Author: george georgovassilis

HTTP compression and incremental rendering

TL;DR: HTTP compression can delay rendering of web resources HTTP permits content to be served with different encodings, some of which can be used to compress [1] the data volume transferred over the network, which has become a frequent suggestion [2] towards optimising websites for performance. It turns out that the deflation phase of the … Continue reading HTTP compression and incremental rendering →

Climbing the monolith

I love learning a term for a vague idea that has been with me for a while already; it gives the fuzzy cloud in my head a box to live in and a label to put under... not to mention convenient stowage when I need room for other things. One such illuminating moment was listening … Continue reading Climbing the monolith →

Unlocking a password-protected hard disk

TL;DR: Recovering data from a password-protected SATA hard disk that was locked by a Thinkpad I wish this post would be as generally valid as the title suggests; at this hour I'm just unspeakably glad to have unlocked a hard disk I didn't even know I had locked and can finally go to bed. What … Continue reading Unlocking a password-protected hard disk →

Off topic: the odds of being hit by space debris

ESA says [1] it's 106 times more likely to be hit by a lightning twice in the same year that to be hit by Tiangong 1's debris. There are 2 recorded incidents [2] of space debris that caused harm to people, the earliest recorded in 1979. According to [3], chances of being struck by lighting in … Continue reading Off topic: the odds of being hit by space debris →

Secure messaging in the browser

By observing news and public discussions I feel that there is a growing awareness of data privacy and an increasing demand for secure person-to-person communication. In order to address my communication needs, I plugged together a few Javascript libraries and started the Webencryption [1] project on Github. What is Webencryption? Webencryption is a rather crude … Continue reading Secure messaging in the browser →

A switching amplifier

In this off-topic post I'm picking up an old hobby of mine: electronics. I've built in the past quite a few analogue audio amplifiers, mostly based on pull-push [1] designs, but always wanted to build a pulsed/switching amplifier. Thus, for no good reason at all, in this post I'll describe the design I came up … Continue reading A switching amplifier →

Phantomjs not showing text

TL;DR if Phantomjs doesn't show any text/fonts, give it a Truetype web font. Despite Phantomjs' [1] development slowing down [2] it still brings most of the features I need for regression testing web applications. And, thanks to Docker, it should be possible to operate it for a long time to come. Installing and operating Phantomjs … Continue reading Phantomjs not showing text →

Eclipse freezes on Windows 10 creator’s update

Symptoms: Eclipse used to work fine under Windows 10, suddenly hangs short after start. Solution: uninstall Linux subsystem or don't use Git in Eclipse Explanation: the Eclipse egit plugin looks for bash, which normally doesn't exist on Windows. When the Windows subsystem for Linux is installed, bash does exist, but blocks with a message ("click … Continue reading Eclipse freezes on Windows 10 creator’s update →

The Accordionist and the value of specifications

On those rare occasions when I arrive home at a God-fearing time, there is, sometimes, a Bulgarian Accordionist sitting in the neighbourhood playing familiar tunes. It's not the action-laden showmanship that compels one to stop and gaze at the spectacle nor the stereotypical French sailor (the kind I never have met in France) easily recognisable … Continue reading The Accordionist and the value of specifications →