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 ‘Scripting’ Category

Quick batch file hack to download a file calling PowerShell to do the heavy lifting

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/08/12

I needed this download-file.bat a while ago, but forgot how I found out.

It’s in this gist too: [Wayback/Archive] Quick batch file hack to download a file calling PowerShell to do the heavy lifting.

Here we go: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in .NET, Batch-Files, CommandLine, Development, Power User, PowerShell, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11, Windows 8.1 | Leave a Comment »

linux – Get final URL after curl is redirected – Stack Overflow (plus some Twitter scraping tricks)

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/08/06

Sometimes I need [Wayback/Archive] Redirect Checker | Check your Statuscode 301 vs 302 on the command-line, so cURL to the rescue: [Wayback/Archive] linux – Get final URL after curl is redirected – Stack Overflow. The relevant portions of answers and comments further below.

TL;DR:

Since I prefer verbose command-line arguments (you can find them at the [Wayback/Archive] curl – How To Use on-line man page) especially in scripts this HTTP GET request is what works with Twitter:

% curl --location --silent --output /dev/null --write-out "%{url_effective}\n" https://twitter.com/anyuser/status/20
https://x.com/anyuser/status/20

This failed (twitter dislikes HTTP HEAD requests):

% curl --head --location --silent --output /dev/null --write-out "%{url_effective}\n" https://twitter.com/anyuser/status/20
https://twitter.com/anyuser/status/20

Notes

Given so many of my scripts now run on zsh, I added the new-line because of command line – Why does a cURL request return a percent sign (%) with every request in ZSH? – Stack Overflow. You can strip that bit.

Note that these do not perform client side redirects, so they do not return the ultimate originating URL https://x.com/jack/status/20 (which was the first ever Tweet on what was back then called twttr) as Twitter on the client-side overwrites window.location.href with the final URL. Similar behaviour for getting the Twitter user handle of a Twitter user ID, more on Twitter tricks below.

Tweet by TweetID trick via [Wayback/Archive] Accessing a tweet using only its ID (and without the Twitter API) – Bram.us.

Further reading (thanks [Wayback/Archive] vise, [Wayback/Archive] Daniel Stenberg, [Wayback/Archive] Ivan, [Wayback/Archive] AndrewF, [Wayback/Archive] Roger Campanera, and [Wayback/Archive] Dave Baird):

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, bash, Batch-Files, Bookmarklet, Communications Development, Conference Topics, Conferences, CSS, cURL, Development, Event, HTTP, Internet protocol suite, JavaScript/ECMAScript, Power User, Scripting, SocialMedia, Software Development, TCP, Twitter, Web Browsers, Web Development | Tagged: | Leave a Comment »

Tootski, a sharing bookmarklet for Mastodon · GitHub

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/08/05

For my research list: [Wayback/Archive] Tootski, a sharing bookmarklet for Mastodon · GitHub

--jeroen

Posted in Bookmarklet, Development, JavaScript/ECMAScript, Mastodon, Power User, Scripting, SocialMedia, Software Development, Web Browsers | Leave a Comment »

Some notes on testing locally modified chocolatey packages

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/08/01

A few notes after I helped updating [Wayback/Archive] Chocolatey Software | SetACL (Portable) 3.0.6.0 to version 3.1.2.0 and [Wayback/Archive] Updates glab from 1.22.0 to 1.24.1; fixes #2 by jpluimers · Pull Request #3 · corbob/ChocoPackages.

As the burden on maintainers (not just Chocolatey ones) is high, not all packages get updated soon after new underlying software versions arrive.

Which means the maintainers are often very happy when an occasional user helps and preferably sends in a pull request.

That brings me to the an important point IN DOCUMENTATION DO NOT LIMIT EXAMPELS TO ONLY ABBREVIATED PARAMETERS OR VERBS as that scares away occasional and novice users of your software.

Chocolatey documentation is no exception on this, hence this blog post meant for people other than maintaining chocolatey packages on a day to day base.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in CertUtil, Chocolatey, CommandLine, Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, Event, Power User, PowerShell, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development, Windows | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

command line – Why does a cURL request return a percent sign (%) with every request in ZSH? – Stack Overflow

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/07/31

I try to stay on the default shells of environments as much as possible, especially as that makes life easier when needing to work on an non-customised system.

Apple switched back from an ancient latest GPLv2 version 3.2 of bash (they regard newer GPLv3 as toxic to their revenue stream¹), introduced MIT-license based zsh and introduced a bash nag screen a few years ago forcing users to switch. Suppressing that message reliably is trickier than you might think².

