The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

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

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Best 404 page ever.

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/01/24

Very distracting: 404.

Thanks Julian (I just found out you also own a Dutch domain jmbk.nl/) for pointing to it (boy, some unproductive days ahead) and the cheat (in your browser, Open the JavaScript console, then paste and run the cheat code).

Thanks Romain for developing it.

When you read through his java script code files, remember that these french-english translations:

  • etat == state
  • tombe == fall
  • paraOpen == opened parachute
  • mort == dead
  • flocon == flake
  • taille == size
  • vitesse == speed
  • écrase == crash
  • marche == walk
  • neige == snow

--jeroen

via: Développeur Web sur Lille (59), Romain Brasier.

Posted in Development, JavaScript/ECMAScript, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Web Development | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

.NET/C#: do not do “if (!Directory.Exists(path)) Directory.CreateDirectory(path))”

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/01/24

During code reviews, I often see people do things like this:

if (!Directory.Exists(directoryPath))
    Directory.CreateDirectory(directoryPath);

or this:

DirectoryInfo directoryInfo = new DirectoryInfo(directoryPath);
if (!directoryInfo.Exists)
    directoryInfo.Create();

You don’t need the if statements here. 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 | 1 Comment »

Start of interesting interview series on Technical Debt

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/01/23

This is the first of a series of upcoming interviews on Technical Debt. Very insightful!

Ward Cunningham & Capers Jones Technical Debt Interview.

Apart from the transcript, there is also the video and the past Expert Interviews.

–jeroen

Posted in Development, Software Development, Technical Debt | Leave a Comment »

Tips, links & tools to help you out when you find yourself in .NET assembly hell

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/01/23

A while ago I found myself in .NET Assembly hell.

I inherited a bunch of interdependent .NET projects with no clear build instructions that were halfway ported between .NET 1.x and 4.x had various binaries here and there, a mix of of imported Office COM libraries and PIAs, links to various source code and binary versions 3rd party libraries like Microsoft Enterprise Library (which is very unforgiving when you get configuration wrong, and – because it uses dynamic loading and the version used was from before MEF – is painfully hard to track down wrong types and assemblies).

Basically the right assemblies got into the wrong places, the wrong assemblies in the right places, and a version mix up all over the place.

All in all it was a mess, and I was in .NET assembly hell.

It was a tedious and painful process to solve, so below are a few tips, links to posts and tools that helped me getting this solved. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in .NET, .NET 1.x, .NET 4.0, Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

VBScript tips and tricks

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/01/22

I normally don’t do much VBScript stuff, but sometimes I have to, and these tips helped me big time:

–jeroen

This was the script in question (mimicked a bit after Prnmngr.vbs): Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Development, Scripting, Software Development, VBScript, Visual Studio 11, Visual Studio 2005, Visual Studio 2008, Visual Studio 2010, Visual Studio and tools | Leave a Comment »

Going to try PowerLine (next to CAT5, and having used 10Base2, 10Base-T, 100Base-TX and 1000Base-T)

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/01/21

I’m going to try PowerLine.

My story is similar to Les at How Big Is Your Network?.

15 years and still growing

In 1995 I wired the house with thin net coax (10base2 w/ BNC connectors), because it did not require any expensive hubs of the day. Those old wires are still in place. The cable modem connects to a Netgear wireless router with four wired plugs. Two go to computers, one to xbox 360 and forth to Netgear hub 24 10baseT and 1 10Base2 (BNC) ports. Connected to the 24 port hub via cat 5 are another computer, 1 inkjet printer, 1 laser printer and an SMC power line Ethernet adapter. The powerline adapter connects to another SMC adapter and switch in storage building about 100 yards away from the house. This storage building has my old computers, Apple II, C64, Atari , iMac etc. Via the BNC port another 2 computers are connected in other parts of the house. Each room to which the 10base2 cable runs has a 4 port hub with BNC and RJ45 ports to allow for cat 5 connections. Last there is a laptop and an desktop in the house connected to the wireless router.

