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All Posts (530)

• 

  Published on

  2020-08-03 9:26 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  gadgetworxlandroid

  Worx Landroid L2000 (WR155E) - an honest review

  In this article, I will be sharing my perspective and experiences with Worx Landroid L2000 - an autonomous lawn mower that I've had for about 2 summers now. Hopefully, I'll be able to help someone else make an informed decision about getting a puppy like this. Anyway - a step back, the 10k-feet view first, as usual. Robot lawn mowers are slowly becoming a commodity, but choosing the right one is still tough.

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• 

  Published on

  2020-07-27 8:49 p.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  azurefunctionsentityframeworkcore

  How to resolve "Microsoft.Data.SqlClient is not supported on this platform." in an Azure Function App?

  Hah - another interesting one. This article describes how to resolve an error along the lines of " Microsoft.Data.SqlClient: Microsoft.Data.SqlClient is not supported on this platform. ", thrown by the Azure Functions host. Apparently, you can run into this issue either on your local development machine or even in Azure. AI-powered summary: Quick Fixes for Azure Function App SQL Errors Encounter the “Microsoft.Data.SqlClient not supported” error in Azure Function Apps?

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• 

  Published on

  2020-07-21 6:45 p.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  dockerhomeassistant

  Gotchas when configuring Home Assistant on Docker on Windows

  What a nice headline, right? 😅 One day, I thought I'd give Home Assistant a try! And obviously, I couldn't just make things easy and run it in a Linux virtual machine or my Raspberry Pi - instead, obviously, I decided to run it on Windows 10! And obviously, I'd use Docker for it. And of course, not just Docker, but docker-compose. Whatever that is. I don't know - it's the first time I'm trying out Docker. Or Home Assistant! Another learning experience coming in, am I right?

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• 

  Published on

  2020-07-16 1:37 p.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  azurewindowsupdate

  Enabling local cache for an Azure App Service

  This article explains one easy way for you to improve the performance and uptime of your Azure App Service. I'll explain a simple but kind-of-hidden and surprisingly badly documented feature - Azure App Service Local Cache, that is - which might make a huge difference. It sure did for me! Since it's such a no-brainer, I'm kind of half expecting everyone else to already have known about this, but since nobody told me about it, I'm going to document it for future use.

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• 

  Published on

  2020-07-08 6:19 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  ef-coreentityframeworkcoresqlsql-query

  How to verify connection to the database in Entity Framework Core?

  This article explains how to perform a very simple and lightweight database connection test for an existing database context.

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• 

  Published on

  2020-06-30 7:23 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  How to resolve "Microsoft.Data.SqlClient.SqlException (0x80131904): Cannot insert explicit value for identity column in table when IDENTITY_INSERT is set to OFF"

  Okay, okay - another super simple thing that I messed up, fixed, and decided to document :) This time I messed up a simple operation in Entity Framework Core operation on a simple entity, and hopefully I'll save someone else some trouble! Onwards to the issue, then! Problem So when you're trying to insert stuff into your database - somewhat like shown in the example below: var entity = new MyEntity(){ Id = 1337, Name = "My Entity" }; _ctx.MyEntities.Add(entity); _ctx.

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• 

  Published on

  2020-06-24 7:18 p.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  ef-coreentityframeworkcore

  How to resolve persistent "Build started... Build failed." when trying to run Entity Framework Core commands?

  This time, I'm happy to present you perhaps the simplest way of fixing an annoying and persistent issue with a misleading error message! Wait, does that sound familiar? It's almost like that's what half of my articles are about... Anyway, I was happily going my way about creating a couple of new fields to an entity and then scaffolding my changes to a new migration using Entity Framework Core's Add-Migration, but this happened: Build started... Build failed. "Oh", I thought.

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• Published on

  2020-06-16 5:27 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  modernsharepointsharepointsharepoint-online

  SharePoint Home Sites - a Game Changer?

  This topic seems to be on everyone's mind right now: SharePoint Home Sites. They're finally rolling out (again). Or maybe even rolled out, in case this article ends up late in my publishing queue! But what are they? How do you create SharePoint Home sites? How do you best use them in your organization? To take a step back, let's first take a step upwards - to get the 1000-feet view! Getting the big picture - why is Microsoft doing this stuff in the first place?

