In 2015 I was working on a Simple C# web framework for .NET. Back then I wanted to create an MVC framework that would allow me to run C# web applications on Linux. Back then I was using MonoDevelop to work on C# code for Mono. Today in 2021 I’m using Visual Studio Code to write C# code for .NET 5 (still on Linux). This port aims to take full advantage of the new .NET 5 platform and it’s support for Linux. I am especially interested in cross-platform support and creating single executable web applications (like Go can do with go-bindata-assetfs). ...

Ruby on Rails was preaching plural table names back in 2005 and DHH shipped Rails with an “Inflector” class: a class that could convert (English) plurals into singulars and vice versa. This was used to map the plural table names to the singular “Model” class names when doing “scaffolding” (code generation). The Inflector class had a “singularize” and a “pluralize” method that you could call with either the plural or the singular form of an (English) noun and it would convert it for you. Thus, it could convert the string ’lives’ to ’life’ with the “singularize” method and ‘person’ to ‘people’ with the “pluralize” method. This post will explain how this magical “Inflector” class worked. ...

Five years ago (2015) I have built a completely silent (no moving parts nor coil whine) PC: A 5th gen Intel NUC i7 with 16 GB RAM and a 512 GB NVMe drive. Those parts have been discontinued, but if you would build something like that again today you could: A 10th gen Intel NUC i7 with 64 GB RAM and a 2 TB NVMe drive. (source: Youtube) ...

Since writing bug-free code is not possible it is very important that you can quickly reproduce and fix bugs. Any programmer will tell you that this is only possible with a good bug report. Not all bugs are about missing/wrong functionality, sometimes the application runs into an error. Fortunately error reports (or crash reports as they are sometimes called) can be automated. In this post I will explain how errors are handled in PHP and how you can collect and log error data. ...

What have light-bulbs in common with Apple products? They are designed so that you can’t repair them and they are (needlessly) designed so that they need replacement pretty fast. Batteries are glued into the phone and the glass front panel breaks easily and is hard to replace. Is that legal? I feel it shouldn’t be. Fortunately, fines of millions of euros are given to counter this phenomenon also known as “planned obsolescence”. Still it seems these fines are not frequent and/or high enough to stop manufacturers from applying this practice. Planned obsolescence is mainly a environmental threat as many appliances and devices are thrown away and end up on garbage dumps (needlessly). ...

I’ve built another PC. This time I wanted to create a silent but powerful small form factor PC. It aims to replace my AMD 3400G midi tower with something equally powerful and quiet that fits my desk. I’ve chosen an ASRock Fatal1ty B450 Gaming-ITX/ac motherboard with a on-board WiFi 5 (802.11ac) in an Antec ISK110 VESA-U3 small form factor case. I transferred the AMD 3400G quad core, the 2x16 GB of G.Skill Ripjaws 3600 a the 2 TB ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro NVMe drive. It is a small, pretty, super fast and not too noisy little box. The case costs 91 euros and has a built-in 90W power supply and comes with an IEC-C5 (also known as “clover”) power cable included. Unfortunately the cable I received was UK type instead of EU type. ...

I’m running Xubuntu 21.04 and when I’m listening to mixcloud and visit certain sites using Firefox the sound starts to crackle and gets distorted. It can only be resolved by restarting Firefox, but restarting the browser is quite annoying. I added a bookmark to the URL “about:RestartRequired” to make the process a little less painful. I had to restart my browser fairly often until I found the following fixes to resolve the problem and find the cause. ...

It was already 7 years ago that I wrote Minesweeper for a the iPad on the iPad (using Pythonista). It was an implementation of Minesweeper in Python and it was optimized for touch usage. I have ported that implementation to Go using the Ebiten game engine, which can compile to Web Assembly. This project really was like a code kata and it proofed to be a great learning experience and a lot of fun to build. ...

I’ve built another PC. This time I wanted to create a low power computer that could be always on. It aims to replace my NUC i7 with something powerful, silent and not too expensive. I’ve chosen an ASRock J5040-ITX motherboard with a on-board Intel J5040 CPU in an Inter-Tech ITX-601 HTPC case. This little machine is 3.2 GHz quad core with 32 GB of RAM a 1 TB SSD and costs less than 500 euro. It is a small, pretty, super fast and not too noisy little box. The case is an amazing value at 61 euros as it comes with a 60 Watt power supply with a power brick and all cables required. I run Xubuntu 20.04 LTS and it works great, I’m very pleased with the results! ...

Bitlocker is the Full Disk Encryption (FDE) solution in Windows, similar to FileVault in OSX and LUKS in Linux. I do advocate the use of full disk encryption on any device, but especially on devices that are prone to theft, such as laptops. In my threat model I’m using full disk encryption (solely) to prevent data theft in case of hardware theft. The power of full disk encryption lies in that it is easy to understand and reason about. Unfortunately this cannot be said about the Windows 10 (professional only) solution, unless you do what I did, as explained in this post. ...