NJ Geeks - New Jersey's IT Community

• Scala's Slick: A Library For Functional Database Access (Brendan McAdams)
• Meteor Smart Packages: Seamless integration with third-party services and tools (Avital Oliver)
• How Google Does It: Using Closure Tools for Large JavaScript Applications (Rhys Brett-Bowen)
• AngularJS Directives - DSL in Your HTML (Lukas Ruebbelke & Brian Ford)
• Meteor Meetup (Avital Oliver)

• Keynote: Design, Composition, and Performance (Rich Hickey)
• Applying Design Thinking and Complexity Theory in Agile Organizations (Jean Tabaka)
• Building Ambitious Web Applications with Ember.js (Yehuda Katz)
• BackboneJS and The Holy Grail: Client and Server (Tim Branyen)
• Engaging The Real World with Android (Doug Bellenger & Nick Dipatri)

I honestly thought I would be blogging a little bit more, since switching from Android to iPhone, since the iOS WordPress app is so nice, but I just don’t seem to get into it. It’s just too easy to post short stuff to Twitter, and photos to Instagram or Facebook …

I think a part of this is the belief that more people follow me on Twitter, or are friends of mine on Facebook, than read my blog.

There are times when I need to write something down because I know my poor rat brain won’t remember it, so I post it to my blog for my future self.

Then, there are times I want to share something with others… and those are the kinds of things I post to social media sites because that’s where I figure I’ll reach the most people. I suppose if I had the kind of audience that celebrities have, I could post everything here… but I don’t.

I guess I’m just doing some thinking out loud here (uh, typing out loud? writing out loud? writing in plain view?) … just confirming that my lack of posting is definitely not because of some barrier of difficulty: this iOS WordPress app makes this so damn easy.

Related posts:

1. Should I start another blog?
2. I hereby give myself permission to blog
3. Hackfest: Getting started on a Facebook app

At some point in time, something changed on my system that resulted in my printer no longer printing. (Cue a relevant scene from Office Space here…) A quick Googling of relevant keywords didn’t turn up anyone else complaining about what I was observing, so I did what any lazy person would do: I found another way to print what I needed to print, and forgot all about it.

Now, several months later, the problem still persists, and while I found a suitable workaround (use the “Generic PostScript printer” driver instead of the Lexmark one), the hardcore geek in me felt it necessary to struggle against the injustice of this whole “it doesn’t work” thing. It should work, damn it.

First, here’s what the most obvious symptom looks like:

Along with this will be an entry in the system log which you can see in Console.app:

1/25/13 12:19:02.275 PM ReportCrash: Saved crash report for pstopsprinter1[78490] version ??? (???) to /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/pstopsprinter1_2013-01-25-121902_localhost.crash

If you look inside the crash report, you’ll see:

*** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInvalidArgumentException', reason: '-[__NSCFArray length]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x1006036b0'

Great. Just great. So, we fire up our handy-dandy debugger, and what is the object it’s choking on?

Aww, damn. I recognize what that is. Those are the domains defined in my /etc/resolv.conf‘s “search” parameter.

Here’s the whole backtrace:

Well, let’s see what it was trying to resolve, maybe that’ll give us a clue:

Yup, that would be the DNS name of my machine, based on the reverse DNS of my IP address on my local private network. However, it appears that forward DNS for that FQDN isn’t resolvable, due to a recent change in my DNS setup. Let’s fix this, and correct the DNS so that the FQDN resolves, and test again.

Still fails. Damn, not going to be that easy, huh?

And, here it is. CFStringGetLength is expecting a CFStringRef and instead getting handed a NSCFArray, and is blowing up because CFStringGetLength trying to [str length] it.

I wish I knew someone who was doing OSX development at Apple to pass this bug along to …

Updated: I filed this as a bug in Apple’s Radar bug reporting system. It was assigned bug ID #13089829.

Related posts:

1. Debian printing problem? “DMA write timed out”? Try this …
2. Reproducible crash bug in FeedDemon 2.6
3. Debugging Java with Eclipse 3.2

I’m excited to announce that there will be another series of Windows 8 developer making their way through the US this summer!  These are special two-day events, with a DevCamp on day one featuring a full day of sessions plus an InstallFest, followed on day two by a Hackathon with Lightning Talks where you can bring app ideas to life with Microsoft and community experts on hand to help.

The first of these series kicks off here THIS weekend in New York City on July 14th & July 15th (separate registration for both days).  New York is the city so nice, they named it twice.  And to help satisfy demand, we’re actually returning with a second stop of the same event content in Brooklyn the following week on July 19th & July 20th.  The first stop is on the weekend for those who can’t skip work.  The second stop in Brooklyn is on a Thursday & Friday.

