I recently needed to extract a numeric suffix from a string value in Python. Initially I did the following: import re def extractNumSuffix(value):     return (None if (search:=re.search(‘^\D*(\d+)$’, value, re.IGNORECASE)) is None else search.group(1)) Note that return has a single-line expression. So ...

Here’s how to install Python, PIP package installer and cx_Oracle extension module on MSYS2: $ pacman -S python warning: python-3.8.3-1 is up to date — reinstalling resolving dependencies… looking for conflicting packages… Packages (1) python-3.8.3-1 Total Installed Size:  108.66 MiB Net Upgrade ...

I was just looking for a way to monitor for file system changs in a cross-platform way. After searching the answers here and the ones at the other question mentioned as possible duplicate in that question’s comments, I think I’d go with fswatch since it is has cross-platform support. It uses different kinds of monitors […]

Was just reading https://www.w3schools.com/python/ref_string_rstrip.asp which says The rstrip() method removes any trailing characters (characters at the end a string), space is the default trailing character to remove. Notes: 1) the chars param was added at Python 2.2.3, can’t use it at older versions as noted at ...

Was just trying to make a Python 2 script work in Python 3 and at first it seemed I just needed a small change to add missing parentheses to the argument of a couple of print statements. But then another issue came up, it wasn’t understanding the command raw_input(somePrompt) that was occuring at various places […]

If you’re having issues with your Windows 7 or newer, you should consider whether its installation has become corrupted (due to malicious software or hard drive errors). After doing a disk check (say by right clicking the appropriate drive under my computer and selecting Properties, then Tools tab and Error checking) and a complete virus […]

Was recently checking out the fine tools from GTmetrix for optimizing some websites I manage and one of the issues I noticed on a client’s site was that GZIP compression was turned off. They have a GZIP compression setup article for IIS and Apache web servers that contains a sample for Apache with compression rules […]

A friend sent me the other day a screenshot from the installer of Microwords Pro Greek version on Windows 10 that was showing gibberish instead of Greek. At their school on Windows 10 it was showing up fine, so they wondered what the issue was. They mentioned that on Windows 10 english it was showing […]

Looking into the following error message occuring with Cisco WebEx Meetings installer on Windows 7, found this useful discussion: https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/a0970bfe-2bca-4ae3-a463-a5a04df83770/could-not-locate-dynamic-link-library-kernel32dll?forum=w7itproinstall where the following are suggested: – install Update for ...

OwnCloud is an interesting solution for setting up a file sharing cloud for a group of people. However,one issue I’ve found with its Windows desktop client’s current version (which looks clean of any viruses since I always check first) is that if your Windows 10 is configured with a preferred language that the desktop client’s […]

Buildbox is a wonderful game authoring tool (that spans the whole nocode-code continuum, including the low-code aspect). It now has a free version too with nice templates and tutorials included. I had an issue with the Windows version (it also has an indentical MacOS-X version since it’s a Qt-based app) where it was complaining about […]

Getting really annoyed by YouTube’s insistence to autoplay (and not even stop the previously playing video) everytime you navigate to a browser tab that shows YouTube content (say using CTRL+TAB / SHIFT+CTRL+TAB to find a tab you’re looking for when you have too many and they only manage to fit their icons so no title […]

Seems Acer Aspire One (AS1) ZG5 can have a recurring problem, esp. if its battery is near its end of life. If it shuts down abruptly its BIOS settings seem to get corrupted and its BIOS instead of discarding them seems to freeze. Luckily they have a way to update the BIOS via USB key […]

Judging from MySQL documentation at https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/8.0/en/datetime.html, it sounds best to use DATETIME rather than TIMESTAMP if you want your database to be future proof. After all 2038 is only 18+ years away. The DATETIME type is used for values that contain both date and time parts. MySQL retrieves and displays DATETIME values ...

On an ASP.net MVC webapp I’m maintaining, I had the issue that due to caching of older CSS (stylesheet) files in the browser, if the user didn’t press F5/refresh, it wasn’t showing you some message (since I had added the class .center-horiz-vert in the CSS that didn’t exist in the older cached css the browser […]

After upgrading from Visual Studio 2017 to Visual Studio 2019 I was able to update NuGet packages Fody and Costura.Fody of a solution that needed them (to package assembly DLLs inside console EXEcutables) and the solution was rebuilding fine. However after I synced the solution via a Git repository on another machine and installed the […]

For some time now I was trying to update the BIOS of an older Dell Inspiron 3537 laptop from inside Windows (with the InsydeFlash application that the respective Dell update package employs), only to get a blue screen saying Invalid Firmware Image upon reboot and the BIOS update was skipped every time. Since that update […]

Was just trying to round-off some Google Maps coordinates for display in Javascript up to 3 decimal digits and that was a bit like a blast from the past (the end of the ‘90s to be more accurate)… So here’s my contributed answer at: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2221167/javascript-formatting-a-rounded-number-to-n-decimals This works for ...

OpenLayers is a fine alternative to the map visualization part of Google Maps Platform, however many of its examples sometimes use features from future and server-side Javascript versions, like “imports”. Based on lou’s answer at https://stackoverflow.com/questions/51093964/why-examples-dont-work-a-struggle-with-imports/56549364, ...

Having recently updated an ASP.net MVC web app from MVC4 to MVC5 and from .NET 4.5 to .NET 4.7.2 I was expecting Razor views (.cshtml files) to use the latest C# compiler, especially since at Properties/Build/Advanced option for the web project one read “C# latest major version (default)”. However that was not the case and […]

I’m often asked by friends and family to assist them on frustrating technical issues they can’t resolve by themselves. Thanks to remote access / support software like TeamViewer, this is a piece of cake nowadays. The solution to such problems isn’t always straightforward though. Just came across a Microsoft Word installation where suddenly the ...

Had just converted to target .NET framework 4.7.2 a Visual Studio solution full of 4.5 libraries, console apps and an MVC 5.0 (recently converted from 4.0) web app and all seemed to build fine, but then noticed that with web.config of the MVC web app open in the editor, it was showing lots of warnings […]

Based on Sam Holder’s answer at https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7388475/reading-int-values-from-sqldatareader/54296026, just contributed an extension method for fetching Int32 values via ADO.net’s SqlDataReader, without jumping through hoops (aka first fetch column ordinal [number] by name, then fetching the int value passing the column ...

* AI business solutions: https://partner.microsoft.com/en-US/solutions/practice-areas/artificial-intelligence * AI platform: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/overview/ai-platform/ at the section «Open and comprehensive platform» (scroll down) and see the three tabs AI tools/AI frameworks/AI related infrastructure * Azure (cloud) Machine Learning: ...

I got an older Lumia 930 phone (nice big display and 20MP camera, Windows Mobile 8.1 upgradeable to Windows 10, main shortcoming is that it doesn’t have microSD slot) on big discount the other day, but after upgrading it to Windows 10 I accidentally entered the wrong PIN code at login an it managed to […]