Another day, another issue – this time with an on-premises environment with a ridiculously complicated architecture and an absolute ton of pipelines. There are plenty of ways to fix this particular issue (because there are plenty of reasons), and after ferocious googling (and very brief binging just to see if Microsoft had found something Google hadn’t), the trail ran cold and I felt like nobody had run into the same issue before. This is probably not true – just that the documentation wasn’t there. So,…Continue reading How to fix a 403.18 in a virtual application?
GitHub Action fails with “The GITHUB_TOKEN environment variable was not set”
Another day, another thing I’m trying to do on GitHub (and at least partially failing), another blog post! This time, I was configuring a build and ran into trouble. This article describes one possible fix to an issue where an error along the lines of “The GITHUB_TOKEN environment variable was not set” is thrown. As a backstory: I have a long history with Azure DevOps, and have maintained a kind of a love-hate -relationship (that maybe gravitates slightly more on the rosy side of things)…Continue reading GitHub Action fails with “The GITHUB_TOKEN environment variable was not set”
How to download audio files from Vidyard
Today, I’m documenting a simple way to download audio files from Vidyard. This approach only works for files that aren’t password-protected or behind authentication – I don’t think you can use it easily for nefarious stuff, but just in case you’re trying to commit some kind of IP theft (intellectual property), please don’t. And definitely do not ask for instructions in the comments -section :) Anyway – why did I take up this task myself? What did I want to achieve, in order to need……Continue reading How to download audio files from Vidyard
Visual Studio Code fails when running “git pull” for a new project
This article describes a simple fix to an issue (well… One issue or many possible issues), where git fails to pull anything from remote, throwing instead an error somewhat like this: fatal: no such branch: ‘master’ Bah. This stops you from pulling any new changes from remote, and likewise it’ll stop you from pushing your new stuff out there. Always something going wrong with git, right? But what exactly is the reason this time? Problem So there I was, just following a guide on docs.microsoft.com.…Continue reading Visual Studio Code fails when running “git pull” for a new project
How to form a parameterized SQL query to find duplicates in a table.
So one day, I needed to quickly check if an identity field in a view in a Microsoft SQL Server was actually unique or not. I was running into weird issues with Entity Framework throwing an error somewhat like this: Store update, insert, or delete statement affected an unexpected number of rows (2) Or somewhat like this: Type: DbUpdateConcurrencyExceptionStore update, insert, or delete statement affected an unexpected number of rows ([row count]). Entities may have been modified or deleted since entities were loaded. See http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=472540…Continue reading How to form a parameterized SQL query to find duplicates in a table.
How to serialize to JSON in camelCase using .NET Core?
This article describes how to configure your .NET Core application to serialize objects in camelCase instead of PascalCase. I guess this is another quick note – something that should be simple, but I couldn’t remember how to do it from the top of my head, and the solution turned out to be a bit unintuitive. I guess that makes it worth documenting because I’ll run into this again for sure. Anyway – let’s take a closer look at the actual issue at hand, shall we?…Continue reading How to serialize to JSON in camelCase using .NET Core?
Home Assistant – Quick and dirty fixes
This article documents the quick and dirty fixes and patches I’ve found for Home Assistant. I’m trying to document all the things that are not complicated enough to warrant an actual blog post themselves somewhere, and this page is as good a place as any. Hopefully, these tips end up being helpful to someone else as well!
How to secure your WebSocket connection using .NET Core?
This article explains how to easily authenticate your WebSocket connections using .NET Core and vanilla JavaScript. The same concept probably applies to all sorts of front-end libraries, although some of them might offer some syntactic sugar on top of it. But it’s simple, and keeping your implementation simple is generally speaking a good idea. So – this one came up when developing a simple API that’d expose a WebSocket endpoint for seamless notifications to the Web UI. As everything else in the system required authentication,…Continue reading How to secure your WebSocket connection using .NET Core?
No way to renew a ClimaCell API subscription – what to do
One day I suddenly realized my Home Assistant’s ClimaCell integration stopped working. That was weird – it had been running just fine for a while. I had signed up for a ClimaCell developer account at developer.tomorrow.io (or whatever the address was before rebranding from ClimaCell to Tomorrow.io – but this is the portal I used) on the 28th of July, perhaps in 2020, or perhaps 2019. And it worked brilliantly so far, but suddenly and without warning, just stopped working. The only thing the log…Continue reading No way to renew a ClimaCell API subscription – what to do
HttpContext.WebSockets.IsWebSocketRequest always null in .NET Core?
This article explains another simple fix to an annoying issue. I guess that’s how I start like every other one of my little tutorials, but hey, it’s true! I suppose I just have a knack for running into issues that come with poorly documented fixes or workarounds that are obvious but only in hindsight… Right? Anyway, this time my WebSocket requests were not being handled as such by my ASP.NET Controllers. “IsWebSocketRequest” was suggested by IntelliSense, but it would always be null in the code.…Continue reading HttpContext.WebSockets.IsWebSocketRequest always null in .NET Core?
Docker-compose fails on Windows with “Error while fetching server API version: (2, ‘CreateFile’, ‘The system cannot find the file specified.’)”
