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• Getting Started With nServiceBus on VAN Mar 31

  - by van

  Topic: nServiceBus is mature and powerful open source framework that enables to design robust, scalable, message-based, service-oriented architectures. Latest improvements in the configuration API enables developers to quickly get started and build a working simple system that uses messaging infrastructure. The goal of this session is to give a jump start with the framework, introduce basic concepts such as message handlers, Sagas, Pub/Sub, Generic Host and also create a working demo application that uses publish/subscribe messaging. The content of the session is addressed to developers that are interested in learning how to get started using nServiceBus in order to design and build distributed systems. Bio: Bernard Kowalski is currently a Software Developer at Microdesk, one of Autodesk's leading partners in providing variety of Geospatial and Computer-Aided Design solutions. Bernard has experience developing .NET framework-based applications utilizing Windows Forms, Windows Services, ASP.NET MVC, and Web services. In a recent project, Bernard architected and implemented a distributed system based on SOA principles using an open source implementation of an Enterprise Service Bus. Bernard develops software with Agile patterns and practices using Domain Driven Design combined with TDD (Test Driven Development). He is familiar with all of the following APIs: Autodesk Vault/Product Stream API, AutoCAD ActiveX/VBA/.NET API, AutoCAD Mechanical API, Autodesk Inventor API, Autodesk MapGuide Enterprise. Prior to joining Microdesk, Bernard worked as a researcher and teacher at the University of Science and Technology in Krakow, Poland where he was awarded with a PhD in Computer Methods in Materials Science. He also participated in research projects where he developed applications for analysis of hot compression test results using advanced optimization techniques. He also developed Finite Element Method-based programs for thermal and stress analysis using C++ and FORTRAN. Bernard is a member of the Domain Driven Design and ALT.NET user groups in NYC. Virtual ALT.NET (VAN) is the online gathering place of the ALT.NET community. Through conversations, presentations, pair programming and dojos, we strive to improve, explore, and challenge the way we create software. Using net conferencing technology such as Skype and LiveMeeting, we hold regular meetings, open to anyone, usually taking the form of a presentation or an Open Space Technology-style conversation. Please see the Calendar(http://www.virtualaltnet.com/Home/Calendar) to find a VAN group that meets at a time convenient to you, and feel welcome to join a meeting. Past sessions can be found on the Recording page. To stay informed about VAN activities, you can subscribe to the Virtual ALT.NET Google Group and follow the Virtual ALT.NET blog. Times below are Central Standard Time Start Time: Wed, Mar 31, 2010 8:00 PM UTC/GMT -5 hours End Time: Wed, Mar 31, 2010 10:00 PM UTC/GMT -5 hours Attendee URL: http://www.virtualaltnet.com/van Zach Young http://www.virtualaltnet.com

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• Miami 311: Built on Windows Azure

  - by Josh Holmes

  This is a cool use of Azure. The city of Miami tool their “311” data around potholes, trash pickup issues, recycling issues, broken sidewalks and the like and put that data in Azure. The next step is that they leveraged Bing Maps and Silverlight to visualize those issues spread on a map of the city. The solution takes advantage of virtually unlimited storage and processing power, provides the ability to quickly address service requests and implement updates even during peak times such as hurricane season. If things change, the City can bring the solution on site or move to a physical facility, all based on  need and cost-effectiveness. As a result, residents logging on to Miami 311 can see on average 4,500 issues in progress - not represented as a ‘list', but located on a map in relation to other projects in their neighborhood .  A simple click on the map allows them to easily drill down to more and more specific details if they want. In short, they have turned what used to be represented by a meaningless list of data into useful information, and created  actionable and consumable knowledge that is relevant to the citizens of Miami. For Miami, their ‘service call to the city' becomes an interactive process they can follow - and the City has a new tool to manage and deliver outcomes. … When the city made the move to the web, they chose tools they knew and software they trust. The Microsoft Windows Azure cloud platform made it easy to do, and they used both Bing mapping and Silverlight to build a user friendly front end. According to Port25 (Miami 311: Built on Windows Azure - Port 25: The Open Source Community at Microsoft), it took two people 8 days to implement the whole system and they are going to open source their solution so that other cities can leverage it. I haven’t seen yet where and how they are going to release it but I’ll keep you posted if I find out.

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• Nice article

  - by DAXShekhar

  Nice article by Kamal,   http://kamalblogs.wordpress.com/2010/04/02/towards-dynamics-ax-product-certification-%E2%80%93-best-practices-part-i/

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• Nice take on Open Source

  - by EmbeddedInsider

  I just revisited the “Micro Framework”- Microsoft’s bootable runtime, essentially an OS that allows managed code to run on small 32bit CPUs, even without Memory Management.  Things are happening http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/bb267253.aspx Abstract The Microsoft .NET Micro Framework is a bootable runtime module that brings the advantages of .NET programming to devices too resource-constrained to run other Microsoft embedded platforms. The benefits of developing with the .NET Micro Framework include the C# programming language, a managed execution environment, a substantial subset of the .NET libraries, and Visual Studio™ deployment and debugging. In this white paper we explain why the .NET Micro Framework is an ideal choice for embedded development and provide technical details of the platform’s Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) and Common Language Runtime (CLR). “Micro Framework” is an interesting product, it is very low cost, like zero. And it is largely community controlled under the Apache License.  A partner network is building, and the application environment is .NET. I have been following this for some time, and the community open source approach seems to be working.  There are new features/packages emerging, for example an F# programming language (ARGH! I am still wresting with VB and C#). Anyway, what I found most interesting was a port to Tron.  Tron is a very popular Japanese open source intuitive.  It is a very real time, very compact kernel, and is, like the Micro Framework, ‘free as beer’.  One limit on MF was it was not real time.  But the merger with Tron may eliminate that problem.  Certainly, if I were dealing with a consumer product with quantities in the millions (like a SmartGrid device, or a toy) I would seriously consider something out of this technology pool.

