I’m a Business Intelligence Developer based in UK.
Screamer-Killer
Tyranids Screamer Killer
Sharing army rosters
When having a game of Warhammer 40,000, you build your army list and you’re suppose to share your army list with your opponent before battle commences. The idea is to provide transparency in what units you are using. Games Workshop provides templates that can be used that can be downloaded for free from Warhammer Community. One of the problems with doing this is WHEN. If you share just before you start the battle, if you, or your opponent is unaware of the opponents army, its the equalivate of sharing nonsense....
Is Wahapedia dead?
With Games Workshop’s masterful release of the tenth edition of it’s popular tabletop game, Warhammer 40,000 they have elegantly ended the Wahapedia era. Wahapedia, for those unaware was a popular website that provided easy, free access to the complex labyrinth of rules required to play the game. Even seasoned players who’s personal libraries containing a plethora of codexes, GT books, addendums and other tomes find themselves using Wahapedia as a reference source....
Tyranids Boarding
Warhammer 40,000 - 9th edition Boarding Patrol Faction: Xenos Sub-Faction: Tyranids Points: 500pts HQ Broodlord Troops 3x Tyranid Warriors 3x Tyranid Warriors Elites 7x Genestealers
Tyranids 1k - Exocrine
Warhammer 40,000 - 9th edition Boarding Patrol Faction: Xenos Sub-Faction: Tyranids Points: 1,000pts HQ Broodlord Elites 4x Zoanthropes Heavy Support 1x Exocrine 1x Exocrine 1x Exocrine
Tyranids 1k - Monsters
Warhammer 40,000 - 9th edition Boarding Patrol Faction: Xenos Sub-Faction: Tyranids Points: 1,000pts HQ Broodlord Troops 10x Hormagaunts 10x Termagants Elites 4x Zoanthropes Heavy Support 1x Carnifex 1x Carnifex 1x Carnifex
Custodes 1k - v2
Warhammer 40,000 - 9th edition Boarding Patrol Faction: Imperium Sub-Faction: Adeptus Custodes Points: 1,000pts HQ Trajann Valoris Troops 3x Custodian Guard Squad 5x Prosecutors Squad Elites 3x Allarus Custodians Contemptor Achillus Dreadnought Fast Attack 3x Vertus Praetors
Tyranids 1k - Hoard
Warhammer 40,000 - 9th edition Boarding Patrol Faction: Xenos Sub-Faction: Tyranids Points: 1,000pts HQ Broodlord Troops 20x Hormagaunts 20x Hormagaunts 20x Termagants 20x Termagants 3x Tyranid Warriors 3x Tyranid Warriors
Custodes - Boarding Actions
Warhammer 40,000 - 9th edition Boarding Patrol Faction: Imperium Sub-Faction: Adeptus Custodes Points: 500pts HQ Trajann Valoris Troops 4x Custodian Guard Squad Elites 2x Allarus Custodians
Custodes 1k
Warhammer 40,000 - 9th edition Boarding Patrol Faction: Imperium Sub-Faction: Adeptus Custodes Points: 1,000pts HQ Shield-Captain in Allarus Terminator Armour Troops 3x Custodian Guard Squad 3x Custodian Guard Squad Elites 3x Allarus Custodians Contemptor Achillus Dreadnought Fast Attack 3x Vertus Praetors
Achillus | Adeptus Custodes
Adeptus Custodes Contemptor Achillus Dreadnought with dreadspear and twin adrathic destructor.
Container
Finally got round to painting my TTCombat container, I took out one of the panels and used some left over sprue that I bent to look like the genestealer was bursting out.
Salamanders
Back in September 2021 I started getting back into Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40,000 universe after a long stint of being out of the game due to other more important life commitment taken over. I started by collecting the hideous, insectoid xenos Tyranids which I decided to plan in the traditional Genestealer colours of blue and purple. After a while and many thousands of points later, I grew bored of painting blue and purple....
Test
Testing shortcodes
Power BI failed to refresh - exception was raised
I was recently seeing alot of Power BI data refresh failures on newly created environments, however existing environments would be fine. The errors that were occuring were as followed: Failed to save modifications to the server. Error returned: 'Attempt to read when no data is present.. The exception was raised by the IDataReader interface. Please review the error message and provider documentation for further information and corrective action. The command has been canceled....
