Archive

2026

October 2026

How to counter vCard address book "bit rot"

After a few years and mobile device generations the state of my address book was rather frustrating: Starting with Nokia Symbian S60 (SyncML) over to early Android (using Backups), on to BlackBerry 10 (Card/CalDAV backend) and ultimately back to Android (using a sync app) has introduced numerous duplications and invisible character additions by the respective address book apps (the Samsung Contacts app being the worst).

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Tags: Programming, Python, Android

2018

April 2018

How to compare vCard address book entries

Following a little mishap with the DAVdroid app on my Fire HDX Android tablet, I ended up with a lot of duplicate contacts in my CardDAV account. Upon closer inspection I then noticed, that in the process of copying the contacts from the local contact store (on my Blackberry smartphone) to the CardDAV account, certain contact details had been lost and spurious characters (like spaces and question marks) introduced.

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Tags: programming, Linux, Android

February 2018

2011

November 2011

June 2011

2010

November 2010

How to dual-boot Windows physically and virtually

While this is no longer possible with Windows Activation Technologies in Win 7, Windows XP allows using Hardware Profiles for a shared installation that can be run either physically or virtually (e.g. using the KVM virtualization stack built into recent Linux kernels, which is a lot more convenient than VMWare Player with its kernel module dependencies, at the price of 3D graphics acceleration). The recommended sequence for such a setup:

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Tags: historic, Virtualization

2009

February 2009

2007

January 2007