Category: My Updates

Bellingham .NET Users Group – Be There!

As I wrote about previously, I’ve got a presentation coming up tomorrow in Bellingham.

Check out the user group website:  http://bellinghamdotnet.org/

Check out the user group message/e-mail list here:  http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/BellinghamDotNet/

Bellingham Cloud Talk, Coming Right Up

Here’s the basic outline of what I intend to speak on at the upcoming presentation I have for the Bellingham, Washington .NET Users Group.  If you happen to be in the area you should swing by and give it a listen (or heckle, whatever you feel like doing).

On April 5th I have a talk lined up with the Bellingham .NET Users Group. So far here’s a quick one over of the talk:

What Cloud Computing REALLY is to us techies

  • Geographically dispersed data centers.
  • Node based – AKA grid computing configurations that are…
  • Highly Virtualized – thus distributed.
  • Primarily compute and storage functionality.
  • Auto-scalable based on demand.

What kind of offerings exist out in the wild?

  • Amazon Web Services
  • Rackspace
  • Orcs Web
  • GoGrid
  • Joyent
  • Heroku
  • EngineYard

…many others and then the arrival in the last year”ish” of…

  • Windows Azure
  • AppHarbor

Developing for the cloud, what are the fundamentals in the .NET world?

Well, let’s talk about who has been doing the work so far, pushing ahead this technology.

  • Linux is the OS of choice… free, *nix, most widely used on the Internet by a large margin, and extremely capable…
  • Java
  • Ruby on Rails
  • Javascript & jQuery, budding into Node.js via Google’s V8 Engine
  • The Heroku + EngineYard + Git + AWESOMESAUCE capabilities of pushing… LIVE to vastly scalable and distributable cloud provisions!

So where does that leave us .NETters?

AWS .NET SDK released a few years ago.
Windows Azure & SDK released about a year ago.

These two have however been lacking compared to Heroku and EngineYard for those that want something FAST,

something transformative, easy to use, without extra APIs or odd tightly coupled SDKs.

Enter…
AppHarbor

In Summary the .NET Platform has primarily:

AWS for the top IaaS and most widely available zones & capabilities at the absolutely lowest prices,

Windows Azure for the general build to PaaS Solution, and for the people lucky enough to be going the Git +

MVC + real Agile route, AppHarbor is the peeminent solution.

Demo Time…

Windows Azure Demo

AWS Demo

AppHarbor Demo

ASP.NET MVC 3 + Razor Infrastructure Update

A few quick notes about the updates on the Infrastructure Project.  For one thing, I need to give it a good name.  Any ideas?

There are sample Zen Garden CSS and jQuery UI Theme files in the overall github repo, BUT, they still need integration into the actual template project.  Again, if anyone is interested or has ideas on how to get those integrated into the Visual Studio Template, I’m all ears!  🙂

On the topic of a full vertical implementation of NHibernate or Entity Framework with a good repository pattern and related code, I’ve made zero progress over the last week or so.  I hope to remedy that between now and mid-next week.

Until later, off to code again.

Circle Pull Explosion!

The Inception of Circle Pulling from Bobby Johnson on Vimeo.

Also check out Bobby’s Cover here and here of the Harmony Hill Hackathon!  It was a blast.  🙂

Egads! This Week Has Been a Complete Failure!!!

Aaaaaaggghhh!! I just want to scream. I can’t though because I’m still recovering from a crazy flu/cold/allergy attack like I’ve not had since I lived in the deep south were the pollen piles up so deep a black car looks yellow during season changes! The powdery mess would knock me out every other year when I was younger.

Well, here in Seattle, travelling down for the Agile Open Northwest Conference I at some point got nailed with the combo attack again. I’ve been out of commission and thus have failed to put together the entries I’d hoped for on Agile Open Northwest (#AONW from here on) and also didn’t meet my original release date of the 11th for my third in a series of Windows Azure Posts. Fear not, they’re on their way, all of em’. Even though I didn’t get to attend the later 2/3rd’s of #AONW I’m putting together what I’ve accrued from what attendance I did make and what my cohorts managed to put together.  Overall, the part I attended and the rest I hear about was awesome!  Will definitely be returning next year!!!

Again, thanks to Amtrak for getting me back swiftly and in one piece. (No fear, I wasn’t contagious, just beaten up by allergies!)