Frictionless User Experiences: Add a Command Palette to your React Application

Although I’m not a user interface designer professionally, I have some rather strong opinions about how user interfaces should be implemented. After all, I use a variety of different software on a daily basis, ranging from Google Chrome, Firefox, Gmail, Google Calendar, Asana, Spotify, and many others. In my mind, user interfaces should be as … Read moreFrictionless User Experiences: Add a Command Palette to your React Application

Control Bluetooth on Apple MacBook Pro from the Command Line

If you’re like me, you try to automate everything, even the small stuff. I have a few Bluetooth devices that I occasionally use with my MacBook Pro: Apple Magic Trackpad 2 Apple Magic Keyboard Bose QuietComfort 35 Sennheiser PXC550 Getting Bluetooth devices powered on and connected isn’t always the easiest process, especially if you have … Read moreControl Bluetooth on Apple MacBook Pro from the Command Line

Enable Intellisense for AWS Boto3 Type Hints in Microsoft Visual Studio Code

If you’re developing with Python and the Amazon Web Services (AWS) boto3 module, you probably wish you had type hints (aka. auto-complete / Intellisense) in Microsoft Visual Studio Code. Even though the boto3 documentation is exceptionally good, it’s annoying to constantly have to switch back and forth between it and your editor. More context switching … Read moreEnable Intellisense for AWS Boto3 Type Hints in Microsoft Visual Studio Code

Create AWS DynamoDB Tables with PowerShell

You can use the AWS PowerShell module to create DynamoDB tables. If you need help setting up the AWS PowerShell module, start by watching this video. There’s a helper function called New-DDBSchema, which creates a .NET TableSchema object. Start by assigning the output from this command to a variable; you can name the variable whatever … Read moreCreate AWS DynamoDB Tables with PowerShell

Finding Windows and Amazon Linux AMIs with PowerShell

Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides some built-in parameters in the AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store service, which expose pointers to the latest version of Amazon Machine Images (AMI) for Windows Server and Amazon Linux. These special parameters are called “public parameters” in the Parameter Store services; for more information, check out the official documentation. In … Read moreFinding Windows and Amazon Linux AMIs with PowerShell

Errors and Fixes using AWS CloudFormation to Deploy Shell Scripts via AWS Systems Manager Associations

While developing a CloudFormation template recently, I received a variety of different error messages from the AWS CloudFormation service. These errors predominantly were centered around the AWS Systems Manager service, which enables you to perform automation tasks. One such automation task that I wanted to perform was to deploy a shell script to an Amazon … Read moreErrors and Fixes using AWS CloudFormation to Deploy Shell Scripts via AWS Systems Manager Associations

[Video] Improving Randomness in the Get-Random PowerShell Command

Although it may seem like the Get-Random command in PowerShell provides random data, it actually returns data that is more predictable than you think. If you’re looking to generate some truly “interesting” data for your project, then you’ll want a better approach. In this video, we’ll explore the limited randomness of the Get-Random command, using … Read more[Video] Improving Randomness in the Get-Random PowerShell Command

Rescan SCSI Controller on Linux to Detect New Disks

I am running Ubuntu Linux virtual machines on VMware ESXi (vSphere Hypervisor), and needed a mechanism to add SCSI disks to VMs without having to reboot. After adding the disk in VMware ESXi, the disk still wasn’t visible to the guest operating system. It seemed like I needed some mechanism to force Linux to rescan … Read moreRescan SCSI Controller on Linux to Detect New Disks

Fixing a git clone error: protocol error: bad line length character: logi

This morning, I ran into a new issue doing a simple git clone command on Windows 10, from a PowerShell console. It turns out that it was just a mistake on my part (surprise, right?). Let me describe my train of thought to you. I wanted to clone a repository, so I ran this command. … Read moreFixing a git clone error: protocol error: bad line length character: logi

Wipe disk and create a new VMFS Datastore in VMware ESXi

Recently I installed VMware ESXi on a spare laptop, to expand my local infrastructure at home. During the installation of ESXi, I selected an option to wipe the main disk and install ESXi over top of it. However, I had a secondary SSD installed in the laptop as well, which wasn’t touched at all during … Read moreWipe disk and create a new VMFS Datastore in VMware ESXi