The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

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

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When Twitter “twitter.com/i/timeline” fails (often, intermittently, usually for a few days, sometimes weeks)

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/03/21

Quite often, but at unpredictable intervals and durations, twitter.com/i/timeline fails.

I finally got the right search terms for this, so via [Wayback] twitter search your timeline – Google Search I found [Wayback] How to search your Twitter timeline | iMore.

The alternative:

  • shows most of the tweets from the timeline
  • does not show notifications (so you have to refresh every now and then)

Their trick is to filter your tweets on filter:follows filter:nativeretweets, then order by latest (the f=live bit below).

Direct web-link: twitter.com/search?q=filter%3Afollows%20filter%3Anativeretweets&src=typed_query&f=live

For me, this filter seems to work better: filter:follows -filter:replies -filter:nativeretweets as it allows me to easily include or exclude retweets.

Direct URL: twitter.com/search?q=filter%3Afollows%20-filter%3Areplies%20-filter%3Anativeretweets&src=typed_query&f=live

I bolded a few bits above for readability; below you can see how the URI is formed from the filter parts:

filter part URI part notes
twitter.com/search?q= base of URI
filter:follows filter%3Afollows show tweets of people you follow
%20 encoded space
filter:nativeretweets filter%3Anativeretweets only show new-style retweets
& URI parameter separator
src=typed_query tells Twitter this is a “filter”
f=live the “filter” is “Latest” tweets (without this, it is “Top” tweets)
-filter:replies -filter%3Areplies do not show replies (those are in your regular “notifications” already)
-filter:nativeretweets -filter%3Anativeretweets do not show new-style retweets

–jeroen

Posted in LifeHacker, Power User, SocialMedia, Twitter | Leave a Comment »

Driver Store-File Repository using huge disk space. How can I reduce – Microsoft Community

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/03/18

[WayBack] Driver Store-File Repository using huge disk space. How can I reduce – Microsoft Community

Try deleting the unneeded drivers by following the steps below:

  1. On the search bar, type command prompt, right-click on it from the list then run it as Administrator.
  2. Type the command pnputil.exe /e > c:\drivers.txt then click Enter.
  3. This command will create a file drivers.txt on C: drive with the list of driver packages that are stored in the File Repository folder.
  4. Delete all unnecessary drivers with the help of command pnputil.exe /d oemNN.inf (NN — is a number of drivers file package from drivers.txt, as example oem07.inf). In case the driver is in use, you will see an error while trying delete it.

This can happen if you swapped a lot of hardware around. Especially graphics drivers tend to be bloatware.

Note this only deletes uninstalled drivers. The problem: some driver software, especially video drivers, keeps parts installed, even during uninstall, and even when running in Safe Mode.

Examples for AMD:

Booting in Safe Mode

One of the nagging Windows 10 things is that out of the box it is hard to boot in safe mode: you have to reset and fail the boot your Windows system multiple times, or you have to hold a shift key (which some BIOS versions do not allow).

Luckily, you can reset the “press F8 during boot” behaviour of older Windows versions:

  1. Start an administrative command prompt (confirm UAC elevation if needed)
  2. Run this command (the bold changes the setting; the others keep track of the changes and show the difference):
    bcdedit /enum > %temp%\bcdedit.original.txt
bcdedit /set {bootmgr} DisplayBootMenu true
bcdedit /enum > %temp%\bcdedit.F8-enabled.txt
fc %temp%\bcdedit.original.txt %temp%\bcdedit.F8-enabled.txt

    (many sites you also need to run something like bcdedit /set {default} bootmenupolicy legacy or bcdedit /set {current} bootmenupolicy legacy or replace the “default” and “current” with the boot option of your choice, but that is not needed)

  3. Reboot
  4. Press F8 once (not multiple times!) as soon as the boot screen appears

    Do not press F8 twice, as it usually runs the mode with early loading of anti-virus software disabled.

  5. Press F4 for “Safe Mode”

This works way better than holding the shift key during rebooting: often that does not work on the machines I tried it on (despite [WayBack] How to boot Windows 10 in Safe Mode – CCleaner.com claiming it should work).

Notes

The DisplayBootMenu for bootmgr (which I found via [WayBack] Boot menu policy – set text or graphical style boot menu Windows 8) seems only documented for Azure site:docs.microsoft.com “bcdedit” “DisplayBootMenu” “bootmgr” – Google Search:

[WayBack] Azure Serial Console for Windows | Microsoft Docs

Disregard the official documentation and other links indicating about bootmenupolicy as they require you to set it for each boot configuration, while setting DisplayBootMenu for bootmgr sets it for all configurations at once:

Without bcdedit, be prepared for lengthy steps:

Boot menu options enabled

These options will be enabled when you have a boot menu (the numbers are the number keys or function keys to press in order to activate the option) via [Archive.is] Windows Startup Settings (including safe mode) – Windows Help:

  1. Enable debugging
  2. Enable boot logging
  3. Enable low-resolution video (640×480)
  4. Enable Safe Mode
  5. Enable Safe Mode with Networking
  6. Enable Safe Mode with Command Prompt
  7. Disable driver signature enforcement
  8. Disable early launch anti-malware protection
  9. Disable automatic restart after failure

[WayBack] Image via [WayBack] Image Search from [WayBack] How to Fix a Computer That Won’t Start in Safe Mode:

Uninstall display drivers

The most effective way to fully get rid of a video driver is to run DDU (Display Driver Uninstaller) in Safe Mode.

