basketweaving for the mind https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/nickhodge/feed.xml Microsoft, Open source, Web and other random stuff from one of Microsoft's Professonal Geeks Wed, 17 Apr 2019 04:00:52 GMT en-US hourly 1 My Geek Origin Story (for Microsoft Australia TechEd 2011) https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/nickhodge/my-geek-origin-story-for-microsoft-australia-teched-2011 Tue, 16 Aug 2011 23:37:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/nickhodge/2011/08/16/my-geek-origin-story-for-microsoft-australia-teched-2011/ As Microsoft TechEd 2011 is fast approaching & Delic8genius has made a call-out to the Australian community “What is your Geek Origin Story” So, it’s time for me to document My Geek Origin Story

My first geek obsession started with cats. Or, as we now call them, kittehs. Quiet companions on the Autistic scale, kittehs added their warm furry friendliness to my pursuits – and were always more accommodating than humans. Therefore, I classify kittehs as a key moment in my geek origins.
Along with kittehs in this photo are the collection of Airfix and Revell models. The history of World War 2, and the making of model aeroplanes was a rather unique pursuit in the middle of rural Eyre Peninsula. But I loved it. Oh, that and LEGO.
After being introduced to an Apple ][, on loan to our school from Angle Park Computing Centre, by a prescient Maths & Science Teacher: Mr Peter Stewart,  I was hooked. From this early access, I also played with a TI programmable calculator and CP/M based Osborne 1. My Dad, sensing my inability to become the 5th generation owner of the farm, purchased a TRS-80 Model I. Oh wow, the fun I had with that computer was amazing. I owe Mr Peter Stewart and my Dad a great debt. Note on Angle Park Computer Centre: many South Australian Geeks of my generation began thanks to Angle Park Computer Centre. Stilgherrian, Frank Falco, Simon Hackett and David Newell to name four. Being a country kid, we relied on loaners.
More cats: this time Bindi; with our/my first Macintosh: a 128K Macintosh. One of the first in South Australia: so first, it only came with a 110V power board! Thanks to Tim Kleemann from Random Access (later owner of Next Byte) – this Macintosh opened the door on a career & a love of Apple.
Taken sometime in 1984 or 1985, this is me at my Macintosh. A harbinger of the next 13 years in the IT industry.
Random Access, Adelaide. 1987. This is me at my desk, working away at some Macintosh things. Thanks to Tim Kleemann, Trevor Starke & Adrian van den Bok – and many others – I worked here happily doing Mac things.
]]> IIS7.5, FTP Sites, 530-error, bindings https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/nickhodge/iis7-5-ftp-sites-530-error-bindings Tue, 16 Aug 2011 22:01:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/nickhodge/2011/08/16/iis7-5-ftp-sites-530-error-bindings/ I have multiple sites on the same IIS 7.5 server. Using the handy Bindings... feature, I am able to redirect incoming :80 HTTP queries to the appropriate server with ease.

On more than one site I have added FTP (File Transfer Protocol) to ease publishing.

I kept getting a 530 error when attempting to log users in.

I found that adding the domain name followed by a | (vertical bar) before the username solved this issue

ie:

<binding name>|<username> as the FTP user name, and it worked.

This IIS forum post may also be of use.

]]> Wordpress on IIS7.x : Permalinks, Media /wp-content/ access https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/nickhodge/wordpress-on-iis7-x-permalinks-media-wp-content-access Mon, 08 Aug 2011 00:18:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/nickhodge/2011/08/08/wordpress-on-iis7-x-permalinks-media-wp-content-access/ One of the mechanisms of improving SEO on Wordpress driven sites is to switch to a more semantic URL scheme.

On an IIS7 installation, after selecting one of these permalink options, Wordpress then suggests you edit and/or create a web.config entry:

If your web.config file were writable, we could do this automatically, but it isn’t so this is the url rewrite rule you should have in your web.config file. Click in the field and press CTRL + a to select all. Then insert this rule inside of the /<configuration>/<system.webServer>/<rewrite>/<rules> element in web.config file.

