My secret identity... The Stig!

I was working with one of my ASP.NET projects this weekend and ran into an interesting problem while I was debugging.  This application was written from the ground up to use ASP.NET identity and OAuth security for all of my authentication and authorization needs.  That also means that my application follows the new default layout for an ASP.NET web forms application, with account management and login capabilities reside in the /Account folder structure.

An interesting series of things happens to web.config when we adapt the OAuth security management in ASP.NET 4.5+  What follows is what I have learned the hard way...

Authentication Information in Web.Config disappears

If you're a long time developer with ASP.NET like me, you're accustomed to the FormsAuthentication configuration in web.config.  With the new authentication and identity modules in ASP.NET 4.5, all of this goes away.  This really tweaked me at first, I got confused and followed the code... and trust me, its all good.

Web.Config has its authentication turned off and all identity providers removed.  Check out this snippet from a fresh web.config in a new ASP.NET 4.5 application:

  <system.web>
    <authentication mode="None" />
    <!-- other stuff -->
    <membership>
      <providers>
        <clear />
      </providers>
    </membership>
    <profile>
      <providers>
        <clear />
      </providers>
    </profile>
    <roleManager>
      <providers>
        <clear />
      </providers>
    </roleManager>
    <!-- other stuff -->
    </system.web>
  <system.webServer>
    <modules>
      <remove name="FormsAuthentication" />
    </modules>
  </system.webServer>

That's some scary stuff right there.  Everything that I've known since ASP.NET was released in 2002 screams out: NOOOOOooooooo!  This is the necessary configuration to turn off all of the embedded and automatically activated security modules in ASP.NET  With that functionality shut off, the OAuth security module can step in.

OAuth Security Configuration

Instead, all of the security configuration goodness is kicked off in a new OWIN-compliant manner from within Startup.cs on the root of the application.

[assembly: OwinStartup(typeof(MyApplication.Startup))]

namespace MyApplication
{
  public partial class Startup
  {
    public void Configuration(IAppBuilder app)
    {
      ConfigureAuth(app);
      app.MapSignalR();
    }
  }
}

Check out that attribute at the top of the file, an OwinStartupAttribute that points to this class that contains the codified configuration of the application.  The class is required to have a Configuration method with the same signature in this snippet.  I'm not clear why the class does not adhere to an interface that enforces the presence of this method, but this is the requirement.  You can see from here, that it calls the ConfigureAuth method in the App_Start/Startup.Auth.cs file.  Its in there that we can find all of the configuration for managing the authentication of resources in the application.

public void ConfigureAuth(IAppBuilder app)
{
 
  // Stuff to configure the Identity data storage
  
  // Enable the application to use a cookie to store information for the signed in user
  // Configure the sign in cookie
  app.UseCookieAuthentication(new CookieAuthenticationOptions
  {
      AuthenticationType = DefaultAuthenticationTypes.ApplicationCookie,
      LoginPath = new PathString("/Account/Login")
      // other stuff
  });
  
  // more stuff down here
}

This is where I was thrown for a loop.  How does ASP.NET know where my login page is?  Its defined right here with the LoginPage configuration property inside of the CookieAuthenticationOptions class.  

How is Authorization Handled?

Finally, how is authorization to pages handled?  In the past, I would write blocks of XML with authorization elements that looked similar to the following...

  <location path="Admin">
    <system.web>
      <authorization>
        <deny users="?" />
        <allow roles="Admin" />
      </authorization>
    </system.web>
  </location>

The good news is that none of that has changed, and we can continue to code high-level authorization rules inside of web.config files in ASP.NET 4.5.

Summary

Its not a good idea to tinker with the default security configuration of ASP.NET unless you know where all of the moving pieces are.  In the past, I knew where everything was referencing from web.config through global.asax.cs to verify connections to my application where authenticated and authorized. In the new Owin enabled ASP.NET, those pieces have moved and are now very descriptive in their new locations.  Coming soon, I have a Pluralsight course that will discuss all of the cool things that you can do to configure ASP.NET OWIN security and other Advanced topics.  I look forward to delivering it for you in the very near future.

Here I am, writing a module for my next Pluralsight course and I ran into an interesting problem.  When I write a custom ASP.NET control, I now have lots of JavaScript and CSS libraries that I want to ship with it.  With the introduction of the Task Runner Explorer in Visual Studio, I decided to try my hand at writing a Gulp script that will combine and compress these static resources inside of my class library project.