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• 

  Published on

  2020-06-10 11:27 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  ef-coreentityframeworkcore

  How to resolve another "An error occurred while updating the entries" exception in Entity Framework Core

  This article offers yet another possible fix to an issue, where trying to call SaveChanges() in Entity Framework Core throws a pretty generic "An error occurred while updating the entries"-exception, and you're left wondering what in tarnation is wrong this time. And admittedly, that's a really generic error, so it could pretty much be whatever. But in this article, I'll go through one possibility - hopefully, it helps!

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• 

  Published on

  2020-05-28 2:08 p.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  azure-adazureportal

  How to find out the ID of your Azure AD tenant?

  This article explains in extremely short way, how to fetch your Azure Active Directory tenant's Directory ID (also known as Tenant ID). Let's make it short and sweet, because quite frankly, it is really simple! Solution Option 1: Use whatismytenantid.com for finding your tenant/directory id: Quick solution - works (at least) for all standard tenants: Navigate to https://www.whatismytenantid.com/ Enter the domain associated with your Azure AD instance (often like contoso.onmicrosoft.

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• 

  Published on

  2020-05-19 9:32 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  azureazurefunctions

  How to resolve error "Insufficient memory to continue the execution of the program." when debugging Azure Functions locally?

  This article describes a solution to an error "Insufficient memory to continue the execution of the program." I was debugging an Azure Function locally and ran into it - it stopped my Azure Function from starting at all. So, this is what I got: Insufficient memory to continue the execution of the program. Ohh... kay..? My development machines have plenty of RAM, surely enough to run an Azure Function!

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• 

  Published on

  2020-05-12 2:43 p.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  ef-coreentityframeworkentityframeworkcorenetcore

  How to implement multiple Connection Strings for one DbContext in EF Core?

  Recently, while building an app service to host a .NET Core API, I had to implement the logic for using both Read-Only and Read-Write Database Contexts for Entity Framework Core. In this particular case, it was the same database - just different contexts, because depending on the location of the app service the app was deployed in, read and write operations might actually go to different database instances, That's really easy, right? Well... Yes and no.

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• 

  Published on

  2020-05-07 6:30 p.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  ms-sql-serversqlsql-querysqlservermanagementstudio

  How to clean up duplicates from MS SQL Database?

  This article explains how to query and remove duplicate entries from a Microsoft SQL database using T-SQL. The same model works both for Azure Databases (in Azure SQL Query Editor) and databases on MS SQL Server (using SSMS - SQL Server Management Studio). I had to do this a while back due to a bug in an API creating multiple entities with the same content - save for the Identity field. Fun! Background Why bother? That's a (somewhat) valid question.

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• 

  Published on

  2020-04-30 10:57 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  applicationinsightsazureazuremonitor

  How to fix weird "Production Breakpoints" errors in an Azure App Service?

  This article describes a curious fix I found to an issue where Application Insights (seemingly) crashes your Azure App Service, leaving behind interesting, yet non-descriptive errors in the Application Event Logs. The actual symptoms might be your Azure app service just timing out with no errors being surfaced on the front-end. Frustrating. Problem Does your Azure App Service's event log look like this? Full of "Production Breakpoints" with weird errors about named pipes?

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• 

  Published on

  2020-04-21 12:16 p.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  cef-coreentityframeworkentityframeworkcore

  How to get the EF Core Connection String?

  This article describes how to access and extract the connection strings from your Entity Framework (Core) database context objects. This is quite convenient if you need to display or log the connection string used for your current DbContext for some reason - or if you somehow form your DbContext objects dynamically, and need to verify which connection string you're using. I'm sure there are other use cases, too. You probably have an interesting one, if you landed on this page!

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• 

  Published on

  2020-04-15 10:03 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  microsoft-teams

  Tips on organizing an online conference using Microsoft Teams

  Writing this in a country under lockdown, it feels like every single conference in the world has either been canceled or switched to being online-only. And right now, that's definitely for the best! But it does pose quite a dilemma for those in charge of these events - how do you organize an event for potentially thousands of attendees, online? How do you foster great interaction between the audience and speakers? How do you encourage your attendees to mingle as well?

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• 

  Published on

  2020-03-31 8:58 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  microsoft-teamsoffice-groupspowershell

  How to fix a Teams team with no Owners?

  As Teams adoption grows (partially driven by the megatrend of digitalization, partially by the massive surge in working from home due to Covid-19), different problems managing Teams also become more obvious. The growth seems to have been largely organic. Teams and organizations are adopting the tools that best help them get their work done with little regard to how the tools are maintained and best used. Teams are often created as needed, and by whoever needs them.