<rule name="wordpress" patternSyntax="Wildcard">
<match url="*" /> 
<conditions> 
<add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsFile" negate="true" /> 
<add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsDirectory" negate="true" /> 
</conditions> <action type="Rewrite" url="index.php" /> 
</rule>

If you temporarily make your web.config file writable for us to generate rewrite rules automatically, do not forget to revert the permissions after rule has been saved.

If you are uploading your own media to Wordpress, I have found the following web.config works better:

<rules> 
<rule name="Imported Rule 2" stopProcessing="true"> 
<match url="^(.*/)?wp-content/(.*)" ignoreCase="false" />
<conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAny"> 
<add input="{URL}" pattern=".*wp-content/plugins.*" ignoreCase="false" negate="true" /> 
</conditions> 
<action type="None" /> 
</rule> <rule name="wordpress" patternSyntax="Wildcard">
 <match url="*" /> 
<conditions> 
<add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsFile" negate="true" /> 
<add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsDirectory" negate="true" /> 
</conditions> <action type="Rewrite" url="index.php" /> 
</rule> 
</rules>
]]> Microsoft School of PHP: Now open for classes! https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/nickhodge/microsoft-school-of-php-now-open-for-classes Mon, 28 Mar 2011 16:24:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/nickhodge/2011/03/28/microsoft-school-of-php-now-open-for-classes/ Microsoft School of PHP
PHP remains one of the most popular web development languages. Combining dynamic, edit/save/refresh development with extensibility - PHP is used by Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla and a myriad of other web content management systems. Intensive frameworks, such as CakePHP provide strongly structured development methodologies to this popular language.
With PHP 5.2, and more intensively in PHP 5.3, Microsoft has invested engineer-time on improving the performance of PHP on Windows.
Apart from supporting the base PHP and extensions, Microsoft has also created plugins to ease PHP deployment and management in IIS and support for SQL Server (and subsequently SQL Azure).
These initiatives have culminated in the Web Platform Installer.
To assist web developers with learning the varied Microsoft-PHP tie-ins, Microsoft created the PHPOnWindowsTrainingKit. This is a set of labs, demos and code showing How-tos.
Microsoft Australia has created a set of over 35 screencasts using the Training kit as a guide that appear in the Microsoft School of PHP.
]]> Preview: Microsoft School of PHP https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/nickhodge/preview-microsoft-school-of-php Thu, 10 Mar 2011 18:20:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/nickhodge/2011/03/10/preview-microsoft-school-of-php/

If you like PHP, and do not have time to setup the PHPOnWindowsTrainingKit - this forthcoming series of videos might be your thing!

Microsoft School of PHP Preview

]]> Updating to Core i7 2600. Well, that was easy. https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/nickhodge/updating-to-core-i7-2600-well-that-was-easy Tue, 18 Jan 2011 20:13:55 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/nickhodge/2011/01/18/updating-to-core-i7-2600-well-that-was-easy/ q9300-installed

GENERALMELCHETT, my main PC ‘ride’ was built in late 2007. The General is named in homage to the great character played by Stephen Fry in Blackadder. A few upgrades of video cards, one processor update to the Q9300 and some hard disk shenanigans resulted in a nice stable PC.

This month, Intel started shipping their “second generation” Core i7 series.

The General, having served well on the front lines for 38 months; well, it was time for an upgrade.

After Core i7

Part 2 of the upgrade involves installing an SSD. Budget requires that to be accomplished sometime in February.

Part 1 involved:

  • Intel Core i7 2600 running at 3.4Ghz (up from the 2.4Ghz of the Q9300)
  • 16Gb of DDR3 RAM (surprisingly cheap!)
  • Gigabyte P67 SATA3/USB3 motherboard

After 30 minutes of hardware surgery, the new GENERAL booted Windows 7 x64; from the same hard drive used in the old machine. A few drivers were installed; the ATI video card reconfigured itself, restart.

In about 45 minutes – I had a new heart in the old GENERAL.

