I browsed back through my calendar, that the last time I went physically to work at the local Microsoft office was about 170 days ago. Even before this new normal, where everyone works from home, I often visited the office… Read More »Building a custom solution using Windows 10 and Azure to track when I’m working from home
I’m a huge fan of the Your Phone Companion app that is now available for Windows 10. It was first made available in mid-2015, but since 2018 it has been actually useful. The app allows you to utilize your phone… Read More »Supercharging your productivity with your Android phone and the Windows 10 Your Phone Companion app
I set out to migrate a few of my old virtual machines to Azure a few months ago. That didn’t end well, as I was lacking a real server – I run all my VMs on Windows 10, and most… Read More »Getting started with Azure Migrate: Migrating an on-premises Hyper-V Virtual Machine to Azure
I often end up automating a lot of things in my life I find too repetitive, or too boring to do manually. This might not always be the smartest thing to do, as learning how to do something esoteric might… Read More »Insights on building robust business process orchestrations using Power Automate, Logic Apps and Azure Functions
This past weekend Finland (and Sweden, that I know of) celebrated the midsummer’s eve. For us, it includes the longest day of the year: The sun rises at 3:45 and sets around midnight. Lots of natural light means lots of… Read More »Building a custom Android app using Xamarin.Forms and C# to retrieve temperature data from Azure
I’ve recently worked with Azure Logic Apps a fair bit. Last night, I wanted to stretch my understanding of the Logic Apps service a bit further and started thinking about what would be a fun solution to build. I came… Read More »Building a double-blind email distribution list using Azure Logic Apps and Exchange Online
For the longest time, I’ve relied on Ninite to deploy my tools. The software that I rely on a daily basis – and for this, I’ve had a simple script to drop the tools for new VMs, servers, laptops, and… Read More »Modernize your tooling deployment with Windows Package Manager (winget)
I’ve built several presence light solutions in my life, mostly to entertain myself and to learn something new. Back when OCS 2007 was still a hot commodity I remember receiving a USB-powered plastic cube, that would turn red when I… Read More »Building a custom presence light solution using Philips Hue lights and C#
For a very long time, I’ve SSH’d to my Raspberry Pi and Linux boxes whenever I need to do something with them. Before this, before SSH, and before Raspberry Pi was a thing, I obviously used telnet so seeing a… Read More »Developing remotely on Raspberry Pi 4 and Linux using Visual Studio Code
This time it’s something a little bit different. Back in 2015 I ordered a bunch of ultrasonic sensors, with hopes that I’d be able to automate the detection of when people arrived at the office. We had limited seats, so… Read More »Building an automated monitoring tool to track how many people are at the office by using Unifi network gear and Azure Logic Apps
It’s summer in Finland now – a pleasant +15 C! Hopefully, it will be warmer in July. We put up a trekking tent on the balcony, and the kids are now sleeping there. So last night, they went to bed… Read More »Creating a custom Microsoft Edge (Chromium) extension using Azure Logic Apps and the Bing Image Search API for content
And here we are again – back to temperature monitoring! I wrote extensively about this three months ago in Building a Raspberry Pi-based temperature monitoring solution. I have a small cabinet in my home office, under my table that houses… Read More »Building a custom app using Universal Windows Platform and Microsoft Azure to monitor hardware temperature
I’ve been taking a few vacation days this week. That is probably one of the considerable differences for me – last year I was still a business owner and entrepreneur, so vacation days simply meant getting more work done without… Read More »Understanding Developer Velocity to achieve better business performance
Fresh off from Microsoft Build 2020, we now have the very first versions of the Microsoft PowerToys Run available for testing. PowerToys are useful little tools and utilities, which are open-sourced and frequently updated. Currently, the tools include: FancyZones, a… Read More »Microsoft PowerToys Run is simply amazing
Microsoft Teams was made available in public preview back in November 2016. Since then, the platform has matured and is used by millions daily. As part of Teams, people can schedule and organize meetings – with audio and video. I… Read More »Getting started with Microsoft Teams Live Events
I’ve been using Cloudflare’s free and fantastic 1.1.1.1 DNS service since it’s inception in 2018. The idea is that you configure your home network to query their DNS (at 1.1.1.1), and they promise a no-hassle, free and fast DNS query… Read More »Insights: Protecting the home network with Cloudflare’s new (and free) 1.1.1.1 for Families, that now has malware blocking
I’ve been meaning to write about how I manage my tasks and organize my work for a good couple of months by now. Then work got in the way, so while I was heading home from the summer cabin, I… Read More »Achieving internal efficiency by managing your time and organizing your tasks
I use Google Analytics on this blog, and I guess it’s the industry standard. It’s free and very easy to configure – you inject a bit of JavaScript on the page, and that’s it. You get a lot of analytics… Read More »Building a simple analytics and tracking solution for the web using Azure Storage
The latest update to Windows 10 is named the May 2020 update. IT Pros might know it by the names of 20H1, or 2004. The update is now available for testing through the Windows Insider program, when you enroll for… Read More »Windows 10 May 2020 (version 2004) update: Top 5 new features
I use the fantastic Ubiquiti Networks Unifi product at home. It’s the same network that I used to build my Site-to-Site VPN connectivity to Azure and to later try and enable 802.11b for my old scale. The idea with the… Read More »Home upgrade: Extending the wireless network coverage to the balcony using Unifi Mesh