Greg's Cool [Insert Clever Name] of the Day

Windows 8 RP now available via MSDN Subscribers Download

2012-05-31T11:50:00.001-07:00

Found via the MSDN Subscriber Downloads RSS feed, MSDN Subscriber Downloads - product availability depends on your subscription program details.

Downloading it now...

In the coming minutes I'm sure it will also be available in other public areas/sites/pages too...

Windows Server 2012 RC now available for download

2012-05-31T11:07:00.001-07:00

Download Windows Server 2012 Release Candidate Datacenter

"The next release of Windows Server, Windows Server 2012, will offer businesses and hosting providers a scalable, dynamic, and multitenant-aware, cloud-optimized infrastructure. It securely connects across premises and helps IT Professionals to respond to business needs faster and more efficiently.

Windows Server 2012 Release Candidate (RC):

Takes you beyond virtualization

Delivers the power of many servers with the simplicity of one

Opens the door to every app on any cloud

Enables the modern work style

Need more information? See the product details page.

...

..."

And so the Windows 8/Windows Server 2012 RC release process begins...

I dig that they are releasing this as both an ISO and VHD. NOTE: At the time I'm writing this, I'm not able to download the VHD, instead getting a 404. The ISO is downloading fine for me, so this is likely just a release day thing...

Work Smart Guides updated. Don't write your own "how to use X/Y/Z Microsoft tech," download and customize these!

2012-05-30T18:04:00.001-07:00

Education - WorkSmart Guides - Updated ready-made IT user documentation

"...

One of the godsends for me was a set of documents called Work Smart Guides, which walked me through the basics of some of the new technology I was encountering.

As our IT team describe it, Work Smart Guides bridge the gap between technology and users. Work Smart guides provide employees with scenario-based, best-use productivity aids on Microsoft products and technologies.

...

Updated ready-made IT guides

The Microsoft IT Team have just updated the published versions that you could modify and publish for your users. This is a great step – I’m guessing that lots of schools, TAFEs and Universities are either producing user documentation for staff, or want to. And I bet that 80-90% of the content is identical in each institution. So these guides would make a good starter for 10, either for the format, or the instructions, or simply the screenshots. As an example, here’s the Email Basics one.

The subjects covered in the step-by-step guides for users include:

Protecting data with BitLocker

Getting started with email

Transfer files and settings to a new computer

Collaborating with SharePoint

An overview of collaboration tools

Customising SharePoint sites

SharePoint workspaces

Integrating Outlook with SharePoint

Basics of managing email (Are you a stacker or a filer?)

Office tips for Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Word

Outlook email signatures

New features for users in Windows 7

Securing Windows Phone

Get started with Outlook Web Access

Successful meetings with Lync

Download the Work Smart Guides

There are 36 of them, and they come in one big Zip file for you to play with:

..." [GD: Click through for the download]

These are short and sweat guides that you can use as the base for your internal guides. Update the logo and style and you've got professional looking internal doc's. Remember good writers borrow, great ones steal...

SELECTing to make your queries more robust...

2012-05-30T17:51:00.001-07:00

FatherJack - TSQL formatting - a sure fire way to start a conversation.

There are probably as many opinions on ways to format code as there are people writing code and I am not here to say that any one is better than any other. Well, that isn't true. I am here to say that one way is better than another but this isn't a matter of preference or personal taste, this is an example of where sloppy formatting can cause TSQL to weird and whacky things but following some simple methods can make your code more reliable and more robust when .

Take these two pieces of code, ready to run against your regular, vanilla AdventureWorks database

...

By using these two simple methods you can be more confidant that a change to TSQL wont result in a broken view, function or procedure and therefore anything like SQL Agent jobs or SSRS reports that rely on those objects will also function as and when expected.

..."

While I'm not a fan of table aliases (not sure why, but I'd rather use the full table name... less mental runtime translation I guess) this article has me re-thinking that a little. If they not only shorten the T-SQL coding but can also add query time validation like this, that's something to consider. Hum....

Clippy is back! (kind of...) Add Clippy to your web site today with Clippy.JS

2012-05-30T17:42:00.001-07:00

Clippy.JS

"Add Clippy or his friends to any website for instant nostalgia. Our research shows that people love two things: failed Microsoft technologies and obscure Javascript libraries. Naturally, we decided to combine the two.

