Misfit Geek

Over the years I’m done hundreds of videos showing tips, tricks, techniques and methods for building ASP.NET applications.

One drawback of videos, especially as we move toward Hi-Def is that there is still much of the world’s developers lack the bandwidth to view streaming videos.

Some folks have he band width at work but not at home, etc.

So lately I’ve had this application in my head.

It’s a Windows Desktop application (and maybe a Windows Phone 7  application) that starts as large index into Developer content.

The content would be organized into “curriculum based learning” so that it could be referenced piece by piece or by a group as a syllabus.

Off course the index would all be searchable by category, tag, and keyword.

The app could contain and deliver video, audio, code, and written content and be capable of interactive learning modules (finish he module take a quiz, etc.)

The application would manage downloading in “the background” as bandwidth was available. (Either via an http server configured for presumable downloads or via a pre-seeded BitTorrent.

When all the assets for the curriculum are downloaded the user would get a notification that the material is ready for them.

New content would be feed by RSS/RDF and the application would sync an on line profile so that uses could keep track of what materials they have consumed and what they have not.

Anyway, it’s a rough idea and I wanted to ask people what they thought of it?

Verizon sold the territory I live in to Fairpoint. FIOS will never be available where I live (at least not in my life time.)

Comcast has always made be pay for two separate broadband accounts. (2 buildings – pay twice.)

Well. The company she worked for was a Microsoft service provider. When Microsoft suddenly decided not to renew their recurring contract, her employer pretty much closed up shop and she was out of work.

This was a good catalyst to consolidate expenses.

So we’re getting rid of my T-Moblie wireless. My wife’s Verizion wireless, my office Fairpoint land lines, and our home Comcast Phone and internet access.

Step one – 7 Acre Wide Wireless.

I want Hi-Speed wireless access without degradation from the far corner of my office building to across my driveway to the far back corner of the source on both floors.

My new setup starts with adding a really good base wireless hub.

 

I choose the Netgear Rangemax WNDR3700 Dual Band Wireless-N Gigabit Router

[ Get  One HERE ! ]

At over $150 dollars it’s not the cheapest but it’s worth the extra money.

There were about 200 4/5 star reviews on Amazon.com and about 50 1/2 star reviews.

This is a great case of non technical folks (many of whom THINK they are networking experts) being frustrated and blaming the product for their lack of knowledge.

I unplugged all mu networking devices and started from scratch.

I plugged the WNDR3700 into my Comcast Cable modem and then with a physical cable connected the WNDR3700 to a computer.

The first thing I did was update the Firmware to the latest version.

After rebooting the WNDR3700 I set the SSID Names (one for each channel), Password, and DHCP address range as I desired and rebooted the device again.

Pressed the wireless connect – and BANG!

The WORST signal anywhere in the buildings on my property’s 4 bars.

I  connected a  Cisco / Linksys SR2024 24-port 10/100 Switch that I already had to the Netgear router. (Though I plan to upgare to the gigabit version).

[ Get One Here ! ]

My hard wired connections at peaking at about 30mb down and 3mb up. (Stay tuned – I’m going to improve this soon.)

The WNDR3700 also has a USB NAS feature so I picked up a Seagate Expansion 1.5 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive.

[ Buy One Here ! ]

I plugged this drive in and went into the device options of the WNDR3700’s admin facility to set the network name of the device.

BANG – 1.7 terabytes of NAS easily accessible from all my machines connected to the WNDR3700.

Setup was EASY and everything worked as I expected.

Now for the HARD part.

The router is in my office but I need SOME hard wired connections in the other building (my house).

This means I needed to bridge the wireless signal from my office into a wired hub in my house.

After a good deal of research I selected a Buffalo Technology AirStation Turbo G High Power Wireless Ethernet Converter

 

[ Get One Here ! ]

Setting this guy up was a bit more difficult because, even though this device has 4 wired access ports,  I needed to bridge the signal into my home Ethernet wiring system and I wanted to extend it with a combination hub (Wireless / Wired).

Though not really necessary for wireless access since the WNDR3700’s signal is so strong, I decided to add 2 additional wireless/combination routers to my scheme since I already had a couple of good modem routers. (One in the house proper and one in the basement.)

I have two D-Link routers from previous use.

A D-Link DIR-655 Extreme N Gigabit Wireless Router.

[ Get One HERE ! ]

And the slightly older D-Link DIR-625 4-Port RangeBooster Wireless-N Router

The secret to adding these 2 routers trough the is on syncing the configuring settings.

The default device IP address is 1.1.1.1

First I changed the device IP address to something gin the same subnet as my WNDR3700 but OUTSIDE the DHCP address allocation pool.

Next I configured each of the D-Link routers with device IP Address and DHCP address allocation pools all in the same subnet (making sure there could be no conflicts).

After wiring everything up – they didn’t work

To solve the last problem I needed to synchronize the wireless channels being used.

On ALL THREE wireless routers I turned OFF automatic channel scanning and set to channel to fix on channel 11 (11 is the default on the Buffalo Air Station) .

In the D-Link routers the admin settings look like this.

After setting these options and rebooting all 3 modems in my network (and updating the router firmware) – everything is working FINE !

Awesome wireless and hard wired connections available everywhere.

TODO:

1.) Upgrade my main office switch to GigaBit.

