I got this error while trying to call an Azure Function from ReactJS app. "TypeError: Failed to fetch \n at fetchData (http://localhost:3000/static/js/bundle.js:33:32)\n at http://localhost:30
Starting seeing this today: The workflow is not valid. .github/workflows/azure-dev.yml (Line: 3, Col: 5): Unexpected value 'branches' Apparently workflow_dispatch never supported branches, but GH sil
Let me cut right to the chase and let the below job description speak for itself. The Azure Developer Experience Team in the Developer Division at Microsoft, my team, is hiring devs of all levels, al
Our family has vacationed at Moon Palace, an all-inclusive resort, in Cancun, Mexico a few times. It’s an amazing place with great food, drinks, activities, and people. I highly recommend you conside
You are on a repo that you love and you see that you have maxed out your allowed 20 Codespaces!!! You’ll see this: But there’s no link to delete a Codespace. This may be obvious, but it took me a min
Azure Identity is an Azure SDK library that abstracts all the authentication complexities so you can get back to building your Azure solutions. In Azure Identity 101, we learned about DefaultAzureCre
I’ve been writing some UI automation tests with Playwright and was trying to parse a SignalR event. Like so: const imageEvent = JSON.parse(event.payload.toString()) as ImageEvent; And I got this erro
Azure Identity is a library that abstracts away all of the Azure authentication complexities so you can focus on building your solutions. In Azure Identity 101, I introduced DefaultAzureCredential, w
I started playing with Playwright (the browser test automation tool) yesterday and discovered that the codegen feature doesn’t work in a devcontainer out of the box. You’ll get the “Unable to open X
Azure Identity is a fundamental building block of the new Azure SDKs. We wanted to make it brain-dead simple for you to authenticate your apps with Azure. Auth can be very hard to get right. There’s
I’m using Visual Studio 2021 Preview 2.1 and I was constantly getting prompted to re-enter my credentials multiple times. I would have to 2FA 3-4 times everytime I wanted to do something with Azure.
We recently added native CloudEvent support to our Event Grid libraries. I created an app for my Intro to the new Azure SDK Python video and discovered that converting a message from a Service Bus Mes
I’m new to Golang and yesterday I attempted to create a Golang CLI. Here’s what I learned while getting it up and running on WSL. This took me a while. Hopefully with this post it only takes you a fe
Azure Identity is a library that simplifies how applications authenticate with Azure services. The following code news up a KeyVault SecretClient and passes it a DefaultAzureCredential object, which
I’m pulling data from GitHub Codeowners into a Power BI report. All was dandy locally, but refresh failed on the PBI service with this: This dataset includes a dynamic data source. Since dynamic dat
GitHub has Topics. For example, when you search for “Azure” on GitHub it displays the Azure topic: And when you click on “See topic” you can view the details of that topic: Azure recently rebranded
You’ve created your Microsoft Teams Team and you want to send an invite to all of the Team members. You create an invite and see the following, but you aren’t sure what to enter here. You then see t
VS Code just released an update that lets you embed an “Open in Visual Studio Code” button in your GitHub readme. It uses the Remote Repositories VS Code extension to directly open the repo without
I just created a Microsoft Teams private channel and noticed that it doesn’t have “Get link to channel” option like other channels. Here, you can see it doesn’t have that option: Here’s how I found t
Let’s say that you are developing with Azure Event Grid and you simply want to see the messages that it is generating to observe the schema or debug it. To do so you need to configure an Event Grid h
I just organized all my old photos into this folder format YYYY/YYYY_MM/YYYY_MM_DD - see this blog for more info: How to Organize Photos by EXIF Date Taken with PowerShell Lightroom doesn’t support t
Update - New GitHub CLI Extension GitHub CLI 2.0 introduced CLI Extensions. I took a few minutes and threw all of the fixes below into a new extension called “Setup Git Credential Helper” and can be
I’ve been coding in .NET for a very-long-time, but this tripped me up. Run the following code: var resources = await client.Resources.ListByResourceGroupAsync(resourceGroupName); foreach (var resource
Thunder Client is a new REST client VS Code extension. It’s like Postman, but integrated into VS Code. I’d consider it an early preview and far from the feature richness and maturity of Postman, bu
You’re using VS Code with the GitLens extension and you see this: Or maybe you noticed that sometimes that text is inserted into the middle of what you are typing. This feature is part of GitLens and
We are a puzzle family and a few years ago started hanging them up around the house. We are also a Star Wars family and started doing Star Wars themed puzzles. My office wall now has many puzzles that
Got this today: The subscription does not have QuotaId/Feature required by SKU ‘S0’. { "error":{ "code":"InvalidTemplateDeployment", "message":"The template deployment 'memetest04091' i
I’ve been blogging and vlogging about Azure REST APIs with Postman for a while now and often get asked why I don’t use Postman’s built in OAuth 2.0 provider. The reason is that when you use the prov
I don’t eat at McDonald’s often, but when I do it’s sodium overload because me and my kid are use to a very low-sodium diet. While on a recent roadtrip we wanted to make a quick stop at McDonald’s. I
This is a story of how much effort and care we put into Azure SDK naming guidelines and consistency - even for the casing of a single letter…the last T in IoT. In 2005, I read Framework Design Guidel
Was getting this error today: Liquid Exception: Could not locate the included file 'app_insights.html' in any of ["D:/OneDriveMS/code/GitHub/jongio/azure-sdk/_includes", "C:/Ruby26-x64/lib/ruby/gems/2
I recently decided to organize all of my photos from the last 20 years. Photos from various phones and cameras - all with many different formats, JPEG, RAW, PNG, etc. They were all stored on my har
Here’s how to call the Azure REST APIs with Insomnia - a modern lightweight REST API client. Azure SDKs Before we go too far into this Azure REST APIs for Insomnia post, I want to make sure that you
I got this error while deploying a new Azure Kubernetes Cluster. { "error":{ "code":"InvalidTemplateDeployment", "message":"The template deployment 'memealyzerdev3' is not valid accordi
I just returned from a trip to Zion National Park in February 2021. Here are some tips that will help if you are considering a trip to Zion in the winter. Housing This is where we stayed and loved it
I recently and successfully used AirportParkingReservations.com to park my car at Master Park at SeaTac - so I thought I would write a quick note to let my readers know that it’s a good service and wo
Every year or so I do an Azure REST APIs with Postman blog and video. It’s 2021 and Postman has changed quite a bit since my last update, so here’s the latest and greatest info. Azure SDKs Before we
I do most of my dev in WSL and occasionally I screw up line endings between Windows and WSL. I wanted to solve the line ending changes so I added a .gitattributes to root of repo file with this: * te
This was time suck for me, hopefully not for you after reading this. I’m working on a PowerShell script to organize my photo library. I want to get Date Taken from EXIF data. I got the data, but the
Ran a gh clone today and got this: GraphQL error: Resource protected by organization SAML enforcement. You must grant your OAuth token access to this organization. Fixed it by running: gh auth refres
I’m working on setting up Codespaces for my project and tried to open my workspace and got this error: The workspace can not be opened in a container. Folder {folder} is not a subfol
I tried to open a VS Code Codespace devcontainer and got these errors: Start: Run: docker ps -q -a --filter label=vsch.local.folder=d:\OneDriveMS\code\GitHub\jongio\memealyzer2 --filter label=vsch.qu
This Azure CLI docker image has been retired and is no longer available on Docker hub. https://hub.docker.com/r/azuresdk/azure-cli-python Apologies if this breaks anything for you. The new Azure CLI
Got this today when trying to assign access_policy to kubelet_identity Error: Unsupported attribute on main.tf line 59, in resource "azurerm_key_vault" "key_vault": 59: object_id = azurerm_ku
Got this error today when trying to set a secret with terraform. Error checking for presence of existing Secret keyvault.BaseClient#GetSecret: Failure responding to request: StatusCode=401 -- Original
In WSL, when I ran ls I was getting this: The folders were highlighted, not matter what theme I changed Terminal to. I did a bunch of searching and found this: https://stackoverflow.com/a/43147778
It quite common to lose track of what filters you currently have applied to a Power BI report. Also, there’s no out of the box way to clear them all. So, here’s how to do it. We’re going to add an i
Exactly, one month ago, to the day, I wrote a post about how to use .env files with Java and Azure SDKs. The gist of the problem was that the package we use to read the .env files didn’t write those v
If you see this error: Autodesk Translation Services failed to translate the current document to stl file - in Fusion 360, then try the solutions here: https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/fusion-36
Here are a bunch of ways you can find which roles are built into Azure. This will come in super handy when you need to assign a role to a service principal or user with Azure CLI commands like this:
Azure doesn’t currently provide a way to delete multiple resource groups at the same time. Here’s a method that works for me. Open Azure Portal https://portal.azure.com Click on Resource Groups Selec
Azurite, the local cross-platform Azure Storage emulator, just released support for HTTPS and OAuth, making our local Azure Storage development story complete. You can now do all of your Azure Storag
I ran into this error yesterday, not sure how I got Visual Studio into this state, but I thought I would post a quick fix - just in case you run into the same issue. So you know, I have reported this
UPDATE 5/13/2020 - This is now outdated as of version 5.2.0 of java-dotnet package. A systemProperties method was added to make all of this easier. You can find all of the updated details on the new
Ticket to Ride is the “go to” board game for me and my family. We’ve been playing for years and like it a lot because it is easy to learn, has a good amount of both luck and strategy, and it is fun fo
Azure has many cloud instances like: Azure Public, Azure Government, Azure German, and Azure China. You can see the full cloud list and associated endpoints via the Azure CLI command az cloud list. I
I’m working on Java / VS Code project and was getting this error: "Unbound classpath container: 'JRE System Library [JavaSE-11]' in project" I’m new to Java and pom.xml files, so it took me
Not sure how, but Amazon charged my Prime membership to the wrong card. I contacted them via chat to credit that card and charge my primary card. They had to make an exception to give me the credit a
UPDATE 04/23/2020 - Azurite now officially supports HTTPS and OAuth. Please see my new blog here for all the details. You won’t need to create a reverse-proxy anymore like I describe in this post b
In this 3 part series we are going to learn a few methods for developing an Azure Function that uploads blobs to Azure Storage using the new Azure Blob Storage and Azure Identity Client Libraries. Co
In this 3 part series we are going to learn a few methods for developing an Azure Function that uploads blobs to Azure Storage using the new Azure Blob Storage and Azure Identity Client Libraries. Co
