Personal Finger Daemon for Windows

Updated on Wednesday, June 2, 2021

Did you know that Windows still has a vestigial finger command with just about nothing left to talk to? One of my New Year's resolutions is to bring finger back and unlike the stalled webfinger project I need to make some progress. Here's some C# to run your own personal finger daemon... you just need to create a .plan file in your home directory (haven't done that for a while):

using System; using System.Diagnostics; using System.IO; using System.Net; using System.Net.Sockets; using System.Text; using System.Threading; namespace fingerd { static class Program { private const int FingerPort = 79; private const int MaxFingerCommand = 256; private const string PlanFile = ".plan"; private static readonly TcpListener _tcpListener = new TcpListener( IPAddress.Any, FingerPort); static void Main() { _tcpListener.Start(); while (true) { TcpClient tcpClient = _tcpListener.AcceptTcpClient(); Thread clientThread = new Thread(ClientThread); clientThread.Start(tcpClient); } } static void ClientThread(object client) { NetworkStream clientStream = null; TcpClient tcpClient = client as TcpClient; if (tcpClient == null) { return; } try { byte[] command = new byte[MaxFingerCommand]; clientStream = tcpClient.GetStream(); int read = clientStream.Read(command, 0, command.Length); if (read == 0) { return; } ASCIIEncoding asciiEncoding = new ASCIIEncoding(); string commandText = asciiEncoding.GetString(command); int endOfCommand = commandText.IndexOf("\r\n", StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase); if (endOfCommand <= 0) { return; } string user = commandText.Substring(0, endOfCommand); if (string.Compare(user, Environment.UserName, StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase) != 0) { return; } string planPath = Path.Combine(Environment.GetFolderPath( Environment.SpecialFolder.UserProfile), PlanFile); if (!File.Exists(planPath)) { return; } string plan = File.ReadAllText(planPath) + "\r\n"; byte[] planBytes = asciiEncoding.GetBytes(plan); clientStream.Write(planBytes, 0, planBytes.Length); } catch (Exception ex) { Debug.WriteLine(ex); } finally { if (clientStream != null) { clientStream.Close(); } tcpClient.Close(); } } } }

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Ambient Orb Controller .NET Library

Updated on Friday, December 27, 2019

The Ambient Orb is (was) an LED illuminated globe designed to display subtle information - stock market prices, weather, etc. Normally the Orb is controlled via the pager network but you can buy (or build) a developer module and connect the Orb via your serial port.

I've used my Orb via both pager and serial port for a number of applications. I've just released a library - Ambient Orb Controller - on GitHub that supports both methods of control. I wrote the library to make it easier for me to gin up new Orb applications. If you use an Orb let me know what you come up with. Two of my favorites are using the Orb for continuous integration and as a music visualizer.

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Personal Finger Daemon for Windows

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