Clippy.js is a full Javascript implementation of Microsoft Agent (AKA Clippy and friends), ready to be embedded in any website. Pick an assistant below and mash some animation buttons! Our favorite is Links the cat.

Motivation

During lunch a few weeks ago we thought it would be cool to have a fully functional Clippy that can be embedded in any website. We fiddled around with it and we had an unexpected amount of fun laughing at Clippy and his antics.

We started thinking about the developers' state of mind when they created Clippy. Did they think it would really help people? It seems that Microsoft really believed that Assistants were the way of the future.

We built Clippy.js over the weekend to share that fun and whimsy with everyone, and to remind people to try new and risky things, even when they seem silly

..."

Come on, you know you want to add Clippy or Merlin or Rover to your website, admit it! :)

Besides clippy.js, make sure you check out this page too. This page is all HTML, yet feels so very Word like. Cool on top of cool... LOL

(The Morning Brew - The Morning Brew #1116)

How many ways are there to create a File Watcher? Well, here's three at least...

2012-05-29T17:47:00.001-07:00

MECUM – .NET TECHNOLOGY BLOG - Daily Problems – How to Write a Filewatcher in Three Possible Ways

During my excessive web-sessions regarding .NET I often stumble over questions and articles regarding file monitoring applications. Either as stand-alone applications or in conjunction with Windows Services.

For years know this discussions goes on. With this post I want to show the three methods I have used over the last few years and also give a good usage-scenario for “File Watchers” on Windows.

System.IO.FileSystemWatcher – The “Standard” Way

Using WMI – Windows Messaging [Management] Instrumentation to Watch Directories

The Third and Last Method to Write a FileWatcher – The Windows 7 API-Codepack

..."

I've known about the first two methods, but the third was new to me. Sure I've known about the Windows API Code Pack for years, just didn't know I could use it this way. I love our industry, there's something to learn every day|hour|minute...

Mighty Metro Morphing! - Design case study of morphing a HTML5 page into a Windows 8 Metro app

2012-05-29T17:01:00.001-07:00

Microsoft Downloads - Design case study: Website to Metro style app (downloadable version)

"This article shows you how to reimagine your website(s) as a Metro style app. This is the downloadable version of the article found here: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=253105

Version: 1.0
Date published: 5/29/2012

Language: English

Website Design case study.pdf, 2.9 MB

Designing websites has been a common practice for decades. Now you can use the web technologies you are familiar with, including HTML5, Cascading Style Sheets, Level 3 (CSS3), and JavaScript, to build Metro style apps for Windows. Here we explore how to expose the capabilities of a website to make it a great Metro style app for Windows 8 and show ways to provide additional value, personalization, and richer experiences using features of the Windows 8 platform."

Looks like a pretty straight forward PDF'ing of the original web content, Design case study: Website to Metro style app. Nice to have if you want to eReader this...

Nick says, "Screw the Power Users"

2012-05-29T13:58:00.001-07:00

Nick Bradbury - Screw the Power Users

"...

But then I made FeedDemon. It's still a pretty geeky product, but it's not just for power users. FeedDemon users range from hardcore developers to computer newbies.

At first I built FeedDemon as though my customers were geeks like me, since that was what I was used to. Power users were happy with all the features and all the options, but the extra baggage made it harder for less technical people to use the product. It scared them away.

So with each new version I tried to simplify the user interface, and dropped features & options that complicated the product. FeedDemon became more popular as a result, but you’d never know it if you visited my online support forums.

I’d come out with new versions that I thought dramatically improved the product, only to find my forums filled with complaints from power users who wanted the return of some obscure option, or were upset that I wasn't adding the geeky features they wanted.

Sales went up, but positive feedback went down. I had built FeedDemon with the wrong customer in mind, and I paid for it by spending a ton of time defending each release.

..."

I've been a FeedDemon user for many years and also been following the discussions in its support feed. I've found myself laughing, shaking my head and wondering at WTH(eck) at some of the discussions/requests. Having released my own products and solutions, Nick's post above resonated with me a little.

In short, my take away was that if you're releasing software, carefully consider EVERY knob and feature you expose. Some consider your feature set a contract of sorts and will fight tooth and nail to keep them as is. Also consider your audience. If your product, solution, source, program or app is available to anyone else, then remember you are no longer the audience.

