Blog ala Vidar
SQL, AppFrame and other cool technologies
Tag Archives: ASP.NET
NNUG and MTUG Haugesund User Group Meeting in English
Posted by on September 3, 2010
The countdown to AppEd has started. ARE YOU READY TO RUMBLE?!
Thursday evening, September 30, we’ll start off with NNUG (.NET) and MTUG (Microsoft Technology) Haugesund user group meeting. First, Fredrik Kalseth, which is a well known speaker in Norway, will talk about ASP.NET MVC 2 and the news in MVC 3. After his talk we’ll have some pizza, and then Morgan Simonsen, which is also a very well known speaker, will talk about Windows 7 SP1 and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2. And the best of all, all sessions are in English, so everyone’s welcome! Please sign up for this at http://www.nnug.no/Avdelinger/Haugesund/Moter/NNUG-and-MTUG-Haugesund—September-2010/
My Vacation
Posted by on July 24, 2010
This weekend is the last in my vacation which basically means that I’m coming to Ølen again after 3 weeks of vacation. So, what have I been doing the last weeks? A lot of things! First on the priority list was the World Cup of soccer and Tour de France, but there’s a lot of “free time” from these events, especially after the World Cup was finished. I’ve of course used my vacation to be the perfect uncle, babysitting my soon to be 1 year old nephew, visiting family etc., but I’ve also used A LOT of time in front of the computer. First I reinstalled my server, playing some more with Exchange, but when that was done I had to find something else to keep me busy; Mentor
Mentor is a website that focuses on connecting people who want to learn something with people who want to teach something. We’re first focusing on .NET, SQL and related Microsoft technologies, but it would be cool if oracle and java guys were using this too! Basically what we’re trying to do is to make a site where people can register which topics (“tags”) they’re interested in and then connecting them with other people of these topics. This has been (and will be) a great opportunity for me to learn ASP.NET MVC. WAIT! Did you read wrong? Vidar doing web-development? Has hell frozen over? Not yet. I’ve just found out that MVC actually makes web-development pretty easy. If you’re interested in this topic I really recommend you watching this great session about ASP.NET MVC2 Basics Introduction by Scott Hanselman. Actually all sessions with this guy is worth recommending, because he’s a real code ninja, and he’s hilarious.
I registered Mentor at CodePlex, and got joined by Jan Leon and Arild. But with CodePlex (which is GREAT for open source projects) you don’t have full access to TFS (Team Foundation Server) and you have to publish your project within 30 days. I don’t want to publish this project as an open source project, since I don’t see the big win on this, although if anyone wants the source code I won’t mind sending it. I’ve been participating on several open source projects, and I really like the idea, but I don’t see why I should publish this. Anyhow, this is another discussion. If you REALLY want me to, contact me and we’ll discuss it. Using TFS on CodePlex whet my appetite for it, so I installed it on a server internally in Omega. I would really recommend using this instead of SVN (for the core parts of AppFrame, custom projects etc.). You can also connect to TFS using SVN with the help of SvnBridge.
Other than this I’ve created PowerPoint slides for my sessions at AppEd, and done other AppEd-planning things. I’m currently thinking of a great way of recording each session, without the session being interrupted because of the recording (software failure, people having to talk into a microphone etc.). Thinking of using Camtasia, but not sure yet. Oh, did I mention we’ve got several surprises for those attending AppEd? One clue for one of these surprises is already in this blog post; “Code Ninja”.
Nordnes.Me
Posted by on June 15, 2010
A couple of weeks ago I looked in the mirror. What did I see? I saw a guy that used most of his spare time on Xbox games. So, what did I do? Well, I had to find something else to do. What else? Build a new server! Yeah yeah, I could go outside having some fresh air etc., but fresh air also comes through the windows, at least if you open them. ANYHOW! I bought two domains; nordnes.me and nrdn.es and though I’d have some fun. A while back I bought a Quad Core AMD CPU for my HDPC, but I bought a new Intel CPU for that, so the AMD processor with the main board was just lying around without being used. I bought 8 GB RAM for it, and 2 x 2TB disks. I’ve also got a Microsoft TechNet subscription, which allows me to download almost any Microsoft product for free to use in a testing environment. What’s more testing environment than my home network? 😉
Now, everything is up and running and here are the specs.
Physical server
vs – Hyper-V Server
Virtual servers, all running with 1GB RAM (2-4 while setting them up):
vsAD – Active Directory, DNS and similar
vsHS – Home Server 2003 (not running. Will probably be deleted soon)
vsLINUX – Debian. Not running, but installed in case I need to test some Linux-stuff
vsMAIL – Exchange Server 2010 (hosting vidar@nordnes.me)
vsSQL – SQL Server, running 5 instances (2005, 2008, 2008R2, Express etc)
vsVAIL – Home Server VAIL
vsWEB – Web server, hosting Nordnes.me and nrdn.es
Home Server
I’ve learned a whole bunch of stuff in the process of installing and configuring everything. Today I finished moving over to the new home server (VAIL) which based on Windows Server 2008 R2. It’s awesome! One of the new features is that you can stream your videos via web (using Silverlight). Oh, while I’m talking about home server. If you’ve got more than one computer at home (or at the office), you might want to think about buying one. It makes sharing videos, music, backing up your computers and making sure all computers have updated antivirus etc. a whole lot easier. But wait till VAIL is released! VAIL will only run on x64 bit, while the old version only runs on x86.
One thing worth mentioning: DO NOT add your Home Server to AD. You will be able to do it, but it causes so many problems. The reason I wanted to do it was to use the same username and password as on all my other machines (both physical and virtual). Also, joining machines to the home server should be done on a wired network, not on wireless. When joined, you can put them back on wireless without any problems, but I haven’t been able to join any of my computers while on wireless. Have no clue why though, since my wireless router is set up as an AP (Access Point).
Active Directory
The main reason I installed AD is that I wanted to use the same username and password on all computers, but also to play around with group policies. Also, Exchange is pretty meaningless, if not impossible, without AD.
Web
This is the server I’ve played most with. I installed SharePoint, played with Office Web Apps and most recently Nordnes.me and nrdn.es. The last one (nrdn.es) is my own test-project for bit.ly/tinyurl.com-like sites. If you’re interested I can send you the project for this one, but there’s no rocket science here. I’ve also built Nordnes.me using Master pages in ASP.NET. This is actually my first site ever in ASP.NET!
Nordnes.me is just a place where I’ve gathered all my public feeds (blog, twitter etc) into one stream. I’m using a windows service to poll all the feeds every 15 minutes or something and then using LINQ to XML (which btw is AWESOME!) with ASP.NET to display them.
Exchange
Since Omega just moved over to Exchange, I felt I had to get some more knowledge about this. It would be interesting anyways since 99% of our customers use it, so I would probably eventually “have to” build something that communicated with Exchange. Before starting the installation I was convinced that this was just another “next next next next finish” project, and I was right. At least to get it up and running. To get it to send and receive mail took a couple of hours though. I am still not able to connect to Exchange outside my network although testexchangeconnectivity.com says everything is working as it should be. Since it’s working locally it’s very hard for me to test outside my network, so I might have to pick someone up from Microsoft and get them home to see my server-collection 😀
SQL
All SQL geeks with self-respect should have at least 5 instances running at home. I’m only using 2008 R2 at the moment, where I’ve got mainly two databases. One for the tiny URLs (nrdn.es) and one for polling twitter. The reason I’m polling twitter is to gather very much data, so I can start playing with SSAS (SQL Server Analysis Services). There are two arguments for polling twitter for this; it’s public and there’s A LOT of data being generated (by people) every second.
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