My Brain BLOG – Page 2 – thoughts, ideas and knowledge

PHP8 and function list() = each()

Time to write something about PHP again. With PHP 7.2, the function each() is deprecated. The documentation says: “Warning This function has been DEPRECATED as of PHP 7.2.0. Relying on this function is highly discouraged.“.
If you ignored this warning before, in PHP8 you will now get the following error: Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Call to undefined function each() in /path/file.php:line
So, what do you do when you find this in your old code or in some library that you use, but is not being updated anymore? Stackoverflow to the rescue…

NordVPN 3 year plan discount

Even though I get no commission, I would like to share a discountcode to get a better offer for NordVPN.
My subscription was up for renewal, but the renewal-offer was way more expensive per month, so I cancelled the subscription. Now after it expired I went back to the NordVPN website to see if the price was any better, but unfortunately they only offered a month, year or 2-year plan. I started searching and fount the following discount code, with the added bonus of getting a three year plan in the process.

Use this discount code:

Thunderbird 115 Calendar View scaled wrong

Ever since the latest upgrade of Thunderbird mailclient to version 115 many people have experienced problems. It started with the setting being changed to compact for the density of the mailbox views. That solution was simple; just change in your menu “View – Density” and change it back to ‘default‘.

However the view of the calendar has been giving problems. The right-hand-side of it is outside of the visible window, basically dropping off the date from the view; see screenshot and yes, that is to the edge of my screen with Thunderbird maximized.

So, how do we solve this?
Go to “Tools – Settings – General” and at the bottom open the ‘Config Editor…’
Now search for ‘layout.css.devPixelsPerPx‘ and change that value to 0.9
Since this scales everything on the screen, you may want to increase your font-size next:
Go to “View – Font Size – Increase Font Size”, and see the second screenshot for the result.
Good luck!

That’s all Folks!
Have a nice day…

Zodiac Signs / Sterrenbeelden

Looks like nobody knows what the actual dates should be?

♈ Aries (Ram): March 21–April 19
♉ Taurus (Bull/Stier): April 20–May 20
♊ Gemini (Twins/Tweelingen): May 21–June 21
♋ Cancer (Crab/Kreeft): June 22–July 22
♌ Leo (Lion/Leeuw): July 23–August 22
♍ Virgo (Virgin/Maagd): August 23–September 22
♎ Libra (Balance/Weegschaal): September 23–October 23
♏ Scorpius (Scorpion/Schorpioen): October 24–November 21
♐ Sagittarius (Archer/Boogschutter): November 22–December 21
♑ Capricornus (Goat/Steenbok): December 22–January 19
♒ Aquarius (Water Bearer/Waterman): January 20–February 18
♓ Pisces (Fish/Vissen): February 19–March 20

How to encode and decode Base64 in VB.NET

Because sometimes you just need a string with ‘normal characters’ instead of funky ones…

Public Function EncodeBase64(input As String) As String
	Return System.Convert.ToBase64String(System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(input))
End Function

Public Function DecodeBase64(input As String) As String
	Return System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetString(Convert.FromBase64String(input))
End Function

Have a nice day!

HP Deskjet 3055A ePrint IS DEAD

After investigating why a customer could no longer print from his iPad to the HP Deskjet 3055A, I found more terrible stuff that HP is pulling. They completely cancelled all eServices support for older printers, leaving my customer with one ugly heavy paperweight.