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• Silverlight Cream for December 12, 2010 -- #1008

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Michael Washington, Samuel Jack, Alfred Astort(-2-), Nokola(-2-), Avi Pilosof, Chris Klug, Pete Brown, Laurent Bugnion(-2-), and Jaime Rodriguez(-2-, -3-). Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Sharing resources and styles between projects in Silverlight" Chris Klug WP7: "Windows Phone Application Performance at Silverlight Firestarter" Jaime Rodriguez Training: "Silverlight View Model (MVVM) - A Play In One Act" Michael Washington Shoutouts: Koen Zwikstra announced the availability of the first Silverlight Spy 4 Preview 1 Gavin Wignall announced the Launch of Festive game built with Silverlight 4, hosted on Azure ... free to play. From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight View Model (MVVM) - A Play In One Act Michael Washington has an interesting take on writing a blog post with this 'play' version of Silverlight View Models and Expression Blend with a heaping dose of Behaviors added in for flavoring. Build a Windows Phone Game in 3 days – Day 1 Samuel Jack is attempting to build a WP7 game in 3 days including downloading the tools and an XNA book... interesting to see where he's headed wth this venture. 4 of 10 - Make sure your finger can hit the target and text is legible Continuing with a series of tips from the folks reviewing apps for the marketplace via Alfred Astort is this number 4 -- touch target size and legible text. 5 of 10 - Give feedback on touch and progress within your UI Alfred Astort's number 5 is also up, and continues the touch discussion with this tip about giving the user feedback on their touch. Fantasia Painter Released for Windows Phone 7 + Tips Nokola took the release of his Fantasia Painter on WP& as an opportunity not only to blog about the fact that we can go buy it, but has a blog full of hints and tips that he gathered while working on it. Games for Windows Phone 7 Resources: Reducing Load Times, RPG Kit; Other Nokola also blogged about the release of the new games education pack, and gives up the cursor he uses in his videos after being asked... The simplest way to do design-time ViewModels with MVVM and Blend. Avi Pilosof attacks the design-time ViewModel issue in Blend with a 'no code' solution. Sharing resources and styles between projects in Silverlight Chris Klug is talking about sharing resources and styles across a large Silverlight project... near and dear to my heart at this moment. Dynamically Generating Controls in WPF and Silverlight Pete Brown has a post up that's generated some interest... creating controls at runtime... and he's demonstrating several different ways for both Silverlight and WPF #twitter for Windows Phone 7 protips (#wp7) Laurent Bugnion was posting these great tips for Twitter for WP7 and rolled all 16 of them up into a blog post... check them and the app out... Increasing touch surface (#wp7dev) Laurent Bugnion's most current post should be of great interest to WP7 devs... providing more touch surface for your user's fat fingers, err, I mean their fat fingerings :) ... great information and samples ... and interesting it is a fail point as listed by Alfred Astort above. Windows Phone Application Performance at Silverlight Firestarter This material from Jaime Rodriguez actually hit prior to his Firestarter presentation, but should be required reading for anyone doing a WP7 app... great Performance tips from the trenches... slide deck, cheat-sheet, and code. UpdateSourceTrigger on Windows Phone data bindings Another post from Jaime Rodriguez actually went through a couple revisions already.. how about a WP7 TextBox that fires notifications to the ViewModel when the text changes? ... would you like a behavior with that? Details on the Push Notification app limits Jaime Rodriguez has yet another required reading post up on Push Notification limits ... what it really entails and how you can be a good WP7 citizen by the way you program your app. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• Special thanks to everyone that helped me in 2010.

  - by mbcrump

  2010 has been a very good year for me and I wanted to create a list and thank everyone for what they have done for me.  I also wanted to thank everyone for reading and subscribing to my blog. It is hard to believe that people actually want to read what I write. I feel like I owe a huge thanks to everyone listed below. Looking back upon 2010, I feel that I’ve grown as a developer and you are part of that reason. Sometimes we get caught up in day to day work and forget to give thanks to those that helped us along the way. The list below is mine, it includes people and companies. This list is obviously not going to include everyone that has helped, just those that have stood out in my mind. When I think back upon 2010, their names keep popping up in my head. So here goes, in no particular order.  People Dave Campbell – For everything he has done for the Silverlight Community with his Silverlight Cream blog. I can’t think of a better person to get recognition at the Silverlight FireStarter event. I also wanted to thank him for spending several hours of his time helping me track down a bug in my feedburner account. Victor Gaudioso – For his large collection of video tutorials on his blog and the passion and enthusiasm he has for Silverlight. We have talked on the phone and I’ve never met anyone so fired up for Silverlight. Kunal Chowdhury – Kunal has always been available for me to bounce ideas off of. Kunal has also answered a lot of questions that stumped me. His blog and CodeProject article have green a great help to me and the Silverlight Community. Glen Gordon – I was looking frantically for a Windows Phone 7 several months before release and Glen found one for me. This allowed me to start a blog series on the Windows Phone 7 hardware and developing an application from start to finish that Scott Guthrie retweeted.  Jeff Blankenburg – For listening to my complaints in the early stages of Windows Phone 7. Jeff was always very polite and gave me his cell phone number to talk it over. He also walked me through several problems that I was having early on. Pete Brown – For writing Silverlight 4 in Action. This book is definitely a labor of love. I followed Pete on Twitter as he was writing it and he spent a lot of late nights and weekends working on it. I felt a lot smarter after reading it the first time. The second time was even better. John Papa – For all of his work on the Silverlight Firestarter and the Silverlight community in general. He has also helped me on a personal level with several things. Daniel Heisler – For putting up with me the past year while we worked on many .NET projects together in 2010. Alvin Ashcraft – For publishing a daily blog post on the best of .NET links. He has linked to my site many times and I really appreciate what he does for the community. Chris Alcock – For publishing the Morning Brew every weekday. I remember when I first appeared on his site, I started getting hundreds of hits on my site and wondered if I was getting a DOS attack or something. It was great to find out that Chris had linked to one of my articles. Joel Cochran – For spending a week teaching “Blend-O-Rama”. This was my one of my favorite sessions of this year. I learned a lot about Expression Blend from it and the best part was that it was free and during lunchtime. Jeremy Likness – Jeremy is smart – very smart. I have learned a lot from Jeremy over the past year. He is also involved in the Silverlight community in every way possible, from forums to blog post to screencast to open source. It goes on and on. The people that I met at VSLive Orlando 2010. I had a great time chatting with Walt Ritscher, Wallace McClure, Tim Huckabee and David Platt. Also a special thanks to all of my friends on Twitter like @wilhil, @DBVaughan, @DataArtist, @wbm, @DirkStrauss and @rsringeri and many many more. Software Companies / Events / May of gave me FREE stuff. =) Microsoft (3) – I was sent a free coupon code by Microsoft to take the Silverlight 4 Beta Exam. I jumped on the offer and took the exam. It was great being selected to try out the exam before it goes public even though Microsoft eventually published a universal coupon code for everyone. I am still waiting to find out if I passed the exam. My fingers are crossed. Microsoft reaching out to me with some questions regarding the .NET Community. I’ve never had a company contact me with such interest in the community. Having a contest where 75 people could win a $100 gift certificate and a T-Shirt for submitting a Windows Phone 7 app. I submitted my app and won. All of the free launch events this year (Windows Phone 7, Visual Studio 2010, ASP.NET MVC). Wintellect – For providing an awesome day of free technical training called T.E.N. Where else can you get free training from some of the best programmers in the world? I also won a contest from them that included a NETAdvantage Ultimate License from Infragistics. VSLive – I attended the Orlando 2010 Conference and it was the best developer’s conference that I have ever attended. I got to know a lot of people at this conference and hang out with many wonderful speakers. I live tweeted the event and while it may have annoyed some, the organizers of VSLive loved it. I won the contest on Twitter and they invited me back to the 2011 session of my choice. This is a very nice gift and I really appreciate the generosity. BarcodeLib.com – For providing free barcode generating tools for a Non-Profit ASP.NET project that I was working on. Their third party controls really made this a breeze compared to my existing solution. NDepend – It is absolutely the best tool to improve code quality. The product is extremely large and I would recommend heading over to their site to check it out. Silverlight Spy – I was writing a blog post on Silverlight Spy and Koen Zwikstra provided a FREE license to me. If you ever wanted to peek inside of a Silverlight Application then this is the tool for you. He is also working on a version that will support OOB and Windows Phone 7. I would recommend checking out his site. Birmingham .NET Users Group / Silverlight Nights User Group – It takes a lot of time to put together a user group meeting every month yet it always seems to happen. I don’t want to name names for fear of leaving someone out but both of these User Groups are excellent if you live in the Birmingham, Alabama area. Publishing Companies Manning Publishing – For giving me early access to Silverlight 4 in Action by Pete Brown. It was really nice to be able to read this awesome book while Pete was writing it. I was also one of the first people to publish a review of the book. Sams Publishing and DZone – For providing a copy of Silverlight 4 Unleashed by Laurent Bugnion for me to review for their site. The review is coming in January 2011. Special Shoutout to the following 3rd Party Silverlight Controls It has been a great pleasure to work with the following companies on 3rd Party Control Giveaways every month. It always amazes me how every 3rd Party Control company is so eager to help out the community. I’ve never been turned down by any of these companies! These giveaways have sparked a lot of interest in Silverlight and hopefully I can continue giving away a new set every month. If you are a 3rd Party Control company and are interested in participating in these giveaways then please email me at mbcrump29[at]gmail[d0t].com. The companies below have already participated in my giveaways: Infragistics (December 2010) - Win a set of Infragistics Silverlight Controls with Data Visualization!  Mindscape (November 2010) - Mindscape Silverlight Controls + Free Mega Pack Contest Telerik (October 2010) - Win Telerik RadControls for Silverlight! ($799 Value) Again, I just wanted to say Thanks to everyone for helping me grow as a developer.  Subscribe to my feed

