NJ Geeks - New Jersey's IT Community

If you’re having scalability problems and blaming it on a single technology, chances are, you’re doing it wrong.

If you attended my HDC 2010 session “From Datasets to Data Services” and want a copy of  the slide deck and code, you can get them from my HDC10 Skydrive folder.

As usual, the Heartland Developers Conference was killer.  If you want to attend a great conference and don’t want to spend a ton of money, you may want to look into the next HDC.

After all the fallout about Thesis, the premium WordPress theme that everyone loved so much, this past July and everyone’s mass exodus to the Genesis theme framework by StudioPress, I decided it was time I checked it out for myself.

Right off the bat, I’m pleased that Genesis is GPL’ed, it means I have the freedom to take it and do what I please with it, including building child themes that depend on it, and sell them.

So, how did I decide to give Genesis a try? By converting the theme for my own blog, dossy.org, to use it. Yup, might as well really live and breathe it and see how it wears, right?

It took me about 2 hours to rewrite my theme using Genesis, which was really pleasant to use and flexible enough to suit my needs. Of course, my theme isn’t really elaborate and doesn’t have a lot of functionality, but I do have some peculiar bits that weren’t hard to reproduce in a way that would fit in with Genesis’s way of doing things.

If you’re looking to switch from Thesis or otherwise have a custom WP theme built using Genesis, this is definitely a service that Panoptic will now be offering. Lets talk and discuss how I can help you.

In this episode, the one and only Windows Azure Tactical Strategist, Steve Marx, joins Dmitry and Peter to give us an update on the Windows Azure platform. Steve talks about common real world Windows Azure use patterns, including storage and compute instance configurations.

Steve uses some strategic tactics to tell us what’s in the tea leaves for the future of Azure. Peter also responds to “cat ladies & acne-laden teenagers” by sharing “The Memo”.

Evan Nagle on Cat Ladies, Tool, and Microsoft.Data

Connect With Steve Marx:

• Steve Marx’s Blog
• Follow Steve Marx on Twitter
• Cloud Cover Show on Channel 9

Windows Azure Stuff:

• Windows Azure Team Blog
• The Windows Azure Platform
• Microsoft’s Windows Azure: What a Difference A Year Makes (Mary Jo Foley)
• Windows Azure Security Overview Whitepaper Released
• Moving Applications to the Cloud on the Microsoft Windows Azure Platform - Guidance from Microsoft patterns & practices
• Programming Windows Azure Book (O’Reilly)
• Windows Azure Lessons Learned Online Series
• The Windows Azure Platform: Articles From The Trenches
• Microsoft’s Cloud In A Box (Jeffrey Schwartz)
• Windows Azure Case Studies
• June 2010 Azure Tools Update For Visual Studio
• Intellitrace for Windows Azure

Yesterday, I made the trip into NYC to added the OData Roadshow.

For those who have not looked into OData:

The Open Data Protocol (OData) is a Web protocol for querying and updating data that provides a way to unlock your data and free it from silos that exist in applications today. OData does this by applying and building upon Web technologies such as HTTP, Atom Publishing Protocol (AtomPub) and JSON to provide access to information from a variety of applications, services, and stores.

• I personally do not feel it is truly RESTful, but I am willing to give up some of the tenants of REST in order to gain consistency.
• While the protocol specification states it is read and write, I would be 99% of implementations will be read only. In fact, in the 5 hours of content covered by Microsoft, there were zero examples of updates.
• If you are using a Linq to “Your Data Access” technology adding OData at a high level will be simple. If you are not using one, I expect this as quite a bit of work.

Overall, I really like the concept. Simple conventions for querying and representing data. IMO, this is the kind of stuff Microsoft should be doing more of (instead of silverlight/windows phone/etc). Couple with their data market (Dallas). I would expect to see much more data becoming available via OData.

On a side note, if the OData Roadshow is coming through your town, I would highly recommend checking it out.

Finally, for a walk through on setting up your own OData service, check out Hanselman’s OData For StackOverflow post.

Soon, it will be the end of the third month of my full-time self-employment. On one hand, I’m very pleased–business has been very good–but on the other hand, it still isn’t enough to cover all the bills, yet. Conservatively, I’d say I’m half-way to where I need to be on a monthly basis. Don’t get me wrong, I’m ecstatic about the progress I’ve made in just three short months! I also know that there’s these bills to pay … and I need to come up with the money to pay them.

