Posts on Mario Moreno

Arcane Code and AI

Mon, 22 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A while ago, I was sorting through old (very old) files. I found the assignments I did in college and literally my first programs or codes written, first in Pascal and then in C++.

Review them with VS Code, nostalgia, re-archive, forget them again.

A few days ago I remembered those codes and now the idea of playing with AI, why not?

Among the programs, I found the final project for Algorithms I (1999), which consisted of generating a simple C++ program that encodes and decodes a message in limited Morse code. Using the statement as a starting point, I asked Gemini (CLI), ChatGPT (Web), and Claude Sonnet 3.5 (from VS Code Copilot) to create a Golang implementation. Just to clarify that all three are free versions, currently I’m not paying for any AI services.

Development on an educational laptop

Sun, 23 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

My education was completely based on the public environment: elementary, high school, and university. With a lot of effort from my parents and people who helped me on the way. Particularly at the university, limited resources, and a crucial grade-based scholarship to continuing my studies, especially in the early years. But that’s another story.

In that context, I find great programs like the one in place in Argentina until 2024, which allows teenagers in high school to have access to a free laptop. In many cases, as the first computer at their home, providing access to technology.

I quit TV

Sun, 23 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In 2021, after literally spending years trying to sell our apartment in search of more space, the opportunity appeared.

Our apartment was not exceptionally small, although the family had grown since the initial purchase. It was not giant either and in practice it seemed to be smaller than it really was in the harshest moments of the pandemic quarantine.

In the apartment, the TV played an important implicit role in our lives. In fact, in my case, it was one of the first things I did when I woke up, turning on the TV to watch the news. A fundamental part of family breakfasts, lunches and dinners. The TV was always on, known, expected, watched programs and other moments where, with no one paying attention, it continued to be on in the background covering up the silence.

Not enough mana

Sat, 14 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I know people who can work for hours without seemingly needing to take a break, eat or even drink something. They can stay long hours working on a task or several tasks. That is not my case

In my case I learned or understood I work best in bursts. A cycle of actions, achieve something or several things and then rest for a while while thinking about the work done, the next priorities and preparations for next cycle

If you know Kung Fu

Sat, 26 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I remember in my childhood situations when my mom or dad explicitly told me or somehow demonstrated I was special or very good at something, little subjects in some cases. Like tinkering things, at school, running fast..

I think it is the right thing to do, especially with your kids, to show recognition, pride, explicitly show how much you love them and how her/his effort at the school, playing a sport, specific activity, etc doesn’t go unnoticed. Contribute to her/his emotional bank account

The Manager's Path™

Sat, 05 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Two years and a half ago I accepted a position as an IT Manager. Before that I was working on different technology companies with positions like developer, devops, software architect and technical lead. Since 2013 also working on positions that involved different levels of management, always technical and working mainly with remote teams

These are some notes about my learnings on the path to become a better manager (work in progress), personal experience and challenges

Intel Stick

Sun, 20 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

On my last vacation, I took the opportunity to spend more time with my family, go to the beach, read some books and resume old software projects (and also start new ones..)

On of those technological adventures included the opportunity to buy at a very good price an used Intel Stick

I have to recognize that I didn’t know about their existence until I saw a picture in the marketplace and start to read about their technical specifications. Surely considering the form factor they seemed fairly good at release date (Q1 2015) but for 2022 they seem limited at least

Net Core Ubuntu Dev Server

Sun, 31 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Well, continuing with the series of post years in draft.. this is from 2018/2019. How to provision, setup and publish a .Net Core development server (Ubuntu 1804) in Azure

VM Provision

In this example I’m using Azure but the same steps could be applied to any Ubuntu 1804 server

We will skip some steps here Home > Virtual Machines > Add

In this case I have created a Standard B2s (2 vcpus, 4 GB memory)

Old Hardware Debian 9

Sat, 30 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

This post have at least two years in draft mode. Does not have anything special, a short story and a list of command hope someone will find useful

Back in 2019 I found an old laptop in my house LG S1 (Intel Core 2 duo from 2006) battery long dead but I conected it to AC power and it started. Originally shipped with Windows XP (and Vista Ready :)) Nostalgia + willigness to learn Golang => this post

Tips

Sun, 03 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The following are just some ’tips’ that helped me (and most of them are still helping me) in my professional career. They don’t pretend to be an exhaustive list nor absolute truths relevant to any situation and context. Also I don’t pretend to get credit as the ‘creator’ of these techniques, some (maybe most) of them could sound like just common sense for a lot of people. It is just a small compilation from mentors I was lucky to have throughout my career, articles or blog posts or even tweets that since several years ago I was particularly interested in and of course personal experience. We can maybe even don’t agree in some of them and that is fine, maybe in the comments section we can start a respectful conversation and in my case discover other points of view

