/Archive] Fuse box location and diagrams: Mercedes-Benz SLK-Class (2005-2011) – YouTube, but I found the PDF more clear than the video.

Query: [Wayback/Archive] r171 fuses – Google Suche

--jeroen

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Posted in cars, LifeHacker, Power User, R171 SLK Mercedes | Leave a Comment »

The queste on figuring out why iqvw64e.sys is considered unsafe in Windows 11 22H2 after upgrading from Windows 10 on a Dell Optiplex 3060 Micro system

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/07/18

It started with this tweet [Wayback/Archive] Jeroen Wiert Pluimers @wiert@mastodon.social on Twitter: “Does anyone know why this iqvw64e.sys file from @Dell is considered unsafe? It is signed by @IntelSoftware and resides in C:\Program Files\Dell\SupportAssistAgent\PCDr\SupportAssist\6.0.7033.2285\iqvw64e.sys iqvw64e.inf in the same directory: 04/06/2018,1.3.2.17 @IntelSupport? “

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Posted in Dell Optiplex 3060/5060/7060 Micro, Hardware, Power User, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11 | Leave a Comment »