Performance differences:

  • MahTweets compiles 20% faster
  • WEI scores 7.6 for CPU and 7.9 for memory.
  • Passmark rating increase as shown above (red is the old GENERAL)
  • significant boost in memory performance
]]> nRake and IronRuby https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/nickhodge/nrake-and-ironruby Wed, 05 Jan 2011 20:29:22 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/nickhodge/2011/01/05/nrake-and-ironruby/ A great little case study on the use of IronRuby to create nRake.

Thanks to Senior .NET Consultant, James Crisp from ThoughtWorks for telling us the story!

]]> Kiwi Pycon 2010 Presentation Notes https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/nickhodge/kiwi-pycon-2010-presentation-notes Sat, 20 Nov 2010 13:24:53 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/nickhodge/2010/11/20/kiwi-pycon-2010-presentation-notes/ kiwipycon

In the time given at Kiwi Pycon 2010, I managed to traverse a wide range of topics related to Microsoft and Python (by IronPython and CPython)

]]> Updating Tomáš Matoušek’s repl.rb & adding repl.py https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/nickhodge/updating-tom-matoueks-repl-rb-adding-repl-py Tue, 16 Nov 2010 17:34:14 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/nickhodge/2010/11/16/updating-tom-matoueks-repl-rb-adding-repl-py/ In April 2009, Tomáš Matoušek created a nifty IronRuby script that demonstrated the sharing of ScriptScopes in the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR). The examples on Tomáš’ blog post still work.

The script is like the movie Inception, with languages within languages; but at its core shows how the DLR permits object sharing between languages within the same scope. The code itself is IronRuby; the script spins up a new ScriptRuntime and Engine to perform the acrobatics.

NOTE: These two small scripts are now published to my github account

As IronRuby has moved to 1.1.x.x, and supporting the Ruby 1.9.x language, I’ve updated the code a little (essentially, replacing ‘:’ with ‘then’)

Code Snippet
  1. load_assembly 'Microsoft.Scripting'
  2. Hosting = Microsoft::Scripting::Hosting
  3. Scripting = Microsoft::Scripting
  4.  
  5. class REPL
  6.   def initialize
  7.     @engine = IronRuby.create_engine
  8.     @scope = @engine.create_scope
  9.     @exception_service = @engine.method(:get_service).of(Hosting::ExceptionOperations).call
  10.     @language = "rb"
  11.   end
  12.  
  13.   def run
  14.     while true
  15.       print "#@language> "
  16.       line = gets
  17.       break if line.nil?
  18.  
  19.       if line[0] == ?#
  20.         execute_command line[1..-1].rstrip
  21.       else
  22.         execute_code read_code(line)
  23.       end
  24.     end
  25.   end
  26.  
  27.    # Reads lines from standard input until a complete or invalid code snippet is entered.
  28.   # Returns ScriptSource that represents an interactive code.
  29.   def read_code first_line
  30.     code = first_line
  31.     while true
  32.       interactive_code = @engine.create_script_source_from_string(code, Scripting::SourceCodeKind.InteractiveCode)
  33.       case interactive_code.get_code_properties
  34.         when Scripting::ScriptCodeParseResult.Complete, Scripting::ScriptCodeParseResult.Invalid then
  35.           return interactive_code
  36.  
  37.         else
  38.           print "#@language| "
  39.           next_line = gets
  40.           return interactive_code if next_line.nil? or next_line.strip.size == 0
  41.           code += next_line
  42.       end
  43.     end
  44.   end
  45.  
  46.   # Executes given ScriptSource and prints any exceptions that it might raise.
  47.   def execute_code source
  48.     source.execute(@scope)
  49.   rescue Exception => e
  50.     message, name = @exception_service.get_exception_message(e)
  51.     puts "#{name}: #{message}"
  52.   end
  53.  
  54.   def execute_command command
  55.     case command
  56.       when 'exit' then exit
  57.       when 'ls?' then display_languages
  58.       else puts "Unknown command '#{command}'" unless switch_language command
  59.     end
  60.   end
  61.  
  62.   def display_languages
  63.     @engine.runtime.setup.language_setups.each { |ls| puts "#{ls.display_name}: #{ls.names.inspect}" }
  64.   end
  65.  
  66.   def switch_language name
  67.     has_engine, engine = @engine.runtime.try_get_engine(name)
  68.     @language, @engine = name, engine if has_engine
  69.     has_engine
  70.   end
  71. end
  72.  
  73. REPL.new.run