In this 3 part series we are going to learn a few methods for developing an Azure Function that uploads blobs to Azure Storage using the new Azure Blob Storage and Azure Identity Client Libraries. Her
I’m working on an app that accepts user input of a start year and end year, loops through those years, and outputs the year. For example, given the start year and end year of 2020, I want a loop to ex
I’m working on project that pulls gharchive data into Azure Data Explorer (kusto) and I decided to try to do all of my setup with the Azure CLI. I could easily create my cluster and database with the
I have two OneDrive accounts, one for personal, one for work. When you have two accounts on the same machine, OneDrive automatically creates a folder for the second account in this format OneDrive - &
When using Power BI Desktop you will see the “Data” tab on the left. When you create a new DirectQuery connection, the “Data” tab disappears. It wasn’t obvious to me that the “Data” tab disappeared
As of 11/4/2019, a few of the New Azure SDKs have hit General Availability! Read more here: Azure SDK Releases Azure has had a tremendous amount of growth in a very short amount of time. With that
On Windows using the Windows Installer and Azure CLI wouldn’t update to the latest version - it was stuck on 2.0.44, but the latest is 2.0.66. I uninstalled the Azure CLI via Apps, but it was still av
This is my 20th year as a software engineer and 15th year at Microsoft. I started in 1999 and worked in startups for 5 years. I then spent the next 12 years at Microsoft shipping products and services
This content is outdated Please see the most up-to-date Azure REST APIs with Postman video and blog here: Latest Azure REST APIs with Postman Video: https://aka.ms/azurerestvideoLatest Azure REST APIs
I just tried to create a Postman Collection and I wasn’t able to add any requests to it because it was created as read only. I did a bunch of Googling and Githubbing to no avail. I happened to go to
I’m building a recursive Vue.js component and ran into this error: Unknown custom element: <Categories> - did you register the component correctly? For recursive components, make sure to provide
I’ve had auto and home insurance with Pemco since 2003, but just switched to Safeco for 31% less. I wasn’t unhappy with Pemco - as they were responsive to claims and reputable, but unfortunately, th
Developing a Vue.js app and I was getting this: Uncaught TypeError: Cannot set property 'render' of undefined at normalizeComponent (componentNormalizer.js:24) at Module../src/App.vue (App.vu
With this code: @Component export default class CategoryRating extends Vue { @Prop({default: {}}) category: any; I kept getting this VS Code error: Exp
I spent way too much time this weekend debugging Vue.js - Vetur - Prettyhtml - Prettier - Beautify - Eslint issues. Here’s what I discovered: By default, Vetur (The VS Code Vue.js Extension) uses Pre
Working on a Vue.js and TypeScript project. I had this: @Prop() enabled!: boolean = false; And got this error: Avoid mutating a prop directly since the value will be overwritten whenever the parent
I’m new to Vue.js and didn’t realize that you have to fully define the structure of your view model object or bindings will not work. For example, with this code, I define data: { vm: {}
One way to keep track of tweets that you want to follow up on is to “like” them to review at a later time. I posted my method for that here: How to Create a Microsoft To-Do Task from a Liked Tweet us
I only “like” tweets that I want to follow up on. For example, when someone tweets a new podcast I’ll “like” it as a reminder to listen to it later. Before today, I would have to go to my “Liked Tweet
I have a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 745 graphics card, which has one DisplayPort and one HDMI port. My NEC PA322UHD is connected via DisplayPort and my NEC EA275UHD is connected via HDMI. I got this error wh
I’ve been snowboarding off-and-on for over 25 years but have never owned a decent snowboard. I recently decided to get a good snowboard and bindings and, like everything else I buy, I researched it t
The default GitHub.com theme is not very colorblind friendly because it is hard to distinguish hyperlinks from normal text. I’m using GitHub as an example because I use that site a lot, but I see the
Go to Firmware Page https://digilab.dremel.com/3D-Support Download Firmware Zip file and unzip it. Run dremel_firmware.exe as Admin. Plug printer into computer’s low-powered USB port - the one withou
The concept of proactive mentorship is all about encouraging both mentees and mentors to be assertive in asking for and offering help. I’m a big believer in mentorship because I’m a byproduct of many
Remove Yourself from an Azure Subscription It is not possible to remove yourself from a Subscription. You have to contact the Subscription owner to remove you. IMO a user should be able to remove th
In Azure DevOps, got this error: 2018-09-25T21:24:45.2778646Z ERROR: Error: Value cannot be null. 2018-09-25T21:24:45.2791049Z Parameter name: paths 2018-09-25T21:24:45.2804472Z at System.IO.Path.C
In Azure DevOps, got this: The user's home directory could not be determined. Set the 'DOTNET_CLI_HOME' environment variable to specify the directory to use. As a workaround, add the DOTNET_CLI_HOME v
I got this the other day while doing a pip install: Cannot remove entries from nonexistent file c:\python36\lib\site-packages\easy-install.pth I searched around a bit and couldn’t find a solution. --i
My main monitor is a NEC PA322UHD and my secondary is a NEC EA275UHD. I set them both up on a new computer with a NVIDIA GeForce 745, the PA322 on DisplayPort and the EA275 on HDMI. The EA275UHD’s re
Building Python packages that support both Python 2 and 3 is time consuming and at some point you are going to ask the question “Can I just build this thing for Python 3?” Ideally, the answer to that
When you launch SpectraView II for the first time it will ask you for a serial number: “Enter the serial number you received with software” I could not find the number on the sensor box - so I contac
Update As of Azure CLI version 2.0.55 that was released on 01/15/2019, the --output param now supports none. So you can just use: az [command] --output none to suppress CLI output. You can review the
If you try to run the Azure IoT Edge Runtime or the Azure IoT Edge Dev Tool on Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), then you will run into the following errors: ERROR: Could not login to Container Regis
You may have noticed that ConfigurationManager is not available in Azure Functions v2 .NET Standard projects. It’s no longer supported. AF v2 now uses ASPNET Core Configuration. If you add the Syste
I just published my first official distributable Python package to PyPI, which makes it available to install via pip install. It’s called Azure IoT Edge Dev Tool (PyPI, GitHub, Video) and helps IoT E
When running Python unit tests with tox, you might see the following errors: C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk\2.0.0\NuGet.targets(466,5): error : Value cannot be null. C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk\2.0.0\Nu
A bunch of people have reported the following issue with the Azure IoT Python SDK: azure-iot-sdk-python/c/c-utility/adapters/httpapi_curl.c Func:HTTPAPI_ExecuteRequest Line:552 curl_easy_perform() fai
This content is outdated Please see the most up-to-date Azure REST APIs with Postman video and blog here: Latest Azure REST APIs with Postman Video: https://aka.ms/azurerestvideoLatest Azure REST APIs
When setting up Azure IoT Edge, you will most likely want to use an external config file. If you run iotedgectl setup with the --config-file option and don’t want to force passwords with the --auto-ce
You will likely want to run the Azure IoT Edge Runtime from your own Azure Container Registry (ACR). While this will be officially supported eventually, right now it is not, but there is a workaround.
My iPhone 6 Plus was so slow it was unusable. Each tap would take 2-3 seconds and everything was sluggish. I deleted all apps I wasn’t using and turned off Background App Refresh but nothing helped.
Outlook has been hanging on me for the last couple of days. Turns out it is related to the Skype Add-in. I disabled the add-in and it’s fine now…but I won’t be able to use Skype integration until that
The default Raspberry Pi keyboard layout is “gb”. You can change to US by doing the following: sudo nano /etc/default/keyboard Change XKBLAYOUT="gb" to XKBLAYOUT="us". sudo reboot
Azure IoT Edge Public Preview was just announced at Microsoft Connect. Here’s how to get it running on Raspberry Pi with Raspbian Stretch or Stretch Lite. Raspbian Jessie should work as well, but I h
By default Raspberry Pi does not allocate enough of your SD card for it to be usable. Out of the box, if you run sudo apt upgrade, you’ll get a message saying that you don’t have enough disk space.
The very first thing you are going to want to do when you get your Raspberry Pi is install an OS. You have a few options, including Raspbian, a Debian based OS. Here’s how to get it installed. Purch
On Windows, Docker runs in a VM called MobyLinuxVM, but you cannot login to that VM via Hyper-V Manager. We aren’t technically going to SSH into the VM, we’ll create a container that has full root acc
Here’s how to delete your Docker container log files. Get Docker File Location 1. Run docker inspect to find your Docker log file location 2. Find the “Docker Root Dir” Value, mine is /var/lib/docker
Here are the steps I take to setup a Raspberry Pi for development: Get Raspberry Pi and Peripherals Raspberry Pi 3 Model B 7" Touchscreen Display SmartiPi Touchscreen Display Stand USB Keyboard
One of the first things you’ll want to do on a Raspberry Pi is change the hostname to something unique on your network. The default name is raspberrypi. You can change it via editing text files or th
The .NET Core SDK is not supported on ARM based devices such as the Raspberry Pi and the .NET Core team is not currently working on supporting it. As mentioned in the announcement, the SDK doesn’t fit
Update: 1/8/18: TrackR will now replace your first battery for FREE! I’ve been using TrackR for a couple of months now without issue. But I am surprised that the initial battery only lasted 2 months.
My team is hiring developers in the high-scale data space that have experience building data and analytics pipelines. The ideal candidate is someone with a deep understanding of Lamda architecture an
This docker command will remove all stopped containers. docker rm $(docker ps -a -q) This docker command will remove all containers, even if they are running. docker rm $(docker ps -a -q) -f If you
You may have just discovered that when you create a console app using the .NET Core CLI tools it only produces a DLL by default. If you execute this: dotnet new console -n App And then execute a buil
You’ll want to make sure you don’t leave the default ‘pi’ user’s password to the default ‘raspberry’ setting. Here’s how to change it. Login to Pi Login to your Pi via Remote Desktop, SSH or via moni
You will often want to execute commands over SSH instead of having to Remote Desktop or access your Pi via a monitor and keyboard. Here’s how to get SSH setup on your Pi. Enable SSH Via Pi Terminal su
It is very easy to get Docker running on a Raspberry Pi. Here’s a barebones post to get you started. You can execute the following commands over SSH or Remote Desktop. Install Docker curl -sSL https:
As part of your normal Raspberry Pi dev workflow you’re going to want to access the files of the Raspberry Pi from your host dev machine. Here’s how to create a file share with Samba. Create a File S
I’ve cleared out this post because the Raspberry Pi documentation site now has docs updated for Stretch. You can find the Raspberry Pi Remote Desktop setup steps here.