So what do you do? One thing comes to my mind, runtime telemetry/analysis. If you can show hard numbers that you have 1000 users, and feature X is used by only 1, then I think it's easier to justify killing that one feature. But if you don't have hard numbers, then you're just guessing how many use what features... And I don't know about you, but I suck at guessing (I always say to myself, "but this is SO cool, everyone will love this!" or "No one uses THAT!!!"... sigh...)

Also start simple and try to stay simple. Even power users learn to accept and appreciate simple, as long as it "just works."

Finally, if you release software (or anything for that matter), grow a thick skin. You will never, ever, ever, please everyone and you'll likely only ever hear from the squeaky wheels (which might lead you to think you suck... You don't! If your brave enough to release anything, you're still heads and shoulders above those who are...)

Free eBook'ed guidance - "Developing an Advanced Windows Phone 7.5 App that Connects to the Cloud"

2012-05-29T11:51:00.001-07:00

Microsoft Downloads - Developing an Advanced Windows Phone 7.5 App that Connects to the Cloud – Book Download

This is a PDF version of the on-line guidance "Developing an Advanced Windows Phone 7.5 App that Connects to the Cloud"

Quick details

Version:1
Date published: 5/25/2012

Language: English

Developing an Advanced Windows Phone 7.5 App that Connects to the Cloud.pdf, 4.2 MB

After reading this book, you will be familiar with how to design and implement advanced applications for Windows Phone that take advantage of remote services to obtain and up-load data while providing a great user experience on the device.

..."

From the Preface;

Windows® Phone provides an exciting opportunity for companies and developers to build applications that travel with users, are interactive and attractive, and are available whenever and wherever users want to work with them. The latest release of Windows Phone furthers this opportunity by enabling you to build many classes of applications that were not previously possible. By combining Windows Phone applications with on-premises services and applications, or remote services and applications that run in the cloud (such as those using the Windows Azure™ technology platform), developers can create highly scalable, reliable, and powerful applications that extend the functionality beyond the traditional desktop or laptop, and into a truly portable and much more accessible environment.

This book describes a scenario concerning a fictitious company named Tailspin that has decided to embrace Windows Phone as a client device for their existing cloud-based application. Their Windows Azure-based application named Surveys is described in detail in a previous book in this series, Developing Applications for the Cloud on the Microsoft Windows Azure Platform 2nd Edition. For more information about that book, see the page by the same name on MSDN®.

In addition to describing the client application, its integration with the remote services, and the decisions made during its design and implementation, this book discusses related factors, such as the design patterns used, and the ways that the application could be extended or modified for other scenarios.

The result is that, after reading this book, you will be familiar with how to design and implement advanced applications for Windows Phone that take advantage of remote services to obtain and upload data while providing a great user experience on the device.

Who This Book Is For
This book is part of a series on Windows Azure service and client application development. However, it is not limited to only applications that run in Windows Azure. Windows Phone applications can interact with almost any service—they use data exposed by any on-premises or remote service. Even if you are building applications for Windows Phone that use other types of services (or no services at all), this book will help you to understand the Windows Phone environment, the development process, and the capabilities of the device.

This book is intended for any architect, developer, or information technology (IT) professional who designs, builds, or operates applications and services for Windows Phone. It is written for people who work with Microsoft® Windows-based operating systems. You should be familiar with the Microsoft .NET Framework, Microsoft Visual Studio® development system, and Microsoft Visual C#®. You will also find it useful to have some experience with Microsoft Expression Blend® design software and the Microsoft Silverlight® browser plug-in, although this is not a prerequisite.

208 pages, all free. Looks well formatted and not just a PDF grab of the web content...

Say goodbye to the Moon[light]... Moonlight (Silverlight for Linux) is officially abandoned.

2012-05-29T11:41:00.001-07:00

InfoQ - Miguel de Icaza on ASP.NET MVC, Moonlight, and the Android Lawsuit

"...

InfoQ: Before Novell was bought out, there were some people working on getting Moonlight to run on Android tablets. Is that effort still underway?

Miguel: We have abandoned Moonlight.

InfoQ: I'm sorry to hear that, Moonlight looked very promising. Was it just a lack of manpower or do you there is no longer a future for browser-based Silverlight/Moonlight?

Silverlight has not gained much adoption on the web, so it did not become the must-have technology that I thought would have to become.

And Microsoft added artificial restrictions to Silverlight that made it useless for desktop programming.

