PrimeFilm 1800u Film Scanner

The drivers on the enclosed CD don’t work in Windows 10.

I had a nosey around online and found this post on the Microsoft Forum where Jack Moorhouse gave some excellent advice (copied below for safety):

• Google “How to install unsigned drivers on Windows 10 - By TotallydubbedHD” and follow instructions
• Download & run the installer for the slide viewer (SF_ENG_1.3.exe) which is for windows up to 7. I ran it in vista sp2 compatibility mode.AT THIS POINT IT STILL DOESN’T WORK
• Go to control panel -> device manager ->imaging devices and update the driver for the slide viewer from the folder c:\windows\Twain_32\cyberviewX_SF

I’ll tweak the above to what worked for me:

Some reference bits for Git source control

Retaining chmod permissions for scripts in git repositories

git update-index --chmod=+x your_bash_script.sh

The git documentation provides more information on the update-index command here: https://www.git-scm.com/docs/git-update-index

Clone repository including all submodules

Get the latest commit in the parent repository:

git clone {repository_url}
cd {repository_dir}
# -- OR --
git pull

And then update the submodule:

git submodule update --init --recursive

This should pull the relevant commit for the submodule, but it will be in detached HEAD mode based on the commit of the submodule reference in the parent repository.

Convert JavaScript Number to Number Array

I had a number which I wanted converting into an array where each digit of the number was an item in the array. I tried a few different ways of doing this but always ended up with a string array which wasn’t what I wanted.

To get around this, you can use some of the new features introduced in ES6 as follows:

const theNumber = 432375;
const output = Array.from(theNumber.toString()).map(Number);

This results in output containing an array with the contents of [4, 3, 2, 3, 7, 5].

The imported project ".../Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" was not found

We have an existing web application project at work which was failing to open in Visual Studio 2019 with the following error:

The imported project "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Professional\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\vCurrent\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" was not found.

After some research, I came across this a VS Community post where Microsoft have deemed it to be under consideration, but after a few months, it’s still outstanding.

Figuring out that the issue could surround the vCurrent part of the path, I did a bit more research, coming across another VS Community post which discusses this point, and it turns out that Microsoft have changed the MSBuildToolsVersion variable to output Current rather than the version (as it did previously). Luckily, Jim Waite has posted a useful workaround which appears to have fixed the problem I was having (which I quote):

Hosting Umbraco 7 on AWS Elastic Beanstalk

Previously at work, our marketing websites were all designed up front, with copy provided by our colleagues in Marketing and then the pages were generated by the development teams. Because this was taking our developers away from the tasks where they can add real value to the customer journey by streamlining the end-to-end process, it was decided that the company would benefit from introducing a CMS solution with which the Marketing team and Content Writers would be able to manage content themselves.

No executable found matching command "dotnet-lambda"

When packaging up a dotnetcore lambda function for deployment to AWS, you would run the following command:

dotnet lambda package -o ../../build/{DestinationFileName}.zip

However, when I ran this command earlier today on a new Lambda function project, I got the following error:

No executable found matching command "dotnet-lambda"

This is because the Amazon.Lambda.Tools package isn’t being included in the dotnet build process, so to fix things, I had to edit the .csproj file for the Lambda function to include the following:

Umbraco 7: Create a custom Property Editor

Recently, I’ve been working on creating an implementation of Umbraco CMS for the Marketing team at work to use for quickly creating content for promotions etc. and the SEO Manager has asked what we could implement to benefit them in terms of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation for those who don’t know).

Requirements

Now, until working on this, I knew what SEO was, but had no idea what it entailed, so working with the SEO Manager, we outlined the following requirements for our initial (MVP) release. He needed to be able to edit the following:

React.js Unit Testing with Jest and Enzyme

I’ve written loads of unit tests in my lifetime for C# and JavaScript, but never gotten around to writing any for testing the actual React components because there’s always been something more pressing. Time to put that right and take the plunge.

So I’ve picked up the project which resulted from the React.js Continued… State! tutorial as a starter for ten as it already has a lot of the boilerplate stuff in place.

Map() support in JavaScript ES6/ES2015

ECMAScript 6/2015 has brought a lot of new things to the world of JavaScript, and Map() is one of them. However, not all browsers are too keen on particular ways of using it.

I’ve been working on a UI project at work this week and encountered a weird issue with some code written by a colleague. We have some scenarios in our React app where we need to translate/map some values from an integer to a string (for textual display in the rendered screen). We tend to use Map() to do this and for the most part it works fine, until today!

iPad appears in Windows 10, but not showing in iTunes

I have an aging iPad2 which is getting on a bit but still works fine, but often won’t appear in iTunes, but is showing in Windows 10 as a device in ‘This PC’.

I find it usually happens after an iTunes update when the iPad was plugged in already, and it seems Windows throws in a generic driver when the Apple drivers are removed as part of the upgrade process. To solve the problem, I do the following: