On Learning .NET after ColdFusion

I certainly don't claim to be a great programmer but I try. Not having an initial formal education in Computer Science can be a handicap at times but still you are given the chance to see programming from a more practical level than most with CS degrees. For one thing you are more focused on the results than on the process. I started out as a ColdFusion programmer in the mid to late 90s when the web was young and folks were beginning to come up with easy ways to add functionality to web pages. ColdFusion was very popular with this and for a time one could make some good money as a CF programmer. I had always been a computer enthusiast and caught the web bug when my friend Pete Tarnowsky introduced me to HTML. CF was easy because it used the same tag like structure as HTML so the progression was natural.

Well along came ASP for which you didn't need to buy the application server. All you needed was what was Internet Information Server or IIS and you had pretty much the basis of what you needed to get a dynamic website up and running. If you were a VB programmer, you could create objects that could interface with ASP. The expense of buying the CF app server was gone. That provided some stiff competition to CF and eventually there were more sites built with ASP. Java followed and things got even more complicated. CF's engine was eventually written with Java and evolved into the scenario where you were actually running a Java application through CF. They were trying to sell it as doing Java the easy way with ColdFusion.

As every programmer knows, one of the requirements is upgrading ones skill set. Only a fool would put all his programming eggs in one language. Unfortunately this happens no fault of the programmer as you can get stuck in one environment. Some times it takes the ultimate plunge, going it on your own, to acquire the skillset to make yourself continually marketable. This is what I did, ending up unemployed for a few months. The great thing is that I was able to use this time to get into .NET. I did work a tiny bit on .NET projects but to be honest I was just editing code, not adding major functionality.

What I found was by being just a little resourceful you could teach yourself .NET without spending an extra dime. One needs to only download the latest application IDEs from Microsoft which would include developer or Express versions of the major applications used in .NET development. You will need Visual Web Developer and MS SQL Server 2008 Express. All of this is available as a download. In addition, a good friend of mine gave me a pdf of the book Build Your Own ASP.NET 2.0 Web Site Using C# and VB by Christian Darie and Zak Ruvalcaba. Obviously I won't offer the pdf file but would encourage you to buy the actual book. Click on the link on this site. While you're at it just a reminder that you're actually supporting this blog when you buy from our sponsors so be sure to check out some of the goods and services being offered.

I intend to be finished with the book in 2 weeks and since many of the concepts I already know, particularly the sections on databases, I hope to move quickly. At the time of this writing, I noticed that there is an updated edition. Seems the names are switched around so that its authored by Zak Ruvalcaba and Christian Dairie instead of the other way around. Whatever it is, get the book. Like I said on Twitter, I hope to be the baddest .NET programmer around.

Beta Beta! The Browser Wars cont'd

Thinking of the introductions of 2 browser betas I can't help but thing of the robot in Buck Rogers. I don't know if that's how it sounded but it I remember it being the robot always trying to be cool and using all the latest slang. Well looking at the browsers I can't help but think the same thing. Here we have 2 browsers in beta, one brand new, the other an update to an old staple, both trying to be cool. As you may know, Microsoft has launched the beta edition of Internet Explorer 8. At the same time, Google, in an attempt to join the browser landscape has come out with their own browser, dubbed Chrome.

Now when you look at browsers today, there's not much different between all of them. There's Opera, IE7, FireFox and Sapphire. What they all have in common are the tabs. Sure there are nuances in all of them but for the most part, users would use them for the same thing. For me, I have several Yahoo, Gmail, MSN and AIM accounts. With all these browsers, I can manage all the accounts at once. In some instances I can even do instant messaging with the different accounts. I don't think I would be different from most other users who have all of the browsers installed.

Based on the reviews, there are some cool things coming out with these new browsers. Chrome has detachable tabs which can be unhinged from the main browswer and placed anywhere on screen. These tabs can also be saved to the desktop as shortcuts. I can see several uses for this. Having a site on your desktop that's only a click away is very useful and cool. No trying to look up and down your bookmarks.

On IE8's side, one of the first things promised is speed. Today, FireFox 3.0 is way faster that this slug and when I use on my Windows XP machine, my machine chokes up. Since FireFox came out, I stopped using IE7. I have a Vista laptop and use IE7 on it as its a little faster given the power of the machine. What's promised is that IE8 would be a good competitor of FireFox 3.0 in terms of speed.

The most talked about feature of IE8 is what they are calling "porn mode". Here if you want to completely cover your tracks after visiting any site, you can. You are given the choice of which cookies to delete. Incidentally, some of these features are already available in Sapphire but not to the granular level that IE8 would provide.

I guess there are more features that make these browsers special but we'll have to see. Now in terms of the browser wars, I don't see IE8 losing. Afterall, IE, both 6 and 7 and yes there are may who still insist on using this mess, have a 70% market share of the browser landscape. One has to wonder if this will continue with IE8. For one thing, GoogleTalk was supposed to challenge the IM market but did not.

Now hopefully there's not any changes to how sites have to be written to accommodate these apps. If this is the case, then we potentially have the problem of a big headache for web designers and developers. In fact, there are still some nuances that have to be addressed for IE7 and FireFox.