2.) Upgrade my Cable Model (and Comcast Account) to DOCSIS 3

If selected the Motorola SB6120 SURFboard DOCSIS 3.0 eXtreme Broadband Cable Modem

[ Get One HERE ! ]

Give it all a try

Next I’ll tackle phones

I’ve turned comments back on (please feel free to comment.)

Thanks to @Meligy for the reminder.

I had to turn them off after several days an automated comment span attack.

I thought this was a cool idea ad thought I’d share it.

Apigee is a website that provides analytics, protection and control for APIs.  Apigee enables API providers to understand usage, protect their app, and enforce API terms of use.  Developers using APIs can use Apigee to get visibility into the actual service levels of the APIs they consume.

http://apigee.com/

This week someone referred me to this blog post about Small Basic.

What a cool idea for playing teaching beginners of kids about programming or just playing around.

You can even build Silverlight application with it and “Graduate” your Small Basic” code to Visual Basic.net / Visual Studio

You can even share your work on the site like this Tetris Game written in Small Basic.

 

What fun !

Yes, the MisfitGeek Podcast still lives.

I’ve recovered from a catastrophic audio hardware failure and learned how to record podcast interviews over Skype.

I’ve got several scheduled and they should start appearing here soon.

In the meantime I thought I’d share that that the Podcast is now listed on Zune Social.

YOU can check it out on Zune Social [ HERE ] 

If you have show suggestions for me PLEASE send them to me [ HERE ]

A free Android application for testing your ASP.NET Development Knowledge.

[ Check it out here. ]

Working at Microsoft has been GREAT. I’ve been here for 8 years.

But it’s hard too.

For a decade before I joined Microsoft, I ran the show. Here, I’m just a peon, and not being on campus often means not being “inside” which creates several barriers to success. 

There is the politics, the constant org changes, the haters spanning your blog, the travel. (Not to mention the cut in pay

Today I had a bit of a cool thing happen.

Last night I installed Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 – which I’m VERY excited about.

 

Today I fired it up to start working on some new videos and the top item in the “Latest News” page was an item about my latest video. 

Trivial, i know, but my spirits valued thy boost !!

The first shows how ASP.NET helps you understand and easily defend against Cross Site Scripting (XSS) in your Web Applications. This one has a REAL WORLD example of DOM Injection based hijacking attacks.

Note that Script Injection is the OWASP #1 vulnerability.

The second video, is a light introduction to programming with LINQ and compares simple data access between ADO.NET and LINQ from a developer experience perspective.

Next I’ll be playing with SQL Injection – the OWASP #2 vulnerability.

After 2 years of development and lots of customer feedback, Microsoft is proud to announce that the Web Deployment Tool has gone  RTW version 1.0!

You can now download the RTW version and use it in production, and it is fully supported by Microsoft Support.

Install our 1.0 RTW release from http://www.iis.net/webdeploymenttool, available in x86 and x64.

Version 1.0, includes the following components:

• Powerful APIs that allow you to deploy, sync and migrate web applications on IIS, and perform granular operations like changing IP bindings, site names and changing file structures on the fly. You can also create a new provider to sync a new type of resource.
• Command-line tool (msdeploy.exe) that allows you to perform all the same operations available in the APIs.
• User interface built into IIS Manager 7.0 on Vista, Windows 2008 and Windows 7 that allows you to create packages (zip files containing IIS config, content, databases and more) and install them.
• Delegation framework and service built into IIS 7.0 that allows you to delegate tasks like installing applications and databases without requiring them to be administrators on the box.
• Remote administrative service that works on IIS 6.0 and 7.0 to allow server-level synchronization by administrators.

So, what can you do with these components?

• Migrate Web applications from IIS 6.0. Simplify the planning of your IIS 6.0 to IIS 7.0 migrations by determining incompatibilities and previewing the proposed changes before starting the process. Learning about any potential issues in advance gives you the chance to take corrective measures and simplifies migration.
• Synchronize your server farm. Synchronize between IIS 6.0 > IIS 6.0 or IIS 7.0, and only sync the differences. The tool simplifies the synchronization process by automatically determining the configuration, content and certificates to be synchronized for a Web site. Optionally, specify additional resources for sync, including databases, COM objects, GAC assemblies and registry settings.
• Package, archive and deploy Web applications. Package configuration and content of Web applications, including databases, and then use the packages for storage or redeployment. These packages can be deployed using IIS Manager without requiring administrative privileges. The tool integrates with Visual Studio 2010 to help developers streamline the deployment of Web applications to the Web server. The tool also integrates with the Web Platform Installer to allow you to simply and easily install community web applications.

Some of our favorite customer scenarios include:

• Create application packages that contain all of the IIS config, content, databases and more, including parameters so that when the server admin installs the package, they are prompted to fill in parameters like SQL Server connection string.
• Build an automated deployment system using our APIs, cmd-line or the Visual Studio integration, so that you can deploy daily from test to staging to production.
• Allow your developers to directly deploy to the staging server without admin intervention, and lock down exactly what they can change (mark a folder as an app but not change the site’s binding).
• Replace Application Center with a set of scripts or programs that call our APIs or cmd-line to sync multiple servers in a web farm.
• Build a roll-back solution by taking a package of your live app, deploying the app_v2 package created in your dev environment, and checking for failures. In case of failures, automatically apply the v1 package or backup that you took.