Aaron Hoffman's Blog

I had a need to determine the State code given a zip code/postal code and could not find a concise list I could use as the base of the map. There is a PDF available on irs.gov , but that doesn't lend itself well to automation. Using that PDF, I generated this CSV file:  https://gist.github.com/aaronhoffman/d7a598efb593e3acf5e0a39c0dd8b52a There are two different formats depending on your use case. I hope you find it useful! -Aaron

I've recently had a need for a custom JsonConverter to read and write data to CosmosDb in a way that utilizes a CosmosDb document's `id` property. (more on that in a later post) My first step was to investigate a custom Newtonsoft.Json JsonConverter . I thought that there might be a BaseJsonConverter implementation somewhere in the docs, but I was wrong . After digging through many different custom converters, I think I've discovered what the most trivial custom converter might look like. You can find the example here, and customize it further to fit your needs: https://gist.github.com/aaronhoffman/de40ac508de95101fa41859195728e39 Hope this helps, Aaron

Project Gutenberg is an amazing site containing over 57,000 free ebooks at the time of this writing. Recently I've been working on a project to create a database of book bibliographies. A database of book references from within other books. You'd be able to answer the query: Show me all the books that reference "Thinking Fast and Slow". I plan to use Project Gutenberg as the repository that I use to create the first version of this database. Project Gutenberg currently makes their complete project catalog available as a collection of RDF files found here: http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Feeds RDF is not something I've worked with in the past, so I converted them to JSON files. You can download that set of files from here: https://sfp.blob.core.windows.net/public/gutenberg_catalog.zip Hope this helps, Aaron

I thought I'd compile some resources on ASP.NET Core 2.1 Identity . Hope you find these useful: Database schema of tables that are generated after the first EF Migration: https://gist.github.com/aaronhoffman/74f4c072afaa0459dcd6595b6380f67d You can override password rules in the Startup.cs class:             services.AddDefaultIdentity ()                 .AddEntityFrameworkStores ();             services.Configure (options =>             {                 options.Password.RequireDigit = false;                 options.Password.RequireLowercase = false;                 options.Password.RequireUppercase = false;                 options.Password.RequireNonAlphanumeric = false;             }); If you are wondering where the AccountController or login pages are (because they do not appear in the solution explorer by default) more info can be found here:  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/security/authentication/scaffold-identity?view=aspnetcore-2.1&

When I'm working with a new repo/project in VSTS , I like to set up shortcuts in Google Chrome to be able to quickly jump to a specific Work Item, PR, Build, or Release based on the ID. To do this, I take advantage of Chrome's " other search engines " settings. You can manually add these by specifying a Short Name, a Keyword, and the URL to navigate to when that keyword is typed into the browser's address bar. Until now, I would manually add these URLs one at a time, but being a lazy developer, I wanted a way to automate this process. I discovered that Chrome uses a SQLite database to store these values, and you can side-load new entries by simply performing a SQL Insert into the `keywords` table of that SQLite database! You can use the following SQL Script to insert the default set of shortcuts I usually add for each new VSTS project/repo: https://gist.github.com/aaronhoffman/60660365310b7ff462b547fea9eb605b Steps to Add:  1. Ensure all instan