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 ‘Software Development’ Category

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Unicode symbols in a batch file – Stack Overflow

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/06/30

Even with a batch file saved as UTF-8 (with or without BOM), by default it does not show most non-ASCII Unicode characters.

The reason is that the default codepage usually is an ANSI one like codepage 437.

Thanks [Wayback] niutech for answering [Wayback/Archive.is] Unicode symbols in a batch file – Stack Overflow:

You can manually set the codepage to UTF-8 by typing chcp 65001 at the top of your batch file.

Codepage 65001 is Windows speak for the UTF-8 code page. I have some more blog entries mentioning codepage 65001.

An example where I needed this was to show how to address the localghost from a batch file (see The spookback localghost address to resolve 👻). This was the resulting UTF-8 saved batch file:

chcp 65001
ping 👻
ping xn--9q8h

For single-byte non-ASCII characters, you can usually get away with setting the encoding of your batch file to your default code page as mentioned in [Wayback/Archive.is] cmd – Using box-drawing Unicode characters in batch files – Stack Overflow.

–jeroen

Posted in Batch-Files, Development, Encoding, Scripting, Software Development, Unicode, UTF-8, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »

chocolatey-community/chocolatey-test-environment: A testing setup related to how the Chocolatey Package Verifier runs testing. Used for manual testing or prior to submission

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/06/29

On my list of things to play around with: [Wayback/Archive.is] chocolatey-community/chocolatey-test-environment: A testing setup related to how the Chocolatey Package Verifier runs testing. Used for manual testing or prior to submission

It sort of is a standalone version of the [Wayback] Chocolatey Software Docs | Package Verifier Moderation Service that you can use to check Chocolatey package that you develop/modify.

From the github repository README:

Requirements

You need a computer with:

  • a 64-bit processor and OS
  • Intel VT-x enabled (usually not an issue if your computer is newer than 2011). This is necessary because we are using 64bit VMs.
  • Hyper-V may need to be disabled for Virtualbox to work properly if your computer is a Windows box. NOTE: This may actually not be required.
  • At least 10GB of free space.

Setup

To get started, ensure you have the following installed:

  • Vagrant 1.8.1+ – linked clones is the huge reason here. You can technically use any version of Vagrant 1.3.5+. But you will get the best performance with 1.8.x+. It appears you can go up to Vagrant 2.1.5, but may have some issues with 2.2.2 and Windows guests (newer versions may be fine).
  • Virtualbox 4.3.28+ – 6.1.6 (this flows in the selection of Vagrant – 5.2.22 seems to have some issues but newer versions may work fine)
  • vagrant sahara plugin (vagrant plugin install sahara)

NOTE: If you decide to run with version 1.8.1 of Vagrant, you are going to need to set the VAGRANT_SERVER_URL environment variable as described in this forum post, otherwise, you will get an HTTP 404 error when attempting to download the base vagrant box used here.

Related: people wanting to do a similar thing for Linux: [Archive.is] chocolatey/choco: Has anyone ever tried to set up virtual box with linux (e.g. ubuntu) for choco testing ? – Gitter

Yes, it should work for choco new, choco pack, and choco push, running on mono.
[Wayback/Archive.is] https://github.com/chocolatey/choco/runs/3660684196?check_suite_focus=true

…

There is also a dockerfile available here:
[Wayback/Archive.is] https://github.com/chocolatey/choco/tree/develop/docker

However, as @AdmiringWorm said, there are not any official builds or official support at this time.

…

In my own private fork of choco however I’m using such interfaces as RestartManager

    //https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/restartmanager/nf-restartmanager-rmstartsession
    [DllImport("rstrtmgr.dll", SetLastError = true, CharSet = CharSet.Auto)]
    static extern int RmStartSession(out uint pSessionHandle,
                                     int dwSessionFlags,
                                     string strSessionKey);

    //https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/restartmanager/nf-restartmanager-rmendsession
    [DllImport("rstrtmgr.dll", SetLastError = true)]
    static extern int RmEndSession(uint pSessionHandle);

    //https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/restartmanager/nf-restartmanager-rmgetlist
    [DllImport("rstrtmgr.dll", SetLastError = true)]
    static extern int RmGetList(uint dwSessionHandle,
                                out uint pnProcInfoNeeded,
                                ref uint pnProcInfo,
                                [In, Out] ProcessInfo[] rgAffectedApps,
                                ref uint lpdwRebootReasons);

those will be windows specific indeed, but I’ll reach them later on.

