Hardware-Encode Video in H.265 with Free Tools to Save Disk Space Many web meeting services have a recording functionality. Most recordings are provided as MP4 files with the video encoded in H.264 because that offers the most universal compatibility. However, it […] Read more
Free and Powerful Equalizer for Windows 10 Windows 10 does not come with an equalizer. That can be annoying when you have headphones that are too heavy on the bass, like the Sony WH-1000XM3. Enter the free […] Read more
Modern Multi-Process Browser Architecture An architecture overview of current browsers on Windows: Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer. Read more
Bluetooth Audio Quality & aptX on Windows 10 Bluetooth is a flexible standard. It defines various profiles that operate on top of the Bluetooth networking protocol stack and implement specific services, such as hands-free communications. Bluetooth devices each […] Read more
Saving & Restoring Total Commander Tab Sets Total Commander’s custom start menu is a great place to quickly launch all kinds of tools and programs that are otherwise hard to get to. However, TC’s start menu is […] Read more
Upgrading Ubuntu 16.04 to 18.04 & PHP 7.0 to 7.2 for WordPress This post describes how I upgraded our webserver running WordPress on Apache from Ubuntu 16.04.5 LTS to 18.04.1 LTS. Please see this article for more information on the server’s installation […] Read more
PowerShell Script: Test Chrome, Firefox & IE Browser Performance There is more than one way to test the performance of web browsers like Chrome, Firefox, or IE, but regardless of how you do it, you need a consistent workload […] Read more
Enabling HTTP/2 in Apache on Ubuntu 18.04 A number of requirements must be met before HTTP/2 can be enabled for a website. This is a compilation of steps I went through to get HTTP/2 working on our […] Read more
How to Limit CPU & RAM via the Windows Boot Configuration Testing the effects of different CPU and memory configurations is easiest when you run the tests on a powerful machine and restrict it to the required number of CPU cores […] Read more
Laudation to E2EVC – Experts to Experts Virtualization Conference On the eve of my departure for E2EVC Athens I feel it is time for a laudation. Let me explain why. Read more
Splunking the Aspect Ratio Distribution of National Flags When I tried to align the Union Jack and the flag of Germany on a presentation slide I noticed that I couldn’t – their aspect ratios are different. A quick […] Read more
Creating an Application Crash Dump How to enable local application crash dump creation globally or for a specific process executable only. Read more
Standard Notes: a Note-Taking App with Client-Side Encryption Note-taking is one of those topics that appear to have been solved long ago, yet offer plenty of opportunity for new contestants. There are multiple reasons for that, but for […] Read more
DiskLED is Now Open Source DiskLED is a tool I wrote a while ago that displays performance counter data using an animated system tray icon. It comes with a graphical configuration dialog that lets you […] Read more
Inexpensive GPU Virtualization Options for Testing For a new chapter in my ongoing series of talks and articles about browser performance I wanted to examine how key user experience metrics like page load time are dependent […] Read more
Is Blockchain the Right Technology for My Application? This is an attempt at guidelines to help in technology decisions about when and where to use blockchain technology. Read more
Building a Fast and Silent Workstation PC This article describes how to build a fast workstation PC that is almost completely silent (actually the fastest possible in terms of single-thread performance). It is based on a PC […] Read more
Hyper-V Backup – Products & Options It’s 2018, and backing up Hyper-V hosts is solved, right? I certainly expected it to be when I took on the task of finding a simple and reliable way to […] Read more
Browser Ad Blockers and Privacy You have probably been in this situation: on some shopping site you put an article in your cart, but decide not to buy it after all. Later on, you notice […] Read more
Browser Video: Codecs, Formats & Hardware Acceleration Web video is ubiquitous. We take it for granted that browsers play video in high resolution, over any connection, on any device. Behind the scenes, a complex machinery of video […] Read more
Troubleshooting Splunk Error “Search Process Did Not Exit Cleanly” When Splunk displays an orange warning triangle instead of a chart or table it is time to investigate. Start by clicking the triangle to bring up a dialog with the […] Read more
Recurring Checklists from Templates the Podio Way Podio is a superb tool for team collaboration, structured information handling and even business process management. However, it is not perfect. There are some astonishing gaps in functionality. One of […] Read more
Leaked Token Handles Preventing RDS Session ID Reuse A recent article on Microsoft’s Ask the Directory Services Team blog piqued my interest. It talks about how leaked access tokens prevent logon sessions to be freed when the user […] Read more
Streamed Video Audio Sync Problems on Windows 10 / Realtek Sound I have been watching streaming video for a very long time. It always worked beautifully, in high resolutions and from any site: YouTube, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, you name it. […] Read more
Upgrading Ubuntu 14.04 to 16.04 & PHP 5.6 to 7 for WordPress This post describes how I upgraded our webserver running WordPress on Apache from Ubuntu 14.04.5 LTS to 16.04.1 LTS. Please see this article for more information on the server’s installation […] Read more
Windows 10: Black Lock Screen with Citrix Receiver Update: KB4022723 seems to fix the black lock screen issue described in this article. The Spotlight feature of Windows 10 shows beautiful images on the lock screen. Annoyingly, it appears […] Read more
Universal Windows App Data Storage for Admins Universal Windows Platform (UWP) is the current name for a new type of application platform originally introduced with Windows 8 as “Metro” and later renamed to “Modern”. UWP apps can […] Read more
Disabling Azure Active Directory Password Expiration User accounts created in Azure AD are subject to Azure AD’s password policies and restrictions, whose defaults are far from optimal. Unfortunately, the most severe shortcomings cannot currently be changed. Read more
Delprof2 & SetACL Studio Free for Commercial Use I am happy to announce that my tools Delprof2 and SetACL Studio are now free to use, both for individuals and corporations. Previously, Delprof2 was only free to use commercially […] Read more
The Perfect Workstation: Fujitsu Celsius J550 When it comes to selecting a general-purpose workstation I tend to be looking for the impossible: high performance, superb reliability, quiet operation, moderate price. Amazingly, there exists at least one […] Read more