If you can’t make either of those dates, Boston is later in August (17/18) and Philly (Malvern, Pa) is later in September (14/15).  Read on for details below…

Windows 8 changes everything. 
Combining the broad reach of Windows, best-in-class developer tools, a re‑imagined user experience, support for new chipsets, and a built-in store with industry-leading business terms, Windows 8 is the largest developer opportunity – ever.

Join us for free events with new sessions and hands-on opportunities designed to help you start building Metro-style applications for Windows 8 – today. We'll show you how to use Visual Studio to code fast, fluid, immersive, and beautiful Metro-style applications in HTML5/JavaScript, XAML/C# and C/C++. Your existing investments in these languages carry forward, making Windows a no-compromise platform for developers. Attend just one day or join us for two full days of learning. It's your choice.

DevCamp - Day 1 
 
Events run from 9:00AM – 8:00PM

Our DevCamp covers Windows 8 Release Preview from top to bottom, featuring sessions that run from introductory to intermediate as the day unfolds. These sessions will be followed by an InstallFest to prepare your system for hands-on app development.

Hackathon - Day 2 
 
Events run from 9:00AM – 9:00PM

Our Hackathon is an open Windows 8 code fest, where you'll put what you've learned into practice. Code to your heart's content, with Windows 8 experts available to guide you through every step of the process. It's the perfect opportunity to get your dream application underway, or to finish that app you've already started.

This full-day event will be filled with coding, sharing, plenty of food, and the occasional Lightning Talk on topics determined by your apps and questions. Bring your own laptop installed with Windows 8 Release Preview, your apps and your cool ideas and get ready to create!

Cities and Dates       
 
Separate registration for DevCamps and Hackathons is required

The choice is yours to join us for either or both days, but please register for each separately.

Seating is limited, so click the date links below (or call 1-877-MSEVENT) to reserve your seat today!

Register today and join us for these fantastic (and free) developer opportunities.

It’s cloudy in Jersey this week.  That can mean only one thing:  There are THREE great opportunities to learn about Windows Azure this week!  Two with me locally in NJ and CT.  And one online from San Francisco from Scott “The Gu” Guthrie himself!

What’s all this buzz about Node.js?  What about using Node.js with Windows Azure?  Want to find out?  I’ll be speaking about Azure & Node twice this week at local area user groups.  Join me Wednesday June 6, 2012 at the NJ Windows Azure User Group in Iselin, NJ, or catch me up at the Fairfield/Westchester .NET user group in Stamford, CT on Thursday June 7, 2012.  If you can’t join me, catch the “Meet Windows Azure” event live online Thursday afternoon at 4pm EDT!

Windows Azure is Microsoft’s cloud service, providing compute, storage, and other services to enable you to scale apps on demand.  Azure is not just a .NET solution. It’s a Windows solution, supporting other languages, including Java, PHP, and most recently Node.js.  Node.js?!  What’s that?  Why should I care?  Join Peter for an overview of both Node.js and Windows Azure, as well as how you can run Node.js apps in Azure. We’ll look at the tools and deployment process and cover some of the details of how Node runs on Windows in general.

The “JrzyShr Dev Guy,” is a Developer Evangelist with Microsoft, based in New Jersey. One of his roles is supporting and educating developers working Microsoft technologies. Peter supports the developer community in the NY Metro area by speaking at user group events, Code Camps, and various tech conferences. Peter spends most of his time focused on the cloud and connecting Microsoft technology with non-Microsoft technology. His blog can be found at http://www.peterlaudati.com. You can also follow him on Twitter @Jrzyshr.

When:
Wednesday, June 6th, 2012 – 6:30pm – 8:30pm

Where:
Microsoft Iselin, NJ Offices
101 Wood Ave South, 9th Floor
Iselin, NJ 08830

When:
Thursday, June 7th, 2012 – 6:00pm – 8:00pm

Where:

University of Connecticut
One University Place
Stamford, CT 06901

Want to learn about Windows Azure in general and all of the latest services and features it offers?  Watch the Meet Windows Azure event, streaming live online, Thursday June 7th, 2012 starting at 4pm EDT!  Scott Guthrie and the Windows Azure team will be bringing you lots of excitement from San Francisco, Ca on Thursday afternoon.  I highly recommend you block some time on your calendar to catch his keynote at a minimum!  The event will be recorded and available for viewing on demand later.

Looking forward to lots of Azure goodness on this cloud week!