These days we no longer believe that Silverlight is a suitable platform for write-once-run-anywhere technology, there are just too many limitations for it to be useful. These days we believe that in the C# world the best option is to split the code along the lines of the presentation layer. The user would reuse a core part of their application across all platforms, and write a new UI specifically for each platform they target: iOS with MonoTouch, Android with MonoDroid, Mac with MonoMac, Windows with WPF or Winforms or Mac, Web with ASP.NET and Windows and Linux with Gtk

It is not write-once-run-everywhere, but the result are applications that can exploit the native facilities and create native experiences on each platform.

..."

While this is kind of sad, it makes some sense. I mean, I wonder what the real world usage numbers for this was? I'd much rather the team at Xamarin work on stuff that's truly viable for the long term...

(via I Programmer - Mono Kills Open Source Silverlight)

Related Past Post XRef:
Moonlight (Silverlight for Linux) v1.0 RTM’s

Two tips for app.config. One about a shared config between different projects and the other on moving sections to external config files

2012-05-25T17:36:00.001-07:00

MECUM – .NET TECHNOLOGY BLOG - Daily Problems – Sharing One App.config With Multiple Class Libraries, Assemblies

You create a project and you want to share a single app.config during development, with different class libraries and one executable.

Here is a simple solution. You create a simple assembly (class library type project) and add a static class to it, which offers you the access to the app.config of the current application that executes the loaded class-library:

The Wit and Ramblings of David Giard - Moving Config Sections to External Files

An App.config file or a Web.config file are great places to store configurable information – information that generally doesn’t change; but we want to be able to change easily (i.e., without rebuilding and redeploying the application.) Examples include connection strings (stored in the config file’s <connectionStrings> section) and application-wide name-value pairs (stored in the config file’s <appSettings> section).

We can add more flexibility by moving a section to an external file and linking to that file from the config file.

By splitting the file, we can manage and deploy only those settings separate from the rest of the configuration.

To do so, we create a new text file and copy that section into that file; then use the configSource attribute of the section tag in the original config file to point to the new file.

For example, the following app.config contains all the application’s connection strings and application settings

...

..."

Now if we combine these two... MUAHAHAHAHAHA...(oh, sorry, it's been a long week)

IIS Transform Manager 1.0 (RTW) An extensible media transform engine with "watch folder" job submission, queuing, management, integrated media transcoding/container format repackaging

2012-05-25T17:29:00.001-07:00

Microsoft Downloads - IIS Transform Manager 1.0 (RTW) [x86, x64]

Runs encoding tasks to convert media files to on-demand Smooth Streams for Silverlight clients and Apple mobile digital devices.

IIS Transform Manager 1.0 is an extensible media transform engine that enables "watch folder" job submission, queuing, management, integrated media transcoding/container format repackaging, and batch-encryption of on-demand audio and video files. One example of a media transform is transcoding Windows Media-formatted and MP4-formatted files, or other encoder-supported file formats, to on-demand Smooth Streams for delivery to Smooth Streaming-compatible clients (such as Silverlight). Another example is repackaging Smooth Streaming fragments encoded with H.264 (AVC) video and AAC-LC audio codecs to MPEG-2 Transport Stream (MPEG-2 TS) segments for delivery to Apple® mobile digital devices. Transform Manager can be integrated with the IIS Smooth Streaming feature in IIS Media Services, which delivers the converted content.

I've not seen much else about this yet, but I thought this kind of interesting and cool...

A Microsoft SQL Server DMV/DMF cheat-sheet with a list of DMV's every SQL DBA should know...

2012-05-25T17:16:00.001-07:00

SQL Canada (@SQLCAN) - A Microsoft SQL Server DMV/DMF Cheat-Sheet

I am asked this question by Microsoft SQL Server customers again and again: “What dynamic management views (DMV) or dynamic management functions (DMF) should I use?” The short answer is, as many as you need. The detailed answer is, well, it depends. There are well over 150 DMV/DMFs spread across 20 some categories in 2012 now, and it is a daunting challenge trying to remember all these. I don’t think I have used all of these, I don’t think I ever will. The use of these really stems from what issues you are trying to deal with or what information you need from SQL Server. Since the use for most DMVs is scenarios based, I am listing here DMV/DMFs that I think every DBA should get familiar with. Now I am not saying this is an exhaustive list, but I find it a good starting point.

...

Using DMV/DMFs

Instead of just giving you random SQL statements against the DMV/DMFs listed above, I am going to walk through the DMV and build the corresponding SQL statement based on information I want to collect.