I’ve been truly blessed with some fantastic clients, tremendous opportunities and an incredibly supportive family. I’ve always had dreams of doing this, but never felt that the timing was right. To be honest, I’m not sure that the timing is right now, either, but one of the things I’ve learned these last three months is that I don’t need to be sure. I’m going to do everything it takes to make this succeed, and if that’s not enough, I’ll just have to find ways so I can keep trying.

I think the challenge for September is to try and figure out what Panoptic is going to specialize in. Being a very broad and varied generalist is making it hard to sell. While I could take on many projects that come my way, it’s hard to explain how that’s possible to a potential client. It also complicates the decision-making process around what leads to generate and pursue. Focusing Panoptic through specialization should simplify the sales process, which could help me achieve my business goals and be able to pay those bills.

Just got word from Andrew Brust that he is launching a new user group in NYC focused on the Microsoft Business Intelligence stack!  Their first meeting kicks off on September 13th, 2010 in the Microsoft NYC office.  The group is so new that they don’t even have their website set up.  I’ll get a link up here on my blog once they do.  In the meantime, they’ve set up a registration page for the 9/13/2010 meeting on Click2Attend (link here).

Details from Andrew:

Many of you know that Business Intelligence (BI) has long been a passion of mine, ever since the release of SQL Server 7 and its OLAP Services (now Analysis Services) component.  With the growing number of BI features in Office and SharePoint, including the new PowerPivot self-service BI engine, Microsoft BI is now hitting a point of true resonance in the MS ecosystem.  The challenge is that the MS BI stack is scattered over several products, including SQL Server, Office and SharePoint.  This means information, events and support around the MS BI stack are scattered as well, creating certain barriers to successful and enjoyable adoption.

With that in mind, and with the support of others in the NYC-area Microsoft user group community, I have decided to launch a new user group focused on Microsoft BI; nothing more and nothing less.  This group’s monthly meetings will feature subjects that include deep dives on the Microsoft BI Stack’s component products, the developer story around them, third party products, and how to integrate Microsoft BI tools with other Business Intelligence platforms.

The group will meet the 2nd Monday of each month, at Microsoft’s NYC offices at 1290 Avenue of the Americas (6th Avenue). Our first meeting will be in less than three weeks, on Monday, September 13th.  Our Web site is under construction but should be up within one week.  For now, please simply register at the link below:

We have a great speaker and topic lined up!  It features an introduction to the entire MS BI Stack, and is a terrific talk for our inaugural meeting.  Here are the details:

Introduction to the Microsoft Business Intelligence Stack

This demonstration will provide a whirlwind tour of the major components of the Microsoft BI stack.    Borrowing from the “begin with the end in mind” approach, We’ll kick things off with an end result: a SharePoint 2010 multi-page dashboard  consisting of different business scorecards and integrated reports/charts for summary/detailed analytics. 

From there, the presentation will step backwards and trace the formative steps towards the end goal, and how developers can use the different products in the Microsoft BI stack (Integration Services, Analysis Services, Reporting Services, PowerPivot, and PerformancePoint Services), to build solutions for ultimate deployment to SharePoint. 

Attendees will come away with some exposure of what each tool in the BI stack can do, and how the tools can be made to work together.

Speaker: Kevin S. Goff

Kevin is a Microsoft SQL Server MVP, a Columnist for Component Developer (CoDe) Magazine, a SQL Server/Business Intelligence Senior Trainer and Curriculum author at SetFocus  LLC  and has been an Industry developer, speaker and writer since 1987

Please register and spread the word.  Thanks in advance and I look forward to seeing you on September 13th!

Andrew J. Brust
Chief Technology Officer
twentysix NEW YORK, a Tallan company

Firestarter events have been growing quite popular over the past year or two. These are all free training events that focus on a single topic from intro to 300-level in a day. Feedback from past Firestarter attendees have been universally positive.  Here in the tri-state area we’ve seen multiple Firestarter events on Silverlight, ASP.NET MVC, Agile Programming, and WCF.  Just last week, I announced that there will be Firestarters on Windows Phone 7 (9/7) and the Entity Framework (9/27) coming to NYC.

It should be no surprise that given the popularity of these events, the folks here at Microsoft have been busy working on helping create more of them!  Today, I’m happy to announce a new series of Firestarters on the Microsoft Web Platform!  These will be running from late September to December in cities up and down the east coast of the US.  There will be local stops in Iselin, NJ (9/30) and NYC (10/26)!

Come on out to learn about the latest in web development on the Microsoft platform.  We’ll take you on a tour of ASP.NET Web Forms & MVC, explore the new WebMatrix, as well as show you techniques for creating effective web applications with CSS, jQuery, and AJAX.

To the Web with ASP.NET 4 Web Forms

The tried-and-true approach for creating effective and robust websites, ASP.NET 4 Web Forms offers powerful abstractions and rapid application development features. Add in recent advances in ASP.NET 4 and Visual Studio 2010 and you’ll be crafting amazing sites in no time.

Looking at ASP.NET MVC

ASP.NET MVC (Model View Controller) is a relatively new option, offering a variety of potential benefits such as separation of concerns, flexibility, control, and testability. In this session, you’ll learn the essentials, along with the latest advances, so you can get started right away.

The Web Platform Smorgasbord (Lunch included!)

Grab a bite to eat and join us for this relaxed but rapid-fire lunchtime look at a variety of web topics, including tools and tech that you’ll surely find appetizing.

Introducing WebMatrix

WebMatrix is a new option that provides a simple but powerful way to create web applications. You can create sites based on existing open-source applications, or dive right in and create from scratch. From code and testing to data and deployment, we’ll introduce WebMatrix and show you how it can make your life easier.

Evaluating Your Web Options

You’re up to speed with the latest in ASP.NET MVC, Web Forms, and WebMatrix, but you may be wondering how and when to choose between them. The great news is you don’t always have to choose just one. In this session we’ll talk about factors to consider, options for adoption/migration, and ways to combine ASP.NET Web Forms and MVC in the same web application.

Creating Effective Websites with ASP.NET

Knowing how to create websites with ASP.NET is important, but making them effective is the key. This final session dives into additional options and techniques that apply to both Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC applications. From scripting with jQuery and AJAX, design with CSS, markup and validation techniques, and tools for testing, you’ll learn how to set your sites (and skills) apart from the rest.

Use the links below to register for the Microsoft Web Platform Firestarter in the city closest to you.

Be on the look out soon for information regarding a series of Windows Azure Firestarters coming soon in November & December!

The Entity Framework is a set of technologies in ADO.NET that support the development of data-oriented software applications. First introduced in .NET 3.5 SP1 in 2008, the Entity Framework underwent significant changes in its second version, known as Entity Framework 4, released in Visual Studio 2010 earlier this year.  If you haven’t looked at EF before due to “V1 concerns”, now is the time to check it out. 

What better way to learn about the Entity Framework than from the east coast’s resident EF guru, Julie Lerman!  Join Julie, Rachel Appel, and Stephen Bohlen for a full-day learning event at the Entity Framework Firestarter in New York City!  They’ll spend the whole day bringing you up to speed on all you’ll need to know about the Entity Framework and how it can help with your application development.

Date: Tuesday September 27th, 2010

Location:

Microsoft NYC Office
1290 Ave of The Americas, 6th Floor
New York, NY 10104

Doors open at 8:00am. Sessions run from 8:30am – 6:00pm.  Lunch will be served.

Intro  by Julie Lerman  

Why EF exists, where it fits into ADO.NET and long term MS strategy, basics about how EF works and some simple first step demos in VS2010.

What’s new in EF4  by Julie Lerman and/or Steve Bohlen

Designer support, model first, stored procedure mappings, pass through sprocs. Lots of the other new stuff is in later talks.

RAD development with EF by Rachel Appel

Drag & Drop with WPF, EntityDataSource, ASP.NET Dynamic Data Sites.

Entity Framework POCO Support Basics by Julie Lerman

How to create snapshot POCOs and dynamic proxy POCOs, differences between their behavior, new T4 code generation, customizing T4 for more targeted POCO classes

Disconnected strategies (WCF/ASP.NET) by Julie Lerman

Leverage new methods for custom WCF/ASP.NET apps, Self-Tracking Entities, quick look at WCF Data Services/oData & WCF RIA Services

Writing Testable/Maintainable Apps with EF by Julie Lerman & Steve Bohlen

Build simple repositories, unit of work, unit tests, use them all in MVC app…

Closing/Raffle

Stay for the closing remarks and raffle.

Registration will sell out quickly, so sign up right away to guarantee your spot at this free learning event!

In this episode, Dmitry and Peter cover the latest news around the Microsoft developer space, including Windows Azure updates, interoperability, & Windows Phone 7. They also talk about the new Visual Studio LightSwitch. Is it really for cat ladies?