Introducing Gulp for the ASP.NET Developer

Gulp is another task runner for use with NodeJS, similar to Grunt.  Unlike Grunt, Gulp runs based on a JavaScript file of instructions and can be run in an asynchronous manner.  This leads to Gulp being a bit easier to read as a series of functions that will run faster than the Grunt JSON configuration file.

To get started with Gulp and Visual Studio:

1. Install NodeJS from www.nodejs.org

2. Install Gulp with the NPM package manager as follows:

npm install gulp -g

This will install Gulp globally and make the gulp command-line executable available.

3. Create a package.json file in the root of your project.  This can be a file that contains just a pair of curly braces.

4. Configure gulp locally to the project by running the following script on the command line at the project root folder:

npm install gulp --save-dev

5. Install a handful of gulp plugins to manage the concatenation, renaming, minifying and notification processes:

npm install gulp-minify-css gulp-concat gulp-uglify gulp-notify gulp-rename --save-dev

With those command issued, we're ready to build our gulpfile.js to contain the instructions for how to automate working with our static resources.

Create a file called gulpfile.js on the root of the project.  This file should be excluded from the project.  Begin by defining a series of variables using gulp's built-in require commands:

var gulp = require('gulp'),
  concat = require('gulp-concat'),
  minifycss = require('gulp-minify-css'),
  rename = require('gulp-rename'),
  notify = require('gulp-notify'),
  uglify = require('gulp-uglify');

Next, we can define a simple gulp task to minify the bootstrap.css file that is in our project:

gulp.task('css', function() {

  return gulp.src('css/bootstrap.css')
    .pipe(rename('mycontrols.min.css'))
    .pipe(minifycss())
    .pipe(gulp.dest('css'))
    .pipe(notify({message: 'Styles minified'}));

});

The name of the task is "css" and it will trigger a function.  The function returns the result of operations on the css/bootstrap.css file.  The file is piped from one operation to the next with the pipe method.  First, the file is renamed to mycontrols,min.css so that the file matches the "mycontrols" project name.  Next, the contents of the CSS file are minified with the minifycss command and then piped to the css folder using the gulp.dest method.  Finally, a notification is triggered with the notify method and the message text specified.

The JavaScript processing is similar:

gulp.task('js', function() {
  
  return gulp.src(['scripts/jquery-1.10.2.js','scripts/respond.js','scripts/bootstrap.js'])
    .pipe(concat('mycontrols.js'))
    .pipe(gulp.dest('scripts'))
    .pipe(rename({suffix: '.min'}))
    .pipe(uglify())
    .pipe(gulp.dest('scripts'))
    .pipe(notify({message: 'Scripts merged and minified'}));

});

This time, I am passing an array of files in to be processed.  The collection are concatenated together with the concat method into the mycontrols.js file and written into the scripts folder with another gulp.dest method.  The filename is renamed with a suffix of .min and sent into the uglify processor for minification.  The results of the uglification are written back to the scripts folder and a notification is triggered with an appropriate message.

Finally, I wrote a default task to call the JS and CSS tasks.  I called this task default:

gulp.task('default', ['js','css'], function() {});

The second argument in this method call is the collection of dependent tasks that should be called before the function is executed.  In this way, the js and css tasks are called asynchronously.

Automating Gulp with Task Runner Explorer

With the Task Runner Explorer extension in Visual Studio, I can connect any and all of these tasks to various steps in the build process.  In my case, I right-clicked on the 'default' task and chose to bind it to the 'Before Build' run time.

Now, every time I build my MyControls project, the gulp default task will run and deliver appropriate CSS and JS files for my controls to use.

Custom Control Project Considerations

Importantly, for this project I marked my gulpfile, package.json, and all of my original CSS and JS files as  Build Action None and Do not copy to output directory.  I did mark the new mycontrols.min.js and mycontrols.min.css as Embedded Resources so that they would be delivered inside of the DLL I will distribute with my controls.

Configuration for files to exclude from my DLL

Configuration for files to include in my DLL

Summary

The new Task Runner Explorer combined with the NodeJS command line interface and Gulp have made automating packaging assets for my custom controls much easier than previously.  Now, visitors to my applications will download one script file and one css file for my controls.  This will provide a faster and easier experience for my visitors and my developers that use my custom ASP.NET controls

This morning, I jumped in to help out my friend Julie Lerman with a question about using jQuery with ASP.NET WebAPI.  In my mind, that's easy... something I've wired up lots of times and shouldn't be a problem. I offered to pair program for a bit and take a look at the code, after all... how hard could it be?

