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All Posts (549)

• 

  Published on

  2023-08-01 10:43 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  outlookwindowswindowssearch

  Outlook Search broken due to Windows Search acting up? Here's 3 ways to fix it!

  Well, this was kind of a dumb one. Search in Outlook suddenly stopped working completely. And I don't mean the normal "Outlook Search can't find anything" -kind of issues, I mean it literally found zero results with any search terms. Well, everything is buggy and nothing works. Not that unusual by itself, but something that should be fixed. This article explains how to fix it. Well, even a couple of different ways to fix it!

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• 

  Published on

  2023-07-25 3:08 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  blazorvisual-studiowebassembly

  "Failed to launch debug server process due to: TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined...." when trying to debug Blazor WebAssembly

  This article explains how to fix an annoying issue when trying to debug a Blazor WASM (WebAssembly) project. In my case, I had a Blazor WASM SWA (Static Web App), that built just fine and ran well in Azure, but refused to be debugged. What an annoying little problem. I mean - it's not a problem until you have a problem to investigate. But when you can't investigate a problem, then you do have a problem. So let's take a closer look. At the problem, that is.

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• 

  Published on

  2023-07-18 6:03 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  gittypescript

  How to clean up redundant .js, .jsx and .d.ts files from your repository?

  Even if you have a 100% TypeScript project, it'll still end up with a lot of .js (JavaScript) or .jsx (JavaScript with React extension) files. Unless you properly ignore them, they'll end up cluttering your Visual Studio solution, and even git. As these are, in that case, generated files and essentially build artifacts, you will most likely not want to commit them to your code repository. They'll get recreated during the build anyway and are more likely to cause confusion than to do any good.

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• 

  Published on

  2023-07-11 3:22 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  windows

  How to fix jarringly jagged text in Windows?

  This article explains one simple fix to all your text appearing wonky, with jagged and somehow oddly fuzzy edges in Windows. The guide is written for Windows 10 (because that's the only modern OS that natively supports taskbar being docked on the side of the screen), but it probably applies for Windows 11 as well. Background As we all know, it's not your computer.

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• 

  Published on

  2023-07-04 2:25 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  azcliazuredns

  How to update the TTL for all A records in a zone at once in Azure?

  Every now and then there comes a time when you need to fiddle with DNS. It's not that you want to do it, but sometimes you just can't avoid it. This article explains a convenient way of using PowerShell to apply a change for all A records (these are essentially host names ) in a zone (which you could usually simply call a domain ).

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• 

  Published on

  2023-06-27 3:43 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  graph-apipnppowershellpowershell

  How to add AdditionalHeaders to Invoke-PnPGraphMethod?

  This article explains how to easily add additional headers to the Graph API calls you make in PowerShell using Invoke-PnPGraphMethod commandlet. There's a convenient sample for you to copy-paste and some basic explanations on what we're doing below. Background Every now and then, I need to make some Graph API calls from PowerShell. And there's a convenient PowerShell commandlet available to make it easy to do just that - Invoke-PnPGraphMethod.

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• Published on

  2023-06-20 4:18 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  powershell

  How to iterate through a collection of items in a Parallel Foreach loop in PowerShell?

  That's a mouthful, right? But yeah - this article shows and tells how to do a parallel foreach loop in PowerShell, and how to do it properly! Well, at least probably. This is how I did it anyway. But that's enough chitchat, let's get to it! Background In PowerShell, you can iterate through objects with a ForEach-Object loop like this: # Create an array of integers $items = 1..

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• 

  Published on

  2023-06-13 3:13 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  powershell

  How to fix "yo : The term 'yo' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program." error?

  This article explains what to do to get rid of an error that SEEMS simple to fix but might turn out to be elusive, namely, "The term 'yo' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program. Check the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try again." Sounds simple, right? It might be. Read on to find out how I banged my head on the wall with this one!

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• 

  Published on

  2023-06-06 3:53 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  bluetoothwindows

  How to re-enable Bluetooth on your Windows device

  This article explains (one way) how to re-enable Bluetooth on your Windows laptop, in case Windows has just forgotten you have a Bluetooth adapter in your pc. Which would be weird because I don't think any pcs ship without, anymore. Even Raspberry Pis have come with Bluetooth for years now. Anyway... What was the problem again?

