Firmware Update Notifications for My Asus Router
Even though there is an app for my Asus RT-AC68U router with the default firmware, it hasn’t worked that well for me and I wanted reliable firmware update notifications. I found that this has been done by others, but still, there are a few steps to go through, so I’m documenting them here. This works for several other Asus router models as well, see the list of supported routers.
Getting a Divorce From SharePoint 💔
In my early days as a consultant this product from Microsoft called SharePoint became popular and customers starting to ask for people who could work with it. As a junior, I jumped onboard and could soon call myself a SharePoint developer, one of the hottest thing in the IT consultant market at the time (around 2007). This specialisation got me into interesting development projects and I learned a lot. What was initially a hurdle (the horrible API), soon became familiar and an advantage for me compared to colleagues in the business that hadn’t got the same exposure to the product.
Integrated Terminal Shortcut in VS Code Opens External Terminal
For quite a while I’ve been slightly annoyed by the behaviour that the keyboard shortcut in Visual Studio Code didn’t open the integrated terminal if I also had an external terminal open, it was switching to that one instead. Googling the problem didn’t help me come closer to an explanation, which I suspected had to do with the language/keyboard specific nature of this issue. As you can see in the image below, the default keyboard shortcut to open the integrated terminal on my machine is Ctrl + ö.
Create Fake Backend with Node Express
The thing I’m most satisfied with in a long time is the introduction of a fake backend for my team’s frontend development. When you have another system that you depend on and that you have no control over, it’s always worth considering if that system can be replaced with a fake version for development. This is especially valuable when this backend system(s) is highly configurable and can be in a lot of different “states” that you cannot control.
Using Angular HTTP Interceptor for Logging
A thing we’ve found handy in the Angular application I’m currently working on, is the console logging of HTTP requests and responses. This makes it quick to determine if a problem exists in the Angular app or in the REST service we’re calling (that we develop alongside the Angular app). Since logging it this way will show exactly which method is being called, the data being sent, headers and everything you need, there is no risk of mistaking one server interaction with another one.