Peter & Dmitry discuss who the target audience is for LightSwitch as well as how some in the community feel it may or may not impact professional Microsoft Developers in the industry.

Windows Azure Stuff:

• Windows Azure Security Overview Whitepaper Released
• Windows Azure Single Sign-on Support Implemented
• Windows Azure App Fabric LABS Access Control Service Update Now Available
• Windows Azure App Fabric LABS Environment
• Access Control Service – Roadmap for PDC and Beyond
• Windows Azure CDN Supports Silverlight Smooth Streaming (Steve Marx)

Interop Stuff:

• Previous Connected Show guest, Maarten Bailleu Blogs About Hosting PHP Apps In Azure
• PHP Driver for SQL Server 2.0 is Released
• Microsoft Drivers for PHP for SQL Server 2.0 Released

Windows Phone 7 Stuff:

• Creating High Performance Silverlight Applications for Windows Phone 7
• Windows Phone 7 Voice Preview on Emulator (Feature Behind Dmitry’s Trick)
• Windows 7 Firestarters, Garages, and Bootcamps Coming to Central & Eastern US

Conference News:

• ALM Summit in Redmond – Nov 16-18th
• P&P Symposium: Redmond Oct 18-22, Moscow 13th Sept, and Kiev 10th Sept
• Don’t forget PDC on Oct 28-29th Redmond, Wa

Visual Studio LightSwitch stuff:

• Microsoft Announces Visual Studio LightSwitch
• Andrew Brust Writes About LightSwitch
• Matt Van Horn & The Folks At Infragistics Are Working On Lightswitch Controls
• Microsoft.Data and Positioning (Ayende aka Oren Eni)
• Microsoft.Data, Because the 90s Were So Good, We Want To Do Them Again (Ayende aka Oren Eni)
• Microsoft.Data – Let’s Inject Some Love Into The Conversation (Evan Nagle)
• Doug Seven – Myth Busting Visual Studio Lightswitch

Despite the news that RIM was going to finally launch a new touch screen slider phone “any day now,” which did finally launch as the BlackBerry Torch 9800, I decided to give an Android phone a serious look.

After looking at the various options that at&t offers, I decided to give the Samsung Galaxy S-based Captivate (details: Samsung, at&t) a try. I ordered three new phones–one for me, one for my wife, and one for my Dad–at the start of August, and by the 6th, we had our phones in hand.

Right off the bat, I’ll have to admit that I went into this with extremely high expectations. I know, big mistake. To be honest, after dealing with BlackBerry phones for the last two-plus years, I was excited at the prospect of finally getting on a modern platform that didn’t involve using that crappy iPhone OS.

On the surface, it sounds really promising: a fancy 4-inch Super AMOLED display; lightweight at 4.5 ounces; 5MP camera; 512MB of RAM and 16GB internal SDHC; Samsung’s 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 Hummingbird CPU. With these specs, there’s a whole lot of potential to build something really incredible.

My first disappointment was the “Email” app that ships with Android 2.1 on this phone. Apparently, I’m not alone, so much so that folks have forked the code and released their changes called K-9. However, K-9 still has its warts: I can’t figure out how to copy-and-paste text from an email message, without “replying” to it and copying from the quoted text area, then discarding the reply. Perhaps I’ll “fix” this and submit a patch.

Next, the lack of out-of-the-box wi-fi tethering was disappointing. I went and rooted my Captivate and then installed Android Wi-Fi Tether on it. Having a free, open source “solution” is a great thing, but certainly not for the average, non-technical consumer.

The Calendar app. isn’t too bad, but I sadly discovered a shortcoming in it: there’s no way to duplicate an event. I’m not talking about creating a recurring event, but taking an event and duplicating it. Suppose you have an event, like a doctor’s appointment. You go to your appointment, and at the end, you schedule your follow-up appointment. It’d be really convenient to be able to just copy your current appointment, and paste it on the new date and maybe adjust the time. Can’t do that with the stock Calendar app on the Captivate. You have to just add a new event and enter in all the data. Annoying, to say the least.

Battery life also seems disappointing. The specs claim over 300 hours (over 12 days) of standby time, and over 5 hours of talk time. Given the amount of email and Twitter and Facebook I get, even at an hour interval for refreshes and K-9 mail set up to do IMAP “push,” my battery seems to last around 4 hours before needing a charge. I suspect the 3G data use of the cellular radio uses more juice than voice “talk” time … and the notion of “standby” time is a bit misleading, since when the phone is doing background data tasks, it’s really not “in standby” as its actively using the radio.