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• 

  Published on

  2023-05-30 3:01 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  microsoftstorewindowswindowsupdate

  "Something happened on our end" on Microsoft Store

  This article explains how to make your Microsoft Store (the app distribution channel on Windows - the one that's supposed to distribute apps reliably and keep them up-to-date) work after it has suddenly stopped updating or installing any apps with a very non-descriptive error - "Something happened on our end". Background The error message - "Something happened on our end" - is a typical error message. It doesn't tell you much, and the little it does, it lies.

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• 

  Published on

  2023-05-23 4:33 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  androidoneplus

  How to fix OnePlus 10 Pro Bluetooth issues

  In a bit different news, this time I'm sharing my preferred Bluetooth configuration that makes using headphones (or are they called "earpods" now?) bearable. It's required some experimentation, but I did finally find a combination that doesn't cause the audio to be laggy or janky. Problem For over a year, I had OnePlus 9 Pro. It always felt a bit sluggish, but the user experience was still something I could live with.

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• 

  Published on

  2023-05-16 3:00 p.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  How to actually uninstall conflicting PowerShell modules?

  This article explains how to resolve "Import-Module: Assembly with same name is already loaded" error in PowerShell (and a couple of related issues - old versions of the module being used, updating modules silently failing, uninstalling modules simply not doing anything...) Problem Different error messages you might get (obviously the same issue affects other modules and not just PnP PowerShell, but it's the one I use often and the one that I ran into issues with.

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• 

  Published on

  2023-05-09 8:03 p.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  androidoneplus

  How to enable Developer Mode on Android?

  This article dives into Developer Mode on Android and explains how to actually enable it on your device. You might need to do this if your device's factory defaults are stupid (like on my 2 last OnePlus phones), you need to debug an app on your phone or achieve some other somewhat advanced scenario. Background Enabling developer mode on Android is a straightforward process, but it's essential to understand what you're getting into.

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• 

  Published on

  2023-05-02 3:58 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  akscertificatesopenssl

  How to include the whole certificate chain in your .cer, .crt or .pem certificate file?

  Haha, another one of those "should've known it was this easy" in the books! This article explains how to include the whole certificate chain (so your "user certificate" with all the "intermediary certificates" and optionally, but not as recommended, the root certificate) in your PEM-formatted certificate. Because sometimes you just need to combine 5 certificates you've just successfully stolen from your own website using a script !

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• 

  Published on

  2023-04-25 3:29 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  githubactionsmaui

  How to avoid sed in GitHub Actions removing spaces from your script steps?

  This article explains how to replace double quotes in string literal when replacing stuff in GitHub Actions using sed. Or rather, how to replace stuff with double quotes in it in GitHub Actions overall. Because it's not as straightforward as one would think. Or maybe I'm missing something obvious here? Either way, here's another thoughtful workaround!

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• 

  Published on

  2023-04-18 2:14 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  azurepipelinesgithubactionsmsbuild

  How to fix "MSB4044: The AndroidSignPackage task was not given a value for the required parameter KeyPass

  This article explains a quick fix to an error along the lines of "AndroidSignPackage" task was not given a value for the required parameter "KeyPass". In my case the issue occurred in a GitHub Actions pipeline, but you could get it in Azure DevOps or even when running the build command locally.

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• 

  Published on

  2023-04-11 2:50 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  mauiwindows

  How to set Window size for your MAUI app in Windows?

  This article shows you how to set a window size for a MAUI app on Windows. This is super useful for debugging - in my case, I wanted to retain a fast development cycle with lightweight debugging to work on my code quickly, but still see everything in roughly the right aspect ratio for my typical end-user device - an Android smartphone. But using the emulator for this was not usable, as it's comparably slow. And of course the same solution will work for production use cases.