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• 

  Published on

  2020-03-25 11:05 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  aspnetcoreazureblazor

  How to fix "HTTP Error 500.32 - ANCM Failed to Load dll"

  Yikes - ever ran into this error after deploying your ASP.NET Core web application to an Azure App Service? Yeah, me too. And when it's a production deployment, and the error didn't happen in test/QA environment, that's even more fun. This article describes a couple of ways to fix it, though. You wouldn't believe these 3 solutions to fix the error "500.32", and what they look like now! Oh heavens, what have I done with that subheading?

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• 

  Published on

  2020-03-19 12:22 p.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  guidemicrosoft-teamsux

  Why you shouldn't attach files from other channels in Microsoft Teams?

  This article will describe a surprising issue with Microsoft Teams, and a simple workaround. 😊 Essentially, using the out-of-the-box "Attach" > "Recent" messaging extension in Teams has a couple of caveats or edge cases, that make it problematic to use. Instead, either move the file to the proper location using the "Files" tab or share a link to your file (also available under "Attach" > "Browse Teams and Channels").

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• 

  Published on

  2020-03-10 10:58 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  remoteworkingwaysofworkingwfhworkingfromhome

  Top Tips To Survive Working From Home!

  Due to the outbreak of the Coronavirus, there's a sudden influx of people working remotely. As someone, who has only recently gone through the transformation from a regular office worker (with an assigned desk and all that classic stuff) to a full-time remote worker, I thought I could share some of my experiences on how to survive WFH (that's Working From Home for those of you who're even newer to this stuff than I am!) Introduction Up until recently, I used to work at Valo's Montreal office.

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• 

  Published on

  2020-03-05 12:01 p.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  aspnetcorerazor

  Adding new MVC/Razor items fails throwing an error about hostpolicy.dll

  This article describes how to fix the error " There was an error running the selected code generator: 'Failed to load the dll from \bin\Debug\netcoreapp\win-x86\hostpolicy.dll, HRESULT: 0x800700C1 An error occurred while loading required library hostpolicy.dll'" when you're adding a new scaffolded item (such as a Razor page or ASP.NET Core MVC Controller) in Visual Studio. Description Imagine this: You're developing your run-of-the-mill, basic, everyday ASP.NET Core web application.

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• 

  Published on

  2020-02-27 11:26 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  aspnetcoreauthenticationcnetcorenetcore3

  How to disable "Register" action in ASP.NET Core?

  Sometimes you'll need the default identity for your ASP.NET Core application, but want to disable the registration of new users. Sounds pretty basic, right? However, there's actually no easy switch you can just flip to enable or disable said functionality. I went through a lot of different articles and ideas by other people. Most of them involved fiddling with IdentityController, creating new scaffolded pages, adding new Actions with redirection code, and who knows what else...

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• 

  Published on

  2020-02-26 11:48 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  azureazuredevopsdevopsnuget

  Fun with Azure DevOps NuGet package versioning!

  This article will briefly explain the different NuGet package versioning schemes - both automatic and manual - available. Then we'll take a look at how to implement a nifty, and quite frankly, downright elegant automatic versioning scheme for your NuGet packages. Okay - returning from quite a trip down another rabbit hole, I think it's a good time to document some of my findings in regards to Azure DevOps NuGet package versioning !

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• 

  Published on

  2020-02-26 11:40 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  loggingnetcorenetcore3

  Adding Debug listeners to your console application fails in .NET Core

  Every now and then comes the need to write your console output to a log file. There's a simple way to do this in .NET Framework, and quite a few online articles detailing a borderline one-liner on how to do achieve it: Adding a log file listener(s) by calling Debug.Listeners - something like this: var tr1 = new TextWriterTraceListener(System.Console.Out); Debug.Listeners.Add(tr1); var tr2 = new TextWriterTraceListener(System.IO.File.CreateText("log.txt")); Debug.Listeners.

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• 

  Published on

  2020-02-18 7:43 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  microsoftexceloffice

  How to change Excel CSV delimiter?

  This article will explain how you can change the Excel list delimiter for your CSV (or other) file exports. Because it isn't always a comma. And setting the delimiter won't escape or strip the same characters in the values, so it'll mess up your data quite easily. Recently, I needed to find a way to import data from an old Excel file to a custom-coded system that could import CSV files. However, the data was fairly non-sanitized - containing commas, semicolons, and other weird characters.

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