Great video on everyday leadership:

Wanted to share another great event around the cloud going on in New York City this week!  On Thursday at the Microsoft office in NYC, Gigaspaces, Aditi, C24, Cisco, and Microsoft will be hosting an event to explore the opportunities created by emerging cloud technologies.  The event will feature coverage & demos of Gigaspace’s Cloudify solution and Cisco’s Unified Computing System in the context to how they relate to Windows Azure.

Gigaspace’s VP of Product Management, Uri Cohen, and Deputy CTO, Shay Hassidim, will be kicking the day off with a keynote covering Cloudify.  One thing that Cloudify can do is make it easy to package and deploy Java solutions to Windows Azure.  Shay will also be talking about this Wednesday 5/16/2012 at the NYC Windows Azure user group!

When:

Thursday, May 17, 2012
9:30am – 4:00pm

Where:

Microsoft NYC Offices
1290 Ave of the Americas
New York, NY 10104

Here are the details from the event’s registration page on Meetup.com:

Cloud computing may be the most disruptive, transformative technology shift since the Internet, and migrating business to the cloud isn’t just a trend anymore but rather a fundamental business requirement.

Leveraging the Cloudify open PaaS stack, public cloud platforms like Windows Azure or unified technology building blocks such as the Cisco Unified Computing System provides users strategic benefits such as reduced cost, flexibility, high-availability and easy automation.

We invite you to join us and our panel of CTOs and technical evangelists for a high-energy event where we will explore the opportunities created by emerging cloud technologies. You’ll hear real world use cases from Microsoft, Aditi, Cisco, GigaSpaces, C24, a Fortune 100 Financial Institution, and learn how cloud computing is opening a whole new world of possibilities for enterprises and ISVs.

We’ll delve into the players and the layers that make up the Cloud ecosystem, including IaaS, PaaS, security, and orchestration. Learn what works, what doesn’t, and what’s next. You’ll find out about the strengths and weaknesses of this promising but hard to define technology paradigm, and how it can allow you to focus on your core business competency.

Discover how Cloudify and Azure work together to:
• Easily deploy even the most complex Java apps onto Azure with zero code changes
• Provide an enterprise-grade production environment for your Java app on Azure through continuous availability, elastic scalability, production ready management and monitoring, and fully automated deployment
• Maximize the already powerful Azure platform capabilities with extremely tight integration

Agenda

09:30 am - 09:55 am: Registration

10:00 am – 10:50 am: Keynote ~ Uri Cohen, VP Product Management, Shay Hassidim, Deputy CTO GigaSpaces ~ Cloudify, the PaaS Jailbreaker - Theory and Practice

The promise of many current PaaS platforms is that they will make application deployment and management on the cloud simple. To achieve this, most PaaS platforms take the "my way or the highway" approach (a.k.a opinionated architecture), and force you to fit into their own stack, language of choice, cloud data center, security, high availability, and scalability models. The result is that they are irrelevant to most existing apps, and once you are in – you’re locked in forever. Cloudify aims to change all that by giving you the freedom to use any application stack, on any cloud, and handle your application without code changes. In this session we'll hear about Cloudify design principles and hear about real life use cases Cloudify implementation.

10:55 am - 11:20 am: Cloudify demonstration

11:25 am – 12:00 pm: Francesco Rietti, BDM - US Azure Partnerships Microsoft

12:00 pm – 01:25 pm: Networking lunch

01:30 pm – 02:00 pm: Siddhartha Bagga, Manager - BD Aditi

02:05 pm – 02:35 pm: Gary Berger, Architect, Office of the CTO Cisco Systems ~ Showcasing the Unified Multi-Service Data Center and service virtualization

02:40 pm – 03:10 pm: John Davies, CTO & Founder C24 ~ On banking and finance-related cloud solutions

03:15 pm – 04:00 pm: Speaker panel open discussion ~ Industry experts answer your questions and provide guidance on cloud computing adoption

About the Participating Companies:

GigaSpaces is an application virtualization platform provider serving 300+ renowned tier 1 companies around the globe. Working with Microsoft, they created an enterprise Java application platform called Cloudify for Azure, for onboarding JEE/Spring/big-data applications to Azure without any architectural or code changes.

Windows Azure is an open and flexible cloud platform that enables you to quickly build, deploy and manage applications across a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters. You can build applications using any language, tool or framework. And you can integrate your public cloud applications with your existing IT environment.

Aditi helps product companies, web businesses and enterprises leverage the power of cloud, e-social and mobile, to drive competitive advantage. We are one of the top 3 Platform-as-a-Service solution providers globally and one of the top 5 Microsoft technology partners in the US.