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• 

  Published on

  2023-04-04 2:39 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  entityframeworkcoresql

  How to fix "System.InvalidOperationException: The property 'ItemBody.AdditionalData' could not be mapped because it is of type 'IDictionary', which is not a supported primitive type or a valid entity type. Either explicitly map this property, or ignore it using the '[NotMapped]' attribute or by using 'EntityTypeBuilder.Ignore' in 'OnModelCreating'." in .NET 7 and Entity Framework?

  Oof. What even is this title? Descriptive - sure, maybe - but also kinda long. Ah, okay. This article explains how to map complex data types to a SQL database when using Entity Framework. This time, I'm using Fluent API to do this. In my case, I just needed to store entities that I got from external source, based on entities coming from a dependency, into my service's database.

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• 

  Published on

  2023-03-28 3:27 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  azuredevopspowershell

  Automatically get version number from project dependencies in Azure DevOps

  This article expands on my earlier article on automatically figuring out versioning in an Azure DevOps Pipeline. In the other article, you'd add Major and Minor versions as variables, and Patch (the last part of an x.y.z version scheme) would be incremented automatically.

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• 

  Published on

  2023-03-21 4:49 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  aadazure-ad

  Solving "AADSTS90097: An error has occurred during admin consent processing." issues in your app

  This article explains how to fix " AADSTS90097: An error has occurred during admin consent processing. " (or like the error message is actually worded - "occurred", which to me looks like a typo, but at least makes this easier to google. I mean - bing. Those are both verbs now until we all just start asking Tay our techy questions and get back definitely-not-hallucinated answers. Ah. Anyway. We should also be able to fix " AADSTS900971 - No reply address provided.

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• 

  Published on

  2023-03-14 2:27 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  blazormaui

  How to fix your MAUI Blazor app crashing on startup with "Failed to compare two elements in the array." ?

  This article explains how to fix your Blazor Hybrid MAUI application (built with Blazor Webassembly, using MAUI to build & publish for multiple different platforms like Windows, Android and iOS at once) not starting up, but throwing an unexpected error instead, an error message being somewhat along the lines of "Failed to compare two elements in the array." What fun, right?

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• 

  Published on

  2023-03-07 4:57 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  githubgithubactionsmaui

  How to build a functional CI/CD pipeline for a MAUI app on GitHub in less than 1 hour?

  Unlike most of my articles, this one isn't a description of an issue I had and the workaround or fix that I found. This time, I'm writing about something I found fun and pretty impressive - a fully functional continuous integration and deployment pipeline from a git repository all the way to your Android handsets, set up in less than an hour, using GitHub Actions and App Visual Studio App Center.

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• 

  Published on

  2023-02-28 4:57 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  mauiwindev

  How to solve "System.TypeInitializationException: 'The type initializer for 'WinRT.ActivationFactory`1' threw an exception.'" in the MAUI application?

  ... or "How to bang your head on a wall for hours on end when developing a MAUI application?" 😂 This article explains how to fix a surprising error you might get when trying to run a MAUI app in Windows. For me, it was thrown when I was simply reading a file from the disk, but I suspect the same or similar error ( "System.TypeInitializationException: 'The type initializer for 'WinRT.ActivationFactory`1' threw an exception.

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• 

  Published on

  2023-02-21 3:54 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  airqualityairthingshomeassistant

  How do Airthings sensors work with Home Assistant?

  This article describes some of my experiences with Airthings air quality sensors, especially when used with Home Assistant. I'm using a couple of sensors to keep an especially close eye on CO2, Radon and air pressure, in addition to temperature and humidity (which I already have plenty of Sonoff sensors for). As a nice bonus, both sensors I got also monitor VOCs. Background I have an older house, so I was fairly certain it has some air quality issues. An older device I have already measures PM2.

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• 

  Published on

  2023-02-14 3:22 a.m.

  Authors

  koskila

  Tags

  maui

  How to read and write files in a MAUI application?

  This article explains how to read and write files in a MAUI application. No, not AppPackageFiles, nobody likes those, but actual NORMAL files. Real files. Dynamic files. Files that can change. Runtime files. I don't know what to call them. But I hope you get the idea. Someone needs to document this stuff for other people only now starting with MAUI, right? 😀 AI-powered summary: Mastering File Management in MAUI Apps Learn to manage files in MAUI applications effectively.

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