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  • New Responsibilities

    - by Robert May
    With the start of the new year, I’m starting new responsibilities at Veracity. One responsibility that is staying constant is my love and evangelism of Agile.  In fact, I’ll be spending more time ensuring that all Veracity teams are performing agile, Scrum specifically, in a consistent manner so that all of our clients and consultants have a similar experience. Imagine, if you will, working for a consulting company on a project.  On that project, the project management style is Waterfall in iterations.  Now you move to another project and in that project, you’re doing real Scrum, but in both cases, you were told that what you were doing was Scrum.  Rather confusing.  I’ve found, however, that this happens on many teams and many projects.  Most companies simply aren’t disciplined enough to do Scrum.  Some think that being Agile means not being disciplined.  The opposite is true! So, my goals for Veracity are to make sure that all of our consultants have a consistent feel for Scrum and what it is and how it works and then to make sure that on the projects they’re assigned to, Scrum is appropriately applied for their situation.  This will help keep them happier, but also make switching to other projects easier and more consistent.  If we aren’t doing the project management on the project, we’ll help them know what good Agile practices should look like so that they can give good advice to the client, and so that if they move to another project, they have a consistent feel. I’m really looking forward to these new duties. Technorati Tags: Agile,Scrum

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  • .Net Micro

    - by MarkPearl
    A while back I purchased a RFID scanner that could be connected to a PC and programmed via VS. It was a fun purchase an though the import duties nailed me, I was glad to get the little gadget. Last night while listening to .Net Rocks I heard of another company that sells similar components for .Net Micro. Check out their websites…. TinyClr GHI Electronics .Net Micro Website Trossen Robotics

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  • TechEd 2012: Windows 8 And Metro

    - by Tim Murphy
    Windows 8 is here (or at least very close) and that was the main feature of this morning’s key note.  Antoine LeBlond started off by apologizing to the IT professionals since he planned on showing code.  I’m not sure if IT Pros are that easily confused or why you would need such a disclaimer.  Developers do real work, IT Pros just play with toys (just kidding). The highlights of the Windows 8 keynote for me started with some of the UI design elements that I had not seen when I was shown one of the Build tablets.  Specifically I liked the AppBar features that we have become used to with Windows Phone and some of the gesture features.  Even though they have been available on other platforms before I think Microsoft really got them right. Two other great features of Windows 8 that they demonstrated were the Hyper-V capabilities and the ability to run Windows 8 anywhere from a USB key.  My jaw dropped through the floor seeing a feature rich OS boot off of a thumb drive. WOW!  I also can’t wait to get rid of dual booting just to run Hyper-V images when developing. The morning continued with a session on Metro XAML development with Tim Heuer.  While included a lot of great XAML Metro demos, I was pleasantly surprised by some of the things I found out about Visual Studio 2012.  Finding out that Blend is now integrated with VS2012 was a nice addition after working with them as separate applications was an encouraging start. Moving on to Metro he introduced the nugget that WinRT is Async everywhere.  How deep this model goes will be an interesting thing to find out as I learn more about developing for the platform.  Thankfully he followed that up with a couple of new keywords, await and async, that eliminates a lot of plumbing that has been required in the past for asynchronous transactions. Tim also related that since the Metro framework is relatively small and most apps will use a significant amount of it the entire surface is referenced by default.  This is a contrast to adding namespace and assemblies one after another as we normally do. This was such a power packed session that I can’t detail it all here so here is the teaser list. New icons in VS2012 for extension methods Emulator/simulator testing features for gestures Portable class libraries XAML no longer managed code And so much more …   del.icio.us Tags: Windows 8,Metro,Tim Heuer,XAML,Widows Phone,Hyper-V,Antoine LeBlond,TechEd,TechEd 2012,Visual Studio 2012,Visual Studio

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  • Wordnik Accelerator

    - by prabhpreet
    Wow, creating IE Accelerators is superbly easy. If you want to learn how to create one, go here (some MSDN blog) and the MSDN documentation (clearly written). I was fed up of dictionary.com bringing all those popups and the stupid definitions of Google's dictionary. So I decided to scratch my own itch. I randomly stumbled on the site called Wordnik and it provides with all examples plus definitions plus lots more for words and its popup-free (as far as I know). So I decided to write and accelerator. Here is the source code (Yes, this is it): <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <os:openServiceDescription xmlns:os="http://www.microsoft.com/schemas/openservicedescription/1.0"> <os:homepageUrl>http://www.wordnik.com</os:homepageUrl> <os:display> <os:name>View on Wordnik</os:name> <os:description>Looking up words on an awesome word site called Wordnik </os:description> <os:icon>http://www.wordnik.com/favicon.ico</os:icon> </os:display> <os:activity category="Define"> <os:activityAction context="selection"> <os:execute method="get" action="http://www.wordnik.com/words/{selection}" ></os:execute> </os:activityAction> </os:activity> </os:openServiceDescription> That’s it. To get it, go here. Enjoy!