Azure IoT allows you to define “Endpoints” and send messages to them via “Routes”. Learn more about Endpoints and Routes here. I setup a Service Bus Queue Endpoint, but it was showing as “Unreachable”
I was recently working with a customer that uses Apache Avro compression and discovered that there isn’t a great example out there that shows you how to send Avro compressed messages through the IoT p
I’ve been doing a lot with Postman lately and have been blogging everything I’ve uncovered along the way. Postman is more than just an ad-hoc REST tester - I believe that the future of REST API docume
6/29/17 Update: There’s a new Azure Solution Template for Jenkins here: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-the-solution-template-for-jenkins-on-azure/ Here’s how to get Jenkins on Azu
Many of you know that I’m fanatical about high quality coffee. Like many people, I used to think Starbucks was good coffee. That was until I experienced freshly roasted and freshly ground coffee. Tha
Some HTTP requests are long running and instead of asking users to wait for the long running operation to complete, they will return a “request status URI” that, when requested, will return a running/
I was recently working with a partner that was having some difficulty integrating with the Azure IoT REST APIs. You can read about that experience here: How to Use the Azure IoT Hub Device Twins REST
I’m working on a project that should make it much easier for developers to consume REST APIs that use SAS Tokens with Swagger and Postman. If you don’t already know, Postman is an app that allows you
This content is outdated Please see the most up-to-date Azure REST APIs with Postman video and blog here: Latest Azure REST APIs with Postman Video: https://aka.ms/azurerestvideoLatest Azure REST APIs
If you see the following while trying to edit an Azure Function via browser… “Read only - because you have started editing with source control, this view is read only. You can edit these settings in
Starting with version 1.5 of the Power BI Custom Visuals SDK, we now have the ability to create “slicer” visuals, which are visuals that can filter data in other visuals on the same report. For the pu
We often need to share database connection strings, system account passwords and whatnot with our team members. People typically put the secret in a DRM’d email, but that’s not secure enough and you c
This post describes how to use Postman and Newman to demonstrate your APIs to your users. Of course, you are going to want to use Apiary to officially describe your APIs, but if you really want to dem
As you can imagine, we have many Power BI internal test environments and all Microsofties get redirected to an internal pre-release version of Power BI so we can test the latest features and provide f
You may notice that the latest version of VS Code uses PowerShell as its default Integrated Terminal. I’m not quite ready to use PowerShell for everything, so I wanted to switch it back to cmd for the
As of January 12th, 2017, Windows now has a brand new Bluetooth Settings dialog with a Connect button! Not having this button in the initial version of this dialog was a big miss and frustrated many p
I recently switched from AT&T to T-Mobile. Here’s a quick post that goes through why and how I made the swtich. 2/22/2017 Update: T-Mobile just introduced the 2 lines for $100 plan, so T-Mobile
Windows does not currently have a good way to re-connect to a previously paired Bluetooth audio device. I’ve blogged about this before, but I’ve simplified my re-connect process. I have heard this has
I’m hacking with a customer today who is using Python and needs to upload images to Azure IoT Hub using the File Upload API. It took us a while to figure it out and ran into a bunch of issues. Here’s
I use git-ftp to deploy my hexo blog from a git repo to an FTP site. Getting it setup on Windows was non-trivial. Here’s how I got it working. 1. Install Chocolatey https://chocolatey.org/install 2.
Here’s how to reference three.js in your Power BI Custom Visual project. I have not tested to see if three.js actually works on powerbi.com, but this is how to resolve reference issues. 1. Setup you
I’m working on a new visual that uses an open source JavaScript control that includes a CSS file. I was hoping I could just reference it in pbiviz.json, but that’s not possible because it only suppor
A big part of my Zero Inbox routine is to Cc myself when I want to be reminded to follow up on the mail. This is useful when you want to make sure you don’t send an email with a request from someone a
I recently gave a few presentations at Ignite New Zealand and used a couple of applications to help me find the lowest latency Azure Region from Auckland. You’ll want to know the top two regions, bec
While digging into the new Azure CLI 2.0 to create a Power BI Workspace Collection, I discovered that while you can create the Power BI Workspace Collection you cannot currently get to the Access Keys
This post will show you how to create a Power BI Embedded Workspace Collection via the new Azure CLI 2.0. People typically create Workspace Collections via the Azure Portal, but that requires clicks a
I pinged a friend over on the Azure API Management team for good “getting started with APIM” material and he sent over this list. I’ll post more as I dig in. Microsoft Azure API Management Essentia
I just moved my blog to hexo and ran into the “EMFILE: too many open files issue”. The hexo issue page recommends you run ulimit, but that doesn’t work on Windows. After trying a ton of different th
I’ve been at Microsoft since 2003. I started as a Dev in Windows, then Dev Lead for the Learning Platform, then Dev Lead in MSDN, then Dev Lead in Bing, then a Dev Lead at MSN, then a Dev Manager for
I was recently asked to help build a “Range Slider” Power BI Custom Visual that simply filters a report based on the slider value. Unfortunately “filtering” is not currently supported in the new Power
Over the past couple of months, the Particle team and the Azure IoT team have been developing a integration between the two cloud services. Particle is an IoT company that launced on Kickstarter in 2
The Azure IoT team just announced Custom Endpoints and Routes feature - which allows you to route IoT Hub messages to your own Event Hub, Service Bus Queues or Service Bus Topics. You define your alte
Here’s how to render either an SVG or a PNG from within a Power BI Custom Visual. For this post, I’m going to use the IoT Hub icon that can be found in the Microsoft Azure, Cloud and Enterprise Symbol
Here’s a quick and easy way to get your GitHub Page repo deployed to an Azure Web App. Let me know if you run into any issues. Create GitHub Pages Repo Skip to next step if you already have a GitHub p
Windows Explorer doesn’t allow you to create files that start with . because it interprets that as not having a file name. On Linux/UNIX you would simply use: touch .gitignore. Windows doesn’t have
The Power BI team just released v1.2 of the Custom Visuals SDK. With this version you now need to reference d3 v3.5.5 yourself. d3 v4 does not work yet. I’m working with the team to get a v4 compat an
UPDATE: The Liquid Fill Gauge visual is now available to download from the Power BI Custom Visual Gallery! – In this series, we are creating a Power BI Custom Visual from an OSS d3 visualization I fou
UPDATE: The Liquid Fill Gauge visual is now available to download from the Power BI Custom Visual Gallery! – This is a continuation of my attempt at creating a Power BI Custom Visual from an OSS d3 vi
You might see this error message when trying to load the Power BI Custom Visual “Development Visual” “Can’t contact visual server. Please make sure the visual server is running and configured correct
The purpose of this post is to show you how to take an existing open source d3 visual and create a Power BI Custom Visual from it. I’ve been digging into the new Power BI Custom Visual SDK and just cr
I have removed the content of this post because the Power BI team created the following dev environment setup page: Power BI Documentation: Use developer tools to create custom visuals Jon
What do you do when you find a static table online that you want to quickly slice and dice? Enter Power BI. Here’s the resulting Power BI report…details on how I created it below… How this report was
Here are some short and sweet instructions for setting up your Raspberry Pi for Node.js dev and creating a base image that can be used over and over again. Many of the steps below are taken from the a
I just spent way too much time trying to login to a VSTS instance from VS. Turns out to have something to do with how Microsoft Account is configured in Visual Studio. So, if you get this error: “You
I’m working on a demo that involves streaming Sphero data through the Azure IoT stack. I got my Sphero SPRK+ last week and quickly discovered that it only has Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) enabled and no
Here’s how to install Node.js on Raspberry Pi (originally posted as a SoF answer for Ubuntu here) Install curl sudo apt-get install curl -y Install node v4 curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_4
If you see this: It probably means your Bluetooth service is stopped: Try this: sudo service bluetooth start then sudo service bluetooth status If that doesn’t work, try this:https://www.pi-supply.
Here’s how to directly connect to the Event Hub that backs an IoT Hub. New Way As of 5/30/2017, you can now get the underlying Event Hub connection string by either the “Endpoints” blade or the “Opera
I joined the Developer Experience team not too long ago and am focused on helping partners develop IoT products on the Azure IoT stack. I just found out that a sister team is looking for a Senior PM E
The Azure IoT Field Gateway SDK is a set of libraries that allow you to build a device that acts as a proxy between an individual IoT device and Azure IoT Hub. Individual IoT devices will connect to t
If you get the following error when trying to install the Lync 2013 SDK…. Microsoft Lync 2013 not found. Go here to download and install: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=248583 Do not go to t
The most anticipated Windows 10 Anniversary Update developer feature is now available for everyone…not just Windows Insiders. Step 0: Install Windows 10 Anniversary Update via Windows Update Go to Win
[ Here’s a Power BI offering index with short and sweet descriptions. I’ll keep evolving this list as the service develops. For Consumers Desktop – Create Reports locally and push to cloud. Web – Crea
I just published this IFTTT (If This Than That) Recipe that will send me an email when I like a tweet. I then have an Outlook rule that flags the email so I can have a look in detail later. Click “Add
I have OpenLiveWriter on two desktops and one laptop. I sync my drafts to Dropbox. Here’s how: 1. Open Regedit 2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\OpenLiveWriter 3. Create a new String Value Nam
I recently created a custom Fiddler extension called PowerBIFiddler. Here are a few tricks that I learned along the way. Re-use Default Fiddler Inspectors For PowerBI-Fiddler, I wanted to re-use the J
I rebuilt my dev machine recently and reinstalled the Service Fabric 2.1 SDKs from here: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/service-fabric-get-started/ The rest of the devs on my
I’ve been using the Adafruit Feather HUZZAH ESP8266 board and Visual Micro quite a bit lately. The Huzzah is a board that includes the ESP8266 WiFi module and a LiPo battery jack – making it really ea
You have a couple different options to monitor your incoming and outgoing Azure IoT Hub traffic. Azure CLI IoT Extension See this ref for more info: https://aka.ms/iotcli https://docs.microsoft.com/e
If you see the error "Duplicate property names are not allowed ‘avg’ in your Stream Analytics query it is likely because you aren’t setting up an alias for that property. Here’s what you may see:
I’m hacking on project that requires an accelerometer. I picked up this 9-Axis Inertial Navigation Module for Arduino from my local Vetco. That board is actually a GY801 (the newer version of the GY80
Azure provides a set of services that allow you to visualize IoT device data in real-time. The data pipeline is: IoT Device –> Azure IoT Hub –> Azure Stream Analytics –> Power BI. Follow alon
Here’s a quick post on how to get setup with Azure IoT Hub with a UWP App. These steps and code taken from Olivier Bloch’s Build Talk: 1. Create a new Azure IoT Hub – Free Tier – in Azure Portal http:
I just flattened my machine and ran into this issue when running a Service Fabric hosted WebAPI project. This line of code: this.serverHandle = WebApp.Start(this.listeningAddress, appBuilder =>
Here’s what you do when you want to get a local copy of an Azure SQL Database. Export Azure Database 1. Select your database in the Azure Portal https://portal.azure.com/#blade/HubsExtension/BrowseRes
If you get the following error, then you need to install BOTH x86 and x64 versions of the DAC Framework. I have only verified that this works with SQL Express 2014. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/dow
I have a Brother MFC-7840W printer and usually have issues with it. Here’s what has helped: Drivers 1. Install the full driver package from here: http://support.brother.com/g/b/downloadtop.aspx?c=us&a
I built a stateless Azure Service Fabric service and later realized I would need a stateful service. Rather than try to comb through docs to see what the conversion looked like, I created a brand new
The Durable Task Framework (DTF) is a workflow execution framework that is based on async/await and backed by Azure Service Bus. I was recently in need of a long running workflow engine and wanted to
I found out the hard way this weekend that when it comes to getting spare parts for your 3D printer, your only option is to order them online. My heater block was clogged and while I was unclogging it
Here’s what you have to do to get a VSO git repo setup in SourceTree Go to VSO Personal Access Tokens: https://{vso-account-name}.visualstudio.com/_details/security/tokens Replace {vso-account-name}
If you see this error when trying to run a web app in Visual Studio – that means something is currently running on that port. To find out what app is using that port… Open resmon.exe Go to Network ta
Here’s how to setup a Namecheap.com CNAME for Azure Web App Custom Domain. 1. Go to namecheap.com, login and click Domain List 2. Click “Advanced DNS”. If you see a message about using Namecheap Defa
Power BI just enabled the ability to embed a report into any website without requiring the viewer to authenticate – it’s called “Publish to Web”. It’s really easy to get the embed code. Here’s how: Cr
I’m printing out part I found on Thingiverse and the bottom of it has some inset text. I would rather the entire bottom of the piece be flush with the print bed. Instead of trying to modify it in Fusi
Here are some tips for using the Dremel Idea Builder 3D Printer. I will keep this post updated with new tips as I learn more about the machine. A lot of these tips apply to any 3D printer, so it’s wor
I just spent way too much time getting AppInsights working in an Azure WebJob. Here are a couple of tips: 1. Make sure you are using the right InstrumentationKey. Go here to find out how: https://azur
I got this Simplify3D error while setting up a multi-process print. “The chosen layer height and extrusion width settings have resulted in a primary width/height ratio below 1.2. This is typically not
I’ve spent a lot of my free time 3D modeling and printing over the last year. It’s a ton of fun and I finally think I got into the groove of things over the last couple of months. I know a lot of you
I’ve been installing Fusion 360 on a bunch of machines lately and am posting the direct link here so I can save some clicks. Here’s the direct link to install Fusion 360: http://www.appstreaming.autod
I had an On-Demand Azure WebJob and wanted to convert it to a scheduled WebJob. It took me a while to figure out how, so I thought I’d share to save you some time. You are probably already past this p
I have 5GB of available iCloud storage, but I am still getting the “Not Enough Storage. This iPhone cannot be backed up because there is not enough iCloud storage available. You can manage your storag
[ Autodesk has a 3D printing prep product called Print Studio: A showcase of the Spark Print Preparation API’s power and utility. Print Studio quickly heals, prepares and prints 3D models optimized f
Around this time last year I did a deep dive into 8 different 3D modeling software options in my “3D Modeling” blog series. I landed on Fusion 360 because it is professional grade, has great support a
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
It took me a good hour to resolve this issue. I’m hoping that the search engines pick this up for you and save you some time. I’m thinking about switching from Blogger to Jekyll, which is built with R
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been working on a Lync Status light called “beakn”. I joined the Windows IoT Maker team not too long ago and have been immersing myself in the Maker space – I’ve bee
I’m continuing to build out “beakn” my DIY Lync Status light. This is what I’m calling a “maker experience” project. I want to know what a maker goes through to build things so I’m building it with as
I’ve spent a good part of the last 15 years doing .NET development. When I joined IoT and started getting ramped up, I quickly discovered that it is largely an unmanaged non-.net non-Microsoft world.