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• Microsoft Press Deal of the Day - 13/April/2012 - Building Enterprise Applications with Windows® Presentation Foundation and the MVVM Pattern

  - by TATWORTH

  Today's deal of the day from Microsoft Press at http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0790145309686.do is Building Enterprise Applications with Windows® Presentation Foundation and the MVVM Pattern"Simplify and improve business application development by applying the MVVM pattern to Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Microsoft® Silverlight® 4. With this hands-on guide, you'll use MVVM with data binding, commands, and behaviors to create user interfaces loosely coupled to business logic. MVVM is ideal for .NET developers working with WPF and Silverlight—whether or not you have experience building enterprise applications."

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• Link To Work Item &ndash; Visual Studio extension to link changeset(s) to work item directly from VS history window

  - by Utkarsh Shigihalli

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/onlyutkarsh/archive/2014/08/11/link-to-work-item-ndash-visual-studio-extension-to-link.aspxBy linking work items and other objects, you can track related work, dependencies, and changes made over time. As the following illustration shows, specific link types are used to track specific work items and actions. (– via MSDN) While making a check-in, Visual Studio 2013 provides you a quick way to search and assign a work item via pending changes section in Team Explorer. However, if you forget to assign the work item during your check-in, things really get cumbersome as Visual Studio does not provide an easy way of assigning. For example, you usually have to open the work item and then link the changeset which involves approx. 7-8 mouse clicks. Now, you will really feel the difficulty if you have to assign work item to multiple changesets, you have to repeat the same steps again. Hence, I decided to develop a small Visual Studio extension to perform this action of linking work item to changeset bit easier. How to use the extension? First, download and install the extension from VS Gallery (Supports VS 2013 Professional and above). Once you install, you will see a new "Link To Work Item" menu item when you right click on a changeset in history window. Clicking Link To Work Item menu, will open a new dialog with which you can search for a work item. As you can see in below screenshot, this dialog displays the search result and also the type of the work item. You can also open work item from this dialog by right clicking on the work item and clicking 'Open'. Finally, clicking Save button, will actually link the work item to changeset. One feature which I think helpful, is you can select multiple changesets from history window and assign the work item to all those changesets.  To summarize the features Directly assign work items to changesets from history window Assign work item to multiple changesets Know the type of the work item before assigning. Open the work item from search results It also supports all default Visual Studio themes. Below is a small demo showcasing the working of this extension. Finally, if you like the extension, do not forget to rate and review the extension in VS Gallery. Also, do not hesitate to provide your suggestions, improvements and any issues you may encounter via github.

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• New Web Comic: Code Monkey Kung Fu

  - by Dane Morgridge

  It’s been something I’ve wanted to do for quite some time and decided it was finally time. Yesterday, I launched a new web comic “Code Monkey Kung Fu”. After being a programer for more than ten years, I’ve come across quite a few hilarious situations and will be drawing on them for inspiration. I also have a four kids, so they will probably produce a lot as well. My plan is to release on Tuesdays with additional comics mixed in on occasion. I hope you enjoy! http://www.codemonkeykungfu.com

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• Independence Day for Software Components &ndash; Loosening Coupling by Reducing Connascence