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  • How To Change Attachment Size in WorkItems in TFS 2010

    - by Ravi
    Recently, I came across an issue where I had to change the size limit for WorkItem Attachments in TFS 2010. I searched all around the internet only to find very little information around it which wasn’t clear honestly. So after breaking my head for sometime, I was successful in doing it. Here are my conclusions and the procedure to do it. 1. You DON’T 'have to' programmatically change it. You can do it directly from IIS webservices. 2. You CAN change it programmatically too, by making an entry into TFS Registry using a small piece of code. Let me show you how it is done from IIS. This is to change the size of attachment to your required value for workItems in TFS 2010 for each collection individually. You must be a TFS Admin to do this ( Login with setup account ) Browse to /WorkItemTracking/v1.0/ConfigurationSettingsService.asmx">/WorkItemTracking/v1.0/ConfigurationSettingsService.asmx">/WorkItemTracking/v1.0/ConfigurationSettingsService.asmx">http://localhost:8080/tfs/<YOUR-COLLECTION-NAME>/WorkItemTracking/v1.0/ConfigurationSettingsService.asmx You’ll see 3 asmx services – GetMaxAttachmentSize, GetWorkItemTrackingVersion and SetMaxAttachmentSize. 4. To know what is the current value of the maximum attachment size for a collection, click on the first service and you’ll the current existing value for this particular collection when you click on ‘invoke’ button. ( value is in bytes ) 5. Now click on the ‘SetMaxAttachmentSize’ webservice and fill in the value of your choice. 6. Reset IIS ( not required honestly, but I did it, just to be sure ) 7. Now try attaching a file greater than the size you’ve set. It’ll fail successfully   Below is the error which you’d see in such scenarios. Let me know if you see any issues & I’ll be happy to help..!

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  • Take care to unhook Anonymous Delegates

    - by David Vallens
    Anonymous delegates are great, they elimiante the need for lots of small classes that just pass values around, however care needs to be taken when using them, as they are not automatically unhooked when the function you created them in returns. In fact after it returns there is no way to unhook them. Consider the following code.   using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using System.Diagnostics; namespace ConsoleApplication1 { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { SimpleEventSource t = new SimpleEventSource(); t.FireEvent(); FunctionWithAnonymousDelegate(t); t.FireEvent(); } private static void FunctionWithAnonymousDelegate(SimpleEventSource t) { t.MyEvent += delegate(object sender, EventArgs args) { Debug.WriteLine("Anonymous delegate called"); }; t.FireEvent(); } } public class SimpleEventSource { public event EventHandler MyEvent; public void FireEvent() { if (MyEvent == null) { Debug.WriteLine("Attempting to fire event - but no ones listening"); } else { Debug.WriteLine("Firing event"); MyEvent(this, EventArgs.Empty); } } } } If you expected the anonymous delegates do die with the function that created it then you would expect the output Attempting to fire event - but no ones listeningFiring eventAnonymous delegate calledAttempting to fire event - but no ones listening However what you actually get is Attempting to fire event - but no ones listeningFiring eventAnonymous delegate calledFiring eventAnonymous delegate called In my example the issue is just slowing things down, but if your delegate modifies objects, then you could end up with dificult to diagnose bugs. A solution to this problem is to unhook the delegate within the function var myDelegate = delegate(){Console.WriteLine("I did it!");}; MyEvent += myDelegate; // .... later MyEvent -= myDelegate;

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  • Agile Documentation

    - by Nick Harrison
    We all know that one of the premises of the agile manifesto is to value Working Software over Comprehensive Documentation. This is a wonderful idea and it takes a tremendous burden off of project implementations. I have seen as many projects fail because of the maintenance weight of the project documentations as I have for any reason. But this goal as important as it is may not always be practical. Sometimes the client will simply insist on tedious documentation despite the arguments against it. This may be to calm a nervous client. This may be to satisfy an audit / compliance requirement. This may be a non-too subtle attempt at sabotaging the project. Ok, it is probably not an all out attempt to sabotage the project, but it will probably feel that way. So what can we do to keep to the spirit of the Agile Manifesto but still meet the needs of the client wanting the documentation? This is a good question that I have been puzzling over lately! I hope to explore some possible answers more fully here. A common theme that my solutions are likely to follow is the same theme that I often follow with simplifying complex business logic. Make it table driven! My thought is that the sought after documentation could be a report or reports out of a metadata repository. Reports are much easier to maintain than hand written documentation. Here are a few additional advantages that we can explore over time: Reports will take advantage of the fact that different people have different needs and different format requirements Reports and the supporting metadata are more easily validated and the validation can be automated. If the application itself uses this metadata than there never has to be a question as to whether or not the metadata is up to date. It is up to date or the application would not work. In many cases we should be able to automatically gather most of the Meta data that we need using reflection, system tables, etc. I think that this will lower the total cost of ownership for the documentation and may provide something useful beyond having a pretty document to look at.  What are your thoughts?