Another huge problem is the fact that GPS on the Captivate appears to be totally broken. The TeleNav GPS navigation application is pretty much unusable, with it not being able to track your location properly, which causes it to constantly reroute as it tries to figure out where you are. Supposedly there’s a workaround, where you can manually reconfigure the phone to use Google’s Location Server, which I’ll try soon, but again, this is just poor out-of-the-box experience and “fixing it yourself” isn’t really a satisfactory solution for a non-technical consumer.

On one hand, I wonder if I should have bothered making the switch from BlackBerry to Android, yet. Despite my complaints with RIM and BlackBerry products, the few things they could do, they did reasonably well. But, I’m tired of waiting for RIM to catch up. Maybe the next generation of touch-plus-slider devices following the Torch 9800 could be an option, but for now, I’m going to stick it out with the Captivate, hoping that Android 2.2 brings some fixes, along with community-developed Android functionality closes the gap between “sucks badly” and “usable on a day-to-day basis.”

A couple of months ago I wrote about wiring up C# 4.0 dynamics with MongoDB. At the time, I opened up the MongoDB-CSharp library and modified a bit of the code.

For obvious reasons this was not a good long term solution. In what appeared to be moment of clarity a couple of days ago, I decided to try to use extension methods and add dynamics on top of MongoDB-CSharp.

To the credit of the MongoDB-CSharp team, getting the basic functionality up and running was very simple. However, in the end it turns out that two compiler hacks (extension methods and dynamics) do not make a right. :)

Once in place, the code to use it looks something like this:

While it works, it still feels too awkward to be useful IMO. Normally, this I would just delete something like this, but I am trying to let less code die on my machine, so I published it all as a GitHub gist: DynoMongo.

After working on this, I have come to the following conclusions:

1. MongoDB-CSharp provides adequate flexibility on a schema if I need it in .NET. Mix in Automapper and a helper or two you are all set.
2. Norm provides more structure if that is a requirementl
3. Dynamics are really just a parlor trick. If I want the flexibility of a dynamic language, using C# is a mistake.
4. I should probably try to do something similar in IronRuby, but with all the excellent MongoDB Ruby libraries out there, I am not sure it is even worth the thought.

Anyway, if someone feels this is interesting or useful, feel free to grab the gist, DynoMongo, and run with it.

Flexibility is the ability to change how software works; power is the ability to do more with less effort.

In this episode, guests Ben Dewey & Kent Brown join Peter to discuss the latest release of the Apache Stonehenge project. Ben & Kent talk about the .NET, Java, and PHP interoperability project and how it now handles identity. (Interview starts at 26:21)

Also, Dmitry & Peter rap about Web Farms, Ribbons & Bows, Windows Phone 7, and Power Tools. They also take us on another trip to Dmitry’s SoapBox!

Various .NET Stuff:

• WPF Ribbon Control “officially” Released
• IIS Team Released Web Farm Framework 2.0 Beta

Interop Stuff:

• Identity “Mash-up” Federation Demo Using Multiple Protocols (Open ID and WS-Federation)

Windows Phone 7 Stuff:

• Windows Phone 7 Design Resources – UI Guide and Design Templates
• Go Get The Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools Beta
• Windows Phone Development Documentation (Refreshed July 2010)
• Windows Phone 7 Developer Training Kit Beta Refresh
• The First WP7 Reviews Came Out On July 19th
• Paul Thurrott Shares Dmitry’s Fury
• Windows Phone 7 Firestarter, Garage, and Boot Camp Events in the US

Visual Studio Stuff:

• New Version of VS 2010 Productivity Power Tools Available (July 2010)
• Announcing the Solution Navigator for Visual Studio 2010

Ben Dewey & Kent Brown Stuff:

• Ben Dewey’s Blog
• Follow Ben On Twitter
• Stay Connected With Kent & the WCF Team via the Endpoint Blog

Apache Project Stonehenge Stuff:

• Apache Stonehenge M2 Release Adds Claims-Based Authentication Scenarios
• Ben Dewey Announces: Apache Stonehenge M2 Released
• Ted Neward Talks About Stonehenge on Connected Show #8
• Apache Stonehenge Project

With all the excitement around the upcoming new Windows Phone 7 platform, it was just a matter of time! I’m happy to announce that Microsoft is going to be hosting a series of Windows Phone 7 Firestarter events around the Eastern US starting this month.  If you’re looking to learn more about the development opportunities on this new platform, these will be the events for you!  Look out New York City…  the WP7 Firestarter comes to town on Tuesday, September 7th.