As I am building out my “maker experience” product “beakn” I’m constantly thinking about ways to improve it with the goal of getting it to be completely wireless. I started with it being USB connected
I’m working on a “maker experience” project called beakn. It’s a Lync status light that lights up red, yellow or green based on your Lync status. beakn v0.1 was all about getting it working without it
Canon has a program called the “Customer Loyalty Program” that allows you to send in your broken Canon camera and get a refurbished camera at a discount. There’s nothing about it on the Canon website,
It took me a while to figure out the best way to automatically start a windows app when a user logs into their computer. There were a bunch of suggestions on StackOverflow, but the registry key approa
It took me a few mins to get the exact steps figured out to upgrade the firmware of the Arduino Wifi Shield. Hope this saves you some time. Here are the original steps: http://arduino.cc/en/Hacking/Wi
Part of my new job is to fully understand the process a maker goes through when developing their ideas into products. There’s no better way to do that than to build something. I believe that to truly
I was getting this error when deploying to Netduino Plus 2 from VS2013. Unable to communicate with device USB:Netduino It turns out that that particular Netduino had an old firmware version. Use the
This Intel page tells you to download the FTDI drivers and run as Admin. I appears that you first need to install the “Windows Driver setup 1.0.0” from this page. 1. Install Windows Driver Setup 1.0.0
It took me a few mins to get all the right firmware and sdks going for Netduino Plus 2 and Visual Studio 2013. Hope this post saves you some time. .NET Micro Framework and VS2013 Setup 0. Close VS20
I was running the following post-build scripts in VS2013… $(FrameworkDir)\installutil.exe /u "$(TargetPath)" $(FrameworkDir)\installutil.exe "$(TargetPath)" and was getting this error… "System.Securi
I’m working on an NFC project and to test things out I got a PN532 NFC shield working with a RaspberryPi via libnfc. Adafruit has a good step-by-step tutorial, but it’s not up-to-date and it’s for the
My career is progressing in what appears to be five year cycles. Back in 2004, five years into my software dev career, I made the move from independent contractor to Microsoft employee. Five years int
I was just messing around with Node.js Tools for Visual Studio and Azure and ran into a few gotchas while getting everything setup. Hopefully this helps you get going. 1. Install the Node.js Tools for
I’m still on Photoshop CS5 but haven’t had a DVD drive for many years, so I needed to find the online download version of it. I searched for a while and finally found the “Download and Installation He
The best developers optimize every aspect of their lives. Optimization is built into their DNA. We are always looking for ways to not repeat ourselves and strive to make everything we do faster. Ever
I have a ton of interests and not enough time to give them all enough attention to be an expert at anything. All of my interests have one thing in common - they all take lots of time and energy to pe
<tldr>I need Microsoft stack and JavaScript dev contractors for a 3 month contract. Must be able to start immediately. Send me your resume and I’ll be in touch: /contact</tldr> I started a
Solution to “Windows cannot access the specified device, path, or file. You may not have the appropriate permissions to access the item” c:\program files\common files\microsoft shared\ink\tabtip.exe w
UPDATE 3/5/2014. I reported this issue to the Azure team shortly after I posted this blog. The issue has now been resolved. Go Azure! If you click on the “try it now” button on the Preview Services pa
I recently switched from a ASUS ZenBook Touch to a Lenovo X1 Carbon. All was well until a few days ago when I let the battery completely drain while watching a movie. Since then the X1 Carbon was slug
Many years ago, I resolved to get a handle on managing the plethora of email that is part of the Microsoft culture. Email is a very important communication mechanism – it’s just a messaging system -
Yes, I work for Microsoft, but I always like to tell people about great customer service…this time from Apple. I bought an Apple Airport Extreme 5th Gen Router back in May 2012. I get very fast (100m
I need motivation to keep physically active. If unchecked I would sit, eat and code all day. Even a little motivation does wonders for my psyche. I use a bunch of apps to keep me motivated with yoga,
I run the Creative Entry Points dev team within Microsoft Advertising. We build the UI and APIs that allows partners to get Ad Assets (images, videos, text) into the Ads system. I’m rethinking things.
I just committed a big change to the AngularJS CRUD Grid – Lookup Tables! CODE: https://github.com/jongio/AngularJS-WebApi-EF Here’s what’s included: Lookup tables: You can now specify that a column
I just added filtering to the AngularJS CRUD Grid. AngularJS makes filtering VERY easy. All I had to do was add a text box with ng-model and then use the “filter” filter in your ng-repeat CODE: https:
I just added support for dynamic columns. Before you were limited to Id and Name, now you can specific the columns as a Json object in the directive. <div crud-grid table='person' columns='[
Easy one, just run SQL Server Management Studio as Administrator.
I just upgraded my Asus UX31A to Win8.1 RTM and broke my Targus Docking Station (ACP71USZ). The USB ports work, but the monitors do not. I get the USB device not recognized toast. And Unknown USB Dev
I just added sorting and upgraded to AngularJS 1.2.0 and Bootstrap 3. CODE: https://github.com/jongio/AngularJS-WebApi-EF I’ll eventually put the into directives, just ran out of time today. 1. Added
I’ve been looking at my options for purchasing an Aeron Chair by Herman Miller I could buy new for $879 or get used on Craigslist for $400-500. I confirmed with HermanMiller that the 12 Year Warranty
XBOX CLOUD DOESN’T SUPPORT MUSIC NOT IN XBOX MARKETPLACE I can’t upload music I purchased from Amazon, iTunes, etc to the Xbox cloud that isn’t in the Xbox marketplace. Allen Stone’s album “Last To Sp
Inheritance security rules violated by type: ‘System.Web.Mvc.MvcWebRazorHostFactory’. Derived types must either match the security accessibility of the base type or be less accessible. Search your who
[A]System.Web.WebPages.Razor.Configuration.HostSection cannot be cast to [B]System.Web.WebPages.Razor.Configuration.HostSection. Type A originates from ‘System.Web.WebPages.Razor, Version=2.0.0.0, Cul
Error: [$sce:insecurl] Blocked loading resource from url not allowed by $sceDelegate policy. UPDATE: This error was also appearing in IE11 because of a bug in the user agent detection. That has been f
CORS support is very easy to setup in WebApi, but the docs are outdated. They removed the parameterless constructor and didn’t update the docs. For testing purposes, you should just pass “*” for all t
Bootswatch is nice. Free themes for Bootstrap. Integrating into an MVC app turned out to be a little more involved than I thought it would be. Here’s what you have to do: Sample Code: https://github.c
The Targus ACP71USZ docking station doesn’t come with an ASUS UX31A power tip. Targus will send you one for free. Just go to the Targus support chat page and tell them what you need and they’ll ship
Today I took my V2 Crud Grid and moved it into an AngularJS directive. That allows me to reuse the crud grid functionality and have many of them on the same page. Here’s what it looks like now: CODE:
In V1 of my AngularJS, WebApi grid I used $http to call my WebApi endpoints. I’ve been using $resource a lot lately, so I thought I’d go back and update it to use $resource instead. Here’s what it loo
Go into your EDMX file, select the field that is causing the error and set StoreGeneratedPattern to Computed. Add the DatabaseGenerated attribute if you are using EF Code First: [DatabaseGenerated(Da
I just spent way to much time trying to figure out why I kept getting this error: Origin is not allowed by Access-Control-Allow-Origin. Here’s the code snippet: var resource = $resource('http://local
I almost gave up, but I finally found where Microsoft hid the ability to lock shapes in Visio 2013. You actually don’t want lock shapes, you want to create layers and lock the layers. But if you reall
Google announced that they are going to be shipping a Google Music iOS app that includes subscription music. I’m a big Spotify fan, but one thing that has always bugged me is that I can’t browse “My A
I just tried to clean up my Deleted Items folder in Outlook 2013 and got the two following errors: Cannot delete this folder. Right-click the folder, and then click Properties to check your permissi
UPDATE 7/30/2013: I modified the code to use $resource instead of $http. Go to my new post “V2 of my AngularJS, WebAPI CRUD Grid - Now using $resource instead of $http and deployed a LIVE DEMO to Azur
@itsananderson and I just spent way too long trying to get Restangular running. Here’s what worked for us: <!doctype html > <html ng-app="app"> <head> <title>Restangular<
PluralSight is great, but because I don’t have 3 hours every time I want to learn something, I always watch them at double speed – and that’s as fast as PluralSight allows you to go….until now. Will
Do I have to get into management to be successful at Microsoft? That, along with the review model and work:life balance, is a very common question I get from interview candidates and current Microsoft
I recently joined a new team to work on a brand new super-secret Windows 8 Modern app. You may have seen my “Moving on to Microsoft Advertising to work on a super secret Win8 app. Come join me.” post
Most people know that the KendoUI controls are awesome and free. The thing that is missing from there demo site is how to create a Jsonp WebApi service that the controls can talk to. I tried to get it
“What does work:life balance look like at Microsoft?” That is the second most asked question I get after “What do you think of the Microsoft Employee Review Model?” Interview candidates want to know i
WhatsApp is all the rage. KakaoTalk is a great alternative for the frugal world. I’ve been using it for years without a problem. It’s on iPhone & Android
I’ve always been a SQL Server guy, but I wanted to give MySQL a try for a project that I’m working on. I could find a really quick MySQL/MVC example so I threw this together. LMK if you have any issue
An interview candidate recently asked me what I thought of the Microsoft employee review model. I don’t hate it and I don’t love it. I personally tend to not stress about things I can’t change. I’m mo
Read this if you don’t know the “why” behind Guid.Comb. In a nutshell. We want to uniquely identify records and don’t want PK collisions across database instances. Using Guid as a PK used to be taboo.