For starters we will look to answer the following question: who is connected to SQL Server? We have in particular two DMVs to give us that information; sys.dm_exec_connections and sys.dm_exec_sessions. The sys.dm_exec_connections returns information for only user connections, whereas sys.dm_exec_sessions returns information for both user connections and system sessions. There is one-to-one relationship between the two DMVs. When looking at just the sys.dm_exec_sessions we can identify the system sessions by looking at the session_id column; values greater than or equal to 51 are user connections and be low are system processes.

...

..."

"Hi, my name is Greg and I don't know near enough about all the goodness available in SQL Server DMV's and DMF's..."

System Center 2012 Configuration Manager free eBooks from the field

2012-05-25T17:09:00.001-07:00

SharePointEduTech - System Centre configuration manager 2012 FREE eBooks

"My very good friend and network administrator Neil Hodgkinson has spent the last few months writing an eBook on how to setup and configure SSCM 2012 and he has now made these available free of charge from his blog Technodge.

These are very much step by step books on the configuration from opening the box (Or downloading) right through to how to deploy your first operating systems through the product.

You will also find on his site the start of his next series of eBooks around the subject of Application virtualization using Microsoft App-V 5 much more to come on this subject.

..."

Technodge eBooks

e-learning eBooks free downloadable documents and guides

Got to love the guys who take the time to write and share in this way...

LINQ Koans - Learn LINQ by doing LINQ

2012-05-25T17:01:00.001-07:00

CodePlex - LINQ_Koans

Koans allow you to 'try out' aspects of a language while working in the language. In these koans, you just download the project, unzip it and open it in VS2010. Work with source the files in the following order:

1) LinqSynax.cs

2) LinqLambdaSyntax.cs

3) ExtendedLinqLamdbaSyntax.cs

As you change the blank (variable) to the correct answer and get the tests to pass, be sure to ask yourself after you get a green bar for each method, 'What did I just learn?'

This is a pretty cool means to learn LINQ by doing. Based on Unit Tests, you scroll down the class, "fixing" each test by replacing the "____" with the correct value.

Think you're a ‘badass innovator?’ The President is looking for people just like you...

2012-05-25T16:50:00.001-07:00

NextGov - White House seeks ‘badass innovators’

"The White House is seeking 20 high-powered Web and mobile developers for short-term assignments aimed at reducing the government’s online footprint, making agency data more accessible and rendering federal contracting less onerous for small businesses, federal Chief Technology Officer Todd Park said Wednesday.

The Presidential Innovation Fellows program will start in July, Park said at a TechCrunch conference in New York City.

“Basically, what we’re looking for is badass innovators," he said. "[For] the baddest of the badasses out there to come to the government for focused six-to-12 month tours of duty to partner with our best innovators on game-changing projects . . . The idea is to work in a lean startup mode [and to] score a lot of significant points within six months.”

..."

WhiteHouse.gov - Presidential Innovation Fellows

The Presidential Innovation Fellows will pair top innovators from the private sector, non-profits, or academia with top innovators in government to collaborate on game-changing solutions that aim to deliver significant results in six months. Each team of innovators will work together in-person in Washington, DC on focused sprints while being supported by a broader community of interested citizens throughout the country. What makes this initiative unique is its focus on unleashing the ingenuity and know-how of Americans from all sectors.

The five projects that will launch in summer 2012 have straightforward goals: to improve the lives of the American people, saving taxpayer money, and fueling job creation. This is innovation aimed at making a difference for all Americans.

1. MyGov

2. Open Data Initiatives

3. Blue Button for America

4. RFP-EZ

5. The 20% Campaign

A friend of mine turned me onto this (Thanks Alan!) and while I doubt I'm badass enough, I thought this was easily cool enough to blog about (because I know some of you ARE badass enough!). Do you whine about the government, about how it doesn't use tech enough? Think you've got the right stuff to show them just how tech can change the world? Click on through and sign-up!

Using NodeXL to analyze social networks and more...

2012-05-24T16:51:00.001-07:00

Sunlight Foundation - Tools for Transparency: A How-to Guide for Social Network Analysis with NodeXL

This post by guest blogger Justin Grimes is the second and last half of a special edition of our Tools for Transparency series by guest blogger Justin Grimes series. Justin (@justgrimes) is a PhD candidate at the University of Maryland's College of Information Studies, a research assistant at the Information Policy and Access Center (iPAC), and a member of the Human Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL). His research areas focus on information policy and information access. In general he geeks out at hacking transportation data and loves talking about all things data.