The Cisco Unified Computing System represents radical simplification of traditional architecture, dramatically reducing the number of devices that must be purchased, cabled, configured, powered, cooled, secured, and managed. The solution delivers end-to-end optimization for virtualized environments while retaining the ability to support also creating new agility for traditional OS and application stacks in physical environments.

C24 is a software house specializing in standards-based messaging and integration solutions aimed at the wholesale financial services markets. The C24 Integration Objects Studio product and the financial services specific message Standards Libraries are used by many of the world’s largest firms in Europe and the Americas supporting business critical applications for asset management, clearing and settlement and payment processing.

This should be a great event.  I’ll be there for the first part of the day before heading over to VS Live! in Brooklyn where I will be doing a talk on Windows Azure + Node.js.

When you give your customers the option to simply reply to emails, this is what you may receive.

Great piece by Mark Cuban, The Coming Meltdown in College Education & Why The Economy Won’t Get Better Any Time Soon:

Its far too easy to borrow money for college. Did you know that there is more outstanding debt for student loans than there is for Auto Loans or Credit Card loans ? Thats right. The 37mm holders of student loans have more debt than the 175mm or so credit card owners in this country and more than the all of the debt on cars in this country. While the average student loan debt is about 23k. The median is close to $12,500. And growing. Past 1 TRILLION DOLLARS.

If you are interested in topic, check out James Altucher’s I was blind, but now I can see.

And if you want a better glimpse into how what we actually define as education is broken, check out Seth Godin’s Stop Stealing Dreams.

I’m excited to announce the line up of this week’s NYC Windows Azure User Group for this month on Wednesday, May 16, 2012!  The group has lined up not one, but TWO great speakers to keep you informed on interesting uses of Microsoft’s cloud platform: Windows Azure.

First off, Bill Zack from Slalom Consulting will kick off the meeting with a warm up talk featuring a quick overview of the Windows Azure Platform.  Next up, our main speaker, Shay Hassidim from GigaSpaces, will talk about running Java on Windows Azure with his company’s Cloudify solution (aka: The PaaS Jailbreaker!). 

Shay is visiting New York City from Israel.  Shay is in town for another great event that GigaSpaces will be hosting at Microsoft the next day on Thursday, May 17, 2012.  (more on that in my next post!)

Since the user group has kicked off last fall, we have mostly focused on .NET topics on Azure.  But Windows Azure is so much beyond .NET!  I’m excited to see the group cover some of these other topics.  Future meetings will be focused on mobile apps and also other non-.NET solutions on Azure (Node.js, PHP, etc).

Here’s the scoop for Wednesday night:

Microsoft NYC Offices - 1290 Ave of the Americas NY, NY 10104 Where:

Microsoft NYC Offices
1290 Ave of the Americas
New York, NY 10104

When:

Wednesday, May 16, 2012
6:00pm – 8:30pm

Session 1: Windows Azure Platform Overview

Presented by: Bill Zack

Perhaps you've heard of Azure but aren't sure how it differs from other clouds. You will leave with an understanding of the platform's features and use cases.

Bill will provide a quick introduction to the entire Windows Azure Platform and its key features such as Compute, Storage and Database plus assorted Windows Azure middleware features such as Service Bus, Access Control, Traffic Manager, Connect and Media Services.

Session 2: The PaaS Jailbreaker

Presented by: Shay Hassidim

The session will cover the following:

• The Difference Between PaaS and DevOps
• Putting DevOps & PaaS togatehr
• What Makes a Cloudify a PaaS Jailbreaker?
• Quick Introduction to Cloudify Recipes

About Shay:

Shay has been with GigaSpaces since the inception of the company, charting the Technology Direction and Product Evolution from Caching, to Elastic Application Scaling to fully functional Hybrid Cloud Platform solution.  Shay studied at Ben-Gurion University with a concentration in advanced computational science and programming.  Shay leads GigaSpace’s developer community and shares the vision of Next Generation IT infrastructure platform in  a consultative practice of innovation creation for fortune 100 level financial customers in the North East.

Hope to see a bunch of you on Wednesday night!!!!

Visual Studio Live! is going on this week on over in Brooklyn this week at the Brooklyn Marriott.  I posted about the event back in March.  It is a GREAT conference for .NET developers to keep up with the latest trends and technologies that make up the Microsoft developer platform.  While the conference itself does have a registration cost, I wanted to share some information about a FREE event, open to all, that the conference organizers are putting on this Wednesday night, May 16th. 

