The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

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

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Archive for the ‘Development’ Category

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Some pages that have lists of Amazon toplevel domains

Posted by jpluimers on 2026/04/16

Amazon has activities spread across many different countries and regions, heck they even own their own toplevel domain .amazon.

Yesterday in Online tools to test JSONPath Queries (plus a small list of Amazon top level domains) I wrote about the JSON parsing I did for Download your Kindle books soon, because Amazon will block them after February 25, 2025 .

The source of that list is [Wayback/Archive] Amazon operating domains by country. · GitHub [Wayback/Archive] in the file amazon-domains.json.

In the meantime, I finally managed to go through a list of old open browser tabs having more of such lists. Here they are:

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Posted in Development, JavaScript/ECMAScript, JSON, JSONPath, Scripting, Software Development, Web Development | Leave a Comment »

Remember: languages automatically evaluate const expressions

Posted by jpluimers on 2026/04/16

The first tweet below reminded me that few people seem to realise that const expressions are evaluated by the compiler/interpreter into the actual const value. Often this is called constant folding (though that can happen outside constant definitions too!)

Truckloads of source code I have come across in all kinds of languages where people put the calculated values in the expression like described here:

[Wayback/Archive] Kevlin Henney on Twitter: “For example: const int secondsInDay = 24 * 60 * 60; There is no need to calculate it yourself: const int secondsInDay = 86400; Or, related to what I’ve just seen: const int secondsInDay = 86400; // 24 * 60 * 60“.

In languages that support rich enough types, you can even pass a typed constant like timespan, duration or period around:

[Wayback/Archive] David Kerr on Twitter: “@KevlinHenney The general point is well made of choir course. In java, etc you can pass a Duration object around, no need to interpret an in. Type safety, self documenting.”

My recommendation is to use an expression like the first and maybe document the calculated value (for instance for ease of bug hunting) like here

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

Online tools to test JSONPath Queries (plus a small list of Amazon top level domains)

Posted by jpluimers on 2026/04/15

I wanted to parse some JSON being sent back during an XMLHttpRequest (what a wrongly named call is that!) of which I grabbed the content using the web development tools of my Chromium based browser.

Input

I got this list of amazon top level domain names from research I did for my blog post Download your Kindle books soon, because Amazon will block them after February 25, 2025 . The source is [Wayback/Archive] Amazon operating domains by country. · GitHub [Wayback/Archive] in the file amazon-domains.json:

{
    "us": "https://www.amazon.com",
    "uk": "https://www.amazon.co.uk",
    "ca": "https://www.amazon.ca",
    "de": "https://www.amazon.de",
    "es": "https://www.amazon.es",
    "fr": "https://www.amazon.fr",
    "it": "https://www.amazon.it",
    "jp": "https://www.amazon.co.jp",
    "in": "https://www.amazon.in",
    "cn": "https://www.amazon.cn",
    "sg": "https://www.amazon.com.sg",
    "mx": "https://www.amazon.com.mx",
    "ae": "https://www.amazon.ae",
    "br": "https://www.amazon.com.br",
    "nl": "https://www.amazon.nl",
    "au": "https://www.amazon.com.au",
    "tr": "https://www.amazon.com.tr",
    "sa": "https://www.amazon.sa",
    "se": "https://www.amazon.se",
    "pl": "https://www.amazon.pl"
}

The list is far from complete, so tomorrow I will post some more sources in Some pages that have lists of Amazon toplevel domains.

The queries and results show you that the original JSONPath (2007) and its RFC 9535 definition (2024, just 2 years ago) do not support getting the key names of the above list the ~ part in the first query below fails, and only the second query works.

This means that finding the right tooling is important.

Example

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Posted in Conference Topics, Conferences, Delphi, Development, Event, JavaScript/ECMAScript, JSON, JSONPath, PHP, Python, Scripting, Software Development, TypeScript, Web Development | Tagged: | Leave a Comment »

Need to find a “smart” broken/404 link checker

Posted by jpluimers on 2026/04/15

Most of the links from my blog get accompanied with Wayback or Archive.today links, but some don’t.

For those, I need to find a broken/404 link checker which I already hinted at in scr.im « Share your email in a safe way. Get less spam.