  - by Brian Schroer

  Today is Independence Day in the USA, which got me thinking about loosely-coupled “independent” software components. I was reminded of a video I bookmarked quite a while ago of Jim Weirich’s “Grand Unified Theory of Software Design” talk at MountainWest RubyConf 2009. I finally watched that video this morning. I highly recommend it. In the video, Jim talks about software connascence. The dictionary definition of connascence (con-NAY-sense) is: 1. The common birth of two or more at the same time 2. That which is born or produced with another. 3. The act of growing together. The brief Wikipedia page about Connascent Software Components says that: Two software components are connascent if a change in one would require the other to be modified in order to maintain the overall correctness of the system. Connascence is a way to characterize and reason about certain types of complexity in software systems. The term was introduced to the software world in Meilir Page-Jones’ 1996 book “What Every Programmer Should Know About Object-Oriented Design”. The middle third of that book is the author’s proposed graphical notation for describing OO designs. UML became the standard about a year later, so a revised version of the book was published in 1999 as “Fundamentals of Object-Oriented Design in UML”. Weirich says that the third part of the book, in which Page-Jones introduces the concept of connascence “is worth the price of the entire book”. (The price of the entire book, by the way, is not much – I just bought a used copy on Amazon for $1.36, so that was a pretty low-risk investment. I’m looking forward to getting the book and learning about connascence from the original source.) Meanwhile, here’s my summary of Weirich’s summary of Page-Jones writings about connascence: The stronger the form of connascence, the more difficult and costly it is to change the elements in the relationship. Some of the connascence types, ordered from weak to strong are: Connascence of Name Connascence of name is when multiple components must agree on the name of an entity. If you change the name of a method or property, then you need to change all references to that method or property. Duh. Connascence of name is unavoidable, assuming your objects are actually used. My main takeaway about connascence of name is that it emphasizes the importance of giving things good names so you don’t need to go changing them later. Connascence of Type Connascence of type is when multiple components must agree on the type of an entity. I assume this is more of a problem for languages without compilers (especially when used in apps without tests). I know it’s an issue with evil JavaScript type coercion. Connascence of Meaning Connascence of meaning is when multiple components must agree on the meaning of particular values, e.g that “1” means normal customer and “2” means preferred customer. The solution to this is to use constants or enums instead of “magic” strings or numbers, which reduces the coupling by changing the connascence form from “meaning” to “name”. Connascence of Position Connascence of positions is when multiple components must agree on the order of values. This refers to methods with multiple parameters, e.g.: eMailer.Send("[email protected]", "[email protected]", "Your order is complete", "Order completion notification"); The more parameters there are, the stronger the connascence of position is between the component and its callers. In the example above, it’s not immediately clear when reading the code which email addresses are sender and receiver, and which of the final two strings are subject vs. body. Connascence of position could be improved to connascence of type by replacing the parameter list with a struct or class. This “introduce parameter object” refactoring might be overkill for a method with 2 parameters, but would definitely be an improvement for a method with 10 parameters. This points out two “rules” of connascence:  The Rule of Degree: The acceptability of connascence is related to the degree of its occurrence. The Rule of Locality: Stronger forms of connascence are more acceptable if the elements involved are closely related. For example, positional arguments in private methods are less problematic than in public methods. Connascence of Algorithm Connascence of algorithm is when multiple components must agree on a particular algorithm. Be DRY – Don’t Repeat Yourself. If you have “cloned” code in multiple locations, refactor it into a common function.   Those are the “static” forms of connascence. There are also “dynamic” forms, including… Connascence of Execution Connascence of execution is when the order of execution of multiple components is important. Consumers of your class shouldn’t have to know that they have to call an .Initialize method before it’s safe to call a .DoSomething method. Connascence of Timing Connascence of timing is when the timing of the execution of multiple components is important. I’ll have to read up on this one when I get the book, but assume it’s largely about threading. Connascence of Identity Connascence of identity is when multiple components must reference the entity. The example Weirich gives is when you have two instances of the “Bob” Employee class and you call the .RaiseSalary method on one and then the .Pay method on the other does the payment use the updated salary?   Again, this is my summary of a summary, so please be forgiving if I misunderstood anything. Once I get/read the book, I’ll make corrections if necessary and share any other useful information I might learn.   See Also: Gregory Brown: Ruby Best Practices Issue #24: Connascence as a Software Design Metric (That link is failing at the time I write this, so I had to go to the Google cache of the page.)

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• Building a Mafia&hellip;TechFest Style

  - by David Hoerster

  It’s been a few months since I last blogged (not that I blog much to begin with), but things have been busy.  We all have a lot going on in our lives, but I’ve had one item that has taken up a surprising amount of time – Pittsburgh TechFest 2012.  After the event, I went through some minutes of the first meetings for TechFest, and I started to think about how it all came together.  I think what inspired me the most about TechFest was how people from various technical communities were able to come together and build and promote a common event.  As a result, I wanted to blog about this to show that people from different communities can work together to build something that benefits all communities.  (Hopefully I've got all my facts straight.)  TechFest started as an idea Eric Kepes and myself had when we were planning our next Pittsburgh Code Camp, probably in the summer of 2011.  Our Spring 2011 Code Camp was a little different because we had a great infusion of some folks from the Pittsburgh Agile group (especially with a few speakers from LeanDog).  The line-up was great, but we felt our audience wasn’t as broad as it should have been.  We thought it would be great to somehow attract other user groups around town and have a big, polyglot conference. We started contacting leaders from Pittsburgh’s various user groups.  Eric and I split up the ones that we knew about, and we just started making contacts.  Most of the people we started contacting never heard of us, nor we them.  But we all had one thing in common – we ran user groups who’s primary goal is educating our members to make them better at what they do. Amazingly, and I say this because I wasn’t sure what to expect, we started getting some interest from the various leaders.  One leader, Greg Akins, is, in my opinion, Pittsburgh’s poster boy for the polyglot programmer.  He’s helped us in the past with .NET Code Camps, is a Java developer (and leader in Pittsburgh’s Java User Group), works with Ruby and I’m sure a handful of other languages.  He helped make some e-introductions to other user group leaders, and the whole thing just started to snowball. Once we realized we had enough interest with the user group leaders, we decided to not have a Fall Code Camp and instead focus on this new entity. Flash-forward to October of 2011.  I set up a meeting, with the help of Jeremy Jarrell (Pittsburgh Agile leader) to hold a meeting with the leaders of many of Pittsburgh technical user groups.  We had representatives from 12 technical user groups (Python, JavaScript, Clojure, Ruby, PittAgile, jQuery, PHP, Perl, SQL, .NET, Java and PowerShell) – 14 people.  We likened it to a scene from a Godfather movie where the heads of all the families come together to make some deal.  As a result, the name “TechFest Mafia” was born and kind of stuck. Over the next 7 months or so, we had our starts and stops.  There were moments where I thought this event would not happen either because we wouldn’t have the right mix of topics (was I off there!), or enough people register (OK, I was wrong there, too!) or find an appropriate venue (hmm…wrong there, too) or find enough sponsors to help support the event (wow…not doing so well).  Overall, everything fell into place with a lot of hard work from Eric, Jen, Greg, Jeremy, Sean, Nicholas, Gina and probably a few others that I’m forgetting.  We also had a bit of luck, too.  But in the end, the passion that we had to put together an event that was really about making ourselves better at what we do really paid off. I’ve never been more excited about a project coming together than I have been with Pittsburgh TechFest 2012.  From the moment the first person arrived at the event to the final minutes of my closing remarks (where I almost lost my voice – I ended up being diagnosed with bronchitis the next day!), it was an awesome event.  I’m glad to have been part of bringing something like this to Pittsburgh…and I’m looking forward to Pittsburgh TechFest 2013.  See you there!