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  • Size doesn't matter

    - by ssoolsma
    Whenever I start a new project I *always* break up my code in different projects. Also known as n-tier solution. The scale of  the project doesn't matter, but make sure that each project is responsible for himself (or herself if you prefer). I make sure that i ....At least thought about how the project should work on the toilet or in a project team meeting.Have a solution directory and create my projects within. I like to name my project (and it's folders by the namespaces). For instance: When i'm creating a piece of (web)software called: ChuckNorris, i always include the software name in my projects. Start off with designing the DataAccess project. I name it: ChuckNorris.DataAccess which lets me easily identify the project incase the project scales alot.Build the classes which represent the database structure. Don't stop working on a class untill it's finished for now. Also, don't over-do the methods. Build stuff only when it's needed, and not think: "Hm, that would be cool to have". Cause most of the time you end up with unused code, and we don't want that.Build a unittest project and make sure you create the folder inside the project that it's testing. So, create the ChuckNorris.DataAccess.UnitTest project inside the folder of the dataaccess project. I would suggest using the nUnit testframework.Incase you though, hm i skip unittest: Don't! Just build it - it will safe you alot of time later onNow, read 5 again. Build that bloody unittest. Don't skip. (i cant emphasize this enough)Now, every class in the dataaccess project is responsible for itself. They don't rely on each other. This is where we use the BusinessLogic project for. Start creating the ChuckNorris.BusinessLogic project. (not inside the data-access project ofcourse, but withing the ChuckNorris folder.Combine stuff from data-access. This usual involves alot of copying the data-access classes and feels silly at first. (we'll get to that later on)Now you come up to a point of creating a service project. You might not always see why to use it, but see it as a way to expose your businesslogic to any application (including your own). Sometimes i use it as a so-called "Factory". Every call goes through this factory, so that's the only thing i'm exposing to any program, and make sure that those methods are the only ones that I allow you to invoke.Build any UI (website, phoneapp, forms application, silverlight, wpf or whatever) and reference it to you service project. Fall in love (cough) with this approach.It's possible that it doesn't seem to make much sense, and very incomplete. Well, that last part is correct. Next post will go in to detail of setting up your Data-Access project and use the entity framework.

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  • What is Stackify?

    - by Matt Watson
    You have developers, applications, and servers. Stackify makes sure that they are all working efficiently. Our mission is to give developers the integrated tools they need to better troubleshoot and monitor the applications they create and the servers that they run on. Traditional IT operations tools are designed for network and system administrators. Developers commonly spend 30% of their time working with IT Operations remediating application service problems. Developers currently lack tools to efficiently support the applications they create. Stackify delivers the application support functionality that developers need:View application deployment locations, versions, and historyBrowse files on servers to ensure proper deploymentsAccess configuration and log files on serversRemotely restart windows services, scheduled tasks, and web applicationsBasic server monitoring and alertsCollects all application exceptions to a centralized pointLog and report on custom applications eventsStackify is building an integrated DevOps solution delivered from the cloud designed to meet the needs of developers but also help unify the working relationship with IT operations teams and existing security roles. Our goal is to help unify the interaction between developers and IT operations. Stackify allows both teams to have visibility that they never had before  to solve complex application service issues easier and faster. Stackify’s CEO and CTO both have experience managing very large and high growth software development teams. That experience is driving our design in Stackify to deliver the integrated tools we always wished we had, the next generation of development operations tools.

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  • Workflow 4.5 is Awesome, cant wait for 5.0!

