I’m working on a project that involves aggregating data from many sources (Twitter, Blogs, Yammer, etc) so my team can get visibility and respond to questions being asked about our product. My goal is
[ We were all disappointed when Windows Live Writer went into sustainment mode in 2012ish. Shortly after that, Scott and I talked about options. One option was to write a new tool and another was to s
I was just setting up a new Particle Photon and got this error message when using the particle-cli setup command No nearby Photons detected. Try the particle.js help command for more information. I
The Twitter API has its own custom date time format. Tue Dec 01 22:35:28 +0000 2015 DateTime.Parse will barf if you try to parse it. I searched around a bit and didn’t find a quick resolution. Lucki
I was just setting up a new IFTTT.com recipe and got this error: “search query is too long or complex”. I did a bunch of poking around and discovered that my IFTTT->Twitter integration was disconn
Truth be told – I haven’t done a lot of ASP.NET dev over the last couple of years, but since I do a good amount of maker projects that involve webhooks, I had to checkout the new ASP.NET WebHooks feat
Scenario: You have a SQL Server database and you edit that data using Access. You make a schema change to the SQL Server table and you want that change to be reflected in Access. It’s easy, yet unintu
Hooking up a 16x2 LCD screen to a Particle Photon is pretty easy one you get it all wired up correctly and find the right library to use. I spent a bunch of time digging through forums to get this wor
I got some new monitors and went to go run my monitor color calibrator – HueyPro by Pantone – and saw that they didn’t have a Windows 10 driver. I pinged them to see if they had one and got this respo
I was just installing particle-cli on a new machine and got this error: Error: Can't find Python executable "python", you can set the PYTHON env variable. Super obvious what is going on – you need to
If you get this exception when connecting to an Azure SQL Database from Access: “Built-in function ‘has_dbaccess’ is not supported in this version of SQL Server.”, you are using the wrong driver. Her
I’m investigating automatic REST API SDK generation options and I’d like your help narrowing things down. We, at Power BI, have a REST/JSON API and our documentation is up on apiary, which supports “A
It took me a few minutes to figure out how to get the Power Pivot Excel Add-in installed, so I figured I’d do a post to save you some time. Instead of a download it’s actually already installed when y
[TLDR; I just joined Power BI and I’m hiring developers. Click here to jump to the job description and apply. Here are some of my previous blog posts to give you an idea of how I operate: On Work/Lif
I’m working on project that uses the Bing Maps Routing API and couldn’t find a way to easily convert a Directions URL that you would get from Bing.com/maps to the Bing Maps Routing API URL format, so
I found a usability bug in Amazon’s Wish List functionality…there’s no obvious way to change a Wish List name. After some searching I discovered that the “Edit list name” feature is in the “List Actio
](http://www.snapcircuits.net/) I recently bought my 5 year old kid a Snap Circuits Jr. SC-100 kit and the black wire broken almost immediately. It went on the shelf and sat for a while because I thou
Here’s a quick post to show you how to get your Particle Photon setup with Node.js. I also have instructions for doing so with PuTTY here. Put Photon in Listening Mode 1. Plug Photon into your compute
beakn is my Skype for Business (aka Lync) Status Light project that I have been building since late last year. Very simply, it’s a hardware device that will change color to Red, Yellow or Green as you
This post is all about just getting your Photon connected to WiFi with Windows. Particle has some slick iOS and Android apps to help you connect your Photons to Wifi and associate them with your accou
Here’s how to get your Particle Photon’s MAC address before you connect it to a WiFi network. 1. Connect your Photon to your computer’s USB port 2. Download putty 3. Open Device Manager and find out w
1. Plug Photon into laptop via USB 1a. Go ahead and install the Particle Photon driver now: https://particle.io 2. Put Photon into DFU mode. a) Hold down both Setup and Reset buttons b) Release the Re
I spent spent way too much time with this one. Hope this post saves you from doing the same. Here’s the exception we are dealing with: can’t be invoked from Azure WebJobs SDK. Is it missing Azure Web
Power BI is Microsoft’s new data visualization platform. It allows you to easily pull data from datasources like Salesforce, GitHub and QuickBooks. As I was going through the product I noticed they di
beakn is a Lync status light that I’ve been building for last couple of months. I tweeted a quick drawing of beakn v0.5, which will include a rechargeable battery and David Washington was quick to res
I’ve been building a battery-powered wifi-enabled Lync Status light for the last couple of months. Lots of people have been building the beakn and I did a hackathon class last week, so I thought it wo
[I joined the Windows IoT team back in October and was thrilled to hear that we were working on getting Windows 10 on Raspberry Pi 2 – now I’m excited to share that news with you all. Like many other
I was getting this error when trying to install the UPWare software for my UP Plus 2 printer. “The setup files are corrupted. Please obtain a new copy of the program.” Solution: Download the file usi
This will likely be my last post in this series on 3D modeling software. I started 3D printing back in November of last year and started with SketchUp which doesn’t do rounded corners well, then 123D
This is post 6 in my 3d modeling software series that outlines my experience as I search for the perfect 3d modeling software for makers. I’m looking for something that is inexpensive, precise, featur
Here’s a quick update to beakn – my Lync status light maker project – this version uses the Spark Core onboard RGB led. Joe Shirey tweeted his version of beakn which uses the onboard led – I was super
This is the 5th post in my 3D modeling software experience series. As I went about searching for the perfect 3D modeling software I figured I would blog about it so you can learn from my experience an
In this series I bring you through my experience as I search for the perfect 3D modeling software. I’m looking for something that is in-expensive, user-friendly, precise and inspiring. Part 1 looked a
This is part 3 of my 3D modeling software series where I detail my experience while searching for a 3D modeling software that is in-expensive, user-friendly, precise and inspiring. Part 1 looked at Sk
The goal of this quest is to find 3D modeling software that is inexpensive, user friendly, precise and inspiring. In part 1 of this series I looked at SketchUp and 123D Design. Someone suggested Tinke
It’s super easy to get a slew of 5-star Amazon reviews. All you have to do is throw away your integrity and tempt your customers to succumb to bribery. A few years ago one of my doctors had a free iPa
I’m just getting into 3D modeling and I’m searching for the perfect software. I do relatively small maker type enclosures and product designs. My requirements are: free or inexpensive, easy to use, pr
A Microsoft customer from Uruguay was trying to purchase Office 2013 Spanish Language Pack, but wasn’t able to because on the Billing Address page the country was set to United States with no obvious
Here’s how you blink an led with just an led, capacitor, transistor and two resistors. This post is a complement to Dick Cappel’s “Simplest LED Flasher Circuit” post. I’ve added a Fritzing diagram and