For me, my biggest concern is how fast these browsers will be. In the not too distant future, there should be a beta for FireFox 3.1 coming out. We'll then have a Beta Beta Beta situation to deal with. Until then, I'll use what I have and will soon begin testing of both Chrome and IE8. At that time I'll post my findings.

My Site Was hacked!!

I had just invited someone to look at my site and they responded by asking me what kind of site was it. I asked them if they saw the pictures I had on it and they said all they could see was a Turkish flag waving and a picture of a baby in a crib with a gold colored baloon on it. So I checked and sure enough it was there. On it was the description "HACKED BY iskorpitx (Turkish Hacker)". One can imagine my embarrasment when this came about. Here I am showing off the work of someone else.

In a way I was glad it happened to this site in particular. For the most part, it was my personal website and I am still trying to figure out what I'll do with it. Truth be told, there were a few vulerabilities with Joomla that made the attack possible. First there is a known security issue with Joomla. Aparently, there is the default admin user ID named admin. You do get to select your own user ID when Joomla is being installed but for the most part, most users keep the default. What I found on the site was a file named abc.php. When I pointed to the file, I got an application suite that apparently could run on my site showing all files, all folders, and could even query the database. Using admin as the user name, the hacker was able to somehow change the super administrator password which allowed him/her to go into the site and make changes to the front page. In panacking I decided that to ensure that the site is problem free, I simply reloaded the entire install. I dumped all the tables, all files, pretty much everything and started totally from scratch. Well this was a little extreme as I later found out. First of all I could've recovered the password. This would've given me the ability to regain control of the site. For purely the purpose of ensuring that the site was secure (I think) I decided to redo it from scratch.

Since I found the abc.php file, I made sure that the directory structure could not be easily accessible applying the right permissions to it. That way it would've been harder to put that file on it. Then I reinstalled the entire application from scratch. Fortunately I didn't have too much content so I was able to get things going quickly. However it was a great pain.

The thing had me wondering if I had made the right choice in choosing Joomla. What brought me a little comfort was the fact that Joomla.org, the parent site of Joomla! was itself hacked. The other thing reminded me of Microsoft products. They are the most hacked, the most attacked, the ones most likely to have viruses. That is because of their popularity and ubiquity. I guess Joomla is heading in that direction. Its very easy to work with and you can do whatever you wish on the web with it. The best part is that its all free, being OpenSource. The folks involved with it have recently formed a security team which would be looking at issues regarding it. So far they've been pretty good. One of the problems with OpenSource is that there's no one to simply call for support. However, there are the boards where a lot of answers you can find. In fact joomla.org has a very good board with lots of answers to almost every issue. Thing is, security is a very interesting one and you really have to be careful how you describe handling it. Hackers are really the only ones reading the manuals to the max. They look for vulnerabilities themselves. Its what makes them thrive.

Anyway, I'm working on getting this thing up again soon. I'll post what I learned next.

Joomla! Great CMS or not?

I was asked by my home owners association to build a website that would have among other things, a blog, a discussion group and the ability of the members or executives to do their own editing. A long time back a friend of mine had mentioned using a content management system and so I looked into it and found a bunch. At that time, Mambo was recommended but there were a few others. Most of the information I had gotten from the web pertaining to this was about Mambo. Fast forward to today. By now, Mambo is no longer known by that name but is now Joomla from a Swahili word meaning coming together. There are also other players that are still in the game and one of them is Drupal. I looked around and sure enough there are even more and they all vary in complexity. They are out there.


I'll be dealing with some of the issues I find with Joomla and will be updating this blog regarding it as we go along. I realized that even though I could be reviewing several of the CMS systems, the best thing for me is to make sure that I am very familiar with at least one of them and then when time permits look deeply into the others. The most important thing is to make sure I can get a site up very quickly.

My foray into Joomla began with 3 sites almost simultaneously. One for my church (www.sanctuaryofhispresence.com), another for me covering my interest in photography (www.iainsworld.net). Needless to say I'm still tweaking them all while learning their intricacies.

Stay tuned.

Plantronics Voyager 520 Bluetooth Headset

I just picked up the Plantronics Voyager 520 Bluetooth headset and I got to say that I like it a lot. I was looking for a cheap bluetooth headset as the one I had, the Motorola H500, was not behaving and was dropping calls all the time. I don't know if it was old age or what but it wasn't performing up to par. Now as I looked around I found at Buy.com this unit selling for $49.99. Wasn't a bad price and was about $20 more than I was thinking. However for what I would get I realized it was a bargain. The thing can handle 2 phones. Interestingly enough I have 2 cellphones. One I had always had and another from my wife's plan. She was not in a contract for quite a while with AT&T formerly Cingular and they gave her 2 Motorola Razr phones to tie her down. Great thing is that we have mobile to mobile free calls so I use that phone to call her 99% of the time. With this uint, I can receive calls from both of my phones. That convenience is astounding as for a lot of times, I may have both phones in my pocket and have to reach out to get them. By the time I did