    - by JoshReuben
    About 2 years ago I wrote a blog post describing what I would like to see in Workflow vnext: http://geekswithblogs.net/JoshReuben/archive/2010/08/25/workflow-4.0---not-there-yet.aspx At the time WF 4.0 was a little rough around the edges – the State Machine was on codeplex and people were simulating state machines with Flowcharts. Last year I built a near- realtime machine management system using WF 4.0.1 – its managing the internal operations of this device: http://landanano.com/products/commercial   Well WF 4.5 has come a long way – many of my gripes have been addressed: C# expressions - no more VB 'AndAlso' clauses state machine awesomeness - can query current state many designer improvements - Document Outline is so much more succinct than Designer! Separate WCF Service Contract interfaces and ability to generate activities from contract operations ability to rehydrate to updated flow definitions via DynamicUpdateMap and WorkflowIdentity you can read about the new features here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh305677(VS.110).aspx   2013 could be the year of Workflow evangelism for .NET, as it comes together as the DSL language. Eg on Azure it could be used to graphically orchestrate between WebRoles, WorkerRoles and AppFabric Queues and the ServiceBus – that would be grand.   Here’s a list of things I’d like to see in Workflow 5.0: Stronger Parallelism support for true multithreaded workflows . A Workflow executes on a single thread – wouldn’t it be great if we had the ability to model TPL DataFlow? Parallel is not really parallel, just allows AsyncCodeActivity.     support for recursion an ExpressionTree activity with an editor design surface a math activity pack return of application level protocol (3.51 WF services) – automatically expose a state machine as a WCF service with bookmark Receive activities generated from OperationContract automatically placed in state transition triggers. A new HTML5 ActivityDesigner control – support with different CSS3  skinnable hooks,  remote connectivity (had to roll my own) A data flow view – crucial to understanding the big picture Ability to refactor a Sequence to custom activity in a separate .xaml file – like Expression Blend does for UserControl state machine global error handling - if all states goto an error state, you quickly get visual spagetti. Now you could nest a state machine, but what if you want an application level protocol whereby each state exposes certain WCF ops. DSL RAD editing - Make the Document Outline into a DSL editor for adding activities  – For WF to really succeed as a higher level of abstraction, It needs to be more productive than raw coding - drag & drop on the designer is currently too slow compared to just typing code. Extensible Wizard API - for pluggable WF editor experience other execution models beyond Sequence, Flowchart & StateMachine: SSIS, Behavior Trees,  Wolfram Model tool – surprise us! improvements to Designer debugging API - SourceLocation is tied to XAML file line number and char position, and ModelService access seems convoluted - why not leverage WPF LogicalTreeHelper / VisualTreeHelper ? Workflow Team , keep on rocking!

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  • Virtualized data centre&ndash;Part three: Architecture

    - by marc dekeyser
    Having the basics (like discussed in the previous articles) is all good and well, but how do we get started on this?! It can be quite daunting after all!   From my own point of view I can absolutely confirm your worries and concerns, but also tell you that it is not as hard as it seems! Deciding on what kind of motherboard to buy, processor and how much memory is an activity you will spend quite some time doing research on. And that is not even mentioning storage! All in all it comes down to setting you expectations and your budget. Probably adjusting your expectations according to your budget :). Processors As a rule of thumb you want VT-D (virtualization) technology built in to the processor allowing you to have 64 bit machines running on your host. Memory The more the better! If you are building a home lab don’t bother with ECC unless you are going to run machines that absolutely should be on all the time and your comfort depends on it! Motherboard Depends on what you are going to do with storage: If you are going the NAS way then the number of SATA port/RAID capabilities do not really matter. If you decide to have a single server with lots of dedicated storage it obviously matters how much SATA ports you will have, alternatively you could use a RAID controller (but these set you back a pretty penny if you want one. DELL 6i’s are usually available for a good bargain if you can find one!). Easiest is to get one with a built-in graphics card (on-board) as you are just adding more heat, power usage and possible points of failure. Networking Just like your choice of motherboard the networking side tends to depend on how you want to go. A single virtualization  host with local storage can usually get away with having a single network card, a cluster or server which uses iSCSI storage tends to have more than one teamed up :). Storage The dreaded beast from the dark! The horror which lives in the forest! The most difficult decision you are going to make in the building of your lab. Why you might ask? Simple my friend, having the right choice of storage can make or break your virtualization solution. The performance of you storage choice will have an important impact on the responsiveness of your virtual machines and the deployment of new machines. It also makes a run with your budget! If you decide to go the NAS route you will be dropping a lot more money than if you would be having just a bunch of disks sitting in a server and manually distributing the virtual machines over the disks. Platform I’m a Microsoftee so Hyper-V is a dead giveaway for me. If you are interested in using VMware I won’t stop you but the rest of my posts will be oriented on Server 2012 Hyper-V (aka 3.0)! What did I use? Before someone asks me this in the comments I’ll give you a quick run down of what I am using. - Intel 2.4 quad core processors (i something something) - 24 GB DDR3 Memory - Single disk in each server (might look at this as I move the servers to 2012) - Synology DS1812+ NAS - 3 network interfaces where possible - HP1800 procurve managed switch I decided to spring for the NAS as I will also be using it for backups and media storage (which is working out quite nicely with my Xbox 360 I must say). At the time of building my 2 boxes (over a year and a half ago) these set me back about 900 euros each so I can image you can build the same or better for a lower price. Next article will be diagramming what I want to achieve and starting a build on the Hyper V 3.0 cluster!