The power to build smart, visually stunning games and applications is right in your hands with Windows Phone 7. Want to see what's under the hood? You are invited to join your local Microsoft Developer Evangelists for an inside look at the Windows Phone 7 platform. You'll learn how to harness the strength of Silverlight and XNA to create compelling user experiences with rich, multi-media content. We'll also outline the new distribution and revenue opportunities Windows Phone 7 and the Windows Marketplace offer to web, game, mobile and interactive developers and application publishers.

Morning Sessions:

• Introduction to Windows Phone Development and the WP7 platform
• Building Windows Phone 7 Applications with Silverlight
• Building Windows Phone 7 Applications using XNA

Lunch (included)

Afternoon Sessions:

• Monetizing Your Apps with Marketplace
• Windows Phone 7 Services
• Light Up Windows Phone 7

Amplify your creativity, productivity and profits with Windows Phone 7 – and don't miss these full-day sessions in your local area. This is an exclusive, advance invitation for our preferred customers, so register today and save your seat.

Following the Firestarter events will be a Windows Phone 7 Garage for mobile application developers each evening featuring hands-on workshops.  (<—And I’m guessing an opportunity to see your app run on an actual WP7 device!)  These events will follow the Firestarter from 6-9 pm and require a separate registration. This hands-on workshop will feature one-on-one proctoring from Microsoft and community experts. It's the perfect opportunity to design and implement that cool new app you've been dreaming about, so bring your ideas and get ready to code. To learn more about the Phone Garage event or to register, click on an event city near you. Hurry, space is limited!

If you can dream it, you can build it with Windows Phone 7.

Use the links below to register for the city nearest to you:

Windows Phone 7 Firestarter

Windows Phone 7 Garage

Hope to see some of you at the Windows Phone 7 Firestarter in NYC on September 7th!

Oh… and if you’re not near any of these cities on the east coast, my peers in the central part of the US are hosting similar free training events by the name “Windows Phone 7 Boot Camps”.  These will be in cities like Chicago, Houston, St. Louis, and Austin.  For a listing of Windows Phone 7 Boot Camp cities and dates, see Jeff Brand’s blog here.

I am still very much in the camp of write good (and consistent) content first and let SEO handle itself. However, that does not mean you should not keep an eye out for fundamental problems which can cause bad search engine results.

One of these problems I believe every developer of public web sites needs to be mindful of is duplicate content. Duplicate content causes quite a few problems:

• You may appear to be a spammer in the “eyes” of a search engine
• Links may appear to be directed at two or more urls
• Your content may have to compete with itself

I have long been a fan of ISAPI_Rewrite for IIS to help manage and control some of these problems (which is in turn heavily influenced by mod_rewrite). However, since I have moved this site to Heroku, I needed to find another solution.

Thankfully, due to the awesomeness of Rack and middleware, I found a component called Rack-Rewrite and I was able to leverage it with just a couple of minutes effort.

A web server agnostic rack middleware for defining and applying rewrite rules. In many cases you can get away with Rack::Rewrite instead of writing Apache mod_rewrite rules.

I am already using a customized Rack application, Rack-Jekyll, to power this site, so plugging in Rack-Rewrite was just as simple as adding a couple of lines to my rackup file.

Here are the full contents of my config.ru

The two rules I am running on this site ensure that only scottw.com (no www.) is used and that no links end in a “/”. The first is particularly important since Heroku issues you a custom url as well.

What is really interesting about Rack-Rewrite is the ability to execute code as part of your rewrites. This enables a lot of flexibility (such as ignoring some rewrites when running in development mode).

I love this time of year, with graduations and their corresponding speeches. This year, Erica Goldson of Coxsackie-Athens High School won my heart and mind with this stellar speech, originally posted on Sign of the Times.

There is a story of a young, but earnest Zen student who approached his teacher, and asked the Master, “If I work very hard and diligently, how long will it take for me to find Zen? The Master thought about this, then replied, “Ten years . .” 
The student then said, “But what if I work very, very hard and really apply myself to learn fast — How long then?” Replied the Master, “Well, twenty years.” “But, if I really, really work at it, how long then?” asked the student. “Thirty years,” replied the Master. “But, I do not understand,” said the disappointed student. “At each time that I say I will work harder, you say it will take me longer. Why do you say that?” 
Replied the Master, “When you have one eye on the goal, you only have one eye on the path.” 