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• Silverlight Cream for March 06, 2010 -- #808

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: András Velvárt, felix corke, Colin Eberhardt, Christopher Bennage, Gergely Orosz, Entity Spaces Team Blog, Mike Taulty(-2-), Jit Ghosh, and Jesse Liberty. Shoutouts: Jeremy Likness expands on the Silverlight Team's post Vancouver Olympics - How'd We Do That? Gavin Wignall has a post up Creating a 360 photograph of an object with Silverlight Photosynth From SilverlightCream.com: Transforming an Ugly Duckling into a Graceful Swan With Expression Blend and Silverlight - Part 2 Intro Animation András Velvárt has part 2 of his Transformation series up at SilverlightShow... he's taking the initro animation to a new length, allowing playback even... cool video tutorial! Free Silverlight 4 beta skin! felix corke has a Silerlight 4 theme up for us all to use. If you like a dark theme like Blend, you'll like this... I like it! Linq to Visual Tree Colin Eberhardt has a great tutorial up for using LINQ to query the WPF or Silverlight Visual Tree while retaining the tree structure. He also has links out to other techniques. XAML Attributes on Separate Lines Christopher Bennage has a post up showing how to easily get all your XAML attributes on separate lines using a VS menu option... I didn't know that! Using built-in, embedded and streamed fonts in Silverlight Gergely Orosz has a post up at ScottLogic going over Fonts in Silverlight -- built-in, embedded, or streamed, and examples with code. EntitySpaces 2010 Two Part Series on Silverlight and WCF Entity Spaces Team Blog has a pair of videos up on Entity Spaces 2010, WCF, and Silverlight. Part 1 is the intro and explanation, part 2 is a full-up app demonstrating it. MEF, Silverlight and the DeploymentCatalog In an attempt to respond fully to a query, Mike Taulty literally pushed the record button and took off on what became a tutorial video on building a real Silverlight app utilizing MEF. Silverlight 4, Experiment with Pluggable Navigation and a WCF Data Service Mike Taulty has an experiment detailed on his blog about pluggable navigation and Silverlight 4. He walks through the history of how we got to this point then takes on in an example... good external links too Enhancing Silverlight Video Experiences with Contextual Data This is a post on the MSDN Magazine site where Jit Ghosh has a great long post about not only Smooth Streaming with Silverlight, but also adding context data to your video. When Is It OK To Hack? Read what all Jesse Liberty gets involved in when he's trying to get something out the door and has to work around a problem. Just about as interesting are the comments ... check it out and leave your own! Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    MIX10

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• Sucky MSTest and the "WaitAll for multiple handles on a STA thread is not supported" Error

  - by Anne Bougie

  If you are doing any multi-threading and are using MSTest, you will probably run across this error. For some reason, MSTest by default runs in STA threading mode. WTF, Microsoft! Why so stuck in the old COM world?  When I run the same test using NUnit, I don't have this problem. Unfortunately, my company has chosen MSTest, so I have a lot of testing problems. NUnit is so much better, IMO. After determining that I wasn't referencing any unmanaged code that would flip the thread into STA, which can also cause this error, the only thing left was the testing suite I was using. I dug around a little and found this obscure setting for the Test Run Config settings file that you can't set using its interface. You have to open it up as a text file and add the following setting:  <ExecutionThread apartmentState="MTA" /> This didn't break any other tests, so I'm not sure why it's not the default, or why there is nothing in the test run configuration app to change this setting. Here is the code I was testing:  public void ProcessTest(ProcessInfo[] infos) {    WaitHandle[] waits = new WaitHandle[infos.Length];    int i = 0;    foreach (ProcessInfo info in infos)    {       AutoResetEvent are = new AutoResetEvent(false);       info.Are = are;       waits[i++] = are;         Processor pr = new Processor();       WaitCallback callback = pr.ProcessTest;       ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem(callback, info);    }      WaitHandle.WaitAll(waits); }

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• Silverlight Cream for April 17, 2010 -- #839

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: ITLackey, SilverLaw, Max Paulousky, Alex Yakhnin, Paul Sheriff, Douglas, Jeremy Likness, Tomasz Janczuk, Anoop Madhusudanan, Adam Kinney, and Ashish Shetty. Shoutout: If you haven't already seen it, CrocusGirl did a great job of summarizing Day 2 of DevConnections with her Silverlight 4 Launch Notes From SilverlightCream.com: RIA Services - IIS6 Virtual Directory Deployment ITLackey has a post up building on his previous post on Windows Authentication with RIA Services and discusses deploying to an IIS Virtual Directory. How To: Determine ChildWindow Position At Runtime - Silverlight 3 SilverLaw has a post up about determining the position of a ChildWindow at run-time, for example after the user moves it. Modularity in Silverlight Applications - An Issue With ModuleInitializeException – Part 2 Max Paulousky has part 2 of his series up on Modularity in Silverlight... he discusses using XAML as a catalog and registering modules at runtime, and compares to WPF. Creating LINQ Data Provider for WP7 (Part 1) Alex Yakhnin has a first cut at a LINQ Data Provider for WP7 ... I was expecting this to hit pretty soon, because we're all going to want it... check out the code and d/l the project. Synchronize Data between a Silverlight ListBox and a User Control Paul Sheriff demonstrates databinding in XAML between local data in a ListBox and a UserControl. The beginnings of Silverlight development with Expression Blend Douglas has a good post up on beginning your Silverlight development with Expression Blend. He covers a lot of ground in this post. Converting Silverlight 3 to Silverlight 4 Jeremy Likness has a video up demonstrating converting Silverlight 3 to Silverlight 4 with download links and also using commanding on buttons. Debugging WCF RIA Services with WCF traces Tomasz Janczuk has a post up discussing the use of WCF RIA Services traces to help diagnose and debug problems in a deployed service. Bing Maps + oData + Windows Phone 7 - Nerd Dinner Client For Windows Phone 7 Check out what Anoop Madhusudanan has provided... Nerd Dinner for WP7, including OData and BingMaps... just very cool! A few cool new features added in Expression Blend 4 RC Adam Kinney announced the availability of the new Expression Blend and highlights some of the new features... like MakeLayoutPath... FTW! Of Crashing and Sometimes Burning Ashish Shetty has a discourse posted about where the causes of errors might come from, what to expect from the platform, where to find crash dumps, and links to more reading. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• Can&rsquo;t eject external USB or Firewire drive in Windows 7