I found it via [WayBack] Windows downgrade my Radeon Software down to 15.11 | Community.

–jeroen

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Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 10 | Leave a Comment »

Uitstel aanvragen belastingaangifte 2021 – hoe doe ik dat?

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/03/18

[Wayback/Archive] Uitstel aanvragen belastingaangifte 2021 – hoe doe ik dat?

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Posted in LifeHacker, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Some of my wp-admin links, as WordPress.com is hiding access to classic-editor and wp-admin links more and more

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/03/18

For my link list as WordPress.com is actively hiding them:

Notes

You can see the old versus new infrastructure by comparing these branches:

WordPress.com does not have the “Classic Editor” plugin, but just gradually discourages use of the old infrastructure which is far more feature rich, thereby screwing old users.

Some of these features from the old infrastructure that are gone (despite the pretentious name of the Gutenberg editor):

  • Posts/Pages/Tags/Categories/Comments overviews are paginated, can be filtered and have bulk-actions
  • Classic-Editor has lots of useful keyboard shortcuts and allows for nested quotes

For reference, WordPress – Wikipedia: Gutenberg versus classic-editor:

WordPress 5.0 “Bebo”[edit]

The December 2018 release of WordPress 5.0, “Bebo”, is named in homage to the pioneering Cuban jazz musician Bebo Valdés.[90]

It included a new default editor “Gutenberg” – a block-based editor; it allows users to modify their displayed content in a much more user friendly way than prior iterations. Blocks are abstract units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a web page.[91] Past content that was created on WordPress pages is listed under what is referred to as a Classic Block.[92] Prior to Gutenberg, there were several block-based editors available as WordPress plugins, e.g. Elementor, and following the release of Gutenberg Elementor was compared to existing plugins.[93][94]

Classic Editor plugin[edit]

The Classic Editor Plugin was created as a result of User preferences and helped website developers maintain past plugins only compatible with WordPress 4.9.8, giving plugin developers time to get their plugins updated & compatible with the 5.0 release. Having the Classic Editor plugin installed restores the “classic” editing experience that WordPress has had up until the WordPress 5.0 release.[95] The Classic Editor Plugin will be supported at least until 2022.[96]

The Classic Editor plugin is active on over 5,000,000 installations of WordPress.[97]

–jeroen

Posted in Classic editor, Development, Gutenberg editor, Power User, SocialMedia, Software Development, Web Development, WordPress, WordPress | Leave a Comment »

ardour – the digital audio workstation: Record, Edit, and Mix on Linux, macOS and Windows

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/03/17

Given that Audacity became toxic last year, and I should have recovered enough to be both working again and having energy to do audio processing, I should install [Wayback] ardour – the digital audio workstation

[Wayback/Archive.is] Ardour repositories:

Via: [Wayback] Kristian Köhntopp on Twitter: “Ardoer… “ (in response to Bye, bye Audacity)

[Wayback] Audacity Is Now A Possible Spyware, Remove It ASAP

–jeroen

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Posted in About, Audacity, Audio, LifeHacker, Media, Music, Personal, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Some notes on replacing parts of a text file with template text using sed on a Busybox system

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/03/17

Note before you think about putting stuff in /etc/rc.local.d/local.sh: that script will not be executed when UEFI booting.

In a very lightweight Busybox system, I wanted to modify some configuration files automatically using fragments stored in template files.

The system has diff, but no patch.

The basic idea is to use sed to insert the template files into certain spots of the configuration file when certain marker texts are not present. So I want the opposite of [Wayback] Hey Stephen Wood: Try patch instead of sed in shell scripts.

Basically the idea is a poor-man’s patch, described in Too bad: ESXi busybox has diff, but not patch « The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff.

Some links that might help me with this:

One alternative would have been to use ed (which is part of the normal Busybox), but ESXi Busybox omits ed like it omits patch.

Too bad that sed commands are too different from ed commands, as I could have used diff -e on another system based on ideas here:

I might give it one more go, as vi is sort of derived from ed via ex (see vi: Creation – Wikipedia), which means that vi “colon mode” (officially command mode: [Wayback] Vim documentation: cmdline) is very similar to ed.

Another alternative would be awk, but I have done so little work with it awk, that I’m hesitating to use a new tool. Some links:

And finally, ash could be used:

The kind of modifications I am after

Below are a few links with examples of the kind of modifications I want to make. Most patch just /etc/rc.local.d/local.sh, but some others introduce other changes as well.

Note that especially with networking settings, local.sh commands might not have any effect (for instance when having slow DHCP or other network issues), see for instance [Wayback/Archive.is] I’m running ESXi 5.5 and my persistent route in local.sh is not taking effect after boot. : vmware.

