Use diskpart CLI to reformat a Linux boot USB flash drive

Useful for reformatting a flash drive after using it as a Linux boot drive. 

In a Windows 10 command prompt, running as administrator:

C:\Windows\system32>diskpart

Microsoft DiskPart version 10.0.19041.964

Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.

On computer: YOURPC

DISKPART> list disk

  Disk ###  Status         Size     Free     Dyn  Gpt
  --------  -------------  -------  -------  ---  ---
  Disk 0    Online          476 GB  1024 KB        *
  Disk 1    Online          931 GB  1024 KB        *
  Disk 2    Online         7396 MB  4509 MB        *

DISKPART> select disk 2
Disk 2 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> clean
DiskPart succeeded in cleaning the disk.

DISKPART> create partition primary
DiskPart succeeded in creating the specified partition.

DISKPART> format fs=fat32 quick
  100 percent completed

DiskPart successfully formatted the volume.

DISKPART> exit
Leaving DiskPart...

How to recover an off-screen window in Windows

 Recover an off-screen window:

1. Select the window's tab in the task bar
2. Press Alt+Spacebar to open the window's context menu
3. Press M to select Move in the context menu
4. Press an arrow key to snap the mouse pointer to the window
5. Move your mouse around until it drags the window back into view

Mastodon

 You can find me on Mastodon: @psteiner@techhub.social

Where is that Perl module installed?

 Out of the box Perl comes with a 'standard library' of modules. You can use tools like cpan, cpanm and ppm to install additional modules. 

To find out whether a module is standard or an add-on, run the command instmodsh to find out.

Canadians! How to turn off that annoying "Control-Shift" Keyboard Switch

No offense to mon copains Quebecois (did I say that right?), but a particular quirk affects PCs for a unilinguist Anglo like me when the Region setting in Windows is set to Canada (or I suppose any bilingual country). 

I've had the annoying experience of holding down "Control-Shift" for more than a couple of seconds, say while I'm trying to decide if I want to paste plain text into a Google Chrome field (using Ctrl-Shift-V), then suddenly I'm getting accented characters all over the place. 

This is Windows being helpful to us Canucks, by switching the keyboard layout from Canadian English to Canadian French, which would be great, if a) I had a Canadian French keyboard, and b) I knew how to write in Canadian French on that keyboard, and c) I actually wanted to write in Canadian French!

Well, I discovered how to turn off that 'helpful' keyboard shift:

1. Open Settings and search for "advanced keyboard settings":
   
   
   
   
   
2. In the Advanced Keyboard Settings panel, click on Language bar options:
   
   
3. In the Text Services and Input Languages control panel, select the "Advanced Key Settings" tab and click the "Change Key Sequence" button:
   
   
   
   
   
4. Finally we are there: click the "Not Assigned" radio buttons for either or both "Switch Input Language" or "Switch Keyboard Layout" options:
   
   

And that I think is it!

Using Windows Command Line to make a dummy file

Echo 64 bytes to a seed file: 

C:\Temp>echo This is just a sample line appended to create a bi wefhwef weh> dummy8.txt

Then call 'type' in a for loop to append the contents of the file to itself:

C:\Temp>for /L %i in (1,1,8) do type dummy.txt >> dummy.txt

Makes a  32,768 byte (32Kb) file.

Courtesy https://www.windows-commandline.com/how-to-create-large-dummy-file/

Formatting Time and Date with Perl

# timestamp examples
use strict;
use warnings;
use v5.10.0;

use POSIX qq(strftime);

my $timestamp = strftime("%Y-%m-%d_%a_%H-%M-%S",localtime);

say $timestamp; # 2021-06-08_Tue_11-54-28

# ------------------------------------------------------------------------------

use DateTime;

my $today = DateTime->today();

say $today; # 2021-06-08T00:00:00

say $today->date; # 2021-06-08