Quick way to get the current ISO-8601 based week number: What’s the Current Week Number?.
–jeroen
ISO-8601: What’s the Current Week Number?
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/08/16
Posted in Internet, ISO 8601, Power User | 5 Comments »
Need some help: parsing almost well formed XML fragments: how to skip over multiple XML headers – Stack Overflow
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/08/16
If anyone knows a better solution than string search/replace, please let me know:
I’m required to write a tool that can handle the below XML fragment that is not well formed as it contains XML declarations in the middle of the stream.
The company already has these kinds files in use for a long time, so there is no option to change the format.
There is no source code available that does the parsing, and the platform of choice for new tooling is .NET 4 or newer preferably with C#.
This is how the fragments look like: Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in .NET, .NET 2.0, .NET 3.0, .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, C#, C# 2.0, C# 3.0, C# 4.0, Development, Software Development, XML, XML/XSD | Leave a Comment »
Great session on how to prevent SQL Injection Myths and Fallacies
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/08/15
A few weeks ago, Bill Karwin did a must watch webinar on the prevention SQL Injection titled “SQL Injection Myths and Fallacies“.
Bill Karwin (twitter, new blog, old blog, Amazon) is famous for much work in the SQL database community, including InterBase/Firebird, mySQL, Oracle and many more.
He also:
- was product manager of InterBase (its screaming multi-generational database architecture – invented in the 80s by Jim Starkey, based on immutability now far more widespread and called MultiVersion Concurrency Control – still baffles many people)
- worked on Firebird
- is author of the book The Pragmatic Bookshelf | SQL Antipatterns: Avoiding the Pitfalls of Database Programmings, available on Amazon.
- is autohor of IBPerl
- is frequent answerer on many SQL related forums and QA sites, for instance Bill on StackOverflow
Anyway, his webinar is awesome. Be sure to get the slides, watch the replay, and read the questions follow up.
Watching it you’ll get a better understanding of defending against SQL injection.
A few very valuable points he made: Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in .NET, .NET 3.5, .NET 4.5, .NET ORM, ASP.NET, Batch-Files, C#, C# 1.0, C# 2.0, C# 3.0, C# 4.0, C# 5.0, C++, Cloud Development, COBOL, CommandLine, Database Development, Delphi, Delphi for PHP, Delphi x64, Delphi XE2, Development, EF Entity Framework, F#, Firebird, FireMonkey, History, InterBase, iSeries, Java, JavaScript/ECMAScript, Jet OLE DB, LINQ, LLBLGen, MEF, Microsoft Surface, Mobile Development, PHP, PowerShell, Prism, Scripting, SharePoint, SilverLight, Software Development, SQL, SQL Server, SQL Server 2000, SQL Server 2005, SQL Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2012, SQL Server 7, VB.NET, VBS, Visual Studio 11, Visual Studio 2002, Visual Studio 2003, Visual Studio 2005, Visual Studio 2008, Visual Studio 2010, Visual Studio and tools, Web Development, Windows Azure, WinForms, WPF, XAML, xCode/Mac/iPad/iPhone/iOS/cocoa | 1 Comment »
Delphi/Fortran memory allocation difference: row/column major order makes a big difference. StackOverflow answer.
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/08/14
Last week I posted an in depth answer on StackOverflow.com about the memory allocation difference in Delphi and Fortran, or more accurately in two different kinds of languages.
You have:
- column major order (not only used in Fortran and other science centric languages, but also in the shading languages GLSL and HLSL that can be used in FireMonkey)
- row major order (used in most other languages, for instance Delphi, C, etc)
A very important aspect is the order of for optimized loops. For column major order, the optimum is inside out (as the inner arrays/records are in consecutive memory locations), but for row major order, it is the exact inverse.
One of the consequences is that in Fortran it is a very fast operation to pass an array of inner fields as parameter to a method.
This is what I wrote: Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Delphi, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi for PHP, Delphi x64, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Development, Fortran, Software Development | 4 Comments »
Keep your WP title length shorter than 118 characters for these work: WP.me — shorten your links
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/08/13
When you have a WordPress.com account, articles can have multiple links, one of which is a shortlink in the WP.me domain.
For instance, this article has these links:
- http://wp.me/pvelJ-2wX
- https://wiert.me/?p=9731
- https://wiert.me/2012/08/13/watch-your-wp-title-length-so-these-work-wp-me-shorten-your-links
- https://wiert.wordpress.com/2012/08/13/watch-your-wp-title-length-so-these-work-wp-me-shorten-your-links
When it gets published, and you publicize through Twitter, the WP.me shortcut gets appended to your Tweet.
Since WP.me shortlinks are 22 characters long, you loose 23 characters (an extra space is needed for separation) of Tweet size.
Which means your blog title should be nog longer than 117 characters (i.e. shorter than 118 characters). Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in LifeHacker, Power User, SocialMedia, WordPress | Leave a Comment »
Portable WinCDEmu
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/08/13
I already knew about WinCDEmu, and recently found out there is a portable version of it too:
Portable WinCDEmu is a special build of WinCDEmu that does not need any installation and can be used out-of-the-box.
- unlike WinCDEmu, the Portable WinCDEmu does not preserve mounted drives after a reboot, so some software installs that require a reboot and the CD to be available after reboot – for instance Visual Studio 2010 – require WinCDEmu.