There is a very convoluted way around using local.sh by using the VIB authoring tool as described in [Wayback] How to create persistent firewall rules on ESXi. It requires lowering the software acceptance level to Community Supported (esxcli software acceptance set --level=CommunitySupported), which gives you a hard time installing ESXi updates.

I got that VIB idea from [Wayback] Solved: Re: Persistent firewall rule – VMware Technology Network VMTN, as:

The local.sh file gets overwritten often with upgrades so it would mean another step during the process.

From the same thread comes [Wayback] Solved: Re: Persistent firewall rule – VMware Technology Network VMTN

set the sticky bit on your separate xml-file – then it will be backed up and persist through reboot: chmod +t

run backup manually before the first reboot: /sbin/auto-backup.sh  because backup runs only once per hour

Within vSphere, one could use [Wayback] Configure ESXi Hosts with Host Profiles, but a standalone ESXi box is not part of vSphere, so that won’t work.

ESXi 7 and up

ESXi 7 makes the above harder as for instance user root cannot change file rights any more, so eventually I might revert to a VM that auto-boots when ESXi comes up, then patches the right files in place over PowerCLI (read-only) or SSH.

Need to give this some thought later:

–jeroen

Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, ash/dash, ash/dash development, Awk, BusyBox, Development, ESXi6, ESXi6.5, ESXi6.7, ESXi7, Power User, PowerCLI, Scripting, sed, sed script, Software Development, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

Digital accessibility is hard; Wayback archival of: Formulieren – CIZ

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/03/17

I know that digital accessibility does not come for free, but it is mandatory in Europe for at least documents and web-sites provided by government and semi-government as per [Wayback] EN 301 549 – Wikipedia

EN 301 549 is a European standard for digital accessibility. It specifies requirements for information and communications technology to be accessible for people with disabilities.

I bumped into numerous tab-order issues when filling out CIZ forms. This makes it way harder for my, as now I require a mouse despite having RSI symptoms for some 30+ years.

So, for my link archive so I can document that all these forms have severe tab-order issues (some fields are not even accessible by keyboard, are being emptied when you leave the field, or not even accessible by mouse): [Wayback] Formulieren – CIZ

Doet u een aanvraag bij het CIZ? Op deze pagina vindt u een overzicht van onze formulieren, zoals een machtigingsformulier en het Wlz-aanvraagformulier.

Hopefully by now the forms have been fixed.

Via:

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Posted in About, InternetArchive, LifeHacker, Personal, Power User, WayBack machine | Leave a Comment »

Installing Wireshark on MacOS is not as simple as `brew install wireshark`

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/03/16

I wish that MacOS Homebrew would warn in advance of any caveates instead of after installing.

Only after brew install wireshark [Wayback] it is told that:

==> wireshark cask is installed, skipping link.
==> Caveats
This formula only installs the command-line utilities by default.

Install Wireshark.app with Homebrew Cask:
  brew install --cask wireshark

If your list of available capture interfaces is empty
(default macOS behavior), install ChmodBPF:
  brew install --cask wireshark-chmodbpf

Now what? Do I need to uninstall Wireshark first, or does the cask stuff just work when it is installed?

These two do not make me happy:

Related:

–jeroen

Posted in Apple, Home brew / homebrew, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Last year, a classic Mojibake was introduced when Waterschap Amstel, Gooi en Vecht redesigned their IT systems

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/03/16

Last year, Waterschap Amstel, Gooi en Vecht sent me a paper letter notifying the yearly water bill was going to be late as they were redesigning their IT systems.

Their letter introduced a classic Mojibake that had not been present in all their older paper letter communication.

  • Street name on a letter via the old IT systems is "Pyreneeën":

    Pyreneeën goed geprint.

  • Street name on a letter via the new IT systems is "Pyreneeën":

    Pyreneeën geprint met Mojibake vervormingen.

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Posted in Development, Encoding, ftfy, Mojibake, Python, Software Development, Unicode, UTF-8, UTF8 | Leave a Comment »

Jilles posted a small script to show offline/online status based on ping

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/03/16

Jilles posted a small script to show offline/online status based on ping in [Archive.is] Jilles on Twitter: “#!/bin/bash HOST={1ST HOP HERE} while true;do p=$(ping -c1 $HOST) if [ $? -ne 0 ];then s=offline else s=online\ fi echo $(date +%F\ %T) $s – $(echo $p | sed -e ‘s/^PING.*— 1/1/g’) sleep 10 done”

#!/bin/bash
HOST={1ST HOP HERE}
while true;do
  p=$(ping -c1 $HOST)
  if [ $? -ne 0 ];then
    s=offline
  else
    s=online\ 
  fi
  echo $(date +%F\ %T) $s - $(echo $p | sed -e 's/^PING.*--- 1/1/g')
  sleep 10
done

The reason was that his ISP had connection problems for the block of homes where Jilles lives.

–jeroen

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Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, bash, bash, Development, grep, Power User, Scripting, sed, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

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