Every year at VS Live!, they host a free community night featuring a notable speaker.  This year is no different.  Make your way over to Brooklyn (it’s NOT that far all you spoiled Manhattanites!) on Wednesday evening for a great talk by Miguel de Icaza! It’s just one stop past Wall St. on most of the major subway lines that pass under the financial district (A/C/2/3/etc).

When:
Wednesday, May 16 – 6:30 – 8:30 p.m.

Where:

New York Marriott @ the Brooklyn Bridge
333 Adams Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201

How To Get There

Join us, and the local developer community, for a bonus evening of content and community at Visual Studio Live! New York's Community Night (open to all Visual Studio Live! attendees).

Featured presentation: Greener Pastures for C# Developers

Miguel de Icaza, CTO, Xamarin

Come learn how Mono can help every one of your current projects: from our C# compiler as a service to running your .NET code on iPhone, Android and Mac. Demos will feature our amazing MonoDevelop cross platform IDE. Come to be energized and fall in love with .NET all over again. This is your second honeymoon. Do not miss it.

Very smart way to do Git with Dropbox. Simple FTW.

A very interesting read on simply pursuing happiness.

A couple of great quotes:

Forget about your life expectancy. After all, it’s calculated based on an average. And you never, ever want to expect being average.

And then:

What you should prepare for is mess. Life’s a mess. You are not entitled to expect anything from it. Life is not fair. Everything does not balance out in the end. Life happens, and you have no control over it. Good and bad things happen to you day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment. Your degree is a poor armor against fate.

The last one in particular gels with my now favorite quote.

Our next round of Windows Azure developer events on the US east coast is happening later this month!  Last fall, Brian, Jim, and I brought the Windows Azure Dev Camp series to 5 locations in the east.  Now, we’re bringing the Azure Dev Camps to three more locations:  Atlanta, New Jersey, and Northern Virginia!

Have you been putting off getting to know the cloud? Well, don't put it off any longer. Whether you're developing enterprise apps, or cooking up an idea for the next million-selling app for Windows 8, or somewhere in between, Windows Azure has plenty to offer you. These events will offer you the opportunity to get up to speed on Windows Azure quickly, including hands-on development time with experts on hand to answer your questions.

We’re going to include a hands-on portion of the event with the @home with Windows Azure project mixed in with plenty of information about the platform.

Here's the agenda for the events:

1.      The Azure Platform – An Overview  (60 minutes)
Let’s start off the day with a dive into Windows Azure.   We’ll talk about what Windows Azure offers, from hosting applications to durable storage.   We’ll look at Windows Azure roles types, hosting web applications and worker processes.  We’ll also cover durable storage options, both traditional relational database that is offered as SQL Azure, or more cloud-centric offerings in Windows Azure Storage for files, semi-structured data, and queues.

2.       Hands on @home with Azure (120 minutes)
For this hands-on portion of the day, we’ll work on the @home with Windows Azure project.  The @home project will give you a solid understanding of using Windows Azure in a project that contributes back to Stanford’s Folding@home distributed computing project.   We’ll walk through the code, provisioning an account, and getting the application deployed and running.

3.      Caching – A Scalable Middle Tier (45 minutes)
Creating a stateless application is a difficult but fundamental aspect of building a scalable application in the cloud.  In this session, we’ll talk about the Windows Azure Cache service and using it as a middle tier to maintain state and cache objects that can be shared by multiple instances. 

4.      SQL Azure, Data Sync, and Reporting (45 minutes)
SQL Azure offers a scalable database as a service without having to configure and maintain hardware.  We’ll look at the subtle differences between on premises SQL Server databases and SQL Azure, and how Data Sync can be used to synchronize data between multiple databases both in the cloud and on premises.  We’ll also look at SQL Azure Reporting.

5.      Windows 8 and Azure – Better Together (60 minutes)
The consumer preview of Windows 8 is out, and it’s the perfect time to ramp up on developing native Metro-style applications.   In this session, we’ll give an overview of Windows 8, and delivering a richer user experience by leveraging a cloud backend.

There are 3 Windows Azure Camps scheduled, and you can register for the one nearest you via the links below:

Don't miss out on this great opportunity to learn about how Windows Azure can help make your apps shine, both in the cloud, and elsewhere!

This week, I am going to do my co-hacking day in Yardley, PA. @briandonahue is going to be there and it looks like one or two others from the Philly Startup Hackers group may stop by as well.

If you can make it out, please stop by and join us.

When: May 10, 2012.

Location:
Yardley Starbucks.
1 North Main Street
Yardley, PA 190671409