  - by Kelly Jones

  As a SharePoint developer, I work a lot with Virtual Machines (presently using Windows Virtual PC, with Windows 7).  I’m using these VMs with my laptop, and in order to get better performance, I’ve moved them to external hard drives.  (These drives have faster RPMs, larger caches, and a larger capacity, than the internal drive.)  I have one large external drive at home, another similar drive at the office, and a small, slow portable drive that I carry with me. So, at the end of each day at the office, I copy the files from the external drive to my portable drive and then once I get home, I copy them from the portable to the larger external drive I leave at home.  I do this for a couple of reasons: so I can work at home and secondly, so I have backup copies.  (Often, I feel like I’m in the movie “Office Space” when copying the files before I leave the office). Anyway, after the files are copied, I safely eject the external drives, and then hibernate my laptop.  I’ve been doing this for over a year now, but within the last couple of months I started to have issues disconnecting the drives.  Intermittently, some application/process would have a lock on some file on the drive that would keep Windows from safely ejecting it. After looking into it, I found that it was actually the Windows search service that was accessing the drive! Since I wasn’t using Windows search to look for stuff on these drives, I removed them as locations to index. To do this in Windows 7, you need to go to Indexing Options (just type “Indexing” into the search box in the Start menu…).  One of the choices displayed will then be Indexing Options, so click on it and you should then see a window similar to this:   Click on the Modify button and you’ll see this window: Notice the different drives listed above.  My “FreeAgent XTreme (F:)” drive was checked for some reason, which was causing the indexing service to scan the drive looking for new files to make available in the search results.  Ever since I unchecked this box, I’ve been able to safely eject the drive.

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• Silverlight Cream for May 30, 2010 -- #873

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Matthias Shapiro, Colin Blair(-2-), Mike Snow, Marlon Grech, Victor Gaudioso. Shoutout: If you're going to be anywhere near Mission Viejo, California on June 19th, set your calendar for this Victor Gaudioso event: New Speaking Event: Microsoft Book Signing/Silverlight 4 Presentation SilverLaw has another example of his Flexible surface app up: Drag & Drop Flexible Surface - Silverlight 4 From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight 4 Binding and StringFormat in XAML Matthias Shapiro has a discussion posted about StringFormat binding in Silverlight 4 ... he dug in hard on this... well worth a read. View Model Collection Properties for WCF RIA Services Colin Blair is discussing some possibilities for exposing collections of entities from the ViewModel... his favorite: PagedCollectionView. The next post discusses this deeper. Advanced Paged Collection View Colin Blair continues in more depth on the PagedCollectionView, this time handling paging, sorting, and multiple loads. Silverlight Tip of the day #25 – Detecting Validation Errors on Submit Mike Snow's latest Tip of the Day is up and is about validation - specifically validating after your user has pressed "OK" INotifyPropertyChanged… I am fed up of handling events just to know when a property changed Marlon Grech has an Rx-less solution to code notifications of properties changing... this is a WPF and Silverlight solution and all the code is downloadable. New Silverlight Video Tutorial: How to Add Multiple BitmapEffects to One Object Victor Gaudioso's latest outing is in response to a query from a reader and is a video tutorial showing how to add multiple bitmap effects to one object. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• Quartz.Net Windows Service Configure Logging

  - by Tarun Arora

  In this blog post I’ll be covering, Logging for Quartz.Net Windows Service 01 – Why doesn’t Quartz.Net Windows Service log by default 02 – Configuring Quartz.Net windows service for logging to eventlog, file, console, etc 03 – Results: Logging in action If you are new to Quartz.Net I would recommend going through, A brief Introduction to Quartz.net Walkthrough of Installing & Testing Quartz.Net as a Windows Service Writing & Scheduling your First HelloWorld job with Quartz.Net   01 – Why doesn’t Quartz.Net Windows Service log by default If you are trying to figure out why… The Quartz.Net windows service isn’t logging The Quartz.Net windows service isn’t writing anything to the event log The Quartz.Net windows service isn’t writing anything to a file How do I configure Quartz.Net windows service to use log4Net How do I change the level of logging for Quartz.Net Look no further, This blog post should help you answer these questions. Quartz.NET uses the Common.Logging framework for all of its logging needs. If you navigate to the directory where Quartz.Net Windows Service is installed (I have the service installed in C:\Program Files (x86)\Quartz.net, you can find out the location by looking at the properties of the service) and open ‘Quartz.Server.exe.config’ you’ll see that the Quartz.Net is already set up for logging to ConsoleAppender and EventLogAppender, but only ‘ConsoleAppender’ is set up as active. So, unless you have the console associated to the Quartz.Net service you won’t be able to see any logging. <log4net> <appender name="ConsoleAppender" type="log4net.Appender.ConsoleAppender"> <layout type="log4net.Layout.PatternLayout"> <conversionPattern value="%d [%t] %-5p %l - %m%n" /> </layout> </appender> <appender name="EventLogAppender" type="log4net.Appender.EventLogAppender"> <layout type="log4net.Layout.PatternLayout"> <conversionPattern value="%d [%t] %-5p %l - %m%n" /> </layout> </appender> <root> <level value="INFO" /> <appender-ref ref="ConsoleAppender" /> <!-- uncomment to enable event log appending --> <!-- <appender-ref ref="EventLogAppender" /> --> </root> </log4net> Problem: In the configuration above Quartz.Net Windows Service only has ConsoleAppender active. So, no logging will be done to EventLog. More over the RollingFileAppender isn’t setup at all. So, Quartz.Net will not log to an application trace log file. 02 – Configuring Quartz.Net windows service for logging to eventlog, file, console, etc Let’s change this behaviour by changing the config file… In the below config file, I have added the RollingFileAppender. This will configure Quartz.Net service to write to a log file. (<appender name="GeneralLog" type="log4net.Appender.RollingFileAppender">) I have specified the location for the log file (<arg key="configFile" value="Trace/application.log.txt"/>) I have enabled the EventLogAppender and RollingFileAppender to be written to by Quartz. Net windows service Changed the default level of logging from ‘Info’ to ‘All’. This means all activity performed by Quartz.Net Windows service will be logged. You might want to tune this back to ‘Debug’ or ‘Info’ later as logging ‘All’ will produce too much data to the logs. (<level value="ALL"/>) Since I have changed the logging level to ‘All’, I have added applicationSetting to remove logging log4Net internal debugging. (<add key="log4net.Internal.Debug" value="false"/>) <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <configuration> <configSections> <section name="quartz" type="System.Configuration.NameValueSectionHandler, System, Version=1.0.5000.0,Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" /> <section name="log4net" type="log4net.Config.Log4NetConfigurationSectionHandler, log4net" /> <sectionGroup name="common"> <section name="logging" type="Common.Logging.ConfigurationSectionHandler, Common.Logging" /> </sectionGroup> </configSections> <common> <logging> <factoryAdapter type="Common.Logging.Log4Net.Log4NetLoggerFactoryAdapter, Common.Logging.Log4net"> <arg key="configType" value="INLINE" /> <arg key="configFile" value="Trace/application.log.txt"/> <arg key="level" value="ALL" /> </factoryAdapter> </logging> </common> <appSettings> <add key="log4net.Internal.Debug" value="false"/> </appSettings> <log4net> <appender name="ConsoleAppender" type="log4net.Appender.ConsoleAppender"> <layout type="log4net.Layout.PatternLayout"> <conversionPattern value="%d [%t] %-5p %l - %m%n" /> </layout> </appender> <appender name="EventLogAppender" type="log4net.Appender.EventLogAppender"> <layout type="log4net.Layout.PatternLayout"> <conversionPattern value="%d [%t] %-5p %l - %m%n" /> </layout> </appender> <appender name="GeneralLog" type="log4net.Appender.RollingFileAppender"> <file value="Trace/application.log.txt"/> <appendToFile value="true"/> <maximumFileSize value="1024KB"/> <rollingStyle value="Size"/> <layout type="log4net.Layout.PatternLayout"> <conversionPattern value="%d{HH:mm:ss} [%t] %-5p %c - %m%n"/> </layout> </appender> <root> <level value="ALL" /> <appender-ref ref="ConsoleAppender" /> <appender-ref ref="EventLogAppender" /> <appender-ref ref="GeneralLog"/> </root> </log4net> </configuration>   Note – Please ensure you restart the Quartz.Net Windows service for the config changes to be picked up by the service   03 – Results: Logging in action Once you start the Quartz.Net Windows Service up, the logging should be initiated to write all activities in the Console, EventLog and File… See screen shots below… Figure – Quartz.Net Windows Service logging all activity to the event log Figure – Quartz.Net Windows Service logging all activity to the application log file Where is the output from log4Net ConsoleAppender? As a default behaviour, the console isn't available in windows services, web services, windows forms. The output will simply be dismissed. Unless you are running the process interactively. Which you can do by firing up Quartz.Server.exe –i to see the output   This was fourth in the series of posts on enterprise scheduling using Quartz.net, in the next post I’ll be covering troubleshooting why a scheduled task hasn’t fired on Quartz.net windows service. All Quartz.Net specific blog posts can listed here. Thank you for taking the time out and reading this blog post. If you enjoyed the post, remember to subscribe to http://feeds.feedburner.com/TarunArora. Stay tuned!

