The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

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

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Some notes on the Samsung UE40C6800 TV, PVR, decoding the PVR recordings and SamyGO extensions

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/09/10

After having recorded quite a few broadcastings to USB from my Samsung UE40C6800 TV with the T.VALDEUC 3011.0 firmware, I wanted to copy them over to either a Windows or Linux based machine for post editing.

Then I found out the USB device had been reformatted into XFS, probably because of its Guaranteed-rate I/O.

The first post I came across (SettoreZero: XFS filesystem and Samsung LEDTVs) indicated XFS is supported under Linux, but not under Windows (it appears the latter might be true).

So I went collecting useful links on which I will start doing deeper research in a few categories.

As it looks now, most of it will probably lead to various Linux shell scripts based on SamyGO.

General info:

XFS documentation:

Limux support:

Windows support:

SamyGO (selected with this particular TV in mind):

SamyGO forum:

–jeroen

via XFS – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Posted in *nix, Development, Linux, openSuSE, Power User, Software Development, SuSE Linux | 2 Comments »

c# – What should I do when I am forced to write unreachable code? – Stack Overflow

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/09/09

Bosak posted an interesting piece of code on StackOverflow last year. His particular code was in C#, but it does not matter what kind of compiler you use:

Sometimes a compiler will complain about unreachable code, for instance when it thinks a function never returns a value.

But you know the program logic does.

Simple solution: When you have code that never should be reached: throw an appropriate exception.

public static int GetInt(int number)
{
    int[] ints = new int[]{ 3, 7, 9, int.MaxValue };
    foreach (int i in ints)
        if (number <= i)
            return i;

    return int.MaxValue; //this should be unreachable code since the last int is int.MaxValue and number <= int.MaxValue is allways true so the above code will allways return
}

The last return could be replaced like this, as proposed by Matt Houser: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in .NET, .NET 1.x, .NET 2.0, .NET 3.0, .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, C#, C# 1.0, C# 2.0, C# 3.0, C# 4.0, C# 5.0, Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Revisited from the .NET side: Why doesn’t WINWORD.EXE quit after Closing the document from Delphi? (via: Stack Overflow)

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/09/08

I long time ago, I asked about  [WayBack] Why doesn’t WINWORD.EXE quit after Closing the document from Delphi?.

It turns out that question is a lot harder in .NET than it is in Delphi. I already had a gut feeling of this when at clients I saw many more .NET applications leaking WINWORD.EXE stray processes than Delphi applications, even though both kinds were calling Quit on the Word application object.

Delphi has a deterministic way of coping with interfaces (hence you can do a One-liner RAII in Delphi, or make a memento): Interface references are released at the end of their scope.

.NET has non-deterministic finalization of the Common Language Runtime (CLR) and has Runtime Callable Wrappers (RCWs) around your COM references which are sometimes created “on the fly”.

The combination of non-deterministic finalization and RCWs can be very confusing, so lets start with the parts first. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in .NET, Delphi, Development, Software Development | 2 Comments »

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/09/07

Nostalgia:

dec :: vax :: vaxeln :: 2.0 :: AA-EU39A-TE VAXELN Pascal Language Reference Manual Mar85 http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/dec/vax/vaxeln/2.0/AA-EU39A-TE_VAXELN_Pascal_Language_Reference_Manual_Mar85.pdf

Posted in DEC Pascal, Delphi, Development, Pascal, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

StackOverflow/StackExchange: two queries to help me improve my questions and answers

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/09/05

On the StackExchange network, I try to keep track of the questions I asked, and answers I gave in order to see if they need follow up.

For instance, questions with answers that have no accepted answer usually indicate there is room for improvement.

On my own questions, it means I could accept an answer, or give out more information on how to better answer that question.

On mu answers to questions from others, it might mean I need to improve my answer, or comment on his question to explain it better.

The first category can be queried easily by the built in search capabilities:
http://stackoverflow.com/search?q=user%3ame%20is%3aanswer%20hasaccepted%3ano

The second category requires the Stack Exchange Data Explorer (SEDE) to execute some SQL:
My answers to questions that have no accepted answer – Stack Exchange Data Explorer.

  • Replace the ‘me’ with your StackOverwlow user ID
    (for StackOverflow.com, you can get that from http://stackoverflow.com/search?q=user%3ame as it will be listed in the search box there)
  • replace stackoverflow with a mnemonic obtained from the main SEDE page (click on the icon you are interested in, then copy that part into the query)

Note some questions (like Wiki: Current state of the art of Delphi 3rd party TCP/IP components libraries – Stack Overflow) are not suited to have one ‘best’ answer.

Note the SEDE can be addictive. If it is starting to become that way, perform a Jon Skeet comparison.

Note the SEDE data is usually at least a few days older than the live data.

--jeroen

Posted in Development, Jon Skeet, Pingback, Power User, SocialMedia, Software Development, Stackoverflow | Leave a Comment »

Delphi XE7 is out with version 21.0.17017.3725; Spring4D is almost ready.

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/09/04

Remarkably few people note the actual version number of the Delphi releases, though that is the version mentioned in any QC reports.

Now that Delphi Insider: Download links for Delphi XE7, C++Builder XE7 and RAD Studio XE7 are there, the ftpd and altd have been seeded a few days ago with the version time stamped at the end of last month, here is the version number:

QC version number for Delphi XE7: 21.0.17017.3725 (Update 1 has version 21.0.17707.5020).

I got that number from the first XE7 report in QC posted almost 2 months ago (and verified it against other reports), so it seems XE7 has undergone some serious testing.

Before installing, note that in addition to the below documentation links:

Be sure to have at least 60 gigabytes of free disk space before you attempt to install.

This in addition to the 5 gigabyte ISO file (:

XE7 doc links

Spring4D

On the Spring4D side (yes, it has a new logo!), Stefan has added XE7 support, so a new release of that is near.

–jeroen

Posted in Delphi, Delphi XE7, Development, QC, Software Development | Tagged: , | 1 Comment »

VSCommands: one of the greatest free Visual Studio addons

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/09/04

My programming life would be much harder without this in my toolchest: VSCommands for Visual Studio extension.

–jeroen

Posted in .NET, Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Microsoft partner stuff: MSDN, TechNet, ActionPacks, various Sparks, etc

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/09/03

So I won’t forget the links:

–jeroen

Posted in .NET, Development, Software Development | 2 Comments »

Some great reads from Barry Kelly

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/09/02

Barry Kelly (Twitter, [WayBack] HN, SO, G+, Blog) was one of the Delphi compiler engineers.

He wrote a great number of insightful blog posts, some of which are in chronological order: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Delphi, Development, Software Development | 2 Comments »

VMware Fusion: Alt+Print Screen on MacBook Pro

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/09/01

VMware Fusion only allows you to send a “Print Scrn” key to a VM, but that takes a screenshot of the whole screen.

Alt+Print Scrn gets you a screenshot of the current Window, which is what I use most often.

A few things you might have tried, but cannot use:

So have to map key combinations that you probably will not use under Windows.

Berknip uses these VMware Fusion keyboard mappings for it: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Apple, Fusion, Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, Mac, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, MacBook, MacBook Retina, MacBook-Air, MacBook-Pro, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, Power User, VMware | Leave a Comment »

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