Pull/Push/Fetch issue after Visual Studio Update

 A few days back, when I was working on Visual Studio 2019, my eyes suddenly stopped at the bell icon in the bottom right corner of the application. When I clicked on it, the notification panel slid in. I found that an update for visual studio is available. So, I clicked on it to update my Visual Studio 2019 to the latest version and started working on my project but, when I tried to push/pull the changes from/to the azure Git repo, I was no longer able to do so. I was worried and tried many things like closing down the application and loading back the project, but nothing worked for me.

Whenever I tried to pull the changes I got the error in the output panel of Visual Studio saying

“Cannot determine the organization name for this 'dev.azure.com' remote url. ensure the credential.usehttppath configuration value is set, or set the organization name as the user in the remote url '{org}@dev.azure.com'.”

and when I was trying to push or fetch the things I got the error saying “Git error - Fatal.”

At last, I thought of checking the Git setting in the visual studio. So I clicked on Tools > Options > Source Control

 

Here I found that under Source Control there are Git Global Settings and Git Repository Settings to view and configure global-level or repository-level settings.

I clicked on Git Global Settings and thought of comparing the preferences with the prescribed ones from the source: Git settings in Visual Studio | Microsoft Docs 

Here I found four dropdowns were still selected as "Unset" against what is prescribed by Microsoft Docs.

So, I changed those four dropdowns as per the source to

•  Prune remote branches during fetch - False
• Rebase local branch when pulling - False
• Cryptographic network provider - OpenSSL
• Credential helper - GCM Core

Then tried my luck to pull the changes, Voila! It worked for me, now I can pull the changes and even push or fetch things from the repo.

Top 5 websites for free Vector Graphics

A curated list of awesome websites for free Vector Graphics  

Fred R. Barnard rightly said, “a picture is worth a thousand words”. This adage is apt in the design world. No matter what we are designing whether an application or a website or in any print media, the use of images convey more clearly the idea the designer wants to showcase to the user, rather than using words.

Today the world has moved on from using image formats namely .jpg and .png to much better SVGs (scalable vector graphics). The reason why the design world is using the SVG format images is, they are scalable, they can be printed with high quality at any resolution, even zoomed or resized without losing image quality (avoiding pixelation). With all these qualities SVG has become a W3C standard.  

Concerning licensing, most vector images are free of restrictions from copyright, or they are licensed under Creative Commons Public Domain or some images may require attribution. It is therefore advisable to practice due diligence in the use of an image, to avoid any legal infringement.   

With the licensing issue in mind let’s move on to the top free picks in Vector Graphics. 

1. Freepik 

 

 A thought to provide a free graphic resources platform, culminated in the creation of Freepik in 2010. Since then, the company expanded at full speed with two new projects: Flaticon and Slidesgo. They uncovered a niche in the market, companies for instance NASA, Amazon, Spotify, FedEx, and Microsoft use Freepik’s resources. 

Freepik provides high-quality content such as illustrations, images, icons, mock-ups, and presentation templates. 

2. Vecteezy

 

Vecteezy launched in May of 2007 with the main goal of allowing its users to license images directly from artists.

Vecteezy provides designers with all the image resources they need to enhance their creative work, wherever they are in the creative process with worry-free licensing. It is an excellent place for designers who frequent the site to get inspiration and source files. Vecteezy has a huge database of design sources and elements to pick from. 

3. All-free-download.com 

All free download was created by a group of young and creative individuals in 2015. They publish new design content created daily via their studio BSG. They provide a vast range of design content like vectors, photos, PSDs, icons, templates, and fonts. All you need to do is just enter a keyword in the search box and voila! You get the design work that best suits your project.

4. VectorStock 

    

 

VectorStock® officially launched in late 2007 with a small selection of Vectors. 

Gone are the days of old where you need to pay large sums for vector images to enhance your design projects. At present, we can see many websites with free design content popping up all over the web. One such website is VectorStock, the world’s Premier Vector-only Image Marketplace with over 28,150,411 Royalty Free Vector Images and growing.

5. Undraw

Undraw Launched in 2017, with the simple goal of allowing designers to contribute to the open-source community, to help bring beautiful design abilities to all.

Apart from finding tons of vector illustrations, the unique feature of this website is we can change the colour of the illustrations with on-the-fly colour image generation to match our own brand identity. Here we also find modern and super lightweight alternative illustrations, designed by hand. 

How to copy a blue ray file on to a drive?

Mostly, people end up frustrated after trying to copy their favorite movie in blue ray format onto a USB drive or an external drive. When they try to do so, they will get an error message saying the file is too large for the file system. The reason is most of the drives are FAT32 formatted, so the maximum file size they will allow is (2^32)-1 bytes, or one byte less than a full 4GB.

The workaround for this problem is 

1. To convert the FAT drive to NTFS, it is still a good idea to back up your data before your convert, though.

To know how to convert the FAT drive to NTFS, you can visit the link here.