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• Apress Books - 4 - Introducing Visual C# 2010 - Initial comments

  - by TATWORTH

  Apress books Visual C# 2010 (ISBN 978-1-4302-3171-4) - http://www.apress.com/book/view/1430231718 is both an excellent introduction to C# programming and a manual for those with experiance. So far I have only been through a few chapters but I have been favourably impressed. In the chapter on Exceptions, I have posted an errata regarding the custom exception in  listing 14-17; it is missing an overload required by FXCOP     private CustomException(SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context) : base(info, context)     {     } Aside of this minor point, I have no hesitation to recommending this book to anyone who wishes to learn C#.

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• Apartment management software. Apartment accounting software FREE.

  - by Jay Kinker

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/JayKinker/archive/2014/08/13/apartment-management-software.-apartment-accounting-software-free.aspx How are you managing your society today? How about bill generation & collection or socializing at your housing society?   Check out the all new online and offline services to manage your society. Online management and accounting software for housing society is free now. Get your housing society or neighbourhood online today for FREE.   Get a new amenity at your society today!   Societyhive services: www.societyhive.com Societyhive helpdesk: www.societyhive.com/helpdesk   Helpdesk is a free service to provide legal and management advice for societies. Do let me know if you have any feature request you’d want to see at Societyhive.

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• Silverlight Cream for November 20, 2011 - 2 -- #1170

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Michael Washington, Oliver Fuh, Jeremy Likness, Derik Whittaker, Jesse Liberty, Jeff Blankenburg(-2-), and Michael Crump. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Handling Extremely Large Data Sets in Silverlight" Jeremy Likness WP7: "31 Days of Mango | Day #8: Contacts API" Jeff Blankenburg LightSwitch: "LightSwitch Chat Application Using A Data Source Extension" Michael Washington Shoutouts: Michael Palermo's latest Desert Mountain Developers is up Michael Washington's latest Visual Studio #LightSwitch Daily is up Check out Shawn Wildermuth's take on the AppStore and WP7 in general: 40,000 Apps - What Does It Mean? Be sure to check out Jesse Liberty & Paul Betts new book: Programming Reactive Extensions and LINQ, I've just had a little time to look at mine, but don't let the size fool you... this is the good stuff! From SilverlightCream.com: LightSwitch Chat Application Using A Data Source Extension In his latest LightSwitch post, Michael Washington gives up code that will enable two people using the same LightSwitch app to chat. Great detailed tutorial as usual! Handling AdControl Fetching Exception WindowsPhoneGeek turns the blog reigns over to Oliver Fuh for this post about using the AdControl in your WP7 app and handling a common exception you get with the Microsoft AdControl Handling Extremely Large Data Sets in Silverlight In this excerpt from his book, Jeremy Likness discusses reading *LARGE* data sets with Silverlight using 3 different patterns: OData, WCF RIA Services, and MVVM. Using MVVM with the AutoCompleteTextBox in Silverlight 4 Derik Whittaker takes a break from WinRT to discuss the Silverlight 4 AutoCompleteTextBox and MVVM ... including a custom Behavior to allow the backing property to be updated and a command to trigger background searches Yet Another Podcast #52–Peter Torr on Windows Phone Multitasking Jesse Liberty scored Peter Torr on his Latest Yet Another Podcast .. talking about Multitasking on Windows Phone including background agents, the backstack, and other Mango features 31 Days of Mango | Day #8: Contacts API Jeff Blankenburg's Day 8 is about a new namespace on WP7: Microsoft.Phone.UserData ... now giving us the ability to treat the user's contact list like a local database 31 Days of Mango | Day #9: Calendar API On Day 9 in his series, Jeff Blankenburg revisits the Microsoft.Phone.UserData namespace and looks at another set of data: the calendar Want to Decompile Silverlight XAP files? Try JustDecompile Beta! Michael Crump has a post up about the new free developer productivity tool from Telerik that provides assembly browsing and decompiling: JustDecompile ... Just download it! Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• AWS: setting up auto-scale for EC2 instances

