The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

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

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Archive for 2026

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Some links on hetrixtools.com Uptime and Blacklist monitoring, and PagerDuty integration.

Posted by jpluimers on 2026/02/06

Historically I have been using Uptime Robot a lot, but in practice they are only good for HTTP/HTTPS uptime checking and TCP connection checking. SMTP checking requires more than just a valid TCP check which they can’t, so I took a look at hetrixtools.com.

They advertise being forever free when using a limit number of Uptime/Blacklist endpoints as per

[Wayback/Archive] Free Uptime Monitor & Blacklist Monitor- HetrixTools

  • 15 Uptime Monitors • 1 Minute Interval
  • 32 Blacklist Monitors • Checked Everyday

FREE Forever!

Unlike many other free uptime checking tools, their interval is better.

A thing to consider is that, like many online-first companies, they do not provide company details on either of these pages which you have to agree with when signing on for their service:

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Posted in *nix, hetrixtools, Monitoring, PagerDuty, Power User, Uptimerobot | Leave a Comment »

Bit by Bit – Exploring Low-Level Programming on the Apple IIe | decuser’s blog

Posted by jpluimers on 2026/02/05

At the time of posting [Wayback/Archive] Bit by Bit – Exploring Low-Level Programming on the Apple IIe | decuser’s blog in 20251010, four episodes were up at [Wayback/Archive] Bit by Bit – Exploring low-level programming with an Apple IIe – YouTube which at the time of archiving at the end of October 2025 already got 10 episodes.

Hopefully by now – some 2 months later – the list has grown even further.

Via [Wayback/Archive] Bit by Bit – Exploring Low-Level Programming on the Apple IIe | Applefritter who explains further than the blog post:

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Posted in //e, 6502, 6502 Assembly, Apple, Assembly Language, Development, History, Power User, Retrocomputing, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

#122 – Essential Things Every Software Engineer Should Know – Kevlin Henney – Tech Lead Journal

Posted by jpluimers on 2026/02/05

Every interview with Kevlin Henney is worth reading, listening or watching and this is no exception: [Wayback/Archive] #122 – Essential Things Every Software Engineer Should Know – Kevlin Henney – Tech Lead Journal

It covered quite a bit of two classic books he (co-)edited: “97 Things Every Programmer Should Know” and “97 Things Every Java Programmer Should Know” as their content is relatively timeless.

His first book has been open source for more than 10 years now. The repository is at [Wayback/Archive] 97-things/97-things-every-programmer-should-know: Pearls of wisdom for programmers collected from leading practitioners. and an easier readable edition is at [Wayback/Archive] Introduction · 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know.

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Posted in Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Crowbarring Windows 95 into Windows NT with CAPITALS • The Register

Posted by jpluimers on 2026/02/04

Via [Wayback/Archive] Crowbarring Windows 95 into Windows NT with CAPITALS • The Register refers a nice trick that I have used in various case-codebases as well.

On case sensitive environments the casing method is easy no matter if you use macros or just regular identifiers.

On case insensitive environments, prepending or appending soemthing like an underscore (_) works just as well.

The trick referred to is in a section of [Wayback/Archive] How did the Windows 95 user interface code get brought to the Windows NT code base? – The Old New Thing:

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Posted in Development, Software Development | Tagged: | 1 Comment »

Why not both? (via Post by @mluckovich.bsky.social — Bluesky)

Posted by jpluimers on 2026/02/04

I like that Mike Luckovich often polls about which cartoon to publish.

Sometimes, I hope he draws both because both are great.

[Wayback/Archive] Post by @mluckovich.bsky.social — Bluesky

Which one should I draw?

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Posted in Cartoon, Fun | Leave a Comment »

msxml – Error when loading valid Windows-1252 document “System error: -2146697210” – Stack Overflow

Posted by jpluimers on 2026/02/04

Yes, I know that Windows XP SP3 and Windows 7 SP1 have been end-of-life for a long time, but in the wild they are still being used so here is for posterity:

[Wayback/Archive] msxml – Error when loading valid Windows-1252 document “System error: -2146697210” – Stack Overflow (thanks [Wayback/Archive] Rob Kennedy for the comment):

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Posted in .NET, Delphi, Development, History, Power User, Software Development, Windows, Windows 7, Windows Development, Windows XP, XML, XML/XSD | Leave a Comment »

What is the difference between git pull and git fetch + git rebase? – Stack Overflow

Posted by jpluimers on 2026/02/04

Great Question, Answer and Comment at [Wayback/Archive] What is the difference between git pull and git fetch + git rebase? – Stack Overflow (thanks [Wayback/Archive] michael, [Wayback/Archive] gawkface and [Wayback/Archive] Daniel K.):

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Posted in Development, DVCS - Distributed Version Control, git, Software Development, Source Code Management | Leave a Comment »

Zivver: Immigratie­dienst IND stopt met Amerikaanse e-maildienst vanwege zorgen om veiligheid – Follow the Money – Platform voor onderzoeksjournalistiek

Posted by jpluimers on 2026/02/04

Hier ben ik blij om:

https://archive.is/2026.02.04-091220/https://www.ftm.nl/artikelen/ind-stopt-met-emaildienst-zivver

https://www.ftm.nl/artikelen/ind-stopt-met-emaildienst-zivver

Nu de Rechtspraak en de medici nog.

–jeroen

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

From Meh to WOW – With 1 “Tiny” Hack! – YouTube – where the comments mention better ways than this convoluted solution

Posted by jpluimers on 2026/02/03

[Wayback/Archive] From Meh to WOW – With 1 “Tiny” Hack! – YouTube shows an interesting but convoluted solution to solve temperature drift on a cheap Tuya WT410-BH-3A-W thermostat (there are similar models, see below) based on the replacement sensor [Wayback/Archive] WSEN-TIDS Temperature Sensor IC & EV-Kits | Sensors | Würth Elektronik Product Catalog.

Luckily the commenters stepped in and suggest better and easier ways.

On the other hand, the solution is nice to know as it allows plugging in a remote thermostat that sits in a better place to read the temperature while the control bits stay in a place where it is easier to manually adjust.

Chapters:

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Posted in ARM Cortex-M, Development, Domotics/Smarthome, ESP32, ESPHome, Hardware, Hardware Development, Hardware Interfacing, Home Assistant, Homey, IoT Internet of Things, Network-and-equipment, Power User, STM32 | Leave a Comment »

woo-besluit-broncode-digid-app/NFCService.cs at master · MinBZK/woo-besluit-broncode-digid-app

Posted by jpluimers on 2026/02/03

This method sparked a lot of discussion on social media:

private static string GetPercentageRounds(double percentage)

It is part of [Wayback/Archive] woo-besluit-broncode-digid-app/NFCService.cs at master · MinBZK/woo-besluit-broncode-digid-app which was published after a request according to the Dutch Open Government Act (WOO: Wet Open Overheid).

Even though it services the iOS app, it is written in C# not Swift despite it being client-side code, but that’s not why it sparked a lot of discussion costing more man-hours than the code is worth.

This is the code:

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Posted in .NET, C#, Development, Software Development, Swift, xCode/Mac/iPad/iPhone/iOS/cocoa | Leave a Comment »

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