2. If you don’t want to reformat the drive, then split the file into parts and then copy the files onto the drive but hold on, you cannot extract the file in the same place as the problem will be the same, and again you will get the same error message. It is to carry the file on a FAT32 formatted drive. Later you can extract it either to an NTFS formatted drive or to your PC then watch the movie.

The 5 Qualities of Remarkable Bosses

By Margaret Heffernan | Mar 5, 2012 


Consistently do these five things and the results you want from your employees--and your business--will follow.

Remarkable bosses aren’t great on paper. Great bosses are remarkable based on their actions.

Results are everything—but not the results you might think.

Consistently do these five things and everything else follows. You and your business benefit greatly.

More importantly, so do your employees.

1. Develop every employee. Sure, you can put your primary focus on reaching targets, achieving results, and accomplishing concrete goals—but do that and you put your leadership cart before your achievement horse.

Without great employees, no amount of focus on goals and targets will ever pay off. Employees can only achieve what they are capable of achieving, so it’s your job to help all your employees be more capable so they—and your business—can achieve more.

It's your job to provide the training, mentoring, and opportunities your employees need and deserve. When you do, you transform the relatively boring process of reviewing results and tracking performance into something a lot more meaningful for your employees: Progress, improvement, and personal achievement.

So don’t worry about reaching performance goals. Spend the bulk of your time developing the skills of your employees and achieving goals will be a natural outcome.

Plus it’s a lot more fun.

2. Deal with problems immediately. Nothing kills team morale more quickly than problems that don't get addressed. Interpersonal squabbles, performance issues, feuds between departments... all negatively impact employee motivation and enthusiasm.

And they're distracting, because small problems never go away. Small problems always fester and grow into bigger problems. Plus, when you ignore a problem your employees immediately lose respect for you, and without respect, you can't lead.

Never hope a problem will magically go away, or that someone else will deal with it. Deal with every issue head-on, no matter how small.

3. Rescue your worst employee. Almost every business has at least one employee who has fallen out of grace: Publicly failed to complete a task, lost his cool in a meeting, or just can’t seem to keep up. Over time that employee comes to be seen by his peers—and by you—as a weak link.

While that employee may desperately want to “rehabilitate” himself, it's almost impossible. The weight of team disapproval is too heavy for one person to move.

But it’s not too heavy for you.

Before you remove your weak link from the chain, put your full effort into trying to rescue that person instead. Say, "John, I know you've been struggling but I also know you're trying. Let's find ways together that can get you where you need to be." Express confidence. Be reassuring. Most of all, tell him you'll be there every step of the way.

Don't relax your standards. Just step up the mentoring and coaching you provide.

If that seems like too much work for too little potential outcome, think of it this way. Your remarkable employees don’t need a lot of your time; they’re remarkable because they already have these qualities. If you’re lucky, you can get a few percentage points of extra performance from them. But a struggling employee has tons of upside; rescue him and you make a tremendous difference.

Granted, sometimes it won't work out. When it doesn't, don't worry about it.  The effort is its own reward.

And occasionally an employee will succeed—and you will have made a tremendous difference in a person's professional and personal life.

Can’t beat that.

4. Serve others, not yourself. You can get away with being selfish or self-serving once or twice... but that's it.

Never say or do anything that in any way puts you in the spotlight, however briefly. Never congratulate employees and digress for a few moments to discuss what you did.

If it should go without saying, don't say it. Your glory should always be reflected, never direct.

When employees excel, you and your business excel. When your team succeeds, you and your business succeed. When you rescue a struggling employee and they become remarkable, remember they should be congratulated, not you.

You were just doing your job the way a remarkable boss should.

When you consistently act as if you are less important than your employees—and when you never ask employees to do something you don’t do—everyone knows how important you really are.

5. Always remember where you came from. See an autograph seeker blown off by a famous athlete and you might think, “If I was in a similar position I would never do that.”

Oops. Actually, you do. To some of your employees, especially new employees, you are at least slightly famous. You’re in charge. You’re the boss.

That's why an employee who wants to talk about something that seems inconsequential may just want to spend a few moments with you.

When that happens, you have a choice. You can blow the employee off... or you can see the moment for its true importance: A chance to inspire, reassure, motivate, and even give someone hope for greater things in their life. The higher you rise the greater the impact you can make—and the greater your responsibility to make that impact.

In the eyes of his or her employees, a remarkable boss is a star.

Remember where you came from, and be gracious with your stardom.

The original article was posted here

8 Qualities of Remarkable Employees

By Margaret Heffernan | Feb 21, 2012 

Forget good to great. Here's what makes a great employee remarkable.

Great employees are reliable, dependable, proactive, diligent, great leaders and great followers... they possess a wide range of easily-defined—but hard to find—qualities.

A few hit the next level. Some employees are remarkable, possessing qualities that may not appear on performance appraisals but nonetheless make a major impact on performance.