SonarQube Email Report Application

Sat, 01 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

In this short blog post I want to present a little application I made around three years ago. At that moment I was working on a small team developing a .NET full framework application and we used SonarQube to measure technical metrics. You can always explicitly navigate to the project dashboard but I wanted to have a daily summary in my inbox. The version of SonarQube that we had didn’t support that functionality so based on a previous full .NET framework application were I was playing with the SonarQube server rest API I built this little .NET Core application to get SonarQube metric email reports in my inbox

Base Windows Script

Thu, 29 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Continuing with the series of old MS Windows stories I found a shell script that I used as a base for several scripts mainly to automatize CI/CD tasks

This script was made from reviewing other coworkers scripts and example scripts from the Internet

echo off
SETLOCAL
@REM ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
@REM
@REM author: [email]
@REM
@REM ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
echo.
echo =========================================================
echo [script_name]]
echo =========================================================
echo.
@REM set local variables
set start_time=%time%
@REM ------------------------------------------------
@REM Shorten the command prompt for making the output
@REM easier to read.
@REM ------------------------------------------------
set savedPrompt=%prompt%
set prompt=$$$g$s
rem do stuff
pushd %CD%
@if %ERRORLEVEL% NEQ 0 GOTO Error
echo process successfully finished.
GOTO End
:Error
echo an error has ocurred.
:End
echo start time: %start_time%
echo end time: %time%
pause
:finish
popd
set prompt=%savedPrompt%
ENDLOCAL
echo on

As an example here is a poor man’s way to generate a daily metric report from a Silverlight report application (that old)

Old School Bootable USB Windows Creation

Sat, 24 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I was reviewing several old directories and I found different Windows recipes and scripts that I used often some time ago

Basically the following are the steps to create a Windows booteable disk from command line

What you will need: a flash drive (back in my time with 4GB was more than enough but I can see that current Windows 10 ISO is almost 6GB) and a Windows ISO file

Hardy Heron promise

Thu, 18 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Back in 2008 I was a fulltime senior .NET developer. .NET Framework 3.5 was recently released, Visual Studio 2008, TFS 2008, SQL Server 2008, Silverlight, Windows Vista.. I was fully commited to .NET and all Microsoft related technologies and products

Also by that time I was able to bought my first laptop. My choice was a HP Pavilion TX which ended being more beautiful than powerfull but it was mine to try and investigate new technologies

Old Raspberry Pi commands

Sat, 30 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Back in 2015 I was in United States on vacations an decided to bought a Raspberry Pi Canakit. The latest model at that moment was 2 B and the possibilities were infite: learn bash, play movies in a non-smart TV, remote play music, task automation

The reality was a little different. It ended mostly resting in a drawer of my desk until I decided to sell it in 2017.. Maybe lots of you share a similar story

Ten Years Later

Tue, 02 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Ten years ago, well, in fact I’m talking about 2008 so this should had be written last year.

In 2008, I was in the second year working for a small company in Buenos Aires. It was my first professional full .NET job.

My daily work involved Visual Studio for coding, Team Foundation Server as source control and issue tracker and deploying applications in a semi automatic way, sometimes involving remote desktop a server to troubleshoot a problem. All over Microsoft Windows platform.

Removable drive custom icon

Sun, 09 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Several years ago I used to have have three removable drives in use. Two external disks for information backup, three replicas (inspired in MongoDB replication schema) and one flash drive for quick information sharing.

At that time I decided that it would be a good idea to name them with some fancy names. After a quick thinking (and as a Diablo 2 fan) there was no other option than the three unique Necromancer shrunken head items:

I cleaned up my virtual basement

Sun, 02 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Something that I quickly realized and definitely love from my profession (I’m a System Engineer) is how easy and cheap is for us to create compared to other disciplines. I’m not talking about big commercial systems, if you want to build the next GitHub you won’t probably go far without some level of real money investment. I’m talking about create something, just because you are learning, trying a technology or building something to address a specific problem. At the very basics you only need a computer, the tools, time and focus.

.NET Framework sample solution

Mon, 27 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

In this post I will describe different parts of a .NET full framework solution. This is the result of years reviewing and incorporating ideas from other people and adding my own experience and criteria.

The solution was part of an exercise proposed in a technical interview. This is not intended to be an example from the code perspective itself. The solution proposed at that time constraint exercise was very basic (and is almost untouched). It just intend to be an example of a potential structure, process and use of tools.