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  • ImageResizer - AzureReader2 with Azure SDK 2.2

    - by Chris Skardon
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/cskardon/archive/2013/10/29/imageresizer---azurereader2-with-azure-sdk-2.2.aspxSo Azure SDK 2.2 came out recently, which means I can open my azure projects in VS 2013 (yay), so I decided to do an upgrade of my MVC4 project to MVC5, I followed this link on how to do the upgrade, and generally things went ok. I fire up my app, and run into a ‘binding’ issue, that AzureReader2 was trying to use Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Storage, Version=2.1.0.0 but alas, it couldn’t find it. I am not the only one (see stackoverflow), and one solution is to run ‘Add-BindingRedirect’ from the Package Manager Console, but that didn’t solve the problem for me, as it didn’t pick up on the Azure stuff, so I resorted to adding the redirect manually. So, in short, to get AzureReader2 to work with Azure SDK 2.2, you need to add the following to your web.config: <runtime> <assemblyBinding xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1"> <!-- Other bindings here! --> <dependentAssembly> <assemblyIdentity name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Storage" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" culture="neutral"/> <bindingRedirect oldVersion="0.0.0.0-2.1.0.3" newVersion="2.1.0.3"/> </dependentAssembly> </assemblyBinding>

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  • Query a Log4Net-database

    - by pinhack
    So if you use Log4Net to log into a database (i.e. using the AdoNetAppender), how can you conveniently get an overview of what has happend ? Well, you could try the following Query ( T-SQL ):   SELECT convert(varchar(10),LogDB.Date,121) as Datum, LogDB.Level, LogDB.Logger,COUNT(LogDB.Logger) as Counter From Log4Net.dbo.Log as LogDB  where Level <> 'DEBUG' AND convert(varchar(10),LogDB.Date,121) like '2010-03-25' GROUP BY convert(varchar(10),LogDB.Date,121),LogDB.Level,LogDB.Logger ORDER BY counter desc This query will give you the number of events by the Logger at a specified date - and it's easy to customize, just adjust the Date and the Level to your needs. You need a bit more information than that? How about this query:  Select  convert(varchar(10),LogDB.Date,121) as Datum,LogDB.Level,LogDB.Message,LogDB.Logger ,count(LogDB.Message) as counter From Log4Net.dbo.Log as LogDB where Level <> 'DEBUG' AND convert(varchar(10),LogDB.Date,121) like '2010-03-25' GROUP BY convert(varchar(10),LogDB.Date,121),LogDB.Level,LogDB.Message,LogDB.Logger ORDER BY counter desc Similar to the first one, but inclusive the Message - which will return a much larger resultset.

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  • Gems In The Visual Studio 2010 Training Kit &ndash; Introduction to MEF: Learning Labs

    - by Jim Duffy
    No, this post doesn’t have anything to do with cooking up illegal drugs in some rundown shack outside of town. That, my friends, would be a meth lab and fortunately that is waaaaay outside my area of expertise. Now I can talk Kentucky bourbon, or as Homer Simpson would say “mmmmmmmmmmm bourbon”, with you but please refrain from asking me meth questions. :-) Anyway, what I’m talking about are the MEF (Managed Extensibility Framework) Learning Labs contained in the Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Training Kit. Not sure what MEF is and need an overview? Then start here or here. Ok, so you’ve read a bit about MEF or heard about MEF and you’re thinking it might be something you and your development team might want to take a hands-on look at. I have good news then because contained in the Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Training Kit is a series of hands-on learning labs for MEF. I’ve added working my way through them to my “things I want to take a closer look at” list. Have a day. :-|

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  • Apress Deal of the Day - 14/Mar/2011

    - by TATWORTH
    v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} jQuery Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach jQuery is one of today’s most popular JavaScript web application development frameworks and libraries. jQuery Recipes can get you started with jQuery quickly and easily, and it will serve as a valuable long-term reference. $44.99 | Published Jan 2010 | Bintu Harwani

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  • FREE Technical Training on Windows Server 2012 Virtualization / Hyper-V / Private Cloud

    - by KeithMayer
    Microsoft Learning partnered with the Microsoft Server and Tools team and Developer and Platform Evangelism (DPE) to deliver the “Windows Server 2012 Jump Start: Preparing for the Datacenter Evolution” on June 20-21, 2012. Thanks to an amazing product and a phenomenal team effort, this event shattered two Jump Start records with 2,064 attendees from 103 different countries and extremely positive event feedback! We are excited to announce the release of the HD-quality video recordings available on TechNet Videos now!For complete details: http://aka.ms/TrainWS12JSIf I can help with any other learning topics, please feel free to connect with me and let me know!HTH,Keith http://keithmayer.com | Twitter: @KeithMayer | LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/KeithM