This was an interesting and simple block of jQuery that was expecting JSON from a service.  A simple WebAPI controller, similar to the one we were attempting to query looked a little like this:

  public class ValuesController : ApiController
  {
    // GET api/values
    public IEnumerable<string> Get()
    {
      return new string[] { "value1", "value2" };
    }
  }

That's easy to get data from with jQuery, I can use an AJAX call to get the data from my server with JavaScript like the following:

$.ajax({
  url: "http://localhost:64948/api/values",
  type: 'GET',
  dataType: 'json'
}).done(function(data) { alert(data.length); });

When I run this page from the same server that is hosting my service, no problem.  I get a simple alert box with the number 2.

That wasn't our problem.

In this scenario, Julie was querying a different server that was hosting WebAPI and needed the services of JSONP to make that cross-origin request.  The jQuery documentation indicates that you can simply switch the dataType of your AJAX call to "JSONP" and everything will just work.

No dice... nothing.  We poked and prodded that JavaScript code and got nothing from it.  Then it hit us:  the problem isn't the JavaScript, its the callback coming from the server.  WebAPI needs to know how to issue a command back to our script.

To complete the task and get WebAPI responding properly to a JSONP request, install the JSONP MediaTypeFormatter from NuGet.  Once that is installed, enter your App_Start\WebApiConfig.cs and add to the bottom of the Register method the following line:

GlobalConfiguration.Configuration.AddJsonpFormatter();

Rebuild and re-run the JavaScript and now the done method of the AJAX call is being executed.

We were happy, and all was right in the world.  

What did we learn about this problem and how to write better software?

The short answer is: JavaScript development is REALLY HARD without proper error messages and with connections that fail silently.  There was no indication that the WebAPI was not attempting to call the Done callback method from jQuery.  Additionally, WebAPI wasn't throwing any warning message to indicate that there were arguments passed in that it didn't know what to do with.  This lack of verbose messaging in a debugging environment made it difficult for two experts to be able to track down a problem.

How would an average developer handle this?  We can do better...  I'll write more about this approach to making debuggable (yea, I just invented that word...) software tools next time and how we can improve this experience.

I have always had a problem with multitasking.  Its not something that I can do well, as I prefer to focus on one thing at a time, giving it my undivided attention.  Once I've completed that task, I move on to the next task.  As someone who works from home, I've found several benefits from this approach, and I've also found several pitfalls.  

Successful Techniques

1. Make a list and stick to it

I've made task lists all sorts of ways in the past.  I've used a paper notepad, notepad.exe, Outlook Tasks, OneNote, and Trello.  They all are used for the same thing: allow me to forget future tasks and only focus on the current item.

This is one of the concepts behind Kanban and Scrum.  You can only take one task card at a time to be worked on.  Once the task card is finished, it gets placed into another queue for review and validation by other team members.  Trello is an excellent free tool for this, but has its drawbacks, as do all online task managers.

The biggest problem I have with the online task list manager is what I can the "in your face" problem.  I need to open the application or navigate to the website in order for me to face my task list of the day.  It is all to easy for me to say, "lemme open Facebook first" or "hey what's going on at LinkedIn" before I face my list of tasks for my work session.

However, by keeping a paper list of tasks and leaving them on my desk chair, or on my keyboard.  Now, I need to look at my to-do list before I begin working on anything.  It may seem simple, but it keeps someone like me who can get distracted very easily on task right from the get go.

2. My Office is My Work Space

This sounds like a simple idea, but let me describe for you my mindset.  I have a room in my home dedicated as my home office.  When I am in that room, I am in there for one purpose only: to accomplish 'work tasks'.  After a bit of practice of this habit, I now get in the "working mood" just when I walk into the room.  My mind knows that good stuff will be accomplished once I sit down.

This also has the side-benefit of 'training my family' that when Daddy is in his office, he's working and we should leave him alone.  Not that I want to be an office hermit, but this bit of training can grant me several hours at a time of uninterrupted work.  In a home with two young daughters, this can be a welcome retreat.

3. Get in "The Zone"

Solving a Rubik's Cube

If you've ever been there, you know what I'm talking about.  "The Zone" or "Flow" as psychologists call it can be intoxicating.  This is when your mind is fully immersed in a task and everything around you just falls away as unimportant.  You'll exit the zone and find out that five to ten hours have gone by and you haven't eaten or been to the restroom in that time.

In the film The Social Network, they refer to this phenomena again and again as being "wired in".  The coders in the movie are oblivious to what's going on around them and solely focused on their code:

My current favorite poker chips to shuffle

For me, when I am analyzing some source code to better understand it, I start to enter this mindset.  I'll move further into it as I begin to write code and see the fruits of my progress.  When I need to wait for a compilation or other process to complete, I'll grab a Rubik's cube and solve it while sitting at my desk.  I can usually complete a cube in less than two or three minutes, and this has been an effective tool to keep my mind active.

Another trick I use to keep my mind going involves poker chips.  Yes, I enjoy an occasional game of hold 'em, but in this case I'm not playing poker, just shuffling the chips.  What I do is take a stack of 10 chips, typically of two different colors, and break them into two equal stacks of the same color.  I then merge the two stacks, inserting a white chip between two blue chips.  This should result in the stack perfectly merged, with white chips alternating between blue chips.  I'll repeat this separate and merge process until I get the chips back in a state where the two sets of colored chips are completely isolated from each other, like in the pic above.

Former co-workers will tell you, when they hear the sound of the shuffling poker chips, they know I am deep in thought and stuff is getting accomplished.

Carl and Richard on .NET Rocks had a great episode this week talking to Mark Seeman about getting in the zone.  They have some great tips there, and its worth a listen.

Problem Areas

These are 3 great ideas to help me get in the zone, get focused and get going at a high speed.  Unfortunately, the following problems arise that prevent my productivity.

1. The list runs empty

When I run out of tasks on my list, I end up wandering aimlessly.  This can be a good thing, but typically its a bad thing.  It is a good thing when I can take time to relax, grab a frosty adult beverage from my friends at Redds Apple, and take it easy.  However, my mind is constantly racing at new ideas, and even when I'm not actively working on something, I like to write down ideas in OneNote on my phone.

2. Interruptions - Arrgh!

This is the killer one for me, and where that passage I read at the Franklin Institute grabbed me.  Interruptions murder my productivity.  This can be anything from a text message, a new tweet that mentions me, or some great post from a friend on Facebook.  Kids wandering in to my office complaining about what their mother has chosen for dinner and buggy software that I'm using that prevents me from working productively are more time sinks that I try to avoid.

Like the sign at the beginning of this piece said, you can't truly multi-task.  The best you can hope for is context switching, and synchronizing your current mindset to paper or some other medium that you can use to pick up and return to your previous state quickly.  Coworkers and family members have gotten very frustrated at me when they have attempted to engage me while I am 'in the zone' and I need to take that minute to "save my progress" so that I can resume after I've addressed their questions.

I've also learned to shut those things out, to silence my phone and to use a pair of gaming headphones with decent noise cancelling capabilities to limit the amount of ambient (read: distracting) noise that enters my head.  Combine that with some mellow music (my current preferred tunes are from Lindsey Stirling) and I can stay very focused for hours on end.

3. Outside of my space

When I'm out of my space and can't get comfortable, it is very hard for me to get in the zone.  Sitting at the airport, in a coffee shop, in an office with lots of traffic going by my desk... these are all places that I have found very difficult to enter the zone.  However, I have found tremendous value in the desk in a quiet hotel room.

I'll pull the drapes shut, turn the lights down, so that the only light is coming from my laptop.  With a nice venti caramel macchiato by my side, I can code anything!  Its a strange experience, being away from home and feeling like I'm back in my comfortable office, but it works.

Summary

This is just a collection of tip about what works for me.  Productivity and getting in the zone are difficult things to manage, and I like to manage them as best as possible through these simple environment management techniques.  What works for you?  Share your tips in the space below.

I'm working through an ASP.NET project and suddenly Postback stops working.  I know!  This is the simplest of interactions with an ASP.NET web forms application, and its not WORKING!!  What the heck is wrong with this stupid website?  I mean, I didn't change anything.. I just want my default.aspx form to be able to have a button click button handler.  Is that so DIFFICULT?  Get your act together FRITZ!1!!

I did some digging and digging on this one.  Did I bring in an add-in or library to my project that was preventing the postback from capturing the click event?  I broke out Fiddler and analyzed the traffic, to ensure that the form content was indeed being submitted properly back to the server.  Everything looked good there.

My next analysis step was to take a look at the Request.Form collection.  I should see the __EVENTARGUMENT being populated.  When I opened the Immediate Window and inspected Request.Form, this is what I found:

The Visual Studio Immediate Window when I inspected Request.Form

How is the Request.Form collection empty?  What's the deal with THAT?

I started thinking about the ASP.NET pipeline, and it hit me:  FriendlyUrls.

There's this interesting thing that happens when web forms attempt to post back to pages managed by FriendlyUrls and lack a filename.  This could be any of the following pages in your site:

• /
• /Products/
• /Orders/

You get the idea.  These pages for some reason don't handle postback properly.  With that in mind, I set forth to drop a quick and dirty change to enable this throughout the website.  Fortunately, I can make that change through a URL Rewrite operation.  I added the following event handler to my global.asax.cs file:

    void Application_BeginRequest(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
      var app = (HttpApplication)sender;
      if (app.Context.Request.Url.LocalPath.EndsWith("/"))
      {
        app.Context.RewritePath(
                 string.Concat(app.Context.Request.Url.LocalPath, "default"));
      }
    }

With that, my pages started posting back properly... all was right in the world.

Please note:  you will have this problem with the default ASP.NET project with web forms when FriendlyUrls are enabled.

I arrived at the event half-way through the first day, and walked the six blocks from my hotel to the conference center.  After negotiating the maze of closed sidewalks, locked doors, and blocked escalators, I eventually found my way to registration and the conference speakers room.  At other events, I am familiar with the speakers room containing several long tables with enough space for 20-30 to power up laptops and review their content.

At TechEd, with more than 500 break out sessions, I did not expect the mammoth room that opened up before me.  There was easily room for 100 to work, and every seat was taken on this Monday afternoon.  I noticed a number of people in the room whose sessions I had attended in years past, and understood at that point I made it:  I was at the big show, and this was going to be my turn to present.  The staff took my information and handed me what I had been coveting for years, a pair of speaker shirts - proof positive that I was where I belonged.

In the weeks leading up to arriving in Houston, I had this feeling that I was just pretending that I got the invitation to speak at TechEd.  I had been wanting to be a lecturer at this show since 2008, and there was just no WAY that I could finally have the change to do it.  This moment when I left that room with two purple speaker shirts over my shoulder was tangible verification  - no more denial.

I attended and worked at the Microsoft ASP.NET experts booth on Monday evening and Tuesday afternoon.  Including Tuesday evening, where I appeared at an "Ask the Experts" event, I felt like I was really getting into a groove.  I was wearing my speaker badge and colors, and representing the content well.  ... and then Wednesday happened.

I couldn't sleep Tuesday night.  Maybe it was the killer party that my colleagues at Telerik put on, maybe it was nerves, but it certainly was not for lack of rest.  I woke at 4am on Wednesday morning and got to reviewing and rewriting my demos for the 5pm presentation.  I calculated that I needed to leave the hotel by 2pm to make it in time for my talk.  All morning I tuned, pruned, and practices my session.  I added a joke or two, moved some code around until I got it just the way I wanted it.... and then I left my hotel at 1:30pm.

After a quick lunch at Chipotle across the street, I walked to the venue.  I made my way to the speaker room and sat for a few minutes, re-reading my paper notes and slides one final time and then I left for my room.  When I arrived, I found my friend Mads still presenting his session on Performance Tuning ASP.NET.  It was a great session, with all of the seats filled and standing room only remaining.  

Give the fear only 5 seconds, then forget about it

Once that session ended, I wired up my mic and got on stage.  After connecting my laptop to the series of displays that I needed for this session, I looked out at a mostly empty room and thought: Holy crow, there's a lot of seats out there.  I'm not usually nervous when I look out at my audience, but there was a lot of build up to this one for me, and I started to feel it.  I wandered to the back of the room and took a picture or two, and started to get my mind right.  I like to think of a moment in the first episode of Lost, where Jack explains that he's only going to be afraid for 5 seconds and then block it out.  ... and that's what I did.

I went on stage with 15 minutes to go until my session was scheduled to start, and relied on an old friend of mine to help break the ice.  My childhood friend Rusty Ward has been producing this YouTube series called 'Science Friction' for a year or so now, and I've started showing an episode or two before my sessions start.  The audience enjoys it, and it gets things going the way I want - smiles and engaged.

I set forth after showing a second episode of this series.  Its a great series, and you should check it out if you haven't click the link already.  Anyways, I started my talk and everything ran very well.  You can watch a recording of the screens and my audio here:

Afterward, I had a number of questions and lots of great feedback come in.  Someone called it "the best session of the entire conference" another person said:

"I was hungover all day, and this was such an awesome session that it got my full attention".  

There were many more comments, and I am humbled by the attendees feedback.  Thank you for watching, and thank you for that hour of your time.

Resources from my session

• You can find my slides on SlideShare at:  http://www.slideshare.net/JeffreyTFritz/cool-modernwebforms-clear
• The source code for my demos is at:  https://github.com/csharpfritz/Fritz.TechEd14Demo
• A bundle of related links are on BitLy at:  http://bit.ly/fritzte14

What does this mean for me now?  Honestly, I don't know.  This has been a career goal of mine since 2008.  I've accomplished it, I have the shirts to prove it and now I must move on.  To what?  I'm not sure yet, but there is another Philly Code Camp coming up next month, and more conferences in the Fall.  I hope to see you at more cool events like TechEd in the near future!

The slowness I found was during the use of explorer resources. Every time I opened the file explorer to look for a file on disk, or clicked an open file dialog in an application, the system would just grind to a halt. I had no idea what was going on with the disk, as Task Manager never reported that I had any disk utilization issues.

I did however notice that the issue didn't happen while I was connected to my corporate VPN. When I would disconnect the VPN, things would run smoothly and this was the clue that I needed to solve the problem.

In my windows configuration, I had several drives mapped to resources across the corporate network. When I was not connected to the VPN and my machine was unable to find those network locations, explorer windows were trying to connect and show information about those drives no matter the operation I was trying to accomplish.

Solution

I disconnected these mapped drives, and now my windows file explorer is running just as fast and snappy as ever. This seems like a simple problem, as the mapped network locations should be able to detect that they are not connected to the corporate network and shouldn't try to access those resources every time I access an explorer window.

If you're having this same problem, check your mapped drives. Perhaps you have the same problem that I had.

NFC stands for "Near Field Communications" and is a technology that allows stickers or cards that have very small wiring in them that is activated when in the presence of a reader that emits a very small power source to read the content stored in that wiring.  The Nokia Lumia phones have these readers embedded in them.

I came home from the conference with a handful of these stickers and was looking at various ways that I could use them.  In the Lumia phone, you can use these NFC tags to automate tasks on the phone.  After tinkering with a few ideas, I hit on a good one. 

if you're like me, you use the GPS on your phone... A LOT.  When I'm out driving, especially recently when I am travelling for Telerik, I use my GPS to help me get home.   Its always a pain to have to locate the HERE Drive app on the phone and enter my home address... so I decided to automate this.

Writing an NFC tag is a pretty easy thing to do.  I used an app on the Windows Phone called NFC Interceptor to read and write my stickers.   I selected a Geo Tag NFC tag type to write, and was prompted to enter a latitude and longitude for the location.  I don't know about you, but I don't know the precise geographical location where I live... its just a few houses down from the corner where the stop sign is.  Ok?

I found my exact latitude and longitude of my location by using Google Maps.  I navigated to my home address and right clicked on "What's Here" to see my latitude and longitude output in the Search box of the screen.  In the screenshot below, I'm using this technique on the Liberty Bell pavilion in downtown Philadelphia:

Google Maps for the Liberty Bell in Philadephia

With the GPS coordinates handy, I entered them into the NFC tag fields on the phone and tapped the sticker I wanted to write these driving directions to.   I then took this sticker and put it in a place that was VERY convenient:

My NFC "Get me home" GPS sticker

Now, when I get in the car at some strange location, I can always find my way home by tapping my phone on the sun visor.

What innovative ways have you used an NFC tag?  Let me know in the comments below.

The Pro Camera app adds some great features to make it much easier to adjust and take great pictures with controls for white-balance, contrast, ISO, and flash all on-screen while using the camera view-finder.   With the GDR2 update from Microsoft, you can now configure this alternate camera application to run when you press the camera button on your Windows Phone.

New Camera Settings Options - Image Courtesy of Paul Thurott 

But....  Here's the 'feature' that I discovered while at lunch with a friend from Microsoft:  if you have changed the camera button to trigger a non-standard camera app AND you have a security passcode configured for your phone, you will not be able to get the instant camera launch feature from a powered off state without keying in your passcode.  

This is a great feature of the phone:  I can quickly take pictures by pressing the camera button and taking a photo.  However, with this change I need to key in my passcode before the camera will open up.  It feels like a half-complete feature for security purposes, to prevent an application from gaining access to the phone without going through security.

Brinkmann Smoke'N Pit

I'm not a fan of cooking... but over the summer I am just nutty about grilling food on my backyard barbecue.  Two years ago, I got myself a Brinkmann Smoke'N Pit and have had a gloriously fun time since.  Over this summer, I've started experimenting with grill techniques and meats to cook.  Most recently, I embarked on smoking pork ribs for the first time.  I have captured all the steps I took to cook these tasty meats and will describe them here for your reference.

I use a technique called 3-2-1 for ribs.  Very simply, the ribs are smoked for 3 hours, cooked in foil for 2 hours, and then basted with barbecue sauce in the smoker for a final hour.  With this framework for cooking the pork, here is how I prepared to cook one on evening last week.

Preparation

There are two separate things to prepare before I start cooking:  the grill and the food.  I like to start preparing the grill first, as I can start the fire and switch to food preparation while the coals are getting hot.

Grill Prep

I use charcoal briquettes and prefer to light them with a chimney starter.  I will wad up a bit of newspaper and light in the bottom of the starter.  While the coals are lighting, I begin soaking apple wood chips and clean up the cooking surface.  I place empty drip pans under where I will place the ribs, and add a small pan of water to keep the cooking area humid.  You can see photos of these items below, including a picture that shows how the firebox is next to and below my cooking surface.

Food Prep

First thing when preparing meat is to rinse it, ensuring that any loose dirt or debris is clear before I start to dress it.  With pork ribs, there is a membrane on the back of the meat that needs to be removed.  I usually cut a slit down the middle and remove the white membrane with the help of a paper towel.  Next, I have been using a pork rub from McCormick to douse and rub in to the top of the meat.  I also prepare a small spray bottle with apple juice to be used during the three hour smoking time.

The First Three Hours

Once the coals have started turning white in the chimney starter, I dump them into the firebox and place the ribs on the cooking surface to the right.  Next, I sprinkle the apple wood on the coals and close both doors to the grill. 

At this point, I start setting timers.  The first timer is for 30 minutes and the second timer is for three hours.  At the conclusion of 30 minutes, I use the spray bottle filled with apple juice to coat the ribs so that they stay wet.  My goal is to continuously infuse an apple flavor through the smoke and liquid.  Every 30 minutes, leading up to the three hour timer's expiration, I will spray the ribs to keep them moist.  Photos below of each of the four spray jobs on the ribs. At the three hour mark, I wrap the ribs in aluminum foil and add some apple juice to the inside of the sealed package.  At this point, I usually add more freshly lit coals to the firebox, and  I leave the ribs in the foil for two hours to cook.

Final Steps in Smoking

After cooking in the foil for two hours, I open the foil and expect to see the bones starting to protrude from the bottom of the meat.  This is a sign that they are almost done cooking.  I discard the foil and then cover the top of the ribs with a wet sauce.  This is a major no-no for some in the Southern United States where they prefer dry ribs, but me... I like my ribs with a great sauce on them.  Recently, I've taken a liking to Bulls Eye Texas Style sauce.  With a coating of that on the product, I close up the grill and let them cook for another hour. 

At the conclusion of that hour, these ribs look glorious.. and certainly taste that way too.  They should be firm, and not fall apart in your hands. 

The Finished Product

if you have any tips for how I can improve my technique or something that I'm missing, let me know in the comments below.   Best of luck to you in grilling this season!

• Launch the Settings application, you know that gear shaped tile, on your phone
• Swipe to the right to the applications menu

The settings -> application menu on my phone

The "location" settings for the camera

Easy configuration of the camera... I would have expected to be able to access this configuration from the "photo settings" application bar button in the camera application, but this is a good second choice location for the settings.