—Guest Les

I built my first network in my first rental home: a 2-room apartment with a living/study/kitchen/balcony of about 38 m^2, a bedroom of about 16 m^2 and a bathroom/shower of about 4 m^2. A crazy place (for one because the landlord choose to install 16 A D-type fuse in the main fuse box delivering power to multiple 25 A fuses in the apartment, so I once had the main fuse explode).

It was the place where I established my first company, had a BBS called The White House (which was in part true, as most of the house was indeed white), frequented the comp.font newsgroup (as I landed a PostScript/TrueType digitizing font job in about 1990) and comp.lang.pascal group,  and was public domain author.

Having a single computer multitasking BBS, work and storage using DESQview (video) wasn’t the best. So when I earned enough money using Turbo Pascal 6 and Turbo Pascal for Windows, and with student editions of DOS 5.0, Windows 3.0, and Netware 3.x I built my own network. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in About, Font, Personal, Power User | 2 Comments »

Geek stuff: Pebble – E-Paper Watch for iPhone and Android

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/01/20

Any geeks that already have this one?

If so, please let me know what you think of it.

Pebble: E-Paper Watch for iPhone and Android

–jeroen

via: Pebble.

Posted in Android Devices, Apple, iOS, iPhone, Power User | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Interesting: Project “W” game “Phase 2” and multi-platform version on the 2013 agenda of Sascha Willems

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/01/20

On my interest list: game written in Delphi and now being ported to FreePascal under Lazarus for multi-platform reasons: Agenda for 2013 | www.SaschaWillems.de.

–jeroen

Posted in Delphi, Development, FreePascal, Lazarus, Pascal, Software Development | 9 Comments »

If your system is configured as Metric, then any app not honouring that have a UX #Fail

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/01/19

I love Google:

Especially since there is still software like Garmin Training Center for Mac on Mac OS X with – in the System Preferences – the Measurement Units set as Metric, insists on entering weight as lb, and workout distance in miles.

The reason is that Garmin Training Center on Mac OS X has its own “Measurement Units” settings. Where Mac OS lets the system wide setting be either “Metric”  or ” US”, Garmin choose between “Metric” and “Statute” (the latter is default, not the OS X setting).

The problem is twofold:

Garmin has head offices and most of their customers outside the USA, so why insist on US units being default, and why not link the setting to the Mac OS X Preference?

UX #fail.

Oh BTW: if you connect your Garmin device, and GTC still indicates “no fitness device was found”, then use a different USB Cable and don’t connect it through a hub: the device is very picky on talking over USB (charging over USB works with virtually any USB cable).

Garmin Training Center on Mac OS X insists in imperial units, even though the system is configured as metric.

Garmin Training Center on Mac OS X insists in imperial units, even though the system is configured as metric.

Garmin Training Center on Mac OS X has its own

Garmin Training Center on Mac OS X has its own “Measurement Units” settings. Where Mac OS lets the system wide setting be either “Metric” or ” US”, Garmin choose between “Metric” and “Statute” (the latter is default, not the OS X setting).

Even after setting the Garmin Training Center to

Even after setting the Garmin Training Center to “Metric”, it still lists “Miles” in your workouts.

–jeroen

Posted in Google, GoogleSearch, Opinions, Power User, User Experience (ux) | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Firebird and InterBase have single direction indexes for your data safety.

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/01/18

In most database index nodes are doubly linked to allow bi-directional scans. http://is.gd/8CMb7w, however not for InterBase and FireBird, there the reverse link isn’t used because it can be inconsistent due to write order of index pages.

The result is that in Firebird and InterBase, indexes are single-directional (either ascending or descending).

This is for your safety: it guarantees index consistency, even if because of EMP, your machine suddenly reboots after your tank fired a missile.

–jeroen

via Twitter / Avalanche1979: @SQLPerfTips For Firebird the ….

(Wow, did I really wrote 1200 blog posts?)

Posted in Database Development, DB2, Development, Firebird, InterBase, MySQL, OracleDB, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, SQL Server 2000, SQL Server 2005, SQL Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2012, SQL Server 7, Sybase | Leave a Comment »