Here are eight qualities of remarkable employees:

1. They ignore job descriptions. The smaller the company, the more important it is that employees can think on their feet, adapt quickly to shifting priorities, and do whatever it takes, regardless of role or position, to get things done.

When a key customer's project is in jeopardy, remarkable employees know without being told there's a problem and jump in without being asked—even if it's not their job.

2. They’re eccentric... The best employees are often a little different: quirky, sometimes irreverent, even delighted to be unusual. They seem slightly odd, but in a really good way. Unusual personalities shake things up, make work more fun, and transform a plain-vanilla group into a team with flair and flavor.

People who aren't afraid to be different naturally stretch boundaries and challenge the status quo, and they often come up with the best ideas.

3. But they know when to dial it back. An unusual personality is a lot of fun... until it isn't. When a major challenge pops up or a situation gets stressful, the best employees stop expressing their individuality and fit seamlessly into the team.

Remarkable employees know when to play and when to be serious; when to be irreverent and when to conform; and when to challenge and when to back off. It’s a tough balance to strike, but a rare few can walk that fine line with ease.

4. They publicly praise... Praise from a boss feels good. Praise from a peer feels awesome, especially when you look up to that person.

Remarkable employees recognize the contributions of others, especially in group settings where the impact of their words is even greater.

5. And they privately complain. We all want employees to bring issues forward, but some problems are better handled in private. Great employees often get more latitude to bring up controversial subjects in a group setting because their performance allows greater freedom.

Remarkable employees come to you before or after a meeting to discuss a sensitive issue, knowing that bringing it up in a group setting could set off a firestorm.

6. They speak when others won’t. Some employees are hesitant to speak up in meetings. Some are even hesitant to speak up privately.

An employee once asked me a question about potential layoffs. After the meeting I said to him, “Why did you ask about that? You already know what's going on.” He said, “I do, but a lot of other people don't, and they're afraid to ask. I thought it would help if they heard the answer from you.”

Remarkable employees have an innate feel for the issues and concerns of those around them, and step up to ask questions or raise important issues when others hesitate.

7. They like to prove others wrong. Self-motivation often springs from a desire to show that doubters are wrong. The kid without a college degree or the woman who was told she didn't have leadership potential often possess a burning desire to prove other people wrong.

Education, intelligence, talent, and skill are important, but drive is critical. Remarkable employees are driven by something deeper and more personal than just the desire to do a good job.

8. They’re always fiddling. Some people are rarely satisfied (I mean that in a good way) and are constantly tinkering with something: Reworking a timeline, adjusting a process, tweaking a workflow.

Great employees follow processes. Remarkable employees find ways to make those processes even better, not only because they are expected to… but because they just can't help it.

The original article was posted here

Why Flexible Hours Inspire Performance

Don't waste a minute tracking your employees' hours. They'll get more done.

By Margaret Heffernan | Feb 6, 2012

"What time do you want me to start work?" That's the question a new hire recently asked me. She looked a little startled by my reply.

"I don't care."

But it was the truth. I didn't care—and I never have—what hours are kept by the people who work for me. You could say I'm the opposite of a control freak, in the sense that I have always resisted rules, for myself and for others. Why? Because once you have rules, you have to enforce them—and there's no more tedious task in life.

I'm relaxed about timekeeping in part because I had great bosses early in my broadcasting career. They didn't care about hours either. They trusted that, with a broadcast date in the schedule, any producer would work their socks off to make the best program on time—because that's how you advanced your career. Nobody ever said, "Wonderful timekeeping, shame about the show!"

And so that's how I've always managed people who worked for me. I've trusted them to get the work done on time and on budget—and they have. Treating employees like grown-ups made it more likely that they would behave the same way. Of course, this also implies that no one person's schedule should mess up anyone else's: we all work collaboratively and to do that, it's helpful to be in the same place at the same time occasionally. But I've rarely had to spell this out.

I have also always taken the same approach to maternity leave. No woman knows exactly what she will want once her baby has arrived: some mothers can't wait to get back to work while others decide that they want to stop for awhile. Their partners' attitudes are unpredictable too. So I've always taken the line: figure out what works for you and let me know. I have never yet had anyone come to me with an unreasonable proposal. Nor have I ever seen two proposals alike. People are different and so are families and I've always assumed that I was the last person to dictate how anyone should feel or behave.

I cannot remember a single instance of being disappointed by this approach. Of course I've had poor or under-performing employees and not a few staffers who were simply in the wrong job. But in none of those cases were hours the problem. Instead, I've had the privilege of working with hundreds of dedicated, committed, energetic individuals whose stamina was hugely enhanced by the freedom to work as they saw fit. They more often exceeded expectations than under-delivered.

'But weren't you afraid of being ripped off?' I'm often asked. Strangely enough, no. I wasn't ripped off, I wasn't disappointed and, perhaps best of all, I didn't have to walk around ostentatiously staring at my watch. There are much better ways to spend precious time.

The original article was posted here