Last week, Justin talked us through a Social Network Analysis (SNA) of people tweeting with the TransparencyCamp 2012 hashtag #tcamp12:

For more about this infographic and general Social Network Analysis, you can check out Justin's last post. If you're ready to try SNA for yourself, here's his guide for how to get started:

As I said earlier, you need two things to do social network analysis: software and a question. NodeXL will be our software. Our question for this example will be what does network of Twitter users at TransparencyCamp 2012 look like? To answer this question I’m going to analyze Twitter activity of TransparencyCamp 2012 by capturing all tweets that contain the hashtag #tcamp12. I’ll give you a step-by-step walkthrough of how I answered this question.

Prerequisites:

Windows machine (or Linux w/ Wine)

Microsoft Excel 2007 or higher

NodeXL

Internet connection

I’ll assume that you have all of these installed and ready to go for this example.
1) To get started we need to load NodeXL...

...

..."

NodeXL

NodeXL is a free, open-source template for Microsoft® Excel® 2007 and 2010 that makes it easy to explore network graphs. With NodeXL, you can enter a network edge list in a worksheet, click a button and see your graph, all in the familiar environment of the Excel window

..."

I've been following NodeXL for years now, yet still didn't know about this capability. How cool is this list of import sources?

Installing it was quick and easy for me and it ran and just worked the first time I tried it. Here's some snaps of it running on my system (Win7, x64, Office 2010 x86).

One thing to note if you're just playing around... It's really easy to hit the twitter request caps/throttle if you run this a couple times (or cancel it in the middle like I did and then try again). Still this is a pretty cool thing to play around with and the price is perfect (free). Heck you can even get the source for it all too!

MSDN gets a new look...

2012-05-24T14:52:00.001-07:00

Third Blog From The Sun - Check out our new MSDN home page

The new MSDN home page has two value propositions:

For developers who are new to Microsoft, the home page guides them to the best resources for getting started with Microsoft platforms and developer tools.

For developers already using Microsoft products, the home page delivers timely and relevant developer news, events, and information from across Microsoft and the developer community.

Primary objectives of the redesign include:

Improve general home page usability by simplifying the content model, information architecture and visual design

Make the page more helpful to developers who are new to Microsoft platforms

Reduce volume of manually curated content to decrease cost of maintenance

Reduce overall Page Load Time

Nice. I like the new page.... The "above the fold" focus getting the tools/downloads/SDK's/etc is nice. It's just, bam, right there....

[Humor] Guys, you have two choices...

2012-05-24T14:38:00.001-07:00

WinExtra - Pick Carefully Guys

This had me laughing this morning... (and as a father of a just turned adult boy, cringing too...)

Think your disks are slow, but are not really sure?

2012-05-24T14:34:00.001-07:00

Testing Spot - Help! I Think My Disk is Slow

Most of what happens here at Testing Services and Labs is determining the performance limit of a customer’s application. To accomplish this, we have to stage the application on systems that we are certain can handle it. After all, we want to know the limit of the application, not the system it’s running on. Pushing the limits typically means testing at volumes at which we can’t be sure what’s going to happen or why it’s happening. As the engineers running the test lab, we are often engaged when a resource constraint is suspected. The number one culprit is typically the disk. This post covers the method that we use to determine if the disk is slow. We will discuss designing a disk for high performance purposes in a later post.

When we are asked if a disk is slow, there are a few steps we take to investigate.

Is the disk really slow?

To find the answer to this question we must measure latency. This is the amount of time that a system waits for a disk I/O request to be satisfied. Specifically, we measure two counters on the physical disk objects:

Avg. Disk Sec/Read

Avg. Disk Sec/Write

The Windows Core Team gets into greater depth regarding these measures here:

..."

A short and sweat guide to diagnosing slow disks and if they are indeed slow, some things you can do about it...

Plugging into Azure with the Azure Plugin Library

2012-05-24T14:29:00.001-07:00

Richard Astbury's Blog - Introducing the Azure Plugin Library

An open source library of plugins installed with a command line tool (a package manager). Once a plugin is installed, it can be easily packaged with an Azure deployment to install application dependencies on a Web or Worker role.

http://richorama.github.com/AzurePluginLibrary/

Watch a screen cast demonstration

Background

One of the key strengths of Windows Azure, is the Platform as a Service offering. Why would you want to patch an operating system, manage the deployment of your application, and check the health of your infrastructure? It’s better left to someone else (Microsoft) so you can focus on your application. However, the pitfall is when your application depends on something extra being installed or configured on the machine.

