Aaron Hoffman's Blog

For the last few years I've needed a way to easily sync contacts between gmail accounts. The only method previously supported by Google is to export to csv then re-import the contact list . This may work for some, but clearly there is a desire for something else. I finally found some time to dig into the Google Contact APIs  and created a site to perform this sync operation easily, without needing to install any software: https://www.mycontactsync.com/ Steps to sync:  1. Authorize your gmail account  2. Link an second gmail account (up to 5 currently)  3. Compare two accounts to see which email addresses and phone numbers will be created.  4. Click the Sync Accounts button to initiate the sync! It's that easy! Hope this helps, Aaron links: product hunt note: this website was previously named "gmail contacts sync". The name was changed to verify the google api use.

To improve my development experience, I disable as many windows and toolbars in Visual Studio as possible. The one toolbar that you can not disable via the IDE itself is the "main menu" toolbar (File, Edit, View, etc.). There is an extension that I've used in previous versions of Visual Studio that hides this menu until the user presses the `alt` key. Here is a link to that extension in the gallery: old --  https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=MatthewJohnsonMSFT.HideMainMenu  -- old For whatever reason, that extension does not appear available in 2017, so I've published my own extension to complete the same task:  https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=AaronHoffman.HideMainMenu2017 I will gladly take mine down if Matthew Johnson ever updates his extension. Hope this helps! Aaron

If you've worked with a remote git hosting service like github , you're likely familiar with the concept of protecting a branch . Other remote git hosting services ( vsts , bitbucket , gitlab , etc) also support the concept. It's a good idea to protect your remote in this way, but why stop there? You can also protect your local dev environment from human error by using git hooks . A new git repo (`git init`) comes with various hook examples in the `.git/hooks/` directory. We can tie into two of those hooks, `pre-commit` and `pre-push`, to prevent commits to your local master branch, and to prevent attempting to push to the remote master branch (even from a local feature branch). Place the two files found in the gist linked below in your repo's .git/hooks directory to prevent the two actions described above: https://gist.github.com/aaronhoffman/ffbfd36928f9336be2436cffe39feaec Hope this helps, Aaron

While you're here, check out some of our interactive visualizations: Would you like to visualize your text messages? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In my experience, the iPhone text message search functionality is usually pretty awful. Especially if you're trying to find a text from a few years ago. Luckily, if you backup your iPhone using iTunes, your text messages are exported/stored in a SQLite database, and it is fairly easy to query. Here are the steps to SQL Query your Text Messages.   1. Backup your iPhone using iTunes.   2. Find the SQLite file that contains your text messages .     - in ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/* with a filename of 3d0d7e5fb2ce288813306e4d4636395e047a3d28   3. Ensure you have a SQLite Query tool ( SQLiteBrowser is pretty good ).   4. Open your SQLite Text Message DB File using your favorite SQLite query tool.   5. Execute t...

I recently blogged about generating a version.txt file on every build via Visual Studio . This solution is fine if you are building from you local machine and using Web Deploy to deploy to Azure, but if you have a github webhook and are using kudu, the VS Post Build Events are not executed. The easiest way I found to generate a version.txt file for every deployment is to add a post deployment action  to your Web App/App Service. Create a file within the /site/deployments/tools/PostDeploymentActions/ folder of your App Service (you may need to create that folder). You can name the file whatever you'd like, I chose `generategitversionfile.cmd`. The file should contain at least the following line: git rev-parse HEAD > "..\wwwroot\version.txt" This command will be executed within the context of the `/site/repository` directory, that's why we need a more fully qualified path for where to write the file. Now, after every kudu deploy, a new version.txt file wil...