Took me a bit to find the solution to this one, but I eventually found it here. 1. Upgrade to Resharper 7.1.2 2. In VS go to Resharper –> Options –> Unit Testing –> MS Test and Uncheck “Use L
Just a quick post to let you know that if you get the error below it means that you don’t have the TypeScript plugin installed: The imported project “C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStu
I am an avid Google Reader user. I use it to scan over 400 tech blogs and often share to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and email. It’s easy to miss stuff on Facebook and there’s too much noise on Twitte
My hard drive crashed today. As you can see in "[My Backup Strategy](/2012/11/my-backup-strategy.html)" post, I am a rigorous backer-upper, but I got schooled today. My strategy includes "File Histor
Installing Neo4j on Windows is pretty straightforward, but the Neo4j installation instructions for Windows are lacking….this is all they have. It’s a little more involved than that. Install Java
I joined MSN three years ago to help them turn around the Tools team and that work is done. The team is in a really good place now, so it’s time to move on. Honestly, the MSN Tools team was one the mo
You’ll sometimes get this error in Firefox and Chrome, but not IE. “TypeError: m[5] is undefined” “TypeError: Cannot read property ‘length’ of undefined” There has been a known issue with Firefox an
I purchased Argo (“HD”)from YouTube.com last night. I was expecting at least 720p since it was advertised as HD, but the highest resolution available was 480p. Here’s the definition of HD video from W
I just spent several hours trying to figure out why I was getting JavaScript errors when using IE10. I owe Hanselman on this one. My error wasn’t exactly the same as what he described, but close. Thro
I know, I know, it’s 2013, but I occasionally have to work with VS2008. Unfortunately, when I was using it recently it would hang every other minute or so. I tolerated it a few times, but couldn’t tak
I got this error today and after a few minutes of messing around with FileZilla settings I discovered a way around it. This might not work for everyone, but it worked for me. Error: GnuTLS error -
What is the best way to develop an application to support multiple platforms (Apple, Android, Microsoft)? Like so many devs out there, I was recently faced with that exact question. It turns out that
You will see this error when you try to play Spotify music from more than one device at the same time: [ “Spotify has been paused because your account is being used somewhere else.” The reason they
I got this error today in Sony Movie Studio Platinum Suite when I tried to render a video file. _An error occurred while creating the media file …. The system is low on memory. You may be able to red
I’ve been making smoothies every morning now for the last couple of months with my old $40 Oster blender that I’ve had for 8 years or so. Being frugal doesn’t mean you are cheap. I means you are wise
I got this error today when I tried to drag a video file that was created with my iPhone 5 to Sony Movie Studio (Vegas) The Sony QuickTime plug-in was not able to initialize the QuickTime components
I just got this error when doing Merge Replication on a SQL Server 2005 environment: A row insert at ... could not be propagated to ... This failure can be caused by a constraint violation. Cannot ins
I’m known for being frugal. The jury is still out on that, but there is no way I’m going to pay $20 for an iPhone 5 cable. I heard nightmares about knock off iPhone 5 cables, but I had to take a chanc
I just spent way too much time trying to figure out how to call the LinkedIn People Search API. I needed to simply use the LinkedIn API to find people in my network by their full name. The last thing
I’ve been an avid Netflix user for the last few months. I use it watch TV shows like White Collar and Lie to Me and my kid watches Thomas & Friends, Curious George, Go Diego Go, etc. I don’t usual
There are a bunch of solutions out there on the web, but all I had to do to fix this was repair iTunes. Here’s how… Close iTunes Go to “Add / Remove Programs” Right-click on iTunes Select Repair
I spent about 5 mins trying to find a “Delete My Account” link on Fitocracy, but came up short. I ended up sending an email to [email protected] and got this response: Hi, We’d be sorry to see y
I use Maps to add businesses to my Contacts all the time. That way I don’t need to search for them again when I need to get a hold of them. Unfortunately today’s release of the new Google Maps App doe
There have been many times over the past couple of months where I have seen many violations to the basic rules that companies should follow when implementing and email notification unsubscribe feature
Intel asked me to use their prototype IvyBridge Ultrabook for a few months and let them know what I thought about it as a dev machine. You can read about my initial thoughts in my “First Look at the I
I connect and disconnect my RocketFish Bluetooth Headset (RF-MAB2) from my phone and laptop all day long. Connecting and disconnecting Bluetooth devices to one machine is easy, just turn it on and off
I often double click the upper left hand corner of an app to close it. I know I could Alt+F4 it, but that’s just what I do. Windows 8 introduced this feature called “Recent App Switching” that shows a
I just tried to transfer an audiobook on Windows 8 and got this exception from OverDrive Media Console: Unable to acquire a license to play the selected title. The selected title requires a newer ver
Yes, my hosting provider provides backups of my site for free, but I like the reassurance of having my own copy. I do so with NetDrive and CrashPlan. NetDrive is a free (for personal use) utility that
Here are the AzureConf 2012 speaker blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Google+ accounts. Enjoy! BLOG FEED FILE You can subscribe to the AzureConf 2012 speaker blogs by importing this [OPML file](
I’ve been fine tuning my backup strategy for years, so I thought I’d share to help any one out there who is just getting serious about it. I take backups seriously because many years of hard work woul
Scenario: You have a Windows 8 Phone and you want to sync media with a Windows 7 Desktop. It took me a bit to dig this up, but there is a Microsoft developed Windows 7 app here: http://www.windowsphon
I drink a lot of coffee. I’ll grab a latte every once and a while and don’t have loyalty to any particular company. I like most coffee brands and could easy grab a Costco latte and be content. This po
Here are the Build 2012 speaker blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Google+ accounts. Enjoy! BLOG FEED FILE You can subscribe to the Build 2012 speaker blogs by importing this [OPML file](http://j
This is the second post in a two part series on integrating SMS functionality into an application. In the first post, “A high-level look into Clickatell’s new SMS Small Business API”, I focused on th
This is the first post in a two part series on integrating SMS functionality into an application. In this post, I focus on the analysis I did into Clickatell’s Small Business API. My second post in th
Here are the Web Unleashed 2012 speaker blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Google+ accounts. Enjoy! BLOG FEED FILE You can subscribe to the Web Unleashed 2012 speaker blogs by importing this [OPM
I use Windows+S ALL THE TIME. Wasn’t working this morning. I clicked around for 5 minutes trying all the different options. The only thing that re-enabled it was opening OneNote and manually selecting
Here are the Ladies Who Code 2012 speaker blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Google+ accounts. Enjoy! BLOG FEED FILE You can subscribe to the Ladies Who Code 2012 speaker blogs by importing this
I just found this utility called BrowserTraySwitch. I’ve never heard of the site, but it looked legit enough for me to give BrowserTraySwitch a try. BrowserTraySwitch is a system tray utility that lau
It took me way too long to figure out how to setup my outlook.com email address in Outlook 2013. It’s simple, but I couldn’t figure out what Mail Server to use it turned out to be m.hotmail.com, which
I used to put on open mics at back in 2006. We saw a lot of great talent come through, but one of the more memorable performances was from Kris Orlowski. Kris captured our attention because he has a n
I spent about two hours the other day trying to find a good jQuery ComboBox, so I thought I’d do a quick post to see if I can help you narrow down your choices. I ultimately decided to go with the Tel
I’ve spend a lot of time with Intel’s IvyBridge Ultrabook since I wrote my “First look at the Intel IvyBridge Ultrabook” post a couple of weeks ago. Intel wanted to get a pre-production Ultrabook in t
Like I mentioned in my post “Microsoftie Perk #9 – Access to product team devs”, it is awesome to be able to ping the people who build the tools we use every day. This post is a great example of that
Here are the IAB MIXX 2012 speaker blogs, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts. Enjoy! BLOG FEED FILE You can subscribe to the IAB MIXX 2012 speaker blogs by importing this [OPML file](http://jongallant.com/
Here are the MADExpo 2012 speaker blogs and Twitter accounts. Enjoy! BLOG FEED FILE You can subscribe to the MADExpo 2012 speaker blogs by importing this [OPML file](http://jongallant.com/MADExpo12Spe
Apple made is real easy to upgrade your Mac OS X with the introduction of the App Store in the Snow Leopard (10.6.6) update. If you go to the “Upgrade your Mac” page on Apple.com they tell you how to
You can find out what OS X version you are on by clicking on the Apple icon, then select the “About This Mac” menu item. The number under the Apple logo is the version you are on. 10.5.x is Leopard, 1
As you may have noticed Lion (10.7) is no longer available in the App Store. Apple intentionally pulled it from the App Store so people would go right to Mountain Lion (10.8) instead. As of today the
Apple didn’t introduce the App Store into Mac OS X until Snow Leopard 10.6.6. Here’s what you need to do to get the App Store. You can find out what OS X version you are on by clicking on the Apple ic
The first thing you need to do is get the Snow Leopard install DVD from Apple. Apple didn’t introduce downloadable OS upgrades until Snow Leopard 10.6.6, so you need to install Snow Leopard from the i
Intel just sent me an IvyBridge Ultrabook to try out and review as a development machine. It’s not a final machine and won’t ever be sold by Intel. The main purpose of the machine is to show what can
I recently received two Twitter direct messages from new followers. They were obviously phishing attacks that happened as a result of the followers account being hacked. The messages were “lol wat r y
I often switch my Bluetooth headset between my laptop and my phone. It took me a few minutes to figure out how to do this in Windows so here’s a quick post to help you out. 1. Double-click the Bluetoo
Here are the DevReach 2012 speaker blogs and Twitter accounts. Enjoy! BLOG FEED FILE You can subscribe to the DevReach 2012 speaker blogs by importing this [OPML file](http://jongallant.com/DevReach20
Here are the That Conference One Day 2012 : Harper College speaker blogs and Twitter accounts. Enjoy! BLOG FEED FILE You can subscribe to the That Conference One Day 2012 : Harper College speaker blog
People give me a hard time because I work at Microsoft and use Apple products. The truth is that I dev iPhone apps and you can only do that on a Mac. I still love Microsoft and Windows, but you got to
Here are the Philly DotNet Code Camp 2012.1 speaker blogs and Twitter accounts. Enjoy! BLOG FEED FILE You can subscribe to the Philly DotNet Code Camp 2012.1 speaker blogs by importing this [OPML file
Here are the Code Camp NYC 2012 speaker blogs and twitter accounts. You can subscribe to all speaker blogs using the OPML file and follow all the speakers on Twitter using the Code Camp NYC 12 Twitter
Here are the ThatConference speakers and twitter accounts. You can subscribe to all speaker blogs using the OPML file and follow all the speakers on Twitter using the ThatConference Twitter List. BLOG
