The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

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

  • My badges

    Mastodon

  • Twitter Updates

  • My Flickr Stream

    20140508-Delphi-2007--Project-Options--Cannot-Edit-Application-Title-HelpFile-Icon-Theming20140430-Fiddler-Filter-Actions-Button-Run-Filterset-now20140424-VMware-Fusion-6.0.3.-no-reclaimable
    More Photos

  • Pages

  • All categories

  • Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

    Join 1,854 other subscribers

Archive for the ‘Personal’ Category

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »

Reminder to self: bring non-decaf tea to the US or buy some non-decaf tea as soon as I get there

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/09/10

Most places in the US only get you decaf tea or herbal tea (which is almost entirely unlike tea), but there Aint_Nothing_Like_the_Real_Thing.

I’m not sure why they do that so much, but I don’t drink coffee and hardly any sodas, and still want to fit into the ‘caffeine’ slice of society :)

Besides it is silly to pay the same or extra to get less (like low-fat diary products where you pay to remove fat, but add water and you need to watch the homogenization of the food emulsion).

So I will either bring a bunch of regular Earl Grey tea (almost all tea here in Europe is non-decaf), or quickly find a supermarket that sells some non-decaf Earl Grey tea.

–jeroen

PS:  I do understand that some people can’t handle the caffeine, but only having decaf feels silly to me.

Posted in About, Opinions, Personal | 2 Comments »

Delphi XE2 FireMonkey: the reason you should not have used assembly

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/09/09

Right now, I’m porting a bunch of stuff over to FireMonkey in Delphi XE 2 so it can run cross platform.
(Be sure to attend the RAD Studio XE2 World Tour when possible, this stuff is way cool!)

Having avoided Windows x86 assembly in my own sources for years, I’m astonished by the number of 3rd party libraries that do.

Right now, third party libraries that you want to use with FireMonkey need these requirements:

  1. In order to run on x64 or OS X:
    Don’t rely on x86 assembly instructions, or provide alternatives for other platforms than Windows x86
  2. In order to run on the an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch iOS device (which all run on Arm), or iOS simulator from the iOS SDK (which is not an emulator, it runs x86):
    Be compatible with Free Pascal 2.5.1.

And the fact that you should have separated your business logic from your UI logic years ago :)

Of course that was what the Future proofing your Delphi apps seminar from Simon Stuart was about.

What baffles me is that so little 3rd party code adheres to that.

–jeroen

PS:

Today and tomorrow I’m be at the German Delphi-Tage.de conference; I’ve already met a lot of people in the Delphi XE2 tutorial and look forward to meet more tomorrow.
Contrary to what the schedule says, my session on a pragmatic Delphi code generator will be in German, I’m sure most attendees will like that.

Sunday I’ll fly to SFO to speak at the DelphiLive.com conference in San Jose, CA.
There, my preconference tutorial on Delphi Certification and sessions on XML and XSLT will be in English, as I’m sure more people there understand that better than German :)

Posted in About, Certifications, Conferences, Delphi, Delphi-Tage.de, DelphiLive, Development, Event, FireMonkey, Personal, Software Development | 6 Comments »

Foto’s 14e editie van de Katwijkbinse Truckrun – Oranjevereniging Katwijk a/d Rijn

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/08/22

Afgelopen zaterdag was alweer de 14e editie van de Katwijkbinse Truckrun.

Dit geweldige evenement laat mensen met een verstandelijke beperking meerijden in één van de 100 trucks en 3 touring cars door de bollenstreek.

Ook dit jaar mocht ik mijn broer wegbrengen en ophalen, en heb meteen de kans schoon gezien ‘s ochtends en ‘s middags wat foto’s te schieten van de trucks op het voormalige Marinevliegkamp Valkenburg.

  • Foto’s ochtend (foto’s op volgorde van binnenkomst, het blauwe formulier achter elk raam bevat het trucknummer)
  • Foto’s middag (foto’s op volgorde van Trucknummer)

Dit jaar was de eerste keer dat de vrachtwagen van Adest Musica mee mocht rijden.

Met nieuwe bestickering van al onze sponsors luidt dit twee belangrijke dingen in:

  1. De Adest Night of Music op 8 oktober die de Rotary Sassenheim samen organiseert, en waar – samen met de diverse afdelingen van Adest Musica – de bekende trombonist Ben van Dijk, saxofonist Wouter Kiers en partyband Ain’t no Secret zullen optreden.
    De opbrengst komt ten gunste van de Jeugdband van Adest Musica, en natuurlijk geven zij die avond ook een mooi optreden!
  2. De aanloop naar het Wereld Muziek Concours 2013 (de tijd gaat snel: over 2 jaar dat alweer achter de rug!) waar de Drum- en Showband Adest Musica weer een puik product gaat neerzetten.

Ben je trucker of deelnemer, en wil je graag originele foto’s, laat het dan even weten via het contactformulier: vul in ieder geval het nummer van je Truck in.

Ben je benieuwd naar Adest Musica? Schrijf je in voor de nieuwsbrief van Adest’ Night of Music!

Volgend jaar is de 15e Katwijkbinse Truckrun, tot dan!

–jeroen

via: Oranjevereniging Katwijk a/d Rijn.

Posted in About, Adest Musica, Event, Personal, Truckrun | Leave a Comment »

Hardloopcursus bij AV’23 Watergraafsmeer – Amsterdam – dichtbij.nl – Amsterdam-Centrum

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/08/19

Hardloopcursus bij AV’23 Watergraafsmeer

Dit is echt een toffe cursus; ben ik ook bij begonnen om – na een blessure door zelf aanklooien – weer lekker aan de gang te gaan.