Some links that hopefully help me:

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Posted in Development, HTTP, Internet protocol suite, Power User, Software Development, TCP, Web Development | Leave a Comment »

Google Sheets actually has a ton of Excel compatible functions; wish the User Experience was better though

Posted by jpluimers on 2026/04/14

I have been using Microsoft Excel since it beat the Quattro Pro limitation of rows and columns with the version 12.0, on Windows more commonly named Excel 2007 (which also introduced a fully new user experience including the vertical screen estate eating Ribbon – the main reason I like 16:10 monitors over 16:9 ones) and on Mac as Excel 2008.

It means I have like 20 years of Excel experience not just on what it can technically can do (see my Excel posts) but especially on the user experience bit.

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Posted in Development, Excel, Google, GoogleDocs, GoogleSheets, Office, Office 2007, Power User, Software Development, User Experience (ux) | Tagged: | Leave a Comment »

Honghong Lu on Twitter: “Alcohol+paste flux = liquid flux It is pretty good, especially when I use to tin the cable with the solder pot.”

Posted by jpluimers on 2026/04/14

Smart: [Wayback/Archive] Honghong Lu on Twitter: “Alcohol+paste flux = liquid flux It is pretty good, especially when I use to tin the cable with the solder pot.”

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Posted in Development, Hardware Development, Soldering | Leave a Comment »

Reflection Frame: is there a public API yet?

Posted by jpluimers on 2026/04/09

The display quality of [Wayback/Archive] Reflection Frame is nice, but the there was no public API at the time of writing, so I wonder if there is now.

Public API request initially denied at [WaybackSave/Archive] Reflection Frame: Digital Photo Prints by Creative Design Worx — Kickstarter:

  1. Would you expose some simple REST API that would accept a jpeg or similar? It’s fine if it needs to be pre-dithered. Only interested in this if it can be controlled from Home Assistant, not interested in manually using any smartphone app.
  2. … At this time, we don’t have plans to open-source the connection protocol, as our hardware and firmware are designed as a proprietary system. …

Via [Wayback/Archive] Colour E-Ink Picture Frame – The Reflection Frame – YouTube.

--jeroen

Posted in Development, Hardware, Hardware Interfacing, IoT Internet of Things, Power User, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Only available on Window, but sometimes useful, the Excel FILTERXML function

Posted by jpluimers on 2026/04/09

Some links on the [Wayback/Archive] FILTERXML function – Microsoft Support.

It is only available on Windows (because of the underlying XPath libraries used, I think it is MSXML), and “only” as of Excel 2013, but still can be useful.

Some links below on FILTERXML and related XPath information so I can more easily find their content back.

Notes:

  • FILTERXML only supports XPath 1.0
  • The quotes are huge, for one because I don’t use Excel enough to be an expert, but have enough software experience to sometimes want to use complex concepts in Excel. Having all this in one place helps me with that goal.
  • You need to ensure your data is either XML in a well-formed document format, or you can translate your data to well-formed XML.

The links and quotes starting with the question that sparked my interest:

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Posted in Development, Excel, Office, Office 2013, Office 2016, Office VBA, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Windows, XML, XML/XSD, XPath | Leave a Comment »

GitHub – D00Movenok/BounceBack: ↕️🤫 Stealth redirector for your red team operation security

Posted by jpluimers on 2026/04/08

Not just for red teamers (:

[Wayback/Archive] GitHub – D00Movenok/BounceBack: ↕️🤫 Stealth redirector for your red team operation security

Via [WaybackSave/Archive] Florian Roth ⚡️ on X: “This is a legitimate part of red teaming”

[Wayback/Archive] Tom Dörr on X: “Reverse proxy hides infrastructure from scanners …”

--jeroen

Posted in Communications Development, Development, Go (golang), Power User, Red team, Security, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Disabling the Windows News and Interests fly-out widget through the registry

Posted by jpluimers on 2026/04/08

I could not find a reliable per-user setting that works with just logoff/logon for Windows 11 like I found for Windows 10 in Disabling the Windows 10 and Windows 11 news (and weather) feeds.

So (for now?) there is only a global Globally which needs admin rights and a logoff/logon sequence:

:: requires admin
reg add "HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Dsh" /v "AllowNewsAndInterests" /t REG_DWORD /d "0" /f
echo logoff/logon to apply the change, or restart Explorer

Via:

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Posted in Batch-Files, Development, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11 | Leave a Comment »

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