  - by Elton Stoneman

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/EltonStoneman/archive/2013/10/16/aws-setting-up-auto-scale-for-ec2-instances.aspxWith Amazon Web Services, there’s no direct equivalent to Azure Worker Roles – no Elastic Beanstalk-style application for .NET background workers. But you can get the auto-scale part by configuring an auto-scaling group for your EC2 instance. This is a step-by-step guide, that shows you how to create the auto-scaling configuration, which for EC2 you need to do with the command line, and then link your scaling policies to CloudWatch alarms in the Web console. I’m using queue size as my metric for CloudWatch,  which is a good fit if your background workers are pulling messages from a queue and processing them.  If the queue is getting too big, the “high” alarm will fire and spin up a new instance to share the workload. If the queue is draining down, the “low” alarm will fire and shut down one of the instances. To start with, you need to manually set up your app in an EC2 VM, for a background worker that would mean hosting your code in a Windows Service (I always use Topshelf). If you’re dual-running Azure and AWS, then you can isolate your logic in one library, with a generic entry point that has Start() and Stop()  functions, so your Worker Role and Windows Service are essentially using the same code. When you have your instance set up with the Windows Service running automatically, and you’ve tested it starts up and works properly from a reboot, shut the machine down and take an image of the VM, using Create Image (EBS AMI) from the Web Console: When that completes, you’ll have your own AMI which you can use to spin up new instances, and you’re ready to create your auto-scaling group. You need to dip into the command-line tools for this, so follow this guide to set up the AWS autoscale command line tool. Now we’re ready to go. 1. Create a launch configuration This launch configuration tells AWS what to do when a new instance needs to be spun up. You create it with the as-create-launch-config command, which looks like this: as-create-launch-config sc-xyz-launcher # name of the launch config --image-id ami-7b9e9f12 # id of the AMI you extracted from your VM --region eu-west-1 # which region the new instance gets created in --instance-type t1.micro # size of the instance to create --group quicklaunch-1 #security group for the new instance 2. Create an auto-scaling group The auto-scaling group links to the launch config, and defines the overall configuration of the collection of instances: as-create-auto-scaling-group sc-xyz-asg # auto-scaling group name --region eu-west-1 # region to create in --launch-configuration sc-xyz-launcher # name of the launch config to invoke for new instances --min-size 1 # minimum number of nodes in the group --max-size 5 # maximum number of nodes in the group --default-cooldown 300 # period to wait (in seconds) after each scaling event, before checking if another scaling event is required --availability-zones eu-west-1a eu-west-1b eu-west-1c # which availability zones you want your instances to be allocated in – multiple entries means EC@ will use any of them 3. Create a scale-up policy The policy dictates what will happen in response to a scaling event being triggered from a “high” alarm being breached. It links to the auto-scaling group; this sample results in one additional node being spun up: as-put-scaling-policy scale-up-policy # policy name -g sc-psod-woker-asg # auto-scaling group the policy works with --adjustment 1 # size of the adjustment --region eu-west-1 # region --type ChangeInCapacity # type of adjustment, this specifies a fixed number of nodes, but you can use PercentChangeInCapacity to make an adjustment relative to the current number of nodes, e.g. increasing by 50% 4. Create a scale-down policy The policy dictates what will happen in response to a scaling event being triggered from a “low” alarm being breached. It links to the auto-scaling group; this sample results in one node from the group being taken offline: as-put-scaling-policy scale-down-policy -g sc-psod-woker-asg "--adjustment=-1" # in Windows, use double-quotes to surround a negative adjustment value –-type ChangeInCapacity --region eu-west-1 5. Create a “high” CloudWatch alarm We’re done with the command line now. In the Web Console, open up the CloudWatch view and create a new alarm. This alarm will monitor your metrics and invoke the scale-up policy from your auto-scaling group, when the group is working too hard. Configure your metric – this example will fire the alarm if there are more than 10 messages in my queue for over a minute: Then link the alarm to the scale-up policy in your group: 6. Create a “low” CloudWatch alarm The opposite of step 4, this alarm will trigger when the instances in your group don’t have enough work to do (e.g fewer than 2 messages in the queue for 1 minute), and will invoke the scale-down policy. And that’s it. You don’t need your original VM as the auto-scale group has a minimum number of nodes connected. You can test out the scaling by flexing your CloudWatch metric – in this example, filling up a queue from a  stub publisher – and watching AWS create new nodes as required, then stopping the publisher and watch AWS kill off the spare nodes.

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• Great post about 10 things that kill motivation

  - by MarkPearl

  I read a great post on 10 surefire ways to kill morale. Read it here.

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• Platform Builder: PBWorkspaces CESysgen.bat Not Used?

  - by Bruce Eitman

  One of the things that I like about Windows CE is that I am always learning new things, but in this case it is a bit disturbing. We working with Multi UI (MUI) this week and discovered some problems with Windows CE 5.0 and Chinese language support. These problems don’t exist in CE 6.0. The problem was that in the batch files in Public\CEBASE\oak\misc, specifically weceshellfe.bat, some of the shell components needed are only included if certain LOCALs are selected. English is not one of them, I suppose this is because someone didn’t think that we would ever use them and English – doh. No problem, just work around this in PBWorkspaces\<workspace>\WINCE500\<BPS>\cesysgen.bat. But that didn’t work. After a lot of trial and error, what I determined is that this cesysgen.bat isn’t actually used by Platform Builder any more.  Instead, in that same folder is a <workspace>.bat file that is called by Public\CEBASE\oak\misc\cesysgen.bat. That leads to some new problems though, but solvable, in that what I really wanted to do was add a fix after the batch files in CEBASE run, but <workspace>.bat runs before the other batch files in CEBASE. So what I finally came up with was to add the fix to the PASS2 handling in <workspace>.bat. Copyright © 2010 – Bruce Eitman All Rights Reserved

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• Inversion of Control Resource

  - by MarkPearl

  Well… this is going to be another really short blog posting. I have been meaning to read more about IOC containers and came across this blog post which seemed to really explain the concept well – based on Castle Windsor. I also  enjoyed reading the replies about IOC on stack overflow and what it meant. If anyone knows of other good articles that explain the basics really well – wont you comment them to me.

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• Why was Mr. Scott Scottish?

  - by iamjames

  It's a good question:  of all the engineers in the world, why choose a Scottish engineer?  The Gene Roddenberry probably chose a Scottish engineer because of this guy: That's James Watt, the same guy the unit of energy watt is named after.  He was a Scottish inventor and mechancial engineer who built the first made significant improvements to the steam engine.  Made sense in the 60's, however given the past hundred years if they were to make a new Star Trek they might have started with a German engineer (or maybe Japanese), but since World War II had ended barely 20 years earlier the 20-somethings that had survived the war were now 40-somethings and seeing a German engineer probably wouldn't have gone over too well.

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