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  • Gaming on Cloud

    - by technomad
    Sometimes I wonder the pundits of cloud computing are way to consumed with the enterprise applications. With all the CAPEX / OPEX, ROI-talk taking the center stage, an opportunity to affect masses directly is getting overlooked. I am a self proclaimed die hard gamer. I come from the generation of gamers who started their journey in DOS games like Wolfenstein 3D and Allan Border Cricket (the latter is still a favorite pastime). In the late 90s, a revolution called accelerated graphics started in DirectX and OpenGL. Games got more advanced. Likes of Quake III and Unreal Tournament became the crown jewels of the industry. But with all these advancements, there started a race. A race of GFX giants ATI and NVIDIA to beat each other for better frame and image quality. Revisions to the graphics chipsets became frequent. Games became eye candies but at the cost of more GPU power / memory. Every eagerly awaited title started demanding more muscle power in graphics and PC hardware. Latest games and all the liquid smooth frame rates became the territory of the once with deep pockets who could spend lavishly on latest hardware. Enthusiasts like yours truly, who couldn’t afford this route, started exploring over-clocking, optimized hardware cooling... etc. to pursue the passion. Ever rising cost of hardware requirements lead to rampant piracy of PC games. Gamers were willing to spend on the latest titles, but the ones with tight budget prefer hardware upgrades against a legal copy of the game. It was also fueled by emergence of the P2P file sharing networks. Then came the era of Xbox and PS3s. It solved the major issue of hardware standardization and provided an alternative to ever increasing hardware costs. I have always admired these consoles, but being born and brought up in a keyboard/mouse environment, I still find it difficult to play first person shooters with a gamepad. I leave the topic of PC v/s Consol gaming for another day, but the bottom line is… PC gamers deserve an equally democratized solution. This is where I think Cloud Computing can come to rescue. It can minimize hardware requirements. Virtually end the software piracy and rationalize costs for gamers. Subscription based models like pay-as-you-play. In game rewards, like extended subscription credits for exceptional gamers (oh yes, I have beaten Xaero on nightmare in Quake III, time and again!) Easy deployment for patches and fixes. Better game AI. The list goes on and on… Fortunately, companies like OnLive are thinking in the same direction. Their gaming service is all set to launch on 17th June 2010 in E3 2010 expo in L.A. I wish them all the luck. I hope they will start a trend which will bring the smiles back on the face of budget gamers with the help of cloud computing.

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  • Why would you dual-run an app on Azure and AWS?

    - by Elton Stoneman
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/EltonStoneman/archive/2013/11/10/why-would-you-dual-run-an-app-on-azure-and-aws.aspxI had this question from a viewer of my Pluralsight course, Implementing the Reactive Manifesto with Azure and AWS, and thought I’d publish the response. So why would you dual-run your cloud app by hosting it on Azure and AWS? Sounds like a lot of extra development and management overhead. Well the most compelling reasons are reliability and portability. In 2012 I was working for a client who was making a big investment in the cloud, and at the end of the year we published their first external API for business partners. It was hosted in Azure and used some really nice features to route back into existing on-premise services. We were able to publish a clean, simple API to partners, and hide away the underlying complexity of the internal services while still leveraging them to do all the work. Two days after we went live, we were hit by the Azure SSL certificate expiry outage, and our API was unavailable for the best part of 3 days. Fortunately we had planned a gradual roll-out to partners, so the impact was minimal, but we’d been intending to ramp up quickly, and if the outage had happened a week or two later we would have been in a very bad place. Not least because our app could only run on Azure, we couldn’t package it up for another service without going back and reworking the code. More recently AWS had an issue with a networking device in one of their data centres which caused an outage that took the best part of a day to resolve. In both scenarios the SLAs are worthless, as you’ll get back a small percentage of your cloud expenditure, which is going to be negligible compared to your costs in dealing with the outage. And if your app is built specifically for AWS or Azure then if there’s an extended outage you can’t just deploy it onto a new set of kit from a different supplier. And the chances are pretty good there will be another extended outage, both for Microsoft and for Amazon. But the chances are small that it will happen to both at the same time. So my basic guidance has been: ignore the SLAs, go for better uptime by using two clouds. As soon as you need to scale beyond a single instance, start by scaling out to another cloud. Then scale out to different data centres in both clouds. Then you’ve got dual-cloud, quadruple-datacentre redundancy, so any more scaling you need can be left to the clouds to auto-scale themselves. By running in both clouds, you’ve made your app portable, so in the highly unlikely event that both AWS and Azure go down in multiple regions, you’ll have a deployment package which will let you spin up a new stack on yet another cloud, without having to rework your solution.

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  • Do you know how to move the Team Foundation Server cache

    - by Martin Hinshelwood
    There are a number of reasons why you may want to change the folder that you store the TFS Cache. It can take up “some” amount of room so moving it to another drive can be beneficial. This is the source control Cache that TFS uses to cache data from the database. Moving the Cache is pretty easy and should allow you to organise your server space a little more efficiently. You may also get a performance improvement (although small) by putting it on another drive.. Create a new directory to store the Cache. e.g. “d:\TfsCache\” Figure: Create a new folder Give the local TFS WPG group full control of the directory   Figure: You need to use the App Tier Service WPG In the application tier web.config (~\Application Tier\Web Services\web.config) add the following setting (to the appSettings section). Figure: The web.config for TFS is stored in the application folder <appsettings> ... <add value="D:\" key="dataDirectory" /> ... </appsettings> Figure: Adding this to the web.config will trigger a restart of the app pool Figure: Your web.config should look something like this The app pool will automatically recycle and Team Web Access will start using the new location.  If you then download a file (not via a proxy) a folder with a GUID should be created immediately in the folder from #1.  If the folder doesn’t appear, then you probably don’t have permissions set up properly.