Once again, I come to you with a surprisingly opaque problem and offer to share my bemusingly simple solution. That should be a dedicated series on my blog – although on second thought, perhaps lobbing 90% of my articles under one tag wouldn’t be helpful… 😁 Problem When running docker-compose up the command would fail, and instead, output a disgustingly long set of what looks like a whole pile of pythons engaging in quantum entanglement would angrily hiss at you if bothered. It’s not pretty.…Continue reading Docker-compose fails on Windows with “Error while fetching server API version: (2, ‘CreateFile’, ‘The system cannot find the file specified.’)”
Azure DevOps suddenly 404s for your project? Easy fix!
This article explains a quick solution to a pretty common problem with Azure DevOps. Namely – random and annoying 404 (or sometimes 401) errors when trying to access your dear team projects. I forgot to take screenshots of the errors and couldn’t figure out how to reproduce them, but hey, the fix is the main point, right? 😀 If you’ve ended up on this page, you’ve probably encountered the issue already, so why would you care about the screenshots anyway. Solution Ok, so this is…Continue reading Azure DevOps suddenly 404s for your project? Easy fix!
How to fix “Cannot read property ‘map’ of undefined (structured-data-blocks)”
So, once again, I find myself wasting time trying to fix WordPress. While a powerful platform, it’s a neverending source of grief when trying to maintain a site with a non-trivial number of plugins. Working with a static website creator would be much more fun, and there’s a good chance the site would stay up far more, but it would take a lot of effort to set up Hugo or Gatsby – but we’ll see. We’ll see. Anyway, this time I had 2 issues with…Continue reading How to fix “Cannot read property ‘map’ of undefined (structured-data-blocks)”
How to update application settings of an Azure Functions App in Azure DevOps Pipeline
This article aims to patch one annoying gap in Microsoft’s documentation: how, exactly, do you update Azure Function App’s application settings using an Azure DevOps build/release pipeline? It sounds easy, and like something that should happen almost automatically – and for Azure Web Apps (or App Services, as they are often called) it IS practically automatic. But for Azure Functions, it isn’t. And the docs aren’t perfect. Let me try and fix that. Problem Azure Functions won’t take your appsettings.json file, “mapping” your variable groups…Continue reading How to update application settings of an Azure Functions App in Azure DevOps Pipeline
How to test a web socket connection in a browser
This article documents a simple and neat way to establish and test a WebSocket connection, using just vanilla JavaScript and your favorite browser’s developer tools. Quick and easy – no external tools or libraries required! The last line sends a simple payload down the WebSocket pipe, just to see if something happens. If there IS a response, we’ll be logging it in the console. Handy! The article does expect you to have your API already up and running, though :) Background WebSockets, they’re all the…Continue reading How to test a web socket connection in a browser
Azure DevOps throwing “Unexpected token < in JSON at position 4"
This article documents one of the simplest solutions to one of the simplest issues you might ever encounter with Azure DevOps. Still: it’s a pretty annoying one, and the solution – as simple as it is – seems worth documenting for the next time I’m googling this fervently as I’m afraid of losing my unsaved changes again… :) Essentially, your editor view in Azure DevOps times out and you risk losing any changes you’ve done, and it’s all due to clumsy authentication implementation by Microsoft.…Continue reading Azure DevOps throwing “Unexpected token < in JSON at position 4"
How to copy a table in Microsoft Word (Office app)?
This article will document a super simple solution to an infuriating and stupid issue you might run into in Microsoft Office Word. Or maybe you might not, but I did. Can you tell I’m just sharing my own pains and whatever I needed to google and didn’t find a solution for? Yeah, another one of these. But hey – maybe that’ll be useful to someone else, too! Problem Long story short – copy-pasting this: Becomes this: WHAT – that’s not a table. That’s just weirdly…Continue reading How to copy a table in Microsoft Word (Office app)?
How to (easily) move data between SQL databases
Every now and then, you will run into a situation where you need to overwrite a database’s contents with those of another database. Maybe you’ll need to update a staging environment with a partial data import from production, or perhaps you have a new developer coming in who needs some data – I don’t know. But this should be a run-of-the-mill action. Something you can do in a minute. The bottom line is – this shouldn’t be complicated. And it should be documented really well.…Continue reading How to (easily) move data between SQL databases
How to fix a Logic App deployment that failed with error “UsageConfigurationNotSupportedInSubscription”?
This article explains a quick and dirty fix when you get an error somewhat like this: “UsageConfigurationNotSupportedInSubscription” when you’re deploying an Azure Logic App from a template. The same fix will probably apply to a number of other issues – but don’t hold me accountable for this :) Anyway – on to the topic of the day! Problem Can you tell by some of my recent blog posts that I’ve been deploying a few Logic Apps recently? :) Today, my Azure Logic App deployment from…Continue reading How to fix a Logic App deployment that failed with error “UsageConfigurationNotSupportedInSubscription”?
Using Azure CLI to assign an AD group to multiple resource groups at once
This article describes a solution to an age-old question of mine: how can I add an Azure Active Directory group – like a security group – to multiple resource groups at once? I’ve had to do this multiple times, and manual work takes quite a while. And who likes multiple manual steps? To be fair, this article could also be called something like: “Using Azure CLI to spend a lot of time unnecessarily complicating a mind-numbingly boring task of adding one Azure AD group to…Continue reading Using Azure CLI to assign an AD group to multiple resource groups at once