Tarmo Pikaro

–jeroen

Posted in .NET, Chocolatey, CommandLine, Development, Power User, PowerShell, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development, Windows | Leave a Comment »

Getting meta data from an image URL – JSFiddle – Code Playground (not sure why it fails on the Chrome console)

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/06/28

It works as a [Wayback/Archive.is] Edit fiddle – JSFiddle – Code Playground.

And it fails on the Google Chrome console:

GET https://anniversary.archive.org/files/2021/07/October-2001-Google-Drive-7-19-2021-3-24-49-PM-768x276.png net::ERR_FAILED

The code is from [Wayback/Archive.is] javascript – Get width height of remote image from url – Stack Overflow (which has many more sync and async code examples that all fail in the same way, not sure why).

Glad the JSFiddle one works.

Via: [Wayback] get image dimensions from url – Google Search

–jeroen

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

CyberChef: The Cyber Swiss Army Knife – a web app for encryption, encoding, compression and data analysis.

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/06/23

[Wayback/Archive.is] CyberChef:

a simple, intuitive web app for carrying out all manner of “cyber” operations within a web browser. These operations include simple encoding like XOR or Base64, more complex encryption like AES, DES and Blowfish, creating binary and hexdumps, compression and decompression of data, calculating hashes and checksums, IPv6 and X.509 parsing, changing character encodings, and much more.

Source code at [Wayback/Archive.is] gchq/CyberChef: The Cyber Swiss Army Knife – a web app for encryption, encoding, compression and data analysis.

Via [Archive.is] Jilles🏳️‍🌈 on Twitter: “Hidden in plain sight. Rot13 cross word. Hidden Barcodes. Qr codes. Barely any InfoSec skill required. Still a hand full. Usually my to go place is: Cyberchef. I did a fun one for cyberklaas using ansi art.… “

Jilles also pointed to the solving part in [Archive.is] Jilles🏳️‍🌈 on Twitter: “See also, for solving: SCWF… “

The [Wayback/Archive.is] Solve Crypto with Force! needs to run without most script blockers, so best run it in an anonymous/private browser window.

Source code for SCWF is at [Wayback/Archive.is] DaWouw/SCWF: CTF tool for identifying, brute forcing and decoding encryption schemes in an automated way.

Screen shot of Cyberchef example “Perform AES decryption, extracting the IV from the beginning of the cipher stream” [Archive.is]:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Barcode, Cyberchef, Development, EAN, Encoding, Encryption, Hashing, Power User, QR code, Security, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

A short review of a few Visual Studio Code preview extensions

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/06/22

A very short review:

I found the above doing a search after visiting the below to links:

–jeroen

Posted in .NET, Development, Software Development, Visual Studio and tools, vscode Visual Studio Code | Leave a Comment »

To Favor Microsoft VS Code, Microsoft’s GitHub is Killing GitHub’s Atom Editor – time to prepare switching to another open source editor with a rich ecosystem in less than half a year

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/06/21

If you are still on Atom, try to see if other cross platform open source editors suit your needs.

Myself, I have moved to Visual Studio Code quite some time ago as, though based on Electron – the core of Atom, it is way faster and much better supported than Atom.

The official announcement is at [Wayback/Archive] Sunsetting Atom | The GitHub Blog.

Various sites reported it in different phrasings:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in .NET, atom editor, Development, Missed Schedule, Power User, SocialMedia, Software Development, Text Editors, vscode Visual Studio Code, WordPress | Leave a Comment »

Inclusie/toegankelijkheid voor het @LUMC_Leiden: een tabel in HTML in plaats van plaatje zonder alt-text – #a11y

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/06/20

Voor inclusie en toegankelijkheid heb ik het plaatje van de tabel met voedingsmiddelen op [Wayback/Archive] Coloscopie | LUMC onderstaand in een HTML versie gegoten dankzij Google Lens die voor mij de tekst via OCR eruit gehaald heeft.

Dit vanwege een ingreep die binnenkort plaatsvindt waarbij een laxeerprotocol met Picoprep bij hoort.

De tabel als plaatje

De tabel is niet leesbaar voor mensen met een visuele beperking, en is afgedrukt bovendien zo klein dat zelfs voor mensen met een normaal zicht dit bijna niet leesbaar is.

