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Using PBKDF2 on multiple platforms
PBKDF2 is a popular choice when it comes to password hashing. I recently looked into PBKDF2 and wanted to use it across multiple platforms and spent some time trying to figure out how to implement it and how to make sure that hashes were the same no matter which platform they were generated on. The programming languages I used was Swift, Java and JavaScript (Node).
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Hello Jekyll
Back from a long blogging hiatus I decided to call it quits on DocPad and move the blog to a simpler platform. Although I did like DocPad it seemed like it was losing support and in the end it was just too cumbersome to keep track on Node versions, modules and what not.
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Find Antenna for iOS gets huge update
Months of waiting is finally over. The iOS version of Find Antenna finally supports the same countries as the Android version which means iPhone users in the United Kingdom, Germany and Sweden can now enjoy the app just as users in Denmark have been able to for some months. The update was also used to adjust some of the Danish transmitters since Boxer has decided to upgrade the transmitters at Borups Alle and Lynetten.
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Secret menu for Huawei u8860
I have an old Huawei 8860 Android phone which keeps running out of internal memory space. I constantly uninstall apps to make room not only for new apps but also just to be able to update my existing apps despite having more than 2GBs available according to the Storage settings. It turns out (I assume) that this behavior is caused by logs hiding in the
/data/logfolder. Too bad it is not possible to delete the files unless the device is rooted which I have not done (yet). I am still hoping to figure something out and recently found out that there is a secret system menu if you dial\*#\*#2846579#\*#\*in the stock phone app. It did not help me with my problem though. -
Find Antenna welcomes UK
From the Baltasound transmitter on the Shetland Islands in the North to the tiny St Brelades Bay transmitter on Jersey in the South, from the Lowestoft transmitter of Suffolk in the East to the Belcoo transmitter in Northern Ireland to the West. Find Antenna for Android now supports the entire United Kingdom.
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Hello DocPad
Today I relaunched my blog. I wanted to skip the Blogger platform for something more flexible for a long time and now I have finally made the switch. I examined a lot of Node blogging platforms and decided to go with DocPad. I looked at other alternatives such as Wheat and Blacksmith but the simplicity of DocPad really won me over. There is no database as everything is stored as files, documents can come in any format or shape and the community is very vibrant (as any Node community these days) just to name a few of the selling points. It is the perfect platform for blogs so the decision was not very hard.
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Find Antenna now available on iPhone
Finally my first iPhone app has hit the stores. The iPhone version of Find Antenna is available for download from the App Store. The functionality is the same as the Android version with some minor differences. I put a lot of work into the visual appearance of both app and icon to give a clearer visual identity. I also changed the layout of the app a little bit by using a scrollview instead of gesture recognizers to switch between transmitters. Representation of the signal strength was also changed to give a clearer indication on how to interpret the strength of the signal.
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Find Antenna officially released
My very first mobile app was officially released yesterday. I have spent many evenings on ridiculous details and I am happy to say that the app is ready at last. The app can be used to determine the 5 closest DVB-T transmitters and in which direction they can be found. It is very useful if you want to figure out which way your TV antenna should point. It uses the location of the mobile phone to determine which transmitters are closest and the compass to determine the direction.
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Setting character set to UTF-8 in MySQL
The default installation of MySQL (5.5) does not use UTF-8 so every time I install an instance of MySQL I spend some time tinkering with the character setup so I decided to write a quick summary of the steps needed in order for MySQL to support UTF-8. When you have a vanilla installation of MySQL you can check your character settings by executing these commands.
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Creating insert statements from table data
Creating a SQL script which inserts data from an already existing table is not as straightforward as one would think. I found a pretty clean and easy solution which I will explain in detail here. I use MySQL but I believe the principles can be applied to most other databases if needed. Consider table A with the following content.