Archive for the ‘Scripting’ Category
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/04/02
Last month I wrote about CELL function looks interesting but beware: language nightmares coming up….
There I mentioned both formulas from [Wayback/Archive] Get sheet name only – Excel formula | Exceljet and [Wayback/Archive] Insert the current Excel file name, path, or worksheet in a cell – Microsoft Support failing to deliver the expected results
an official Microsoft example of obtaining the Worksheet name which I suspected would not work on systems allowing ] in path names. And indeed it is true: that case fails on both MacOS and Windows in the same way.
Here you see the failures of both the ExcelJet function and the ones from Microsoft Support on two operating systems:
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Posted in Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, Event, Excel, Office, Power User, Scripting, SocialMedia, Software Development, Twitter | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/03/31
Forgot to schedule this one when I saw it two weeks ago: [Wayback/Archive] Sweep the Strait.
Apart from demonstrating that Trump never had a plan, does not and will not have a plan, it is cool to see Minesweeper developed in JavaScript, HTML and CSS mapped with some geodata onto a real map of the Strait of Hormuz.
Cool idea!
It has a function Windows 3.x UI with functional menu (Game -> New Game; Help -> How to Play)
At first, I thought the original developer is this:
However, in fact the developer is:
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Posted in CSS, Development, HTML, JavaScript/ECMAScript, Opinions, OS/2, Power User, Retrocomputing, Scripting, Software Development, Web Development, Windows, Windows 3.11 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/03/26
There is no official Ring API. But there are libraries and tools around that can talk to a Ring ecosystem, mostly written in JavaScript or Python.
Some links I found:
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Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, cURL, Development, Hardware, IoT Internet of Things, JavaScript/ECMAScript, Network-and-equipment, Power User, Python, Ring Doorbell/Chime (Amazon), Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/03/25
On my research list: [Wayback/Archive] nvaccess/nvda: NVDA, the free and open source Screen Reader for Microsoft Windows
A bit more background is in NonVisual Desktop Access – Wikipedia
NonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA) is a free and open-source, portable screen reader for Microsoft Windows. The project was started by Michael Curran in 2006.
NVDA is programmed in Python. It currently works exclusively with accessibility APIs such as UI Automation, Microsoft Active Accessibility, IAccessible2 and the Java Access Bridge, rather than using specialized video drivers to “intercept” and interpret visual information. It is licensed under the GNU General Public License version 2.
It opens a ton of possibilities to use during software development for instance for automation or GUI testing.
It is an open source alternative for JAWS (screen reader) – Wikipedia.
Via this remark in [Wayback/Archive] Angrynerds 086 – Gone in 37 minutes – YouTube (around the 29:30 and 30:30 time marks)
#08 Windows11 gaat 32bit systemen kapotslopen. Dat is niet leuk voor bepaalde toegankelijksopties.
–jeroen
Posted in C++, Development, Python, Scripting, Software Development, Testing | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/03/24
On my research list: [Wayback/Archive] sjinzh/awesome-yolo-object-detection: 🚀🚀🚀 A collection of some awesome public YOLO object detection series projects.
YOLO (You Only Look Once) is a series of computer vision algorithms and libraries based on training data that does ultra-fast object recognition. Most of it is written in Python with the more recent versions all using Pytorch, though interface from various other languages and environments are available. The above article lists them all.
A long time ago I gave a presentation on a few conferences using computer vision of which I blogged about the first one: Spoken @ DevDays 2009 NL – download is online: .NET & hardware – capture video & control servos, in a fun application
My presentation (.NET & hardware – capture video & control servos, in a fun application) was as a GeekNight session.
That imposed geeky stuff, but in addition it addressed an important point: there will be many more means of interaction.
In particular, my ‘geek’ combination of hardware and software would react on movements seen by the webcam by pointing the beam of the laserpointer towards the largest area that moved.
So it is cool to revisit the topic by for now a link dump: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in .NET, AI and ML; Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, Development, Python, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/03/04
Dit is net zo nalatig als de Odildo hack waar alle klantgegevens mee op straat kwamen te liggen: [Wayback/Archive] Odido-router verzamelt analytics van je huishouden
Bevindingen in het kort
- De Odido-router haalt bij een nieuwe WAN-verbinding een bash-script op over een onversleutelde HTTP-verbinding.
- Je kan dit script manipuleren om een root shell op je router te krijgen.
- Als je TLS-verkeer mitm’t zie je analytics-data over de lijn gaan; de scripters hebben TLS-validatie uitgezet (`curl -k`) dus je kan dit ‘versleutelde’ analytics-verkeer inzien.
- Je router stuurt namen en MAC-adressen van devices in je huis door naar Lifemote. Verder deelt het ding de SSID’s en MAC-adressen van WiFi-netwerken in de buurt. En wat analytics-stats over je dataverbruik. Lifemote adverteert met “AI-Powered Home Wi-Fi Solutions for ISPs”. Het voelt wat vies dat zij AI’s gaan trainen met data uit mijn huishouden. Daar vind ik wat van.
