Jeroen's Weblog

4.7 Earthquake near Santiago

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 09:14:00 -0500

We had an earthquake last night, not a really heavy one but look how close to Santiago…

You can see all the details about this quake overhere.

My schedule is now online

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 21:35:00 -0500

Often I get questions like “When do you have time for…?”, now you can see it yourself! I’ve published my calendar online, you can see it at http://jeroenlandheer.com/Calendar

Or if you want it to add this to your Outlook, simply open this link.

Update: For security reasons, I’ve decided to only publish free/busy information. Being busy does not mean that I’m not reachable, it just means I’ve scheduled a task on that time.

Internet Access - Is it a human right?

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 11:56:44 -0500

Internet Access - Is it a human right?:

Well, no… according to Vinton Cerf, one of the pioneers of the Internet.

Our 2 new kittens

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 10:07:00 -0500

Our 2 new kittens

Work it harder, Make it better, Do it faster, Makes us stronger,...

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 10:49:00 -0500

Work it harder, Make it better, Do it faster, Makes us stronger, More then ever, Hour after hour, Work is never over..

A new website layout

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 15:10:15 -0400

I decided to change the website layout, I hope you all like it :)

Fun with byte arrays

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 14:02:00 -0400

Some easy and fun byte array extensions

  static class ByteArrayExtensions
  {
    public static string ToHexString(this byte[] bytes)
    {
      StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
      for (int i = 0; i < bytes.Length; i++)
      {
        sb.AppendFormat("{0:X2}", bytes[i]);
      }
      return sb.ToString();
    }
    
    public static byte[] Copy(this byte[] bytes)
    {
      byte[] result = new byte[bytes.Length];
      Buffer.BlockCopy(bytes, 0, result, 0, bytes.Length);
      return result;
    }
  }

  public static class ByteArray
  {
    public static byte[] Concat(params byte[][] bytes)
    {
      int resultLength = 0;
      for (int i = 0; i < bytes.Length; i++)
      {
        resultLength += bytes[i].Length;
      }

      var result = new byte[resultLength];
      int resultPosition = 0;
      for (int i = 0; i < bytes.Length; i++)
      {
        Buffer.BlockCopy(bytes[i], 0, result, resultPosition, bytes[i].Length);
        resultPosition += bytes[i].Length;
      }
      return result;
    }
  }

Mists of Pandaria is revealed - The new expansion of World of...

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 17:35:09 -0400

Mists of Pandaria is revealed - The new expansion of World of Warcraft

Er… 6 screens? And I thought 3 were awsome….

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 01:12:17 -0400

Er… 6 screens? And I thought 3 were awsome….

Holy smokes!

Sun, 21 Aug 2011 12:07:37 -0400

Holy smokes!:

Try to wrap your head around that solution…

Time for a universal software updater?

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 14:25:12 -0400

Just one of the things the average user is batteling with every patch tuesday is that if you have 10 different software products installed, you have 10 different update procedures to go through. Something tells me this could (and should) be a lot simpler.

One of the best updaters in the software industry is Windows Update. Without a doubt it is the least intrusive (no popups), does it work when you want it to (when you either shut down your computer or when you leave your PC alone for a long time) and is fully configurable by system administrators. Besides Windows Update, there are tons of other updaters out there. Updaters like Adobe Flash, Adobe Air, Adobe Updater (the one included with Acrobat, Photoshop and so on), Mozilla FireFox, Google Chrome, Skype’s built-in updater, Sun’s Java … to name a few.

All these programs have one thing in common: They ask me to update. It’s getting more anoying each time. Then with that, there’s a bit more that comes into play. Some of these programs need administrator access to do their updating. System administrators often configure end-user computers to not allow a user to have administrative rights. Getting all software provisioned and keeping it up-to-date in a big network really becomes quite a challenge.

What if we simply say, let the OS provide a universal updater for our software. Microsoft will probably say: “You can already do this…”, but that is not really the case. What we need is a way for applications to plug themselves into the Windows Updater in such a way that the user has the ability to update all the software solutions he has on the computer with one click of a button. One thing is for sure, there are a lot of silly questions that need to be answered like: “But do I give my update process to Microsoft?” The answer is obviously no.

Implementing a universal updater by extending the Windows Update mechanism is something Microsoft already did for themselves. Microsoft Update extends Windows Update by updating not only Windows, but also products like Microsoft Office. Same thing can be done for updating other organization’s products. Let’s say an organization simply provides his update service like normal, chooses to ‘register’ his company’s update in a Windows Update API, which asks the end user for consent. Now every time Windows is checking updates, the updater of the other company will run aswell.

It really shouldn’t be that hard, and it is a feature that will help end-users keeping their systems more up-to-date and secure.

Text to Morse Code in C#

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 11:40:01 -0400

This was one of those questions on code golf that was very interesting: “Write the shortest program to transform the standard input into Morse code. Characters not in the table should be printed as they are.”

The C# Answer was actually a pretty clever one: class P{static void Main(string[] a){foreach(var t in a[0]){var c=”“;for(int i=” ETIANMSURWDKGOHVF L PJBXCYZQ 54 3 2 16 7 8 90”.IndexOf(t);i>0;i/=2)c=”-.”[i—%2]+c;System.Console.Write(c+” “);}}}

Here are the details: http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/131/morse-code-translator

99 Bottles of Beer

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 10:15:42 -0400

99 Bottles of Beer:

With an answer in BrainF***!

Tuesday Morning Post: By patch day be purged edition

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 07:48:49 -0400

Tuesday Morning Post: By patch day be purged edition:

Last week, Ahune busted our instance servers. This week, Ragnaros gets the chance to do the same as we fully expect patch 4.2 to go live as of this writing. Now mind you, I’m not saying servers will crash, but hey…

Exporting 'non-exportable' certificates - What the hell?

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 12:08:52 -0400

Certificates that are stored in a Cryptographic Service Provider (CSP) of a computer, marked as non-exportable should not be allowed to be exported, ever… It seems though that iSEC found a way to ‘Jailbreak’ non-exportable certificates.

The big question is: is this a hack or is this using official supported functionality? Probably a bit of both. Nevertheless, Symantec already has something to say about this app. Clearly these kind of tools are working on the edge of what should be possible, and what should not.

It comes down to a simple fact: Keys on a disk are not securable by any means. If you need to secure keys, use smart cards or other techniques that provide a physical layer against the stored key. Finally, jail breaking certificates can be done if needed and it’s nice there’s a tool for it. Though use this with care!

MJ Loves Creating FUD

Sat, 25 Jun 2011 11:42:30 -0400

MJ Loves Creating FUD:

Microsoft splits up its XAML team: What’s the fallout? There is none. XAML is one of the technologies that will be a core part of Windows 8 and Silverlight won’t get moved out any time soon….

Zzzzz

Sat, 25 Jun 2011 07:36:57 -0400

Why is it, that in weekdays I have trouble to wake up and in weekends I can’t sleep in the morning?

I got up at 7 AM this morning, way too early for a saturday…

Hurray, My weblog works!

Thu, 23 Jun 2011 11:58:00 -0400

Hello world!

It has been a long time since I blogged and put stuff out there on the internet. Too long. So from now on I’ll be posting something at least once a week on how everything goes.

You can expect things here that have to do with tech, software development and system maintenance.

I also will put some fun stuff here and some things for entertainment. So keep an eye on this and follow me via Twitter or Facebook!

CU All Soon!