LastPass Autofill Rules LastPass is a very convenient tool for managing and autofilling usernames and passwords on internet sites. How does LastPass determine which inputs to autofill? My research and testing showed that LastPass as of
Query Store Added to SQL Server 2016 In order to understand a system's performance you need to have baseline data. The Query Store is a tool provided by SQL Server to capture baseline data. The Query Store is new SQL
.net Preferred .NET Open Source Packages - Q2 2018 Database Migration DbUp Inversion of Control Container Autofac Logging NLog Mapping AutoMapper Mediator/Command Handler/Pipeline MediatR Testing XUnit Fake It Easy Approval Tests Validation Fluent Validation
ASP .NET Core Logging with Serilog The de facto loggers in the .NET space have historically been log4net and NLog. Along comes Serilog and it has a more metadata"y" approach that they describe as structured events.
Planning Azure Resource Groups When building a Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment pipeline in Azure it's important to plan out your resource groups ahead of time. The unit of containment in Azure for a resource, e.g. database,
monitoring Bare Minimum Business Website Monitoring Let's look at the bare minimum amount of monitoring every business critical website needs. This is the absolutely least amount of monitoring you should have in place. You need to make sure the
vsts VSTS Extension: Tags Manager When using VSTS it's recommended to use tags liberally to help with identifying and categorizing work items. Over time people will tag work items with different tags for the same purpose. For example,
c# F# vs C# Every year I dabble with F# for several weeks. I did this again during the 2016 holiday break. Before I forget what I learned this break I thought it would be good to
Documenting APIs in ASP .NET Core Thanks to Swagger and the ecosystem surrounding Swagger it's straight forward to develop great documentation for your ASP .NET Core Web APIs. There is a .NET/C# project called Swashbuckle that will generate
Recommended NPM Packages Q2 2016 I want to be as fast and efficient as possible when writing Node.js code. I have found the key to this is discovering and using the "right" NPM packages. When
Slack in 10 Minutes or Less Slack is the new hotness in team IM (instant messaging) tools. It is a great business communication tool that can greatly improve communication within your organization. Slack features the ability to add and
ASP .NET MVC CSRF Breakdown Cross-Site Request Forgery(CSRF) is in the Open Web Application Security Project(OWASP) top 10 2013 edition. OWASP is a non profit organization that produces a list of the top security vulnerabilities in
bash Bash for Everyone I have been using the bash shell increasingly on my macbook pro to get stuff done. I haven't used the power of the bash shell extensively since college. Here is a fun Bash
game dev 2014 Big Giant List of Free Game Dev Resources Here is the 2014 Big Giant List of free (or low cost) game development resources. Fonts An often under looked aspect of games is picking a font that fits the aesthetics of the
Is C# Missing Traits? Does C# need "traits"? It's always interesting to look at other programming languages for features that aren't available in your main programming language. First, what the heck is a trait? Traits
Intro to Group Theory I took several courses on Abstract Algebra as an undergrad and graduate student in college. One core aspect of Abstract Algebra that we studied was Group Theory. Group theory is an underpinning of
audio Audio Tools for Game Development Developing audio for video games can be quite an intricate and complex task. Great audio can make a game with simple graphics seem quite sophisticated. Many of the early 8-bit video games had
tips and tricks Global Conditional Compilation with Unity3D I am developing a Unity(4.3.4) game and need to toggle features on and off between the Lite and Standard version. The Lite version contains ads and is free, while the
windows8 Pixel Hero - Windows 8 App Post Mortem This blog post just didn't want to get out the door so it's being published almost half a year late:) I published a Windows 8 app, Pixel Hero late Saturday night (9/7/
.net Nuget Packages You Should Know About In order to build software quickly we stand on the shoulder of giants. The .NET ecosystem has many great software packages that can be leveraged to speed up your development cycle. Here is
mongodb MongoDB Utilities MongoDB comes with several very useful utilities for managing data. You can restore data from a MongoDB dump with the following command: mongorestore dump You can import data from a csv file with
mongodb Installing MongoDB on Mac OS X Here is a quick guide for installing MongoDb for developers. Download file curl http://downloads.mongodb.org/osx/mongodb-osx-x86_64-2.4.7.tgz > mongodb.tgz Extract file tar -zxvf mongodb.tgz Move
javascript Understanding Strict Mode in JavaScript Strict mode is enabled in a JavaScript program by adding a special string constant at the beginning of the program: "use strict"; Also, you can enable strict mode for a function
javascript It's Alive!!! Building Objects in JavaScript It's overwhelming the number of ways you can construct objects in JavaScript. In this article I will tackle the various ways to build objects (including inheritance). The basic techniques for creating objects are:
nodejs Grunt Ground Zero Grunt is a popular task runner in the Node/JavaScript space. Any task you perform repeatedly is a good candidate to be automated via Grunt. On a typical development project you would automate