This is the dilemma I’ve faced within the American education system. We are so focused on a goal, whether it be passing a test, or graduating as first in the class. However, in this way, we do not really learn. We do whatever it takes to achieve our original objective. 

Some of you may be thinking, “Well, if you pass a test, or become valedictorian, didn’t you learn something? Well, yes, you learned something, but not all that you could have. Perhaps, you only learned how to memorize names, places, and dates to later on forget in order to clear your mind for the next test. School is not all that it can be. Right now, it is a place for most people to determine that their goal is to get out as soon as possible.

I am now accomplishing that goal. I am graduating. I should look at this as a positive experience, especially being at the top of my class. However, in retrospect, I cannot say that I am any more intelligent than my peers. I can attest that I am only the best at doing what I am told and working the system. Yet, here I stand, and I am supposed to be proud that I have completed this period of indoctrination. I will leave in the fall to go on to the next phase expected of me, in order to receive a paper document that certifies that I am capable of work. But I contest that I am a human being, a thinker, an adventurer – not a worker. A worker is someone who is trapped within repetition – a slave of the system set up before him. But now, I have successfully shown that I was the best slave. I did what I was told to the extreme. While others sat in class and doodled to later become great artists, I sat in class to take notes and become a great test-taker. While others would come to class without their homework done because they were reading about an interest of theirs, I never missed an assignment. While others were creating music and writing lyrics, I decided to do extra credit, even though I never needed it. So, I wonder, why did I even want this position? Sure, I earned it, but what will come of it? When I leave educational institutionalism, will I be successful or forever lost? I have no clue about what I want to do with my life; I have no interests because I saw every subject of study as work, and I excelled at every subject just for the purpose of excelling, not learning. And quite frankly, now I’m scared.

John Taylor Gatto, a retired school teacher and activist critical of compulsory schooling, asserts, “We could encourage the best qualities of youthfulness – curiosity, adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insight simply by being more flexible about time, texts, and tests, by introducing kids into truly competent adults, and by giving each student what autonomy he or she needs in order to take a risk every now and then. But we don’t do that.” Between these cinderblock walls, we are all expected to be the same. We are trained to ace every standardized test, and those who deviate and see light through a different lens are worthless to the scheme of public education, and therefore viewed with contempt. 

H. L. Mencken wrote in The American Mercury for April 1924 that the aim of public education is not “to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence. … Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim … is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States.” 

To illustrate this idea, doesn’t it perturb you to learn about the idea of “critical thinking.” Is there really such a thing as “uncritically thinking?” To think is to process information in order to form an opinion. But if we are not critical when processing this information, are we really thinking? Or are we mindlessly accepting other opinions as truth? 

This was happening to me, and if it wasn’t for the rare occurrence of an avant-garde tenth grade English teacher, Donna Bryan, who allowed me to open my mind and ask questions before accepting textbook doctrine, I would have been doomed. I am now enlightened, but my mind still feels disabled. I must retrain myself and constantly remember how insane this ostensibly sane place really is. 

And now here I am in a world guided by fear, a world suppressing the uniqueness that lies inside each of us, a world where we can either acquiesce to the inhuman nonsense of corporatism and materialism or insist on change. We are not enlivened by an educational system that clandestinely sets us up for jobs that could be automated, for work that need not be done, for enslavement without fervency for meaningful achievement. We have no choices in life when money is our motivational force. Our motivational force ought to be passion, but this is lost from the moment we step into a system that trains us, rather than inspires us. 

We are more than robotic bookshelves, conditioned to blurt out facts we were taught in school. We are all very special, every human on this planet is so special, so aren’t we all deserving of something better, of using our minds for innovation, rather than memorization, for creativity, rather than futile activity, for rumination rather than stagnation? We are not here to get a degree, to then get a job, so we can consume industry-approved placation after placation. There is more, and more still. 

The saddest part is that the majority of students don’t have the opportunity to reflect as I did. The majority of students are put through the same brainwashing techniques in order to create a complacent labor force working in the interests of large corporations and secretive government, and worst of all, they are completely unaware of it. I will never be able to turn back these 18 years. I can’t run away to another country with an education system meant to enlighten rather than condition. This part of my life is over, and I want to make sure that no other child will have his or her potential suppressed by powers meant to exploit and control. We are human beings. We are thinkers, dreamers, explorers, artists, writers, engineers. We are anything we want to be – but only if we have an educational system that supports us rather than holds us down. A tree can grow, but only if its roots are given a healthy foundation. 