The is a post in a new blog series I’m writing called Microsoftie Perks Yes it is true. Earlier this week at the company meeting Ballmer gave all Microsofties new Windows 8 machines, a Surface RT and
Here are all the Minnesota Developers Conference 2012 (MDC12) speaker blogs and twitter accounts. Enjoy! BLOG FEED (OPML) FILE You can subscribe to the MDC12 speaker blogs by importing this OPML file
I’ve been working on an app in my spare time called “Conf Speakers” to help us subscribe to and follow devs who speak at conferences. Most conference sites don’t provide an easy way to do so, which le
The is a post in a blog series I’m writing called "Microsoftie Perks" Over the years I have found many bugs in Microsoft products. I want to help Microsoft have the best products out there,
I just pushed my first Google Chrome extension to the web store the other day. The name of my extension includes “Google Reader” and, according to the official Google Chrome extension branding guideli
I’m an avid Google Reader user. I star and unstar items a lot and sometimes my starred items pile up. I wrote a few lines of JavaScript to unstar all items in bulk and blogged about it back in June. R
NuGet is amazing, but I often find myself typing in the same search string over and over again. This usually happens when I don’t realize what tab I currently have selected. Yes, I could train myself
Problem Microsoft ASP.NET Web API (RTM) references Newtonsoft.Json (>= 4.5.6) (AKA Json.net) Twitterizer 2 references Newtonsoft.Json (=4.5.5) You can’t have both Newtonsoft.Json (>= 4.5.6) AND
The is a post in a blog series I’m writing called "Microsoftie Perks" All Microsofties get a free gym membership to a couple of local gyms. We could instead choose to get cash if we don’t wa
I have a long running script that needs to run once a day and I’d like to store the results of that script in cache for the rest of the day so only one user (or any automated http request) will incur
I just deployed a new MVC web app and instead of executing the routes it just listed the contents of the directory like so: There could be many reasons for this, but I figured out the reason it was h
A “brake” from my normal tech posts to tell you about my new favorite brake place: Les Schwab. This isn’t a sponsored post, I just like how they function as a company and I hope I can save you some ti
The is a post in a blog series I’m writing called "Microsoftie Perks" Microsoft has an amazing technical library and an internal website to go with it. There’s also a very slick logistical s
The ADO.NET Entity Framework is an awesome way to quickly pull data into an app. I’ve been building apps for a really long time and have used all the frameworks that have come out over the years. IMO
I needed to refresh the code generated by the EDMX model, but it wasn’t working for some reason. So I deleted the EDMX file and deleted the connection string from web.config to start from scratch. I g
I have the RTM of Visual Studio installed, but the WebApi NuGet RTM build isn’t available yet. WebApi depends on Newtonsoft.Json and so does Twitterizer, but there is a version conflict. Unfortunatel
The new SQL tools in Visual Studio 2012 are amazing, but still lack a database diagrams features that SQL Server Management Studio has. I use database diagrams all the time to easy create foreign keys
Free drinks is the one perk that most people will already know about, but since it is one of my favorites I couldn’t not include it in my Microsoftie perk list. I have heard that since day one Micro
The is a post in a blog series I’m writing called "Microsoftie Perks" Microsoft allows all Microsofties to take Microsoft Certification Exams for free. Non-Microsofties pay $150 an exam and
I got this “System.EntryPointNotFoundException” exception today: “Entry point was not found.” There could be many reasons for this exception. In my case it was because my main app and library app we
The is a post in a blog series I’m writing called "Microsoftie Perks" Microsofties are very generous people and they keep getting more and more generous every year. About 35,000 Microsofties
The is a post in a blog series I’m writing called "Microsoftie Perks" Microsoft gives all Microsofties FREE MSDN, TechNet and Azure Subscriptions. With the free MSDN Subscription comes a f
The is a post in a new blog series I’m writing called "Microsoftie Perks" Over the years I have sent many emails to Microsoft Execs and I always get a response. Whether I’m looking for money
The is a post in a new blog series I’m writing called "Microsoftie Perks" It only took about 3 seconds for me to be introduced to the term “dogfood” when I started at Microsoft back in 2003.
This is the index post for my “Microsoftie Perks” posts. I will continue to update this post as I discover new perks. You can subscribe to my blog via RSS here or you can subscribe via email here to b
My wife and I have been searching for the perfect type of hardwood flooring since April and have been exclusively using KentwoodFloors.com. We’ve been sending emails back and forth that go something l
By default FeedBurner refreshes your feed about every 30 minutes, so if you change anything about your posts (title, content, etc) FeedBurner won’t immediately reflect that change. I use my technique
Could not find an implementation of the query pattern for source type ‘[type]’. ‘Where’ not found. Consider explicitly specifying the type of the range variable ‘[variableName]’ You get this error if
As I mentioned back in June, I’m training to run a 5K (3.1 miles) using C25K and MapMyRun. It’s great that C25K supports Pink and I found the app very useful, but it’s not exact in how it calculates d
It wasn’t obvious to me how to load an Html doc that requires Windows Authentication. Here’s a quick code snippet that hopefully saves you some time. The trick is to set UseDefaultCredentials on the W
HtmlAgilityPack is a great HTML parser library that I often use for scraping. It does web requests on your behalf via the HtmlWeb().Load methods, but doesn’t expose the HttpWebRequest.Timeout property
The UIHint Attribute is a great way to pass metadata from a model to a view. I was looking around for a simple way to get the value of the attribute from my razor view. I could be missing something ob
You have a model that has a property of type List. You write a view and your first inclination is to create a cshtml file called List.cshtml, but that doesn’t work. There’s a trick and it has to do wi
I cringe every time I have to add a reference in 2010. The dialog is slow, it’s hard to find reference, it’s hard to sort. I absolutely hate it…and I don’t hate too many things. I know there are VS pl
This is an easy one. Just restart Visual Studio. Not sure what happened, but I’ll follow up with the Visual Studio team to see if I can find out.
UPDATE: 2/3/2013 In VS 2012 we now have a “Close All Documents” context menu item on the file header. It’s one more click (right click then left click), but still a good option. ORIGINAL POST: I blog
I’m a big fan of the new Visual Studio interface, but I got a little lost today in Team Explorer. I registered my server, picked my project, but couldn’t see any Queries. , but the error message you get when your MSDN Subscription has expired needs more detail. I
There are many reasons why this error will appear. One of the less obvious reasons has to do with the “Target framework” project level setting. In my referenced project the “Target framework” was set
I lead the Tools dev team for Bedrock, the CMS system that runs MSN.com. We are rebuilding the entire app one piece at a time in jQuery and MVC4 and need your help. We ship every other week. We do gat
It took me more than 2 minutes (too long!) to figure out how to call the new Bing search API. The Bing API to Azure Marketplace migration doc is a great resource for learning how to call the new Azure
There are a lot of great devs speaking at aspConf 2012 and most of them have great blogs and twitter feeds. I want the dev community (including myself) to follow these speakers and continue to learn f
1. Make sure your Application Type is set to Read and Write in the Settings tab. 2. After you do step 1 you need to recreate your access token by clicking the button at the bottom of the Details tab.
I’m a Principal Development Lead on MSN’s content management system called Bedrock. I’ve been at Microsoft for 9 years, 1 year as a contractor and 8 years as an FTE. But I’ve wanted to work for Micros
When you import an MP3 audiobook it appears in iTunes (and your iPhone) under music because iTunes assumes anything MP3 must be music. Here’s how to move it to the Audiobooks section. When you borrow
Victoria, BC is a great place to visit if you like history, museums, gardens, golf and the coast. I’ve been out a few times, but I usually enjoy the trip out more than the island itself. There are a f
For some reason the “Update” button in my Visual Studio Extension Manager isn’t responding to clicks. I clicked it about 10 times to no avail. I messed around with Extension Manager settings a bit, b
UPDATE (08/27/2012): I created a custom Google Chrome extension that allows you to unstar all items without having to run any JavaScript! Read more about it here: Unstar All Google Reader™ Starred It
AT&T might be doubling billing you for data. I was getting close to my 2GB limit this month, so turned off my 3G and Cellular Data. [![photo (1) (yes, my SSID is Willie, affectionately named after
Sometimes you want to update a read only system field in TFS, such as System.CreatedDate or System.ResolvedDate. There is no way to do that with TFS 2010 by using the UI or the object model because bo
I was migrating one field to another today and I got this exception when trying to delete the old field from the Fields tab: “Cannot delete this field because it is referenced by other objects”. Not
TF26061: ‘[Reference Name]’ is not a supported reference field name. I just got this error after copying and pasting a reference name from an email to the TFS WIT Editor. There might be other reasons
You can now copy and paste images that are on your clipboard right into the body of a Gmail message!! I just accidentally discovered this new Gmail feature. We used to have to save the image locally a
You’ll often see TF237055 when you try to call destroywitd on a type that is currently assigned to a category. Here’s how to get around that. TF237055: You cannot destroy a work item type that is bein
1. Download the OverDrive Media Console – This is the desktop application that you will use to transfer the audiobook from your computer to your phone. 2. Go to the Seattle Public Library’s OverDrive
Every browser (except Chrome) has about:blank selected when you open a new instance. So you can just start typing, hit enter and you are off to searching. Instead selecting about:blank Chrome puts th
My Gmail account got hacked last year which led me to develop a complex password system that includes special characters. They aren’t the only site that I’ve come across to do this, but for some reaso
I love my new Logitech V470 mouse. This being my first bluetooth mouse, I didn’t realize that the driver and service turn off the bluetooth signal when idle. So, after a few mins of not using the mou
If you aren’t careful Blogger will automatically create SEO UNfriendly urls based on the post title. Read on to learn how to overcome this and create SEO friendly urls with Blogger. Fact #1: Search en
[ If you are reading this post you are like me. You don’t read manuals. Because I don’t read manuals it took me a while to figure out how to pair my Rocketfish RF-MAB2 Bluetooth Headphones with my iPh
Try the following if you get this error in Visual Studio: The imported project "C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\Silverlight\v4.0\Microsoft.Silverlight.CSharp.targets" was not found. Confirm t
I’m not athletic, but like everyone else I need to exercise. I tried the gym for a year, but got really bored with the treadmill, elliptical, weights, etc. Too much repetition and distraction for me.