I Finished Diablo 2 LOD

Thu, 17 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Diablo 2 is by far the game that I most played in my life.

I first played it in 2002 and since then (sometimes with years of difference) I played uncountable hours. Initially with a sorceress then paladin, assassin and necromancer.

I played with my wife (long time ago), all night with friends through Lan (also long time ago), over the internet in battle.net and finished it several times through the years in normal and nightmare difficulty solo games. Different characters, sometimes with the same class. But for some reason I have never played enough with one character to finish the game in hell difficulty.

Continuous Delivery ASP .NET MVC Application

Sat, 21 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This is a continuation of my previous post Continuous Delivery ASP .NET MVC Application

I will explain step by step how to put in place the Continuous Delivery process explained in my previous post in a Continuous Integration & Delivery tool. In this case Microsoft Team Foundation Server.

You can download or clone the code of the project included in the examples from GitHub.

Create a build plan

Our first step is to create a Build Plan. This plan is responsible to generate the artifacts, a deployable version of our application.

Continuous Delivery ASP .NET MVC Application

Sun, 15 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

In this post I will explain the steps I follow to put in place a Continuous Delivery process for a .NET MVC Application.

The proposed solution is based on WebDeploy and parameter files to generate one deployment package and deploy it to N environments. Something similar to the following picture.

Image credits: https://confluence.atlassian.com/bamboo/deployment-projects-338363438.html

The same process could be applied to WebForms and WebApi applications.

Update: There is a second part of this post in which I explain how to orchestrate this process in MS Team Foundation Server

SonarQube

Sat, 24 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

In this post I will explain all the steps I follow to install SonarQube in a Windows (Windows 10) environment. Windows Server steps should be the same except from resources location. You should surely connect to a remote database server, needs to configure remote access on that server. Also make the SonarQube server available outside (enable TCP port) etc. Most of the steps like configure it as a Windows service are explained in this post.

ASP .NET Core Identity

Sat, 04 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

In this post I will explain all the steps I follow to create a default ASP .NET Core MVC application with Identity using MSSQL Server on Docker.

I’m using a Mac but the same steps (maybe with some slightly differences in Windows) should be valid for Linux and Windows.

Requirements

.NET Core

.NET Core installed, you can follow the steps from the official site: https://www.microsoft.com/net/learn/get-started/macos

Docker

Again you can follow the steps from the official site: https://www.docker.com/docker-mac

Command Line Compression Tools

Thu, 07 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

There are several scenarios where is very useful to know how to compress/decompress files via command line.
One example is the configuration of a continuous integration plan. We could need to compress directories to expose them as an artifact.
Here is a short list of command line options for Windows and Linux and a third-party option using 7zip.

Windows Built In

Powershell (Windows 8+, Server 2012+)

Compress

Add-Type -A System.IO.Compression.FileSystem
[IO.Compression.ZipFile]::CreateFromDirectory([folderPath], [zipFilePath])

folderPath: path to the folder to be compressed
zipFilePath: destination zip file

Setup a .NET Core, VSCode & Docker Ubuntu Development Environment

Fri, 25 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

On this post I will describe the steps I have followed to go from an Ubuntu 16.04 clean installation to a .NET Core and Docker development environment.

Initial Setup

This step is definitely not mandatory. By default Ubuntu comes with different great applications. As this is intended to be a development environment I prefer to remove some of the non-development related applications. At least the biggest in size. For example:

.NET Continuous Delivery/Deployment

Thu, 17 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

In this post I will describe a process to generate and deploy a .NET 4.5 web application (including database) to a Windows Server. This process can be implemented to configure a Continuous Delivery or Deployment process in a Continuous Integration server.

I will describe the process using Atlassian Bamboo as the continuous integration server. Only because is the tool I’m currently using but this process can be implemented in any other continuous integration server with just a few tweaks.

My Tools

Tue, 08 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

I’m writing this post with VS Code in a Linux Ubuntu 16.04 laptop. But as a .NET developer I spent last fifteen years (and continue at work) working on different Windows based desktop/servers and laptop computers.

Since 2010 I’ve started to work heavely wit virtual machines and different computers. I ended selecting different old and new tools, looking mainly for portable versions to fit in a little flashdrive. Here is my selection of tools, most of them I use in a daily basis.

The Development Wave

Sun, 23 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

I bought my first laptop in 2008 a HP Pavilion Tx1330la

Definitely more prettier than useful, at least for development :)

By that time I was working in a company with hard .NET development background with a corporate Team Foundation Server 2008 as a source control and issue tracker.