 

In my Pycon-AU keynote, I demonstrated the above piece of fun. Showing Ruby in a Python keynote did not result in my immediate death – just in case, for the forthcoming Kiwi Pycon I decided to rewrite this in IronPython:

Code Snippet
  1. import clr, sys
  2. clr.AddReference("Microsoft.Scripting")
  3. from Microsoft.Scripting import *
  4.  
  5. class REPL :
  6.     def __init__ (self) :
  7.         self.currentlanguage = "py"
  8.         self.runtime = Hosting.ScriptRuntime.CreateFromConfiguration()
  9.         self.engine = self.runtime.GetEngineByFileExtension(self.currentlanguage)
  10.         self.scope = self.engine.CreateScope()
  11.     def run (self) :
  12.         while (True) :
  13.             scriptinput = raw_input("{0}> ".format(self.currentlanguage))
  14.             if scriptinput == "" :
  15.                 sys.exit()
  16.             if scriptinput[0] == "#" :
  17.                 self.execute_command(scriptinput[1:])
  18.             else :
  19.                 self.execute_code(self.read_code(scriptinput))
  20.     def read_code(self, firstline):
  21.         code = firstline
  22.         while (True) :
  23.             interactivecode = self.engine.CreateScriptSourceFromString(code, SourceCodeKind.InteractiveCode)
  24.             parseresult = interactivecode.GetCodeProperties()
  25.             if parseresult ==  ScriptCodeParseResult.Complete or parseresult == ScriptCodeParseResult.Invalid :
  26.                 return interactivecode
  27.             else :
  28.                 scriptinput = raw_input("{0}| ".format(self.currentlanguage))
  29.                 if scriptinput == "" :
  30.                     return interactivecode
  31.                 else :
  32.                     code = code + "\n" + scriptinput
  33.     def execute_code(self, source):
  34.         try:
  35.             source.Execute(self.scope)
  36.         except Exception, e:
  37.             print "{0}".format(e)
  38.     def execute_command(self, command):
  39.         if command == 'exit' :
  40.             sys.exit()
  41.         elif command == 'ls' :
  42.             self.display_languages()
  43.         else :
  44.             self.engine = self.switch_language(command)
  45.     def display_languages (self) :
  46.         for i in self.engine.Runtime.Setup.LanguageSetups:
  47.             print '{0}'.format(i.DisplayName)
  48.     def switch_language(self, name) :
  49.         old_engine = self.engine
  50.         try :
  51.             new_engine = self.runtime.GetEngineByFileExtension(name)
  52.             self.currentlanguage = name
  53.         except :
  54.             print "{0} is an unknown script engine file association".format(name)
  55.             new_engine = old_engine
  56.         return new_engine
  57.  
  58. r = REPL()
  59. r.run()

]]> OpenConferenceProtocol https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/nickhodge/openconferenceprotocol Sun, 17 Oct 2010 20:44:14 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/nickhodge/2010/10/17/openconferenceprotocol/
Winning pitch at Sydney Amped.

https://openconferenceprotocol.org/ won the Amped Sydney 2010 one day hack-a-thon. The video above is the team’s presentation; an interview in episode 49 of the Frankly Speaking podcast is also worth a listen. Tatham Oddie, Brendan Forster & Aaron Powell – are the team members you see on stage and have done excellent work.

After spending time working on an oData version of the TechEd Australia 2010 conference backend, openconferenceprotocol is a welcome innovation.

Along with a Windows Phone 7 UI, the backend data using pre-existing microformats is the amalgam of modern day web things.

Now to get Microsoft’s conference backend using some smart microformats. And other conferences, too – and we’ll all get a universal UI

]]>