- all virtual CD software requires administrative privileges to install their virtual CD driver. WinCDEmu and Portable WinCDEmu are no different.
Having relied on Daemon tools more recently and Nero ImageDrive in the past (back when Nero 5.5 was a great tool and not the bloatware it has become; Nero ImageDrive has been discontinued since Nero 9).
I will probably switch to WinCDEmu for a new install of my development system: it is extremely light, and now portable too. Better than the ever increasing Daemon tools (of which I don’t use the copy protection features, nor the adware ones).
Unless I find a tool that allows me to mount an NTFS folder as if it was the base for an ISO image (and watches that folder for changes, then remounts the image). That would be tremendously useful in a development environment.
If you don’t know WinCDEmu:
WinCDEmu is an open-source CD/DVD/BD emulator – a tool that allows you to mount optical disc mages by simply clicking on them in Windows Explorer
Another tool on the shortlist is ImDisk; this is why:
The ImDisk driver supports forwarding I/O requests to third-party image file format handlers or to services on other computers on the network. This makes it possible to boot a machine with NTFS partitions with a Live-CD and use the included devio tool to let ImDisk on another computer running Windows on the network mount the NTFS partition on the machine with a faulty NTFS partition. This way you can recover information and even run chkdsk on drives on machines where Windows does not boot. There are also instructions about how to use devio under Windows on Claus Valca’s blog.
–jeroen
via:
- Portable WinCDEmu.
- WinCDEmu – the easiest way to mount an ISO. And more….
- ImDisk on Tools and utilities for Windows.
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Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP | 1 Comment »
Low power desktop – via: 8.5W Core i3-based desktop computer (English) – mux’ blog
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/08/12
Emile Nijssen, Dutch student Electronics at the Delft University of Technology wrote an interesting English 8.5W Core i3-based desktop computer abstract of a Dutch series of post getting a Desktop setup running far under 10W.
Though about 2 years old, they are immensely useful as not many people have thoroughly researched all that, and the info is still very applicable on more today’s hardware.
I got there because I was looking for some real world usage of VMP3203 DC/DC converters at 5V output that you can really well priced on DealExtreme (the PDF of the “datasheet” seems offline, but there is a Google cache of it).
If you can read/translate Dutch, this is the series (be sure to read the comments, as those contain about 25% of the info):
- Teaser: Core i3 desktopsysteem @ 10W idle… – mux’ blog.
- 10W core i3 systeem – de voorbereidingen – mux’ blog.
- 10W i3 systeem – de treinreis – mux’ blog.
- 10W i3 systeem – undervolten en hardwaremods! – mux’ blog.
- 10W i3-systeem: nu voor maar 8.5W! – mux’ blog.
He even won a prize of EUR 2500 with this design!
Great work!
–jeroen
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Posted in Development, Electronics Development | Leave a Comment »
Getting hacked often involves social engineering and corporate policy flaws (involved: Apple, Amazon, GMail)
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/08/10
With more and more stuff being linked together in the cloud, getting hacked becomes increasingly more simple.
This time, it involved Amazon, Apple and GMail, some good knowledge on how the system works, and social engineering to sound trustworthy.
The goal was to get access to a 3-letter Twitter account, the collateral was someones digital life.
Lessons to learn from how Mat Homan got hacked:
- Make local backups often
- Use two-factor authentication
- Don’t have all your devices on “wipe from the cloud”
- Don’t bind your primary accounts together on the clouds
- Have distinct reset accounts for your primary accounts
- Make your primary accounts use a distinct name
Applause for Mat for coming forward on this. I know lots of people that wouldn’t.
–jeroen
via:
- How Apple and Amazon Security Flaws Led to My Epic Hacking | Gadget Lab | Wired.com.
- Emptyage — Yes, I was hacked. Hard..
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Posted in GMail, Google, LifeHacker, Power User, SocialMedia | Leave a Comment »
A few nice PDFs on fonts and font designer handwriting
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/08/10
In my early software developer years, I have been into scaleable fonts, PostScript and PDF very much.
Over the years, I kept an eye on that, and recently I found a few nice PDFs about fonts and designer handwriting:
- An Alphabet Book by Ben Fry, an expert in data visualization. There is some great other stuff on his personal web site.
- Handwritten Typographers showing the handwriting of some famous typographers. There are very few good handwriting fonts, and in between the lines, that PDF shows you why.
–jeroen
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Posted in About, PDF, Personal, Power User, Typography | Leave a Comment »
.NET/C#: ExpandEnvironmentStrings equivalent is Environment.ExpandEnvironmentVariables; expands environment strings
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/08/09
A while ago, I needed a way to defer settings to environment variables in a .NET application written in C#.
The easiest way to do this is to keep the same syntax as for expanding environment variables in batch files: use the %ENVIRONMENTVARIABLE% syntax (not the delayed expansion !ENVIRNMENTVARIABLE! syntax).
The reason is that there is a Windows API function ExpandEnvironmentStrings that handles all the expansion magic.
Don’t P/Invoke that function yourself, as there is already a very nice Environment.ExpandEnvironmentVariables wrapper since the .NET framework 1.1 that handles all the gory details for you (like marshalling the strings, making sure that lpDst contains enough space for the expansion).
–jeroen
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Posted in .NET, C#, C# 1.0, C# 2.0, C# 3.0, C# 4.0, C# 5.0, Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 