In that context my personal goal was to master .NET development and TFS. I configured a VirtualBox environment with Windows Server 2008 and installed TFS 2008. Then I was able to develop .NET applications with Visual Studio 2008 connected to my local TFS instance. All in my 1GB RAM HP Windows Vista Laptop..

PostgreSQL Centos 7

Mon, 20 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Installation friendly for a JIRA or Bamboo installation afterwards.

Install

sudo yum install postgresql-server postgresql-contrib

Init

sudo postgresql-setup initdb

Password authentication

By default, PostgreSQL does not allow password authentication.

sudo vi /var/lib/pgsql/data/pg_hba.conf

Find the lines that looks like this, near the bottom of the file:

pg_hba.conf excerpt (original)
host all all 127.0.0.1/32 ident
host all all ::1/128 ident

Then replace “ident” with “md5”, so they look like this:

PostgreSQL Ubuntu

Mon, 20 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

PostgreSQL Ubuntu installation. Default port 5432.

Install

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install postgresql postgresql-contrib

Test Installation

sudo -i -u postgres
psql
\quit

Example: Create Bamboo Database

sudo -s -H -u postgres
createuser -S -d -r -P -E bamboouser
createdb -O bamboouser bamboodb

Testing the connection

sudo adduser bamboouser
sudo -i -u bamboouser
psql -d bamboodb

Links

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-and-use-postgresql-on-ubuntu-14-04 https://confluence.atlassian.com/bamboo/postgresql-289276816.html

SQL Server Windows Installation

Mon, 20 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

SQL Server Windows Installation (thinking on an installation of JIRA, Bamboo and Crucible afterward)

The installation steps are based on SQL Server 2014 (the current version supported by JIRA and Bamboo) you can download it from the official Microsoft site: https://www.microsoft.com/en-US/download/details.aspx?id=42299

Additionally you can download and install SQL Server Management Studio. 16.5.3 in this case. Again you can download it from the official Microsoft site: https://msdn.microsoft.com/library/mt238290.aspx

Installation

Click on New SQL Server stand-alone installation…

Bamboo Linux Agent Installation

Sat, 04 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

On this post I will describe my experience installing a Bamboo agent on a Linux server (CentOS based)

Requirements

JDK

It’s strongly recommended to install the same JDK version as the Bamboo server. You can follow my post about how to install the JDK in a CentOS server.

In my case the configuration is:

java version "1.8.0_51"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_51-b16)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.51-b03, mixed mode)

Agent JAR

The next step is to download the agent JAR from our Bamboo server. It can be found in:

.NET Code Coverage Process

Mon, 27 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

In this post I will describe a very cheap process to calculate unit tests Code Coverage and generate a html report with the results as part of our development process.

I’m using OpenCover and ReportGenerator. You can directly call them by command line they support several configurations and parameters: OpenCover Usage Wiki, ReportGenerator. In this case I’m using two .cmd files I wrote and usually include in my development projects. The open-cover.cmd file recursively look for test assemblies and run opencover to generate an open-cover.xml report. The report-generator.cmd file take an open-cover.xml report as input and generate a coverage-report folder with a human friendly html report ready to be deployed to a web server.

Bamboo .NET Continuous Integration

Sun, 26 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

On this post I will describe the configuration of a Continuous Integration plan with Bamboo.

The project is a simple wrapper for Virtual Clone Drive. A .Net application initially written several years ago. This simple application will serve as a good example about how to configure a Continuous Integration plan in Bamboo.

Create Plan

First we should create the Plan. In order to do that we should go to Create > Create a new plan option and configure the project name, project key, plan name and plan key. Also we have to configure the source code repository in this case GitHub.

Bamboo CMD tools

Sat, 04 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

I found useful to configure different tools and batch files as Commands in Bamboo. To support and easily configure my build plans later.

There is a basic list of tools and their configuration, also some of them are based on different batch file created by me that you can find in this repo.

7zip

It’s always useful to compress stuff and make it available as an artifact for example.

You can configure 7zip as a command in Bamboo and use it in your plans. The basic workflow is compress stuff, delete previous zip files (to avoid adding new files to an existing file container) and uncompress stuff.

Bamboo Net Agent

Sat, 21 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Initial State

After the Bamboo .NET Agent Setup

This should be the initial state:

The following is a list of tools to install and configure in Bamboo in order to support .NET builds.

Add Capabilities

In Bamboo you can add a capability to an agent going to Administration > Agents

Then select the agent where you want to add the capability and click in Add capability option

Bamboo Ubuntu Install

Tue, 03 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Initial Notes

I have installed it on my laptop so I have skipped some steps like create a specific bamboo user, etc.