After so many years of bash, I still stumble over things that zsh does differently: [Wayback/Archive] command line – Why does a cURL request return a percent sign (%) with every request in ZSH? – Stack Overflow (thanks [Wayback/Archive] Travis and [Wayback/Archive] zaTricky) is a “feature” with a simple workaround for cURL:

This is a zsh feature that prints a percent-and-newline after a command completes if that command does not already include a newline at the end of its output. If zsh did not do this, you would either not ever notice the fact that the command didn’t print a newline – or you’d see zsh’s command prompt not start on the margin and think it was a bug in zsh.

$ curl http://api.macvendors.com/0015c7   
Cisco Systems, Inc%     
$ curl -w '\n' http://api.macvendors.com/0015c7
Cisco Systems, Inc

Since the above example now writes a redirect messages (good bye HTTP, welcome HTTPS), and I very much dislike short command-line parameters, here is version with the long form of the [Wayback/Archive] curl -w or --write-out parameter :

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, Apple, bash, bash, Development, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, macOS 14 Sonoma, macOS 15 Sequoia, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, zsh | Leave a Comment »

Kevlin Henney on “configuration is code” in his essay “Out of Control. An essay on paradigms, refactoring…”

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/07/31

For my link archive [Wayback/Archive] Out of Control. An essay on paradigms, refactoring… | by Kevlin Henney | Dec, 2020 | Medium.

Neither because Kevlin describes how to refactor a basic algorithm to convert Roman numerals into Hindu-Arabic numerals (in part by using the fact that an if statement can be considered a bounded case of a while loop), nor because he splits the resulting algorithm in coded data and coded statements, or because he mentions the [Wayback/Archive] Gilded Rose Kata but because well, you should just read it in full.

Remember though: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Configuration Management, Development, DevOps, Power User, Python, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

PowerShell: playing around with Get-PnpDevice filtering with -Class and -Status

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/07/29

I while ago I was playing around in PowerShell with Get-PnpDevice (which got introduced in Windows 10 and Windows Server 2019):

[Wayback/Archive] Jeroen Wiert Pluimers: “@jilles_com … this is the difference between only connected disks versus including ones that had been connected in the past.Output difference between Get-PnpDevice -Class DiskDrive -Status OK Get-PnpDevice -Class DiskDrive …” – Mastodon

Read the rest of this entry »

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

Wakamai Fondue, the tool that answers the question “what can my font do?”

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/07/24

What Can my Font do - beta pageVery cool web site that I only discovered last year, with the clever name: [Wayback/Archive] Wakamai Fondue, the tool that answers the question “what can my font do?”

Drop a font!
Fonts aren’t uploaded,
they stay on your computer

Back then I used it to investigate some properties of SMuFL (Standard Music Font Layout) fonts as sometimes editing a PDF is easier than manually entering/transcribing it in MuseScore.

Of course you can use local font tools, but this is far easier for occasional use.

The beta can do even more at the risk of bumping into bugs: [Wayback/Archive] Wakamai Fondue, the tool that answers the question “what can my font do?”

Note the colour matching of the text around the circle with the fondue background image.

Oh: it is open source too, written mainly in JavaScript, CSS and a tiny bits of HTML and Python, based on Vue.js and npm, and available as parts in the repositories of [Wayback/Archive] Wakamai Fondue · GitHub:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in CSS, Development, Font, HTML, JavaScript/ECMAScript, npm, Python, Scripting, Software Development, Vue.js, Web Development | Leave a Comment »

GitHub – minvws/horsebattery: A password generator inspired by https://xkcd.com/936/

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/07/22

[Wayback/Archive] GitHub – minvws/horsebattery: A password generator inspired by https://xkcd.com/936/

Inspiration: [Wayback/Archive] xkcd: Password Strength

Curated Dutch word list: [Wayback/Archive] horsebattery/config/nl/word-list.txt at main · minvws/horsebattery · GitHub

Via: [Wayback/Archive] Discord

--jeroen

Posted in Development, Passwords/manages, PHP, Power User, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Disabling the ever returning screens after Windows install/upgrade, and advertisements/feeds

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/07/21

This started out ad a post to make things easier for my mentally brother, but then I figured it makes it so much easier for myself as well: getting rid of the evern returning Windows nag screens. Not just the ones after logon during initial Windows install that get back about every other Windows 20H update (thank god they stepped away from 19## version numbering that felt so, ehm, last millennium), but also the various “suggestions” in start menu, on the taskbar and elsewhere.

I understand that basically giving Windows 10 and 11 for free to many Windows 7/8 licensed machines or Windows-preinstalled machines induces Microsoft to see Windows as an advertising environment, but hey: many users can do without these distractions.

It is hard to solve, as even the underlying registry settings seem to be reset every once in a while, and solving it globally is not an option: the settings are a per-user one. Which means you need to run script early during every Windows logon to overwrite these settings.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Batch-Files, CommandLine, Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, Event, Power User, PowerShell, PowerShell, Registry Files, Scripting, Software Development, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11, Windows Development | Tagged: | Leave a Comment »