How to replace Nitro boots TLS laces

Yes, today something completely different! :)

At the start of the winter session, I noticed that the laces of my boots were attacked by a mouse squad and almost unusable.

I was searching the internet and managed to found the replacement at the Czech sports shop Snowboard Zezula.

But still there didn't found any tutorial on how to replace them, so I made a few pictures of the process, I hope someone finds it useful.

Boots before the replacement

First,, with very fin screwdriver remove the laces holder, yes it will stay as-is - I was afraid that it might fall into the pieces

Now it will very easy to remove existing and insert the new laces

Then just continue removing the old one and instantly replacing it with the new one, that's it.

Have a nice ride!

Cordova / Ionic barcode scaner with native camera preview

I just forked the cordova-plugin-qrscanner and added support for standard barcode images (initially, it supports only QR Scanning).

Comments welcome https://github.com/papsl/cordova-plugin-qrscanner. It can also be used with Ionic Native QR-Scanner.

Mr. Clippy is in a bad mood

Made by my youngest, she had no idea why I'm laughing at her creation.

Mr. Clippy is in a bad mood today

Some (n)unit tests run on TFS are failing with System.OutOfMemoryException

Symptom:

- some tests are failing with "----> System.OutOfMemoryException : Exception of type 'System.OutOfMemoryException' was thrown." error

Solution:

- add "/platform:x64" to VSTest step

Additional info:

under the hood, TFS is running "vstest.console.exe" and it looks that is run as a 32bit application by default

Migrating Mercurial (Hg) repository to GIT

Here a just a few random notes to get you starting with the migration of existing Mercurial Hg repository to GIT without loosing history.
Read:

• http://www.mehdi-khalili.com/migrating-from-mercurial-to-git/
• http://guides.beanstalkapp.com/version-control/git-on-windows.html

Install:

• Git Windows client
• python install
• fast-script (hg-fast-export.sh)
• mercurial lib for Python (pip install https://pypi.python.org/packages/55/c0/167c90e51d2bad39d466950a60c490d02c64128e787ecae6ef293c919763/mercurial-4.0-cp27-cp27m-win32.whl#md5=81b9e77d74907812cba53b811452561e)
• run in new Git repository (use Git Bash)
  – …/fast-export/hg-fast-export.sh -r c:/projects_HG/tfs/pixi-tools.hg/ --force
  – git checkout HEAD
  Done :)

How to use Visual Studio’s 2015 Android Emulator in Android Studio or Eclipse

Microsoft introduced Android Emulator in Visual Studio 2015, which is currently available as Release Candidate, this emulator uses Hyper-V with virtual machines running on Android x86 platform. So emulator is super fast and has a lot of nice features previously known just to Windows Phone emulators, like zooming, easy location mocking, simulating camera with real images, drag and drop APK files etc, ...

But the best part is, that this great emulator with all its nice features can be also used when developing Android applications with Android Studio or Eclipse. Just with two additional steps:

1.) Prepare and run desired VS Android emulator in Visual Studio, for detail read this article

2.) Check IP address of Android emulator device Settings \ WiFi \ Advanced\ Ip Address

Getting current IP address of Android device

3.) Run Command "ADB connect ipaddress"

4.) Now VS Android emulator should be available for running and debugging Android applications in either Eclipse or Android Studio.

Enjoy!

How can SQL code behave differently in or outside procedure and about poor error handling

During refactoring of very old code, I found a ancient/ugly and in the end even totally wrong error handling script. Interesting is that the developer probably tested it outside of procedure and it did "kind a work" for him, ... :)

I'll add details later (or much later).

How can I query remote Microsoft SQL Server using integrated security

How can I query remote Microsoft SQL Server without setting up linked server and not using hardcoded username and password of course! :)

tSQLt FakeTable fails with error "cannot be renamed because the object participates in enforced dependencies"

Table is probably included as part of some "schema binded" view. Use attached script to temporary remove schema binding.

Error:
"[Test] failed: (Error) A .NET Framework error occurred during execution of user-defined routine or aggregate "SuppressOutput":
System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: Object '[dbo].[SomeTable]' cannot be renamed because the object participates in enforced dependencies."


Source on GIT

How to use Ionic framework with Ripple web browser based emulator

http://ripple.incubator.apache.org/

droid gang (Photo credit: valanzola.t)

First prepare Android platform:

ionic platform add android ionic build android 

Install Ripple emulator with node.js NPM.

npm install -g ripple-emulator 

and run it:

ripple emulate --path platforms/android/assets/www


Last step can be also used in ordinary PhoneGap / Cordova project.

Links:
- Ionic Framework

Backbone model sample (javascript)

Following sample script demonstrates all Backbone.js libraray model related functions:

• attributes
• setting default values
• getting list of attributes
• constructor
• validation 
• methods
• converting to JSON

Additional resources:

• Todos

Chocolatey is incompatible with version 2.1.31022.9038 - How to update nuget client in Chocolatey

I become a big fun of Chocolatey lately! :) While installing some tools I received following error:

Chocolatey (v0.9.8.20) is installing wget and dependencies. By installing you accept the license for wget and each dependency you are installing.