Create Database

If you don’t have a database you can follow the guidelines described in requirements/postgres or requirements/sql-server

Remember to create an application database and user. For example: bamboodb and bamboouser

Create Installation Directory

cd /opt
mkdir atlassian
cd atlassian
wget https://www.atlassian.com/software/bamboo/downloads/binary/atlassian-bamboo-5.10.3.tar.gz
tar zxvf atlassian-bamboo-5.10.3.tar.gz
cd ../..
ln -s atlassian/atlassian-bamboo-5.10.3 bamboo
chown [user] atlassian

Set Bamboo Home

vi atlassian-bamboo/WEB-INF/classes/bamboo-init.properties

Uncommment bamboo.home with a value like: bamboo.home=/opt/atlassian/app-data/bamboo-home

CentOS 7 Minimal

Sun, 25 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

CentOS 7 Minimal Installation Configuration

Based on: http://www.tecmint.com/things-to-do-after-minimal-rhel-centos-7-installation/

A small subset of steps I was executing after a CentOS 7 minimal installation. In this case it was to configure different Bamboo, Crucible and JIRA test server instances.

Static IP

Install ifconfig utility

sudo yum install net-tools

Show IP address

ip addr show

Edit ifcfg file

sudo vi /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-enp0s3

For example:

IPADDR="10.0.64.2"
GATEWAY="10.0.64.1"
DNS1="8.8.8.8"
DNS2="8.8.4.4"

Restart network

service network restart

Test configuration

Bamboo .NET Agent Setup

Sat, 24 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Bamboo .NET Agent setup

In this post we will see how to setup a Windows Agent to build .NET solutions.

Prerequisites: a Bamboo Server & Agent already configured.

https://mamcer.github.io/2016-12-11-bamboo-windows-install/
https://mamcer.github.io/2016-12-20-bamboo-windows-agent-installation/

The example in this post it’s based on a Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1.

Most of this tools can be downloaded from www.visualstudio.com Tools for Visual Studio section

Install GIT

Extend support for the built-in Bamboo agent Git support.

https://git-scm.com/

JDK linux install

Sat, 24 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

JDK

Tested on a CentOS 7 minimal installation

Install

The current latest stable version is 1.8.0_77

cd /opt/
wget --no-cookies --no-check-certificate --header "Cookie: gpw_e24=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.oracle.com%2F; oraclelicense=accept-securebackup-cookie" "http://download.oracle.com/otn-pub/java/jdk/8u77-b03/jdk-8u77-linux-x64.tar.gz"
tar xzf jdk-8u77-linux-x64.tar.gz
cd /opt/jdk1.8.0_77/
alternatives --install /usr/bin/java java /opt/jdk1.8.0_77/bin/java 2
alternatives --config java

Set environment variable

add a jdk.sh file in /etc/profile.d/

With the following content

export JAVA_HOME=/opt/jdk1.8.0_77
export PATH=${PATH}:/opt/jdk1.8.0_77/bin

Logout

gnome-session-quit

Test

Test the installation by executing

java -version

Bamboo Windows Agent Installation

Tue, 20 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Based on

https://confluence.atlassian.com/bamboo/bamboo-remote-agent-installation-guide-289276832.html

https://confluence.atlassian.com/bamboo/additional-remote-agent-options-436044733.html

Requirements

JDK

To avoid any version conflict it’s recommended to install the same JDK version as the Bamboo Server.

Define JAVA_HOME environment variable and optionally add %JAVA_HOME%\bin to PATH then you should be able to run in any command prompt:

java -version
java version "1.8.0_101"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_101-b13)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.101-b13, mixed mode)

Bamboo Agent User

You can run the agent as an administrator. For different reasons we prefer to create a specific non-admin user for the agent

Bamboo Windows Install

Sun, 11 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

On this post I will describe my experience step by step installing Atlassian Bamboo on Windows with SQL Server as database.

This installation was done following the official documentation: https://confluence.atlassian.com/bamboo/installing-bamboo-on-windows-289276813.html

Requirements

You can check the current Bamboo supported versions in the following Atlassian confluence page: https://confluence.atlassian.com/bamboo/supported-platforms-289276764.html

In this case we have a clean Windows Server 2012 Standard installation. Our first steps are the installation of the JDK and SQL Server.

Install Prerequisites

JDK

First of all we want to install Java. In this case Oracle JDK, you can find the latest version in: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jdk8-downloads-2133151.html