--jeroen
Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, bash, bash, Development, ISP, Odido (ex Dutch T-Mobile), Power User, Python, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/03/03
A few years back I tweeted [Wayback/Archive] Jeroen Wiert Pluimers @wiert@mastodon.social on Twitter: “@b0rk @jilles_com Acids vs bases.”
It was a kind of tongue-in-cheek reaction (with a way better picture below) to a very valuable post by b0rk (Julia Evans) on both Twitter and Mastodon [Wayback/Archive] Julia Evans on Twitter: “bases” / [Wayback/Archive] Julia Evans: “bases title: bases # we usually…” – Mastodon for two reasons:
- There are various interpretations of bases
- Octal is very important to educate as errors introduced by its support are hard to spot even if you do know about octal.
Back to Julia’s post:
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Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, 68k, 8086, Assembly Language, bash, bash, C, C++, Chemistry, Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, EPS/PostScript, Event, Haskell, History, Java, Java Platform, JavaScript/ECMAScript, Jon Skeet, LifeHacker, Mathematics, PDP-11, Perl, PHP, Power User, Python, science, Scripting, Software Development, x86 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/02/25
This worked on the built-in Windows PowerShell to get the recommendation status:
$volume = Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_Volume -Filter "DriveLetter = 'C:'"
$analysis = $volume.DefragAnalysis()
$analysis.DefragAnalysis
$analysis.DefragRecommended
Without elevation token, $analysis.DefragAnalysis will be empty and $analysis.DefragRecommended will return False, but elevated it will return the analysis data and $analysis.DefragRecommended will return False or True depending on the analysis result.,
And this gets the most recent defragmentation action from the event-log:
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Posted in CommandLine, Development, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development | Tagged: possible | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/02/25
Often I need to generate passwords or uuids (on some systems called guids). I usually try to do that in a relatively platform agnostic way as I use MacOS, Windows and Linux in various mixes for many reasons (for instance that I have had developed quite hefty RSI in the early 1990s of the and the best keyboard/pointing-device combination for is the MacBook built in keyboard/touchpad combination so basically MacBooks are my window to all other operating systems).
Generating randomly with a good random number generator them makes sense as for most usage, it is important that both passwords and uuids are hard to guess which means having an entropy that is as high as possible.
A cool thing about OpenSSL is that:
- most of not all systems have it installed (it was no coincidence I published Installing OpenSSL on Windows a few days ago)
- it has a very good pseudo-random number generator and as of [Wayback/Archive] OpenSSL version 1.1.1 first released in 2018 has solved the problem around [Wayback/Archive] Random fork-safety – OpenSSLWiki, see [Wayback/Archive] Our Review of the OpenSSL 1.1.1 Random Number Generation Update – OSTIF.org.
- it supports various useful output formats
hex (hexadecimal) and base64 (next to the default of octet – or by today’s naming convention byte – output)
The easiest to generate are passwords. Yes I know that password managers can do this too, but there are some systems I cannot use them on or sync between them (don’t you love the corporate world) so my aim is to use a random password generator in a platform agnostic way which usage is easy to remember. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, Apple, base64, bash, bash, Batch-Files, Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, Encoding, Event, HEX encoding, Mac, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, MacBook, OpenSSL, Power User, Python, Scripting, Software Development, Windows | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/02/24
LLM eat a lot of energy and are their hallucination are bad: [Wayback/Archive] LLM-generated passwords ‘fundamentally weak,’ experts say • The Register
Your AI-generated password isn’t random, it just looks that way
…
AI security company Irregular looked at Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini, and found all three GenAI tools put forward seemingly strong passwords that were, in fact, easily guessable.
…
Basically they are almost as good as the 2007 XKCD “four” number generator, the 2013 XKCD “I’m So Random” or the 2001 Dilbert “nine” number generator further below (don’t read the latter if you dislike Scott Adams)
Is it a coincidence or are these two using two small squared numbers?
Anyway: avoid LLM whenever possible, as most often they do more bad than good.
And for passwords, better use the blog post that was already scheduled for tomorrow: Generating random strings for passwords and uuids/guids on both Windows and Linux using base64 and hex encoding, plus: “Hive Systems: Are Your Passwords in the Green?”
Via [Wayback/Archive] Eloy.: “LLMs are centrist randomness: not useful for anything that requires truth but neither for password generation” – HSNL Social
Below this post, there are some great responses as well.
Comics
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Posted in AI and ML; Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, C++, Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, Event, Internet, InternetArchive, LLM, Pingback, Power User, Python, Scripting, Software Development, Stackoverflow, WayBack machine | Leave a Comment »
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 