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  • Do you know how to move the Team Foundation Server cache

    - by Martin Hinshelwood
    There are a number of reasons why you may want to change the folder that you store the TFS Cache. It can take up “some” amount of room so moving it to another drive can be beneficial. This is the source control Cache that TFS uses to cache data from the database. Moving the Cache is pretty easy and should allow you to organise your server space a little more efficiently. You may also get a performance improvement (although small) by putting it on another drive.. Create a new directory to store the Cache. e.g. “d:\TfsCache\” Give the local TFS WPG group full control of the directory Figure: You need to use the App Tier service WPG In the application tier web.config (~\Application Tier\Web Services\web.config) add the following setting (to the appSettings section). <appsettings> ... <add value="D:\" key="dataDirectory" /> ... </appsettings> The app pool will automatically recycle and Team Web Access will start using the new location.  If you then download a file (not via a proxy) a folder with a GUID should be created immediately in the folder from #1.  If the folder doesn’t appear, then you probably don’t have permissions set up properly.

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  • Retrofit Certification

    - by Bill Evjen
    Impact of Regulations on Cabin Systems Installation John Courtright, Structural Integrity Engineering There are “heightened” FAA attention to technical issues related to IFE and Wi-Fi Systems Installations The Aging Aircraft Safety Rule – EWIS & Damage Tolerance Analysis The Challenge: Maximize Flight Safety While Minimizing Costs Issue Papers & Testing, Testing, Testing The role of Airworthiness Directives (ADs) on the design of many IFE systems and all antenna systems. Goal is safety AND cost-effective maintenance intervals and inspection techniques The STC Process Briefly Stated Type Certifications (TC) Supplemental Type Certifications (STC) The STC Process Project Specific Certification Plan (PSCP) Managed by FAA Aircraft Certification Office (ACO) Type of Project (Electrical/Mechanical Systems or Structural) Specific Type of Aircraft Being Modified Schedule Design & Installation Location What does the STC Plan (PSCP) Cover? System Description – What does the system do? System qualification – Are the components qualified? Certification requirements – What FARs are applicable? Installation detail – what is being modified? Prototype installation – What is new? Functional hazard Assessment (FHA) – is it safe? EZAP-EWIS Requirements – Any aging aircraft issues? Certification Data – How is compliance achieved? Delegation and FAA involvement – Who is doing the work? Proposed certification schedule – When is the installation? Certification documentation – What the FAA Expects to see Cabin Systems Certification Concerns In addition to meeting the requirements for DO-160, Cabin System Certification needs to address issues related to: Power management: Generally, IFE and Wi-Fi Systems are classified as “Non-Essential Equipment” from a certification viewpoint. Connected to “non-essential” power buses Must be able to shed IFE & Wi-Fi Systems in a smoke/fire event or Other electrical emergency (FAA Policy 00-111-160) FAA is more relaxed with testing wi-fi. It used to be that you had to have 150 seats with laptops running wi-fi, but now it is down to around 50. Aging aircraft concerns – electrical and structural Issue papers addressing technical concerns involving: “Structural Certification Criteria for Large Antenna Installations” Antenna “Vibration/Buffeting Compliance Criteria” DO-160 : Environmental Test Procedures DO 160 – “Environmental Conditions and Test Procedures for Airborne Equipment”, Issued by RTCA Provides guidance to equipment manufacturers as to testing requirements Temperature: –40C to +55C Vibration and Shock Contaminant susceptibility – fluids and dust Electro-magnetic Interference Cabin systems are generally classified as “non-essential” Swissair 111 crashed (in part) due to non-standard wiring practices. EWIS Design Implications Installation design must take EWIS Requirements into account. This generally means: Aircraft surveys are needed to identify proper wire routing Ensure existing wiring diagrams are correct Identify primary/Secondary/Tertiary bus locations Verify proper separation of wire bundles exist Required separation from fuel quantity indicator system (FQIS) to prevent fuel tang ignition Enhanced Zonal Analysis Procedure (EZAP) Performed EZAP was developed by the Aging Transport Systems Rulemaking Advisory Committee (ATSRAC) EZAP is the method for analyzing airplane zones with an emphasis on evaluating wiring systems and the existence of combustibles  in the cabin. Certification Considerations for Wi-Fi Systems Electrical – All existing DO 160 testing required Issue papers required Onboard EMI testing – any interference with aircraft systems when multiple wi-fi users are logged on? Vibration/Buffeting compliance criteria – what is the effect of the antenna on aircraft flight characteristics? Structural certification criteria – what are the stress loads on the aircraft at the antenna location and what is the impact on maintenance inspection criteria for the airline? Damage tolerance analysis required Goal – minimize maintenance inspection intervals

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  • Creating a Podcast

    - by Matt Christian
    Hopefully in the next week I will begin developing a new podcast for your listening pleasure.  Actually, it'll probably be quite horrible as I'm not a great speaker and I don't know what kind of content I'll have, but damnit I'll produce something. Anyone out there have any tips or suggestions for a new podcaster?