There are a few ways for installing 3rd party components on an Azure instance. This blog post has a good summary of the options.

In summary, start-up tasks are the best mechanism available for installing dependencies, which is fine for something straight forward, but for more complicated components (like MongoDB for example) there is quite a bit of work involved in scripting out the installation. Projects like AzureRunMe help with this, but ideally you want something that just works, without you having to write a lot of script.

Azure Plugin Library

The Azure Plugin Library exploits an undocumented feature of the Azure SDK, whereby modules referenced in the Service Definition file are bundled with your application in a package, which is uploaded and deployed to the Azure instances. The SDK uses this mechanism to set up Remote Desktop, Connect, WebDeploy and Diagnostics, however, additional plugins can be added by copying the files to the “Windows Azure SDK\v1.6\bin\plugins” folder.

..."

Azure Plugin Library

What is a plugin?

A plugin comprises of configuration, scripts and binaries that are packaged with your Azure deployment, and executed on the Azure Web or Worker Role.

These plugins will typically alter the configuration of the Azure instance or install a dependency.

The Windows Azure SDK ships with five plugins:

Connect

Diagnostics

RemoteAccess

RemoteForwarder

WebDeploy

Plugins are installed in this directory:
C:\Program Files\Windows Azure SDK\v1.x\bin\plugins
This project aims to extend the capability of the SDK by providing a wide range plugins with a community maintained library, and a command line installer.

What plugins are available?

The Azure Plugin Library is maintained in a GitHub repository. You can browse and download the plugins directly from the respository, using the links below, or alternatively use the command line tool.

Apache

AzureBlobDrive

AzureCommandLineTools

ChaosMonkey

Chocolatey

ClassicASP

CloudXplorer

Curl

DisableFirewall

DisableIESecurity

JavaJRE

MongoDB

MountVHD

Node

RunMe

SMTP

SevenZip

SqlServer2012Express

Sublime

Tcpview

Tomcat-5.5

Tomcat

WIF

...

"

The fact that this is built on an undocumented feature of the Azure SDK concerns me a little, but I still think this is pretty cool. Got to love plugins/extensions/not-having-to-reinvent-the-wheels!

[Humor] You have the right to remain silent

2012-05-23T17:07:00.001-07:00

Science, Love and LSD - Right to remain silent

This gave me a good laugh today. I didn't want ruin it, so make sure you click through... :)

Who need grades at school, when you can get badges!

2012-05-23T16:51:00.001-07:00

ON Course - Release the Badges!

"After working on the badges system that I outlined in a previous post, it has finally reached a point where it is functional enough to be ‘released’. It should be noted, though, that it is neither fully functional ‘out of the box’ and is by no means a shining example of development practices at their best. The mini-project of looking at how a system such as the Mozilla Open Badges platform could be used in higher education has suffered tremendously from scope creep and the underlying code (at the moment) reflects this. Over the past few weeks I’ve been through the following phases:

Consider how Open Badges (or similar) could be used in higher education.

Create a prototype system to be used in higher education.

Develop a more stable system that could be used in a trial run within our university.

Develop the system in such a way that it could be picked up and used in a variety of institutions or situations with minimal reconfiguration.

Initially, I considered creating a small database to hold ‘objectives’ that need to be met in order to be awarded badges, along with the bare minimum of APIs in order to interact with the database and the Open Badges framework. After starting out down this path, I started to realize that there was far more potential in a badging system within a higher education institution than I had originally thought and began to think of more features that would be useful.

...

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ON Course - Designing a Badge System for Universities

"Over the past week or so we have started looking at the Mozilla Open Badge platform and how it could, possibly, be applied to use within HEIs (and beyond). It started to become apparent, through reading other peoples blog posts and reading through mailing lists, that there is already some work going on to award badges for completion of modules of study or achieving particular learning outcomes. After looking at what information is required to award a badge using the Open Badge framework, I created a design for a platform that can be picked up and used within another institution or context with minimal customization required. The purpose of this blog post is to document the decision processes involved and to describe and show the resulting design.