The schema version of 'Microsoft.AspNet.Mvc' is incompatible with version 2.1.31022.9038 of NuGet.

Please upgrade NuGet to the latest version from http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=213942.

Sollution:

cd C:\Chocolatey\chocolateyinstall
nuget update -Self

And it should work!

Powershell: Create Folder/Directory if doesn't exists

Simple script for creating new folders.

# Create folder if it doesn't exists
function CreteFolder([String]$folderPath)
{
if ((Test-Path $folderPath) -ne $True)
        { New-Item $folderPath -type directory }
}

Powershell: How to get members of AD security group

all - AD security group

Get-ADGroupMember all 

Displays only "usernames":
Get-ADGroupMember all | Select SamAccountName

Snippet for Iterating through all users

$Users=Get-ADGroupMember all | Select SamAccountName

foreach ($User in $Users)
{
Write-Host $User.SamAccountName

}

Unable to connect to Windows 7 file share

While trying to connect to Windows 7 machine (from Mac or PC) over the network I was constantly receving messages:"Unable to connect"

On "server" machine I noticed following error in event viewer:
Soruce: Srv
Event Id:2017
"The server was unable to allocate from the system nonpaged pool because the server reached the configured limit for nonpaged pool allocations."

The server was unable to allocate from the system nonpaged pool because the pool was empty.

Problem occurs when multiple computers are trying to connect to one Windows 7 "server" machine. Do following procedure:


Set the following registry key to ’1':

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\LargeSystemCache

and set the following registry key to ’3':

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters\Size

Restart computer or just "Server" service, fixed! :)

Windows Azure Mobile Services resources

Documentation:

• Check out Windows Azure Mobile Services REST API Reference on MSDN

Some useful resources:

• Live Connect Developer Center (register your application)
• Getting Started with Windows Azure Mobile Services (video form Scott Guthrie)
• SDK source and samples on github
• follow @joshtwist from Microsoft Azure Mobile Services Team
• Xamarin is preparing SDK for iOS and Android

Samples:

• Windows 8
• Simple ToDo tutorial for Windows 8 and Mobile Services
• Windows 8 How to upload an Image using a Blob Storage SAS generated by Windows Azure Mobile Services
• Android
• Storing Images from Android in Windows Azure Mobile Services
• IOS
• Storing Images from iOS in Windows Azure Mobile Services

Don't forget that Azure Mobile Services are still in beta!

Related articles

• Introduction to Windows Azure Mobile Services
• Episode 89 - Windows Azure Mobile Services | Windows Azure Cloud Cover Show
• Microsoft Launches Windows Azure Mobile Services: A Cloud Backend For Windows 8 And Mobile Apps

Visual Studio 2012: System.FormatException: The format of value 'application/json; charset=utf-8' is invalid.

After installing Visual Studio 2012 RTM over Visual Studio 2012 RC one of my Web API start failing with error:

Server Error in '/' Application.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The format of value 'application/json; charset=utf-8' is invalid. 

Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code. 

Exception Details: System.FormatException: The format of value 'application/json; charset=utf-8' is invalid.

Source Error: ...

Solution is simple - just update NuGet API packages (Microsoft ASP.NET Web API Client, Web API Core, ...)  it can be done by UI or runing following command:

PM>Update-Package

Probably updating to latest version is also good for other packages like EntityFramework, ...

The Microsoft Visual Studio .NET logo. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Visual Studio C# web application build fails with "Error 46"

After rebuild I've got following error:

"Error 46 It is an error to use a section registered as allowDefinition='MachineToApplication' beyond application level. ..."

Clear build and rebuild didn't help. Deleting all files in Bin folder did help! :)

When you are sick of deleting bin folder, just simple add folowing tag to *.csproj:

<Target Name="AfterBuild" Condition="'$(Configuration)'=='Release'">
  <RemoveDir Directories="$(IntermediateOutputPath)" />
</Target>

Source:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7388359/mvc3-project-build-fails-because-of-web-config-in-obj-folder

Related articles

• Visual Studio 2012: System.FormatException: The format of value 'application/json; charset=utf-8' is invalid.

Backend as a Service - list of providers

List of most used BaaS (Back-end as a Service) providers for mobile application development:

• Applicasa
• Kinvey
• Stackmob
• Parse
• Sencha IO
• https://io.tiggzi.com/secured/database-list (cloud rest database)
• Dotcloud.com (very interesting JS cloud for realtime apps)
• Microsoft Azure Mobile Services  
• Backendless
• Appery.io

Storageroomapp is more content oriented (aka CMS via REST).

Some articles to read:

• ReadWriteWeb - The Rise of Mobile Cloud Services: BaaS Startups Grow Up (2012-04)

Enable .config file build configuration transformations in non-web based applications

Not posible OutOfTheBox in Visual Studio 2010 and not in current Visual Studio 12 RC, but it exists an easy work around in David Sandor blog post.