Posts by Year

2024

Easily format all files in your VS Code workspace

less than 1 minute read

I recently discovered the awesome Format Files VS Code extension that allows you to format all files in your workspace. Typically you would need to open each...

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2023

Use Carnac to show key presses on-screen

less than 1 minute read

Carnac is a free, open source, small utility that displays the keys you press on the screen. This is great for demos, presentations, and screen recordings wh...

Change the default AutoHotkey script editor

3 minute read

The Windows context menu provides an Edit Script option for AutoHotkey .ahk files. Unfortunately, it defaults to opening in Notepad, which is not a great edi...

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2022

Run PowerShell as another user

3 minute read

I was looking for a way to run a PowerShell script as another user in our deployment pipeline. There are many reasons you might want to do this; for me I nee...

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2021

Get IIS events from Event Viewer using PowerShell

2 minute read

Sometimes services hosted in IIS don’t behave as we expect and we need to dig into what’s happening. If the problem lies in your application’s code, you may ...

Find which Windows process has file in use

2 minute read

When a file or directory is in use by a process (application), you will not be able to delete or modify the file / directory. Unfortunately it’s not always o...

Master the Windows copy-paste clipboard

7 minute read

Copying and pasting is a common task that pretty much everyone does. Becoming more efficient with it is a great way to improve your productivity.

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2020

Get up and running with AutoHotkey

4 minute read

AutoHotkey (AHK) is an amazing programming language for automating tasks and keystrokes in Windows. In this post we’ll look at how you can get your first AHK...

Git alias to reset local tags

less than 1 minute read

I’ve noticed that VS Code sometimes detects conflicts between my local Git tags and remote ones. This results in a Git error when hitting the small Git sync ...

Watch videos faster and reclaim your time

2 minute read

Your time is valuable, and limited. Many videos we watch, whether they’re conference sessions, DIY instructions, movies, or silly cat videos, can easily be u...

Bring up the Windows Terminal in a keystroke

4 minute read

I decided to try out the new Windows Terminal to see how it compared to ConEmu, which is my usual console. The recommended way to get the Windows Terminal is...

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2019

Awesome Azure DevOps resources

2 minute read

I’m a huge fan of Microsoft’s Azure DevOps. As a developer, it’s a single place that allows me to do everything. It stores my code, tracks my project ideas a...

Ignite 2019 mass session download script

less than 1 minute read

The Microsoft Ignite 2019 conference has ended, and you know what that means. Time to mass download all the sessions you missed!

Great Xamarin.Forms workshop from Ignite 2019

1 minute read

I’m lucky enough to attend the Microsoft Ignite 2019 conference this year, and do a pre-conference workshop. The workshop I chose to do was Build your first ...

You don’t scale, so don’t be a hero

4 minute read

I’ve been writing code since 1999; professionally since 2009. For many years I put in 60+ hours a week at my job. I was young. I was committed. And most impo...

Create and test PowerShell Core cmdlets in C#

3 minute read

Creating PowerShell Core cmdlets in C# is actually quite easy, especially when you have a great blog post like this one to reference. There is also some offi...

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2017

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2016

Fix MSBuild 2015 Compile Taking A Very Long Time

less than 1 minute read

I created the Invoke-MsBuild PowerShell Module (also available in the PowerShell Gallery), and recently added support to use the Visual Studio 2015 version o...

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2015

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2014

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2013

PowerShell Script To Get Path Lengths

1 minute read

A while ago I created a Path Length Checker tool in C# that has a “nice” GUI, and put it up on CodePlex. One of the users reported that he was trying to use ...

Invoke-MsBuild Powershell Module

7 minute read

Update: I’ve moved this project to it’s own new home at https://invokemsbuild.codeplex.com. All updates will be made there.

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2012

Migrating My GWB Blog Over To WordPress

1 minute read

Geeks With Blogs has been good to me, but there are too many tempting things about Word Press for me to stay with GWB. Particularly their statistics features...

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2011

Awesome Visual Studio Videos

less than 1 minute read

I watched an awesome Channel 9 Visual Studio Tips And Tricks video, so I thought I’d share. Some great VS gems in there. Even a few Windows 7 ones, like usin...

Sweet C# Gems

less than 1 minute read

James Michael Hare has a lot of awesome C# and .Net related posts, so this is just a little shout out to him (and my own little way of bookmarking his blogs ...

Using TFS Programmatically

less than 1 minute read

I recently discovered this post which shows how you can programmatically update queries in TFS, which is great for when you make a WIT (Work Item Template) c...

Visual Studio Tips and Tricks

less than 1 minute read

Just found a few websites that show some Visual Studio tips that I haven’t seen before, so I thought I’d share:

TFS GoToWorkItem VS command and keyboard shortcut

less than 1 minute read

The button to jump directly to a work item by specifying its ID looks to be on the Work Item Tracking toolbar by default in VS / TFS 2010. This button is not...

Solution won’t build on TFS Build Server

1 minute read

If you are able to build (compile) the solution on your local machine, but it won’t build on the TFS build server and you are getting an error message simila...

My WPF Binding won’t work. WTF!

1 minute read

At one point or another I’m sure we’ve all been confused as to why our binding won’t work. Here’s a couple things to keep in mind:

Setting focus to an element in WPF

less than 1 minute read

So if you are trying to set focus to a WPF element, but are unable to. Here is a quick checklist to go through:

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