Greg's Cool [Insert Clever Name] of the Day: 01/11/2009

Saturday, January 17, 2009

The table top guide for getting started with Azure

Bruno's Blog - Understanding Azure Tools – The Real Starting Point

“The real starting point

I am writing this blog to help the very beginner in all of us. I started writing on the "Thumbnails" example, but found all the talk about "blobs" and "queues" was too fast. Also, the documentation is at the "conceptual level." I always like starting from scratch when learning something. I love seeing things like "File – New – Project."

Goals

We are interested in creation, building, debugging, running and packaging of scalable services on Windows Azure.

…”

Lots of pretty pictures (screen shots, etc), setup links and a step by step guide to help those of us who’ve not yet taken the Azure development plunge get started.

Open XML/ECMA-376 Notes for Office 2007 SP2

Erika Ehrli - Great News for Open XML Developers: ECMA-376 Implementation Notes for Office 2007 SP2 are here!

“We've published today a new set of Open XML implementation notes. The ECMA-376 Implementation Notes helps developers to understand low-level details of the Open XML implementation. The notes also include information that will help ISO update the standard over time, and some other general information to cover some scenarios that are not covered in detail by the SPEC.

The notes are definitely a great resource for all us who work with the Open XML SDK 1.0 and 2.0 and are looking for detailed documentation and guidance. I know lots of devs out there are creating document assembly solutions and the notes help you understand fine details of the implementation. Say you are working with WordprocessingML and want to learn about paragraphs, tables, footers, document parts, or mail merge. If you don't know the SPEC by heart (like most of us J), and want to learn more about the implementation details, you can always check out the implementation notes.

Great blogs posts you should not miss:

…”

This is one of those “I’m going to need this one day” posts. I know, in the not to distant future, that I’m going to need brain numbing level of OpenXML details and this post seems to be a nice starting point for that (You know, that doesn’t sound quit right, does it? I didn’t mean to imply the post was brain numbing, just the 7,000+ pages of ECMA-376 spec… lol… )

C# Code Header Comment Utility – Help inserting standard headers into your source

Colby Africa - C# Code Header Designer 1.0 Released to MSDN Code Gallery

“Recently I finished an engagement where the customer received the source code. When MCS does this, we typically add a header to each source file, which contains information related to the engagement. About two years ago, I wrote up a little application to apply a standard code header to a source tree. I dug it up, gave it a quick polish and now I am giving it to you. Visit the resource page on MSDN Code Gallery or click here to install now.

Here is a summary of the tool. Check out the user guide for more information.

The C# Code Header Designer (the Designer) gives developers the ability to design code headers, save the headers for future use, and apply headers to existing source trees.

…

…”

MSDN Code Gallery - CSharp Code Header Designer

“…

The CSharp Code Header Designer gives developers the ability to design code headers, save them, and apply the header to existing source trees.

For more information, please review user guide.docx

…”

From the User Guide:

“…

The Designer provides the following features to enable code header design, storage, and use:

A simple editor that emulates the look of a source editor

A means to add fields to a header, which are replaced by values specified by the user when the header is applied

Auto fields, which are field whose values are automatically inserted into the header by the system

Header save and open features, which allow for the header to be persisted as a .headerx file for later use

The ability to choose a source directory and selected which files should have the header applied

The ability to apply the header, which includes the ability to remove existing headers prior to applying the new header

Maintain a log of actions taken on the source files

…”

I thought this was an interesting project, something I could see using if I were in a “deliver source to a client” engagement.

Also I just liked the code, UI, tech, etc behind the project cool and since Colby released the source, well that’s double cool. ;)

Friday, January 16, 2009

The step-by-step guide to setting up Outlook so you can send signed and/or encrypted emails (for free)

Scott Elkin - Make Your Emails Stand Out Using Personal E-mail Certificates

“Notice the red badge on each envelope and the blue lock in the image below?

The red badge tells me that the person is who they say they are, and the blue lock tells me that the message is encrypted.

Not only is this functionally important, but it really makes their email stand out and appear important.

This is accomplished by the use of a Personal E-mail Certificate, and is pretty easy to make work once you know the basics.

1. In order to “digitally sign” your emails going out, you first need to find a provider to issue you one. I used Thawte, which offers one for free:

…”

Scott’s 15 step guide will get you setup so you can send signed and/or encrypted emails from Outlook. The setup and key exchange is the “hard” part. Once you’re setup, and for encryption you’ve exchanged keys, it’s drop dead easy to send and receive signed/encrypted emails.

