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
Author: george georgovassilis
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
Getting test coverage reports for integration test
I'm a vociferous supporter of integration tests with an embedded servlet container and in this post I'll show how to get test coverage for the classes touched in those integration tests. All test coverage gauging tools I know instrument code under test either at build time or run time through Java agents. Because the code … Continue reading Getting test coverage reports for integration test
Code reusability: from classes to containers
What is the right code granularity? I have previously written about reusing functionality [1] in the micro service context and found then that the old aim to optimise code footprint is a metric in need of a good overhaul. Ever since I'm happy that the idea is getting traction:Classes, libraries, applications OOP reuses code and … Continue reading Code reusability: from classes to containers
Unjam CSS
Abstract: Unjam CSS is a technique for removing render-blocking CSS from pages over which we have only partial control, such as CMS or portals. The problem: a portal generates HTML pages based on a template. Custom HTML can be inserted at specific place holders, but we can't modify the rest of the page HTML. The … Continue reading Unjam CSS