New Year tech clean up
Well as another weird year begins I’ve managed to break some time off to do a bit of housekeeping. I’ve remove some old forks, added licenses, tags etc. I’ve also been renaming the default branch to main. git branch -m master main git fetch origin git branch -u origin/main main
Invoke-SqlCmd Failing
A really annoying problem I hit recently with a some Azure Runbooks was the following message occuring: Invoke-Sqlcmd : The WriteObject and WriteError methods cannot be called from outside the overrides of the BeginProcessing, ProcessRecord, and EndProcessing methods, and they can only be called from within the same thread. Validate that the cmdlet makes these calls correctly, or contact Microsoft Customer Support Services. After doing some digging, I found out that Invoke-SqlCmd isn’t thread safe, so other runbooks running on that Azure Automation account, could interfere with each other....
HP Laptop review
It’s the time again that I go in search of a new laptop to replace my current one. Following on from my previous success with the Toshiba laptop - buying cheap and upgrading the RAM and HDD. I went in search of a cheap laptop. My requirements remained all but the same except for a Full HD screen. I once again settled on a Intel CPU. I did spent a large amount of time trying to find a AMD Ryzen based laptop and although they seem good I just couldn’t seem to find the right one, most seemed to have a optical drive which nowadays seems like a waste of money and just adds pointless weight to the laptop....
Version control in PowerBI
Power BI is a awesome self-service reporting tool that has a low-level of entry for new comers, that allows end-users (ie Non-IT folks) to deliver elegant insight into data via interactive reports. It’s biggest flaw however is it doesn’t have any kinda of code version control support. Like it’s impossible. Various people/companies have developed hacky solutions however this goes against Power BI core design of being a simple, self service tool....
Auto refreshing PowerBI
One of the problems we hit today was getting a Power BI to automatically refresh. The underlying data is updated every 5 mins, however the actual Power BI only refreshes when the user interacts with the report despite using DirectQuery. To overcome this, we’ve built a simple HTML page that used a bit of JavaScript magic to force a refresh and the new Secure Embed feature. First, we need to get a code for the report, open the report then click File > Embed (You can select ‘Publish to web’ - this means you don’t need to login to view the report, however anyone in the world could access the report)...
Microsoft christmas
Power BI Secure embed codes - allows easy sharing of Power BI reports. The public embedded codes - publish to web - has been out for a while that allows you share the Power BI reports that the anyone on the Internet (unauthenticated members of the public) should be able to see. The key difference is the secure part of the name. Users will need to authenticate, this does of course mean they will require either a Power BI Pro license or the report will be using the Power BI Premium capacity....
Monzo
Monzo is a digital only UK bank. It is fully authorised in the UK by the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and the PRA. Simply put, if Monzo goes belly up, your money is protected. If you are over 18 years old and have a Android or iPhone (as it’s app only), it’s worth signing up, it takes minutes. Especially whilst they are giving away £10 for new customers!...
Power BI folders
One of the annoyingly missing features in Power BI is the ability to organize fields into folders to allow users to easily find them. Luckily the amazingly animated Will Thompson posted an update on Power BI Ideas, which has received over 400 votes, that it has been developed and is available as a preview feature in the Nov'18 Power BI Desktop release. The display folders are part of the new modeling view....
Remember a business is a business
At the end of the day, a business is a business. It’s sole job is to make money. There isn’t anything wrong with this, I like getting paid each month, it enables me to be to, you know, buy food and keep a roof over my head. Once you accept you need money to live in today’s society you can kinda see how a business needs to make money and if you can reduce costs it, brillant....
vardecimal support is enabled for the database but disabled for the project
I had a bit of a weird one where one of the SSDT projects failed to deploy. The package would successfully deploy locally, but failed from the deployment server. An extract from the log: vardecimal support is enabled for the database but disabled for the project. See SQL Server Books Online for more information about how to turn off vardecimal support. The short version of the story is the deployment server was trying to msdb....