Images appear blurry (or distorted) when you copy them into Windows Live Writer from the clipboard. See this screen capture (using Win+S) of my new mouse. Notice how the words are slightly blurred in
There are a ton of free books to be borrowed from your public library. It’s really easy to do with a Kindle because Amazon.com uses whispernet to wirelessly sync the books with your Kindle…no cable re
The is a post for anyone who is trying to decide between the Kindle Touch and the Nook Simple Touch eInk eReaders. I bought them both with my own money and spent a lot of time reading with both of the
If you try to load a remote assembly using it’s path you’ll likely get a permission or operation exception. When using LoadFrom: Assembly a1 = Assembly.LoadFrom(file); I got this error. Could not loa
When you have a DataGridCheckBoxColumn without an associate label it is very difficult to check and uncheck the CheckBox. I know this solution makes no sense, but it works. In your Xaml add this marku
It was simple fix for me. Go into the Xaml file and add the ItemsSource attribute to the Grid node.
I’ve tried a ton of different reading lights with my Kindle and my favorite is called the eBook Lite (aka eReader Lite) from Pathway Lights. I like it better than the Kindle because it’s smaller, but
I just created 10 queries with all the same columns and sort order. I then realized I missed a column and wanted to add another sort column to all those queries. I made the changes to one of the other
The TFS Work Item Attachments tab supports the Windows Clipboard and Drag and Drop. For all of these tips make sure you click in the attachments grid, not just the tab. OneNote By using the clipboard
This could be happening for a number of reasons. I’ve had to try a few solutions below to get it to work. Try one, see if it works and if not try the next one. 1. Repair Office Tools a. Open add/r
It’s pretty cumbersome to create a New Query in TFS. You have to open Team Explorer, Expand your Server node, Right click on Works Items and select New Query. Here’s how to quickly do all that with a
SyncBack is a great backup and sync utility, but by default it creates Windows XP scheduled tasks which do not support running under a NETWORK SERVICE account and there’s no way to change that through
By default TFS opens all files in the Changeset details window with Notepad. But what I want to do most of the time is diff the file, not open it. You could either right click the file and choose com
I’m working on a project that involves researching and comparing many versions of the same DLL. I don’t have the source for every version of this DLL so I needed a way to convert it to C# files and di
XSN files are just cab files, but .NET doesn’t ship with APIs to easily decompress them. After a little bit of poking around I found SevenZipSharp to be the fasted and simplest way to do so. 1. Instal
You need to change the target platform to x64. Double click properties. Click on Build Tab Change Platform target to x64 Can not load 7-zip library or internal COM error! Message: failed to load libr
Here’s how to solve the exception: “Can not load 7-zip library or internal COM error! Message: DLL file does not exist.” Step 1: SetLibraryPath Add a call to SetLibraryPath before you init SevenZipEx
I wanted to simplify my TFS work item display so I removed a bunch of columns and and groups. It turns out you need those groups or you get something like this: Not good since it takes up so much ver
So far I really like the PhotoSync app for syncing photos and videos from my iPhone to my PC. I was getting this error when I tried to sync: “An error occurred during the transfer. Please check your W
TFS allows you to update work items in bulk by applying a template to them. Here’s how: Install the TFS Power Tools Right click on Work Item Templates in Team Explorer and select New Template
By default TFS always displays the System.ChangedBy field as the current user. I am Jon Gallant and Wallace Breza is a dev on my team. As you can see he was the last to change the bug, but my name is
It just means that you maxed out the number of photos allowed per album. Right now it looks like that number is 200. The solution is to create a new album.
Run a TFS query to find the AreaId and IterationId that you don’t want to allow. In my case it was 489 for both Area and Iteration 0.1) Create a new query: 0.2) Select the AreaId and IterationId co
I had to change TFS Iterations and didn’t want to break all existing queries. I also didn’t want to update them all manually. Thanks to Tarun Arora for a good starting point: http://geekswithblogs.net
You just need to delete a few things from your Lightroom preferences file: (The following from this thread, I’m reposting so it’s easier to find) 1) Close Lightroom 2) Open up your preferences file in
Don’t know why but the Bluetooth plugin that is installed by default is causing Visio to crash all the time. I disabled the plugin and haven’t had a crash since. UPDATE: If disabling doesn’t fix the p
Not sure this will work for everyone, but it worked on my Dell P2411H I was getting this really loud buzzing sound from my monitor today…and only when I was viewing Excel docs fully maximized. I just
It took me forever to figure out how to turn off my Sony IC Recorder (ICD-SX46) 1. Slide the Hold slider to the hold position. 2. Hold down the “Stop” button. That’s it. Really simple. Really undiscov
I just removed the word “test” from all of our test method names. Here’s how I did it: Find what: public void {.*}test Replace with: public void \1
Canon’s RAW codec does not support Windows Explorer thumbnail integration on x64 machines. 1. Install Windows Live Photo Gallery http://explore.live.com/windows-live-photo-gallery?os=other 2. In Windo
For Win7 Click on the Start Button Type “clear” Click “Clear ClearType text” Go through the Wizard. Helped me tremendously. Jon
TFS 2010 was released without “Branch by Label” in the UI (you had to do using TF.exe /branch /version:Lxxx). A hotfix was released on Aug 3 that fixes that problem. (details http://support.microsoft.
Had a tough time finding the right driver for my old GEMPLUS GPR400 Smart Card reader. This is what I found. It is for Windows 2000 and for the GemPC400, but it seems to work. http://support.gemalto.c
You need to use the SetValue method of the DependencyObject class… I’ll let the code speak for itself: <UserControl x:Class="SetGridProgrammatically.MainPage" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.co
Probably not the only reason you’d get this exception, but if you do try this: Open WMAppManifest.xml under /Properties Remove all child nodes from HTH, Jon
It’s really simple to Navigate to another page in Windows Phone 7, but it took me a few to figure it out. Where Page1.xaml is in the root of the app: NavigationService.Navigate(new Uri("/Page1.xaml",
Sometimes you click “Ignore” by mistake. “Ignore” is just a rule that auto sends the thread to Deleted Items. So, just find the item in deleted items, select it and click the “Ignore” button again.
Gladient has a Free Starter Edition of their product that allows you to do things like bulk move files and other things we take for granted in Windows Explorer http://www.gladinet.com/p/download_start
This is an awesome error message: I have found that manually killing wmdc.exe in Task Manager and then restarting helps.
I’m not sure what the deal is with this one, but rebooting my phone resolved it.
[ You likely get the exception "Connections to SQL Server files (*.mdf) require SQL Server Express 2005 to function properly.��� when you are trying to add a Database file to a project and don’t
[ This exception: “This server version is not supported. Only servers up to Microsoft SQL Server 2005 are supported” Probably means that you have SQL Server 2008 installed and don’t have Visual Studio
The Zune Pad on my 80GB Zune was unresponsive for a day or so and a normal reset or restore didn’t work because they require the Zune pad to be working. This worked for me, give it a try: Plug Zune
The exception “the data necessary to complete this operation is not yet available” can mean that the app you are trying to debug is already running on the device. Go to the device, close the app and t
Not sure why, but the “Start only if the following network connection is available” option is disabled for scheduled tasks if the task is configured for: “Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, or Windows 2
I spent about 20 mins with ATT technical support today trying to figure out how to send a Text from their website. Apparently they did some website updates and the “Send Text Message” option is buried
You will get this exception if you try to debug on a physical device from Visual Studio and haven’t install the debug certificates. “Connection failed. The device security configuration disallowed th
My beloved Microsoft Trackball Explorer mouse died recently and I was amazed to find that the price increased from about $70 to $600 (new) and $190 (used). I like the mouse, but not enough to shell ou
Sometimes you want a key command (keycommand) that works across all of your Windows Desktop. For example, let’s say that you write a lot of email and you want to be able to pop open Gmail’s compose pa
I picked up the Zoom H4n not too long ago for my concert and rehearsal recordings. While I’m really happy with the quality of the recordings there are some significant design flaws that prevent it fr
For some reason this feature is hidden in Outlook 2010. Click the Office Button in the upper left hand corner. [ Click “Open” and then “Import” [ Import and Export Wizard Dialog Appears. Select “
Here’s how to highlight rows based on a cell value in Excel 2007 and Excel 2010. Reference this page for previous versions of Excel Select the table you want to apply the custom formatting to [ Go
Microsoft will donate 8 meals to Feeding America for every IE8 download. Very creative way to get people fed.
I love short and sweet learning. That is exactly what Dimecasts.net provides. Videos that are 10 minutes or less (hence the “dime” in the name) and cover many dev topics, such as design patterns, LINQ
Creating a new category in Outlook isn’t very intuitive. Right click on the item you want to categorize Select “Categorize” Select “All Categories” Click the “New…” button Enter the Name of
By default the DataSource wizard passes parameters for AutoNumber primary keys. If you are getting this error: You tried to assign the Null value to a variable that is not a Variant data type. Then yo
You are probably using the wrong DbConnection class. If you are using Access then make sure you use OleDbConnection, not SqlConnection…and vice versa. Alternatively you could be referencing your MDB f
Could be a couple of things: The file is marked as read-only. Right click on file, uncheck “read only”.2. The application pool identity doesn’t have write permissions to the folder that contains th
Before last week the only two viable Mobile Browser Detection options were: WURFL – Great for non-.NET solutions. .NET APIs lack support2. DeviceAtlas – Great for .NET solutions, but it’s starts at
I just finished Cameron Moll’s “Mobile Web Design” book. Not only is it a great book…short, sweet and comprehensive, but it has a lot of great references. I figured I’d help others find the references
I had to install my Canon MP980 software on to my new Windows 7 laptop and even though my domain account is in the Administrators group I was getting this error: “To install the software, you must log
It’s simple. Use the import function. Open the destination database. Right click in the table pane. Select Import. Choose the origination database. Choose the tables you want to import. Select to co
ASP.NET doesn’t ship with Membership, Profile, Role or Personalization providers out of the box. Imar Spaanjaars has a great article on how to setup a site using the “Sample Access Providers” provided
If you are trying to read a protected mail using Outlook and are getting prompted to enter a Windows Live Id instead of your network credentials it is because there is a conflict between Outlook IRM a
I often get this error when trying to bind a project or solution to a VSS provider in Visual Studio through File->Source Control->Change Source Control. Microsoft Visual Studio Unexpected error
I installed win7 today and had to post about it… Facebook converts <3 to a heart…how cute. What other hidden Facebook codes are out there?