The Basics

The basic premise of the system is fairly simple: create badges and award them to individuals who meet the criteria for each badge. These awarded badges can be ‘baked’ (to include the relevant information) and sent to individual’s ‘backpacks’ – be that the OpenBadge backpack or an internally hosted version.

This suggests that data pertaining to the following is required: Badges, Objectives and Earned Badges.

..."

This is a PHP based system and not one I'm likely to play with myself, but I really like the thought of this, the gamification of school. If grades themselves are not enough to engage our students, then maybe badges/achievements can?

Helping the effect you have in Expression by getting additional Effects...

2012-05-22T13:16:00.001-07:00

2,000 Things You Should Know About WPF - #563 – Additional Effects in Expression SDK

In addition to the two effects that come with the .NET Framework, you can get access to a number of other effects when you download and install the Expression Blend SDK for .NET 4.

Once you install the SDK, you’ll see the new effects show up in the Effects folder of the Assets panel.

The effects include:

Bloom – Make bright areas appear brighter

Color Tone – Render a visual using shades of two colors

Emboss – Make visual appear raised or stamped

Magnify – Magnify a circular area

Monochrome – Render using shades of a single color

Pixelate – Reduce resolution, rendering as large pixels

Ripple – Apply visual that looks like rippling liquid

Sharpen – Sharpen image edges

Swirl – Apply effect that twists entire image

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..."

You guys know I've mentioned Sean's 2,000 Things You Should Know About WPF series last year, A Feed You Should Read #34 - 2,000 Things You Should Know About WPF, and true to his word he's still blogging about a WPF related thing almost every day.

Today's caught my eye in that I love getting more stuff free and I wouldn't have expected to get more Effects in Expression this way (though in hindsight it makes perfect sense). Plus I really appreciate that he took the time to provide an example of all the added Effects. That was a nice touch...

Related Past Post XRef:
A Feed You Should Read #34 - 2,000 Things You Should Know About WPF

The feeling of excitement is tangible... with the release of the tangible T4 Editor 2.0!

2012-05-22T13:04:00.001-07:00

Tangible T4 Editor Blog - tangible T4 Editor 2.0 plus modeling tools – Released!

"We just released the second generation of our tangible T4 Editor. Version 2.0 marks a big milestone for us. We have been working on this major release almost two years. This effort was done in parallel to the many Version 1.x updates and smaller feature improvements we shipped over the period of last 3 years T4 Editor Version 1.x exists.
What is new?

tangible T4 Editor 2.0 is almost a 100% rewrite of the existing Version 1.0 product. It addresses nearly all feedback we got from you regarding feature wishes and change requests. Thank you for providing feedback in the past – we really read every piece of feedback and take action on it.
Free Edition Users will notice these improvements and changes which result from your feedback:

Support for VS2010 and VS11 (Beta) – Following the tradition from 1.x we will support two Visual Studio Versions in 2.x. tangible T4 2.x will be supported for VS2010 and VS11 (Beta). We have two separate installs.

We use the real Visual Studio Code Editor: This now honors Tab Settings, Keybindings, UTF-8 Encoding, Version Control System Integration, Fonts and Colors, VS Search Dialog, Support for VS Editor Extensions like Incremental Search and Current Line Highlighting.

Support for Dark Theme – Note you can customize the T4 Code Highlighting Color under Visual Studio Menu Tools->Options->Environment->Fonts & Colors ->”tangible T4 Background”. You can customize the other colors and fonts also via this Fonts & Colors dialog.

New Statement-Completion within T4 Code Blocks behavior that corresponds to VS 2010 Editor behavior. Also completely new Parsers that now support newer C# and VB Language features. Also changed from generating Warnings about limitations of Free Edition to show up in Completion List instead in Error Window.

Additional Directives to solve VS T4 Engine limitations: #includeForIntelliSenseOnly, #assemblyForIntelliSenseOnly, #newappdomain, #IntellisenseLanguage directives.

Remaining Incompatibility with some ASP.NET MVC Builds should be fully resolved now.

Additional Documentation and Training Videos which will get online in the next few days

It also adds major features to the PRO-Edition:

...

You can review the complete list of features and improvements of tangible T4 Editor 2.0 plus modeling tools here.

FREE Edition Licensing

You can use T4 Editor Free Edition as before. There no restrictions that prevent using it in commercial or private projects. Please read the EULA for the actual use rights.

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Like I've said before, if you T4 you need an editor and this is one of the best...