You're tired because your lizard brain knows that Zoom meetings aren't natural

Remote work isn't normal. It's great when it's not quarantine work, to be clear. I've worked remotely with success for over 13 years and written about it extensively. I'm pro-remote work. But. Doing zoom calls all day can be super productive but they are also physically and emotionally exhausting. One of the reasons that isn't helping you is that a...

2w

Using the Blockly visual programming editor to call a .NET Core WebAPI

I like to showcase interesting and cool open source projects that need more attention! Go give our friend a star on GitHub! NetCoreBlockly on GitHub is clever and fun! Blockly is a JavaScript library for building visual programming editors. If you've used languages like Scratch you've seen block-style programming environments. The picture below shows...

3w

The Importance of Nesting when Remote Working and Quarantine Working

We've all learned the hard way that Quarantine work is not Remote work. It doesn't feel the same because it's not the same. It's a hard time right now and tension is high. "People are overwhelmed, afraid, and stressed. There's a background pressure - a psychic weight or stress - that is different in these times. This isn't a problem you can fix with...

4w

Easily rename your Git default branch from master to main

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) points out that "Master-slave is an oppressive metaphor that will and should never become fully detached from history" as well as "In addition to being inappropriate and arcane, the master-slave metaphor is both technically and historically inaccurate." There's lots of more accurate options depending on context...

Jun 2020

Mirroring your Presence Status from the Microsoft Graph in Teams to LIFX or Hue bias lighting

During the Microsoft Build keynote last week - that you can watch free online here - we snuck in a LOT of detail and easter eggs. We planned the whole thing out like a live stage play (I have a background in theatre) and one of the things that mattered to me was lighting. If you're going to watch something you for an extended time you'll need a little...

May 2020

Developing on Docker with the new and improved Visual Studio Container Tools (and WSL2)

I've been spending a lot of time with Docker lately. Docker Desktop on Windows is great and getting better every day. Now that WSL2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux) is rolling out stable over the coming weeks and Docker Desktop supports WSL to host Linux containers directly, I'm finding myself using Visual Studio to develop my sites under Docker. Visual...

May 2020

Windows PowerToys FancyZones is the essential window manager for Windows 10

Last year Microsoft rebooted PowerToys and it's open source and on GitHub. It's a few months later and PowerToys is getting even better. You can download and install it from https://github.com/microsoft/powertoys releases. FancyZones is one of the highlights of PowerToys. I'll do other blog posts on the other awesome apps and applets, but FancyZones...

May 2020

Review of the Surface Book 3 for Developers

I was offered a Surface Book 3 to use as a loaner over the the last 5 weeks. I did a short video teaser on Twitter where I beat on the device with a pretty ridiculous benchmark - running Visual Studio 2019 while running Gears of War and Ubuntu under WSL and Windows Terminal. I have fun. ;) Hey they loaned me a @surface book 3! So...I threw EVERYTHING...

May 2020

Review: Logitech MX keyboard and mouse - MX Keys and MX Master 3

Logitech makes some beautiful keyboards and mice. Frankly, for me there's just Logitech and Microsoft in the keyboard and mouse game. I've never been a big fan of mechanical keyboards. I like a soft touch and a clear soft key throw. I've gone back and forth between Microsoft classic keyboards like the Ergo 4000, but for Mice, I've been Team Logitech...

May 2020

Microsoft Build 2020 registration is not only open, it's FREE, it's LIVE, it's VIRTUAL, and it is all FOR YOU

Microsoft Build 2020 is upon us, registration is open NOW. Stop reading this blog post and go register. I'll wait here. Done? Sweet. It's not the Build we thought it would be, but it's gonna be special. It's BUILD. Marketing says not to use ALL CAPS because it's Microsoft Build for them. For me, it's BUILD. It's BUILD at HOME. It's BUILD for YOU. It's...

May 2020