If you get this exception _System.TypeLoadException: Could not load type ‘x’ from assembly ‘xx, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null’ because the method ‘SendMessage’ has no implemen
I’m creating an app and need the same data set for two tree views. Nodes.AddRange only works with a TreeNode[] and the TreeNodeCollection is read-only and doesn’t have a ctor. I first tried something
My Outlook RSS Feeds were in a really funky state this morning. I had to create a new profile and I had RSS Sync enabled. When that is the case Outlook re-adds all Feeds that you have ever added to th
You would have never guess this by the error message, but "“SQL Server 2008 setup requires .NET Framework 3.5 to be installed” when you have Visual Studio 2008 SP1 installed means that you need t
Got this error when logging into a machine that I hadn’t touched in months: “the security database on the server does not have a computer account for this workstation trust relationship” Not exactly s
PDC was great this year! Here’s a quick list of my favorite sessions of technologies and products that Social Bookmarking will use soon… Stuff we’ll use this year: Velocity ADO.NET Data Services Vis
Try the following if you get errors when upgrading to SP2 Give explicit (not inherited) Full Control permissions to “c:\program files\microsoft sql server\mssql.x” for Administrators group Delete all
If you are using the Gmail Mobile App on Windows Mobile you may notice that it seems impossible to enter a username and password into the authentication screen. You can actually enter the data, but yo
I was getting this exception earlier today: Test method x threw exception: System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: Procedure or function ‘sp_get_x’ expects parameter ‘@x’, which was not supplied… I was 10
Along with all the other new features of our recent MSDN & TechNet search release we also created “search” sub-domains for both of the sites. The new URLs are: http://search.msdn.com and http://se
The backslash key isn’t on the default key layout on the Blackjack. Just hold down the “sym” button and a list of symbols (special characters) will appear. Jon
I’m not sure exactly what leads to this issue, but in 2008 SP1 the designer doesn’t always update the codefile after dragging from Server Explorer. Hit F7 from the designer and move (or add) the “usin
Here’s the solution to the: A property with name '[table].[column]" does not exist in metadata for entity type ‘[type]’. issue in ASP.NET Dynamic Data. The links are generated incorrectly for ass
Phil Haack created a very useful HttpSimulator to assist in unit testing code that accesses the HttpContext. I was up an running in a few minutes. Here’s a sample that worked for me. [TestMethod] publ
Great video on the new Date DataTypes in in Sql [T-SQL Enhancements and Date/Time ](http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/5/1/851B0968-0BE0-417E-9DA9-B3A2A6E47A67/NewDateTime.wmv) SQL Server 2008
WebClient will return a Download failure exception if you search the Digg API using an invalid search term. If you search with a valid term, say “microsoft”, then you will have no issues. Search with
I got this error today: “Configuration system failed to initialize” while loading a config file. Looking at the web.config file it wasn’t obvious what the problem was. <?xml version="1.0" encoding=
I regularly use SkyDrive for sharing files with my friends and family. You get 5GB free, the UI is super easy to use and you completely control the permission model on your folders and files. Check i
With the transition of MailMessage from System.Web.Mail to System.Net.Mail there were some mail header casing changes that caused mail sent to Hotmail and Live email addresses to appear as being succe
If you call Single to get an object from your DB and the object doesn’t exist you will get an InvalidOperationException. return this.DataContext.MemberDaos.Single(m => m.MemberID == id); Instead o
If you are using LINQ to insert data with RTM bits you won’t find the Add method on the DataContext post Beta2. Use the InsertOnSubmit method instead.
It’s usually a good idea to seperate Biz Layer Objects and Data Access Objects into seperate assemblies, but when you do that and use LINQ to SQL (.dbml) files the DataContext object default ctor uses
SilverLight 1.0 was released today and Microsoft confirmed that they are working with Novell to produce a version of it for Linux. Great news!
Binding simple (int/string, etc) type properties to a TemplateColumn in a GridView is easy, but when you need to bind the Grid to an object that has properties that aren’t simple types it gets a bit m
When dev’n I frequently want to close all the open documents in VS. The right click on tab command in VS doesn’t have that option, so after digging around in the customize window box I found “Window
Tim McBride just pushed out his code that dynamically creates the profile provider classes for non-WebSite projects. http://www.codeplex.com/WebProfile/
If you create a project in Blend 2 May Preview and right click on the project and select “Edit in Visual Studio”. Blend 2 creates that VS project using version 2.0 of the .NET Framework. Some symptoms
I just installed Orcas and was getting this error when running a performance test: Event Type: Error Event Source: ASP.NET 2.0.50727.0 Event Category: None Event ID: 1062 Date: 5/24/2007 Time: 11:1
I do a bit of recording and usually bounce my tracks to 16bit WAVs because Windows Media Player doesn’t support 24bit WAV out of the box and I couldn’t find the right codecs. I also use Windows Media
I just spent a while searching for the ATOM 1.0 schema definition. This looks like the most human readable form out there. http://www.atomenabled.org/developers/syndication/ HTH, Jon
I found out the hard way that Web Application Projects do not support dynamic class generation for profile providers. For now you need to use the “WebSite” type project instead of WAP or you can use
I’m working on this app that pulls the ip address from the request headers. When debugging the app locally the headers are always “127.0.0.1”, which doesn’t help because I need to know the actual IP a
I just deployed a new wpf/e control to a new server and found that I need to register the content types for xaml, etc. You will find the configuration steps here: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/libr
Lutz Roeder’s Reflector add-ins are now on www.CodePlex.com http://www.codeplex.com/reflectoraddins
For all those dev’n on Vista, self included :) http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=90e2942d-3ad1-4873-a2ee-4acc0aace5b6&displaylang=en
I just spent the last few hours trying to track down why I kept getting an “is null or not an object” error when setting up a service with a ScriptService attribute. I started my coding with a PageMet
I accidentally hit Ctrl+F1 today and my ribbon was gone. Hit Ctrl + F1 and it’s back. Kind of a hidden command, HTH
Lets say you have this xml: Blog Content And you are using an XmlDataSource to run it through a repeater. You can easily get the attributes like so: <%#Eval(“Date”)%> To get the innerText
If you are referencing an external configuration file in your web application and are caching that access, then look at using the restartOnExternalChanges config attribute to restart the domain on con
I just got a new laptop and am running it at 1600x1200. With IE I was getting jagged images, so I pinged the internal IE discussions group and got this response from Tony Schriener. It sounds like t
The SqlXml datatype constructor only accepts a Stream or XmlReader, if you have an XmlDocument in memory (go with stream if you have it) then you can easily convert to a SqlXml compatible stream with
The “page cannot be displayed” issue in IE could be many things. First turn off the Show Friendly Error Message option in IE. Then check event viewer. And if all else fails recreate the website in IIS
If you are wondering where the “Atlas Control Project” template disappeared to with the latest beta, you can find install instructions for the template here: http://ajax.asp.net/ajaxtoolkit/Walkthroug
http://labs.live.com/photosynth
This typically means that you need to configure your site to use v2.0 of the .NET framework. aspnet_regiis -i is one way, another is to manually switch to 2.0 in the ASP.NET tab of the sites IIS prope
If you get this exception when loading a CSAdmin web service it is likely that the AppPool’s identity does not have access to the MSCS_Admin database. Give the identity access to the databases and you
If you have a slow jerky cursor (mouse) on a Virtual Machine it probably means that you need to install Virtual Machine Additions. How to install Virtual Machine Additions on a virtual machine http://
My team uses many static analysis tools to check for common coding mistakes and coding standards. I recently stubbled upon JavaScriptLint which we’ll start using to analize our JavaScript code base, w
What features would your dream dev portal have? Blogs, technologies, products, reviews, articles? Does the customizable experience at Live.com give you what you need or would you use a site that pushe
I’m a dev lead in a group that is part of MSDN and TechNet. I’m curious what you (the IT Pro/Dev community) think of the MSDN/TechNet homepages and how we could make them better. It’d be cool if you c
Lots of great ASP.NET videos up on www.ASP.net http://www.asp.net/learn/videos/default.aspx?tabid=63
The project I’ve been working on since I joined IDEO last October has finally shipped! Learning Platform v3 can be found at http://learning.microsoft.com/ The Learning Platform allows you to Purchas
Blinq is going to at least make all the dreary admin site creation work super easy for you. I was up and running with a full admin site in about 5 mins.
If you see this error message it means that you have not selected a .NET framework version to use for the website or virtual directory. To resolve, go to IIS, properties of the site, ASP.NET tab and s
The second parameter overload of Response.Redirect is nice because it doesn’t call Response.End, which is responsible for throwing the ThreadAbortException. BUT… The drawback to using this is that the
Check out Ian Huff’s intro video about VSTS Performance Tools. It’s a great overview and covers just about everything you need to know about them.
Convert.ChangeType doesn’t support nullable types. Peter Johnson has a post which shows how to test and cast from object to Nullable types. The can obviously be extended with generics. http://aspallia
While building our Commerce Server 2007 solution it made sense to wrap the LineItem class to easily access the weakly typed indexer accessible properties (which are exposed as object). Because the und
My team is implementing a custom Commerce Server 2007 (which just RTM’d last week btw) and I had to remove a custom pipeline from the stack. I removed all references from the registry, but forgot to
Let’s say an algorithm does what we need it to do really well 90% of the time. We have a choice to build the app to handle the other 10% which could come at substantial cost, or introduce a human work
Very cool talk with Joe Belfiore this morning. I came a little late, but caught the cool work ms is doing with ease of integration with Office Addins. VSTO makes this especially easy. He demo’d a cool
**Overview of Expression - Brad Becker **Splitview and XamlPad are included in the WinFx SDK. You can use them to create the Xaml by hand, but I would stay away if you can and go with Expression! It
My day started off by having a quick bite with Doug Seven of DotNetJunkies and SqlJunkies fame. Amazingly enough we work in the same building @ ms, but have never met - it’s cool b/c we both started c
Just installed Office12 yesterday…I know a bit late, but I’ve been working like crazy lately and just starting to get caught back up on what else is happening in this world ;) Wow - it is slick. I’m l
Just found out that I’ll be hanging in LV for a few days next week at Mix06. For those of you that can’t go - what sessions would you like me to attend on your behalf? Here’s a link to the sessions: h
I ran out of disk space today and did a quick search for disk usage analysis tools. With WirDirStat I was able to find out quickly that my tempdb ldf file was 27 GB. http://windirstat.sourceforge.net/
See how a malicious site could retrieve your clipboard data with a few lines of code… Copy any text with Ctrl+C and then click on the link below. You’ll see the text in the highlighted in yellow.
Here’s how to get the full path to a file in VSS. Right click on file and select Properties from context menu.2. Click Report Button3. Click Preview Button4. The “Preview File Properties Report” d
In the process of building a COM Add-in for Outlook I ran into the issue of events not being fired with XP. I needed to capture the ItemAdd, ItemSend and SelectionChange events, which his was working
I finally learned what the cloaking feature of VSS does and wanted to share. If you cloak a folder, you are marking it as a folder that you do not want to include in a recursive get. For example, lets
What do naming convention do you prefer when naming controls and why? Hungarian: lblUsername Pascal: UsernameLabel or Username Camel: username Other?
I am amazed at how many developers are still using windiff or VSS diff tool. Beyond Compare is great tool that I use almost daily. It allows you to diff files and folders using the context menu of Win