For those of you out there that must continue to sit in desks and yield to the authoritarian ideologies of instructors, do not be disheartened. You still have the opportunity to stand up, ask questions, be critical, and create your own perspective. Demand a setting that will provide you with intellectual capabilities that allow you to expand your mind instead of directing it. Demand that you be interested in class. Demand that the excuse, “You have to learn this for the test” is not good enough for you. Education is an excellent tool, if used properly, but focus more on learning rather than getting good grades. 

For those of you that work within the system that I am condemning, I do not mean to insult; I intend to motivate. You have the power to change the incompetencies of this system. I know that you did not become a teacher or administrator to see your students bored. You cannot accept the authority of the governing bodies that tell you what to teach, how to teach it, and that you will be punished if you do not comply. Our potential is at stake. 

For those of you that are now leaving this establishment, I say, do not forget what went on in these classrooms. Do not abandon those that come after you. We are the new future and we are not going to let tradition stand. We will break down the walls of corruption to let a garden of knowledge grow throughout America. Once educated properly, we will have the power to do anything, and best of all, we will only use that power for good, for we will be cultivated and wise. We will not accept anything at face value. We will ask questions, and we will demand truth. 

So, here I stand. I am not standing here as valedictorian by myself. I was molded by my environment, by all of my peers who are sitting here watching me. I couldn’t have accomplished this without all of you. It was all of you who truly made me the person I am today. It was all of you who were my competition, yet my backbone. In that way, we are all valedictorians. 

I am now supposed to say farewell to this institution, those who maintain it, and those who stand with me and behind me, but I hope this farewell is more of a “see you later” when we are all working together to rear a pedagogic movement. But first, let’s go get those pieces of paper that tell us that we’re smart enough to do so!

Perhaps there is some hope for this country, after all. Erica, I wish–no, I pray for–you, the best of luck. I will be cheering for you.

My answer to this question has consistently been, “Only if you value your time”.

As an example, I just started watching Tekpub’s iPhone Development series. There is currently about 2 hours worth of content (and I believe more is on the way). The cost for the series is listed as $25 on the site.

My guess is the videos will save me about 10 to 20 hours of reading, tinkering, and just generally getting things going. Now assuming I put a value of more than $2.50/hr for my time (and i do :), the purchase1 would be a no brainer.

I also have a subscription to Peepcode which I have been loving as well.

1 Disclosure: Rob Conery did comp me a full season pass. However, this came when I was about to personally buy a license so I have no qualms writing this review.

Thanks to everyone who attended the WCF Firestarter event in New York City on June 19, 2010!  I had a great time helping organize the event and speaking with many of the attendees about the Windows Communication Foundation.  There were over 200 folks who made it out to the Fire Starter in NYC that day, as well as an almost equal number that tuned in via our live simulcast!  Special thanks goes out to the event’s speakers Miguel Castro and Don Demsak for assembling and delivering most of the day’s content!

The recordings and content from the event are now available! 

Miguel Castro’s Blog
Follow Miguel on Twitter

Peter Laudati’s Blog
Follow Peter on Twitter

Don Demsak’s Blog
Follow Don on Twitter

Here are some links to useful information on WCF.

• What IS the Windows Communication Foundation?
• WCF Developer Center on MSDN
• Beginners Guide To WCF
• WCF Resources & Community on MSDN

Here are the links to the docs for all 3 major releases of WCF. The WCF 4 documentation is the most current, of course. The deltas between these are minor, but good to have if you’re restricted to using an older version in your organization.

• WCF 4 Reference Documentation 
• WCF 3.5 Reference Documentation
• WCF 3.0 Reference Documentation

• WCF REST Developer Center on MSDN
• Overview of REST in WCF
• WCF REST Starter Kit (most of these features are in WCF 4 & VS2010 with a few exceptions)
• Paste As XML Types in VS 2010 (Dani Diaz shows how you can use this REST Starter Kit feature in VS2010)
• Rob Bagby’s AWESOME Blog Series on WCF REST
• Glenn Block’s Blog (Glenn is now on the WCF REST team!)

• Get Started With WCF RIA Services
• WCF RIA Services on MSDN
• WCF RIA Services Code Gallery
• Silverlight Web Service Team Blog (Using WCF with Silverlight Clients)

• WCF Data Services Center on MSDN
• Getting Started with WCF Data Services
• WCF Data Services & oData At-A-Glance
• WCF Data Services Team Blog
• The Endpoint Blog

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