Inmiddels zit ik op 10 km, en nog steeds blessurevrij.

–jeroen

Via: Hardloopcursus bij AV’23 Watergraafsmeer – Amsterdam – dichtbij.nl – Amsterdam-Centrum.

Posted in About, Personal | Leave a Comment »

#fail #rookzone #astmapatient #schiphol personeel weigert in te grijpen

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/08/11

Ik sprak enkele Schiphol medewerkers aan, nadat ik een longpatient hoestend en proestend zich een baan door de massa rokers had zien bewegen, of ze de rokers uit de rookvrije zone naar de (overdekte!) rokerszone wilden sturen.

Wat ik letterlijk te horen kreeg: “We laten die mensen lekker staan, want als we ze wegsturen, staan ze er over 3 minuten weer”.

Ofwel: Schiphol voldoet niet aan haar verplichtingen en laat longpatienten in de kou staan.

Ook na aandringen dat ik het erg op prijs zou stellen, bleven ze bij hun standpunt.

Toen ik aangaf dat ik dan foto’s zou publiceren, gaven ze aan dat dat mocht.

Dus bij deze:

Foto van de rokers om het bord “rookvrije zone” (rechts onder de rest van de overkapping stonden er zeker nog 20):

Foto van de (ook overdekte!) lege rookzone:

Posted in About, Opinions, Personal | Leave a Comment »

IBM turns 100 today: Happy birthday, IBM

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/06/16

Today, a lot of articles and blogs will mention IBM’s 100th birthday.

My first encounter were their Selectric typewriters, followed by their PC and AT computers at high-school and university, both setting standards for personal computing.

I’ve used their AS/400 machines (via iSeries now named System i, and merged into their IBM Power Systems), RS/6000 (now System p) and mainframes (via zSeries now named System z) too.

However, being mainly on the PC side, I got totally addicted to their keyboards and to their  ThinkPad line of machines that – as part of IBM’s PC devision – got sold to Lenovo, and their hard drives (which got sold to HGST and are now part of Western Digital).

IBM still do a lot of research, which sets them apart from many other IT companies.

I love that, as a lot of good things has come from it: just google it or browse their lists with highlights on their research accomplishments.

Happy birthday IBM.

–jeroen

Posted in About, Opinions, Personal | Leave a Comment »

Zo onderweg naar #Taptoe #Mierlo om met #adestmusica te spelen #bolesian collega’s kom eens kijken :-)

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/05/21

Om 19:00 vanavond speel ik als deel van Adest Musica op taptoe Mierlo.

Dus (oud) Bolesianen en andere bekenden uit die buurt: als je tijd zin hebt, komeens kijken naar wat voor mooie show we daar geven.

–jeroen

Posted in About, Adest Musica, Personal | Leave a Comment »

Post 500

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/05/21

This is post 500 after 2 years and 1 month of blogging here.

When starting this blog, I never estimated the volume would be like this.

So far, the blog has been a great way of meeting new people, something I didn’t anticipate when starting it. Thanks everyone for commenting and teaching me. I’m never too old to learn something new :-)

One thing I did hope for was that the blog would make it easier to find things back. That really works: somehow my blog scores quite well on various search engines. That is only possible when other sites link to me: they apparently do, and I sure hope it is because of the content here. Thanks for linking!

I’m anxious how the blog evolves over the next year: will post # 750 be there? Did the topics change or not?

I’m open to suggestions, so please let me know what you like about this blog, and what direction you would like to evolve it to.

–jeroen

Posted in About, Personal | 1 Comment »

FAT32 formatting a HDD volume bigger than 32 gigabyte

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/05/02

Most external USB HDDs you buy are way bigger than 32 gigabyte, and factory formatted with NTFS.

Nowadays, many devices (TVs, modems, routers, etc) support attaching HDDs, but not all of them support NTFS, but most of them support FAT32.

My brother has such a TV. He has mental retardation (they have euphemisms for that; he basically has an IQ < 50, which in his means he can live on his own but needs daily visits from people that help him with the more complex things in life).

I’m his legal guardian (Dutch: curator), so my wife and me take care of some of those things.

This included getting his TV to recognize a USB HDD so he can watch his favourite TV series I recorded for him (Knight Rider, Top Gear, etc).

Windows NT and beyond cannot format FAT32 in an easy way.

They can from the commandline using the format command: use FOMAT X: /FS:FAT32 for that, it is slow and as soon as you add the /Q parameter to speed things up, it imposes the 32 gigabyte limit.

Microsoft suggests botting Windows 98 or Windows Me, but those have too many limitations (lack of USB support, no 48-bit LBA, imposing 137 gigabyte HDD limit, etc).

Luckily, Ridgecrop Consultants Ltd has a FAT32FORMAT tool  and accompanying GUI wrapper. They format any HDD using FAT32. Their tools work at least in Windows XP and up (I haven’t tested Windows 2000 and NT 4).

Problem solved: my brother can happily watch his favourite TV series I recorded for him :)

–jeroen

Posted in About, Personal, Power User, Windows, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »

Jeroen turns 42 today

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/04/29

is a remarkeble number, and forty-two is what Jeroen turns today.

Jeroen won’t panic, as he lives on a mostly harmless planet, and plans to live for quite a while longer.

Don’t forget your towel today!

–jeroen’s alter ego

Posted in About, Personal | Leave a Comment »

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »