I also deactivated my bhamwriter account on twitter. While I love creative writing, I’m draw elsewhere right now.

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Using Elmah with Azure Table Storage

How to create a ChildWindow Login Popup for Windows Phone 7

Summary

This post will show you how to pop up a ChildWindow on the app page to grab the user’s login credentials. The control allows the old username and password to be passed into the control so that previous values can appear. The tab order/enter key switches from textbox to textbox to button.

How to Get and Install an SSL Certificate for a Windows Azure Deployment (Web Service) used by Windows Phone 7

Summary

In all development processes, you need to perform a security review in order to responsibly handle your user’s data . With my Windows Phone 7 application, the process turned into a huge decision and many incremental steps to handle. This blog post will enumerate how I took my unsecured WP7 app and corresponding Windows Azure website and secured them. This blog includes a detailed step-by-step of deploying a SSL certificate on Windows Azure.

Why I did it

I not-so-patiently waited for Windows Phone 7 to release and bought it ten minutes before the T-Mobile store officially opened at the Mall on November 8. Please accuse me of an aggressively overboard enthusiasm for an unproven product! That’s what I had and still do. I wanted to learn both the development and design sides of this microcosm. My husband suggested I build an app and game review site. The distraction of the actual site development was too much so I was thrilled when WP Apps Hub advertised for a writer. I was fortunate to have a great boss in Justin.

WP7 Community

I reviewed Windows Phone 7 games and apps. After looking at so many games and apps, I learned a ton about the people who make them. The WP7 Community is awesome. The developers are wonderfully enthusiastic, talented, and love the medium. While the community isn’t quite as organized as it could be, and the division of Silverlight versus XNA is distracting, I’m thrilled to see great technical leaders stepping up and caring for the technology and community.

UX

Microsoft, and the community, can provide only so many sample apps to learn from. Since design isn’t my strength, I needed to see both the good and bad User Designs on the Phone, and understand what made them so. This job was absolutely great for that. I took notes. I learned.

Infections

Justin, my boss at WP Apps Hub, and I both were interested in developing apps for the WP7 Marketplace. That passion was slightly distracting but completely illustrates how infectious mobile development is. 

Software Development

So I’m off developing a Silverlight app for the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace. It’s a business app (a.k.a. Aggregated Information) with a very small market (Windows Azure). Granted. But it’s the coolest market , in my opinion, so I’m happy to work on it – which is the whole point. Follow your passions. I’ll follow mine.

Where to Find Me

My WP7 development work is supported by posts over at Project 31a.

He sleeps in a regular twin bed. He went right from crib to twin without a problem. I bought a bed rail that fit completely under the mattress and hugged it tight. However, the bed rail’s main surface area, the wall that actually kept him in bed, was mesh.

Somehow, one of the holes in the mesh stretched. Then enlarged. Then ripped into the next hole. And so forth. I ignored it while only his hand could get through. Then his arm. Then his head. Ack! This took weeks but it happened and a swell of panic rose within me every time I saw the bed rail. I chucked it. But now he could fall out of his bed. I pushed his huge, old, falling-apart rocker next to his bed but that didn’t look much safer.

Then I went to Costco. If you are member of Costco, Sams, or any of those warehouse clubs, you know there is a danger to impulse-buy there. They had plush adult-size body pillows. I just had to get the kids one each.

My thought was it could be the new bed rail. It’s huge and soft. The rocker will hold it in. He immediately crawled up on it and laid down. I told him he is supposed to sleep beside it, hug it. No, no, no. He wants to sleep on top of it. He demonstrates. I panic. This is worse, not better.

He is demonstrating our compromise below.

I won’t bore you with the whole my-6-months-old-computer-died story. But let’s just say 2-day Dell hardware support is more a guideline, than a rule.

I wrote an app for the Windows Phone marketplace because coding wp7 is fun! The app is a cheesy game and I haven’t even had time to push out my latest version. Cripes. I’ve been busy.

I’m writing for WP Apps Hub, getting on a regular schedule there. I’ve got a stealth Windows Phone 7 project with Wayne since he’s Mr. Azure in our house. And I’m trying to eek out time to write for Kulshan.com and the 31a project.

Oh, and the book. I’m on my third or fourth draft. I can’t remember now. But still plugging away. Getting closer…

A friend loaned me The Eyre Affair and I absolutely loved it. Literary science fiction with a huge smirk. That’s the last thing I’ve read. No time.

What have you been up to?

On top of that, I’m writing WP7 app reviews over at WP App Hub just to keep my fingers nimble. Who needs to write a full-length novel, when I can write an app review in 500 words? Just kidding, Mom, please don’t cry. Really, the tears already? I’ll write the book, promise!

And then, of course, is the actual holiday: food, gifts, etc. Covered. Double-covered! Thank goodness I ‘m not the cook in the house. My biggest responsibility is picking up the Tiramisu and Cannolis from Torre. And taking care of the kids. Where are those kids anyway? They are far too quiet sometimes.

So happy National Holiday tomorrow. Or, if you’re living on the edge and don’t mind a little non-pc up in here, Merry Christmas.

In case you are wondering, the class needs:

• 32 cupcakes or cookies
• 32 juice boxes (if two parents want to split these – just communicate with each other so you get the same thing)
• Bag of pretzels
• Bag of chocolate kisses (no nuts, please)
• Set of napkins

Very doable list. And I want to help. I’m a mom too. So I’m thinking I can send an e-bag-o-pretzels. People send e-cards all the time. How hard could it be?

Or I could show up, my two kids in tow. We probably know some of the songs to be sung. And I was invited. It’s not like I’m crashing.

However, what about the parent who is supposed to be getting this email, instead of me? “I never got the email. You know how the Internet is…” Or do they know? Did they purposely misspell their email address, hoping not to have to bring anything for these parties? I have a rather specific email address that received this list of party supplies. It’s not as easy as MOM123, which could easily be MOM132, or moom123. You know what I mean?

Of course, the other parents hit REPLY ALL to this request for supplies so I get to see what everyone else signed up for. How Sweet! Literally.

So in case your kid’s class needs an e-bag-o-pretzels, here ya go.

I finished this story last night and have now found a new author to read. Yeah! And she has several other books. Yeah!

In terms of story craft, I will have to read the book over as expected. However, on the first read, one chapter stuck out because it was so unlike all the others previous to it. There was a point of having it in the book and craft-wise, I was suspicious of what that was.

The story follows two main characters who are married to each other, one is a Judge and the other is a Sheriff’s Deputy. Both are from rural, farming North Carolina so farm life and the rural south are very much a part of the story. The story is very heavy-handed with farm, crop, and rural life. Some readers might say that is characterization, and I would agree. For some readers, it would go too far and detract from the story. There is a line there. Since I’m interested in the characterization, I was more than willing to see where it went.

The chapter I wondered about is a family scene where the many generations of the Judge’s family decide what to plant for the next season. There are many people in the chapter and the level of detail in the conversation is intense. I was most interested in how the chapter drove the story which was a murder mystery. The characters discuss gross profits, pesticides, labor and equipment requirements among other things. Not once is the murder mentioned. I’m sure if I went back into the chapter and read it, at least one tertiary detail would be there for the over-all mystery.

The point of the chapter is educational to the reader. The level of detail is important to understand the motive behind the murder. As a writer, the question is always, “Is there a better way to present this?”

My main concern is that it is dumped into a single chapter that sticks out. It probably wouldn’t be so obvious to the average reader just going along for the ride. It was skillfully done, in dialogue, with context. I’m wondering what are some other ways to do this? Info dump to the reader without losing the reader?