Vanuit oogpunt van (verplichte, zie onder) toegankelijkheid en inclusie van mensen met een beperking is dit onwenselijk.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in accessibility (a11y), Awareness, Development, Health, Hospital, Inclusion / inclusive society, LifeHacker, LUMC, Power User, Web Development | Leave a Comment »

How can you export the Visual Studio Code extension list? (via: Stack Overflow)

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/06/16

Adapted from [Archive.is] How can you export the Visual Studio Code extension list? – Stack Overflow, presuming that code is on the PATH:

  1. From the command-line interface on MacOS, Linux, BSD or on Windows with git installed:
    code --list-extensions | xargs -L 1 echo code --install-extension
  2. From the command-line interface on MacOS, Linux, BSD or on Windows without git installed:
    code --list-extensions | % { "code --install-extension $_" }

    or, as I think, more clearly (see also [WayBack] syntax – What does “%” (percent) do in PowerShell? – Stack Overflow):

    code --list-extensions | foreach { "code --install-extension $_" }

    or even more explanatory:

    code --list-extensions | ForEach-Object { "code --install-extension $_" }
  3. From the command-line interface on Windows as a plain cmd.exe command:
    @for /f %l in ('code --list-extensions') do @echo code --install-extension %l
  4. On Windows as a plain cmd.exe batch file (in a .bat/.cmd script):
    @for /f %%l in ('code --list-extensions') do @echo code --install-extension %%l
  5. The above two on Windows can also be done using PowerShell:
    PowerShell -Command "code --list-extensions | % { """""code --install-extension $_""""" }"

    Note that here too, the % can be expanded into foreach or ForEach-Object for clarity.

All of the above prepend “code --install-extension ” (note the trailing space) before each installed Visual Studio Code extension.

They all give you a list like this which you can execute on any machine having Visual Studio Code installed and its code on the PATH, and a working internet connection:

code --install-extension DavidAnson.vscode-markdownlint
code --install-extension ms-vscode.powershell
code --install-extension yzhang.markdown-all-in-onex

(This is about the minimum install for me to edit markdown documents and do useful things with PowerShell).

Of course you can pipe these to a text-file script to execute them later on.

The double-quote escaping is based on [Wayback/Archive.is] How to escape PowerShell double quotes from a .bat file – Stack Overflow:

you need to escape the " on the command line, inside a double quoted string. From my testing, the only thing that seems to work is quadruple double quotes """" inside the quoted parameter:

powershell.exe -command "echo '""""X""""'"

Via: [Archive.is] how to save your visual studio code extension list – Google Search

--jeroen

Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, .NET, bash, Batch-Files, CommandLine, Console (command prompt window), Development, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Power User, PowerShell, PowerShell, Software Development, Visual Studio and tools, vscode Visual Studio Code, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Development, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016, WSL Windows Subsystem for Linux, xargs | Leave a Comment »

AI and ML are just as smart as the training data, which for large sets of data usually gives biased or outright results

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/06/15

Kris phrases a thought that has been lingering in my head for decades: [Archive.is] Kristian Köhntopp on Twitter: “”AI” ist nicht intelligent, sondern reproduziert das Trainingsmaterial und die Vorurteile darin. Es handelt sich um automatisierten Aberglauben und Verschwörungsquatsch. Je größer das Netzwerk, um so wirrer.” / Twitter

Basically there are two kinds of AI:

  • a bunch of if/then/else statements
  • a model based engine that is as bad as it’s training data; the larger the set of training data, the worse it gets.

A few of the images in the excellent thread that Kris quoted (more in the [Wayback/archive.is] PDF): [Archive.is] Owain Evans on Twitter: “Paper: New benchmark testing if models like GPT3 are truthful (= avoid generating false answers). We find that models fail and they imitate human misconceptions. Larger models (with more params) do worse! PDF: https://t.co/3zo3PNKrR5 with S.Lin (Oxford) + J.Hilton (OpenAI)… “

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in AI and ML; Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

How isotopp became the online handle of Kristian Köhntopp

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/06/09

Like me, [Archive.is] Kristian Köhntopp is a nerd.

Unlike me, Kris bumped into character encoding issues for just about all his digital life. That started about the same time as mine, but again unlike me: he was way more involved in the technical aspects of it.

First a series of Tweets:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in ASCII, C++, Development, Encoding, EPS/PostScript, Font, ISO-8859, ISO8859, Power User, Software Development, Times New Roman | Leave a Comment »

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