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  • Profiling Startup Of VS2012 &ndash; YourKit Profiler

    - by Alois Kraus
    The YourKit (v7.0.5) profiler is interesting in terms of price (79€ single place license, 409€ + 1 year support and upgrades) and feature set. You do get a performance and memory profiler in one package for which you normally need also to pay extra from the other vendors. As an interesting side note the profiler UI is written in Java because they do also sell Java profilers with the same feature set. To get all methods of a VS startup you need first to configure it to include System* in the profiled methods and you need to configure * to measure wall clock time. By default it does record only CPU times which allows you to optimize CPU hungry operations. But you will never see a Thread.Sleep(10000) in the profiler blocking the UI in this mode. It can profile as all others processes started from within the profiler but it can also profile the next or all started processes. As usual it can profile in sampling and tracing mode. But since it is a memory profiler as well it does by default also record all object allocations > 1MB. With allocation recording enabled VS2012 did crash but without allocation recording there were no problems. The CPU tab contains the time line of the application and when you click in the graph you the call stacks of all threads at this time. This is really a nice feature. When you select a time region you the CPU Usage estimation for this time window. I have seen many applications consuming 100% CPU only because they did create garbage like crazy. For this is the Garbage Collection tab interesting in conjunction with a time range. This view is like the CPU table only that the CPU graph (green) is missing. All relevant information except for GCs/s is already visible in the CPU tab. Very handy to pinpoint excessive GC or CPU bound issues. The Threads tab does show the thread names and their lifetime. This is useful to see thread interactions or which thread is hottest in terms of CPU consumption. On the CPU tab the call tree does exist in a merged and thread specific view. When you click on a method you get below a list of all called methods. There you can sort for methods with a high own time which are worth optimizing. In the Method List you can select which scope you want to see. Back Traces are the methods which did call you. Callees ist the list of methods called directly or indirectly by your method as a flat list. This is not a call stack but still very useful to see which methods were slow so you can see the “root” cause quite quickly without the need to click trough long call stacks. The last view Merged Calles is a call stacked view of the previous view. This does help a lot to understand did call each method at run time. You would get the same view with a debugger for one call invocation but here you get the full statistics (invocation count) as well. Since YourKit is also a memory profiler you can directly see which objects you have on your managed heap and which objects do hold most of your precious memory. You can in in the Object Explorer view also examine the contents of your objects (strings or whatsoever) to get a better understanding which objects where potentially allocating this stuff.   YourKit is a very easy to use combined memory and performance profiler in one product. The unbeatable single license price makes it very attractive to straightly buy it. Although it is a Java UI it is very responsive and the memory consumption is considerably lower compared to dotTrace and ANTS profiler. What I do really like is to start the YourKit ui and then start the processes I want to profile as usual. There is no need to alter your own application code to be able to inject a profiler into your new started processes. For performance and memory profiling you can simply select the process you want to investigate from the list of started processes. That's the way I like to use profilers. Just get out of the way and let the application run without any special preparations.   Next: Telerik JustTrace

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  • Discovering Your Project

    - by Tim Murphy
    The discovery phase of any project is both exciting and critical to the project’s success.  There are several key points that you need to keep in mind as you navigate this process. The first thing you need to understand is who the players in the project are and what their motivations are for the project.  Leaving out a key stakeholder in the resulting product is one of the easiest ways to doom your project to fail.  The better the quality of the input you have at this early phase the better chance you will have of creating a well accepted deliverable. The next task you should tackle is to gather the goals for the project.  Specifically, what does the company expect to get for the money they are about to layout.  This seems like a common sense task, but you would be surprised how many teams to straight to building the system.  Even if you are following an agile methodology I believe that this is critical. Inventorying the resources that already exists gives you an idea what you are going to have to build and what you can leverage at lower risk.  This list should include documentation, servers, code repositories, databases, languages, security systems and supporting teams.  All of these are “resources” that can effect the cost and delivery schedule of your project. Finally, you need to verify what you have found and documented with the stakeholders and subject matter experts.  Documentation that has not been reviewed is actually a list of assumptions and we all know that assumptions are the mother of all screw ups. If you give the discovery phase of your project the attention that it deserves your project has a much better chance of success. I would love to hear what other people find important for this phase.  Please leave comments on this post so we can share the knowledge. del.icio.us Tags: Project discovery,documentation,business analysis,architecture

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