As I’ve said in the past;

IMPORTANT NOTE: Don’t loose your Certificates (your Private key)! Without that you WILL NOT be able to open those encrypted emails that were sent to you (or that you sent)…

Ray Bradbury to sign copies of his book "Fahrenheit 451: The 50th Anniversary Edition" at Simi Valley Library, February 1st

Simi Valley Acorn - Ray Bradbury will do book signing at Simi Valley Library

“Author Ray Bradbury will sign copies of his book "Fahrenheit 451: The 50th Anniversary Edition" on Sun., Feb. 1 at the Simi Valley Library, 2969 Tapo Canyon Road.

Seating and raffle begin at 1 p.m. The presentation and book signing will be from 2 to 4 p.m.

Space is limited, and advance tickets are required for admission. To obtain an autographed copy of the book, patrons are urged to order books in advance.

…”

How cool is that? Sending them a check for a ticket now… (well I will once I find out if my son wants to go too… ;)

Update #1 1/17/2009 @ 11:40AM PST:

Some more information and link to the flyer (which makes it much clearer as to how to buy the tickets);

Simi Valley Public Library Foundation – Ray Bradbury Event Flyer

My check’s in the mail… ;)

Friday Humor – The true difference between men and women?

Gizmodo - Workflow Charts Finally Put to Good Use Show Fundamental Men vs Women Differences

This made me laugh so I thought I’d share it.

Every time I go out to an event with my wife and hear her “Oh my god, The line was soooo long…” story I too “Thank god I’m a man.” ;)

Make sure you click through to see the Office workflow diagram too… lol

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Reusable CRC-32 hash implementation (with source) as seen in the free, multi-threaded, command line file hashing, ComputeFileHash utility (also with source)

Delay's Blog - Trust, but verify [Free tool (and source code) for computing commonly used hash codes!]

“…

Popular hash functions in use today are MD5 and SHA-1, with CRC-32 rapidly losing favor. Speaking in very broad terms, one might say that the quality of CRC-32 is "not good", MD5 is "good", and SHA-1 is "very good". For now, that is; research is always under way that could render any of these algorithms useless tomorrow... (For more information about the weaknesses of each algorithm, refer to the links above.)

In order for published checksums to be useful, the user needs an easy way to calculate them. I looked around a bit and didn't a lot of free tools for computing these popular hash functions that I was comfortable with, so I wrote my own using .NET. Here it is:

…

One of the things that was important to me when writing ComputeFileHashes was performance. Nobody likes to wait, and I'm probably even less patient than the average bear. One of the things I wanted my program to do was take advantage of multi-processing and the multi-core CPUs that are so prevalent these days. So ComputeFileHashes runs the three hash functions in parallel with each other and with loading the next bytes of the file. Theoretically, this can take advantage of four different cores - though in practice my limited testing suggests there's just not enough work to saturate them all. :)

…”

Delay's Blog - Free hash [A reusable CRC-32 HashAlgorithm implementation for .NET]

“In the notes for yesterday's release of the ComputeFileHashes tool (and source code), I mentioned that I'd written my own .NET HashAlgorithm class to compute CRC-32 hash values. The complete implementation can be found below and should behave just like every other HashAlgorithm subclass (ex: MD5 or SHA1). The code here is based on the CRC-32 reference implementation provided in Annex D of the PNG specification and pretty much "just worked". It implements the necessary Initialize, HashCore, and HashFinal methods as well as the technically optional (but practically necessary) Hash and HashSize properties. There's no test code to speak of, though it's worth pointing out that I've run tens of gigabytes of data through my ComputeFileHashes tool and have verified the correctness of the computed CRC-32 value for each test file. :)

Without further ado:

…”

Since hashes are a significant part of my work world, related articles usually catch my eye. And since these two included source code, I thought I’d capture them for future reference (and in case you might find them interesting too ;)

Windows Cloud Now – 15 minute guide to Windows, IIS and ASP.NET with Amazon’s EC2

BillS IIS Blog Posts - How to Run Windows, IIS and ASP.NET in the Cloud on Amazon EC2 (in 15 mins)

“…

The purpose of this post is to provide a quick walkthrough of how to setup your own EC2 account and run Windows and IIS in about 15 mins. Amazon’s approach to cloud computing will be familiar to anyone who is already running Windows Server themselves, as it essentially offers Administrative access to virtual server instances running on Amazon’s infrastructure. Once you’ve created your first instance of Windows server in EC2, you can log on to your Amazon-based Windows Server via Remote Desktop and install software and manage the server the same way you would if it was running in your home or office. Amazon just released their EC2 Web Console, which makes deploying new instances of Windows Server, and connecting to them, very easy.

…”

If you want to “Cloud Now” and would like, are are more comfortable with, a more traditional virtual machine like environment, then Amazon EC2 and this guide is for you…

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Firebird ADO.NET Provider (with source) for Entity Framework Beta Released

ADO.NET team blog - Beta of Firebird ADO.NET Provider with Entity Framework Support Available

“I'm pleased to announce that a beta of the Firebird ADO.NET provider with Entity Framework support is now available. Congratulations to Jiří Činčura and to everyone else who has worked on this project so far!

For more information, please see Jiří's blog post here or access the download page for the provider here.

…” [Post leached level: 99%]

Jiří {x2} Činčura - Firebird ADO.NET Data Provider 2.5.0 Beta 1 for .NET 3.5/2.0 [with Entity Framework support]

“I'm pleased to announce 2.5.0 Beta 1 for .NET 3.5/2.0 [with Entity Framework support] version. It contains several bugfixes as well as brand new Entity Framework support (still beta!). Looking forward to your feedback.

Binary as well as sources can be downloaded from http://www.firebirdsql.org/index.php?op=files&id=netprovider.” [Post leached in full]

Firebird - Firebird .Net Providers Downloads

It’s been a few years since I’ve posted about Firebird, so after seeing this I felt it was time…

LiveZoom with the new ZoomIt v3.0

Sysinternals Site Discussion - Updates: ZoomIt v3.0, Process Explorer v11.32, Autoruns v9.38

“ZoomIt v3.0: This major update to ZoomIt, the Sysinternals screen magnification and annotation utility, adds a LiveZoom mode on Windows Vista and higher, allows you to change the typing and break timer font, adds the ability to copy the magnified screen to the clipboard with Ctrl+C, and introduces a new configuration interface.
Process Explorer v11.32: This update fixes a bug in the process security page's name resolution and uses history graph tooltips that track the mouse.
Autoruns v9.38: This fixes a bug that prevented v9.37 from viewing the system account's profile on 32-bit Windows.” [Post leached in full]

I really hate to say this, but I’ve never used ZoomIt. Yeah, I know, no wonder my presentations byte (and why I tend to walk so much between my PC and the screen, gesturing wildly in front the the projector).

I think it’s about time I join the professional presenter club, at least tool wise, and start using ZoomIt (or like tool).

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Natively booting to a VHD with Windows 7 - 10 Steps to VHD’ness

Cesar de la Torre – BLOG - Windows 7 - Natively Booting from a .VHD file (Virtual PC image)

“Most important thing to keep in mind is that we currently cannot boot from any kind of .VHD.

Actually, I have just managed to boot from a Windows 7 installed on a new .VHD, and I installed it right from the Windows 7 DVD. We can do a similar process with "Windows Server 2008 R2 (beta)" installed on a .VHD file, as well.

If you'd use Virtual PC 2007 to install the Virtual image, the produced .VHD wouldn't work when trying to boot from the .VHD.

A.- Creating the .VHD file and Windows 7 installation on that .VHD file

1. Boot the machine using the Windows 7 DVD

…

10. Reboot, and you got it!!!!

B.- Configure boot options

…”

Hardware 2.0 - How-to: Getting started with .VHD files in Windows 7

“Some of you seem confused about how Windows 7 goes about supporting .VHD files as used by Virtual PC, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Hyper-V. Here’s a quick how-to work with .VHD files in Windows 7.

OK, let’s begin with a Windows 7 beta 1 install. Fire up a Command Prompt and type the following:

…”

This is something I’ve wanted to see since it was mentioned at PDC. There’s just something I find too cool about booting to a VHD. Now if I can configure it in such a way as to have differencing disks (i.e. to have the base OS on the main and then later “new” stuff on the diff’s, making it drop dead easy to revert back to a clean/base OS, or to start a new chain off of that base… etc)

Ora, The Region Alternative

CodePlex – Ora

“Ora is a Visual Studio 2008 add-in that provides an instant grouped overview of the class, interface or struct you are viewing or editing. Because the members are grouped in the order of your choosing, and the view instantly appears when you click in the code of a class, there is no need to abuse the #region feature. Just keep Ora docked next to the source editor and the equivalent groupings just appear automatically.

…

Forget using cumbersome #region statements to group together class members. What if you want to see them grouped a different way? And isn't it a bad idea to repeat the same information twice in source code? What if the region structure doesn't reflect the truth? Regions, like comments, should be used to supply information that can't be recovered automatically by an add-in, such as Ora.

Ora is latin for region, amongst other things.

…”

An interesting Visual Studio add-in for those who looking beyond regions for access/grouping. It’s kind of like the Class Diagram but on steroids * 10. And one of cooler things is that sample code is provided so you can add your own grouping. So you’re not tied to how the author decided to group the methods…

Oh yeah, it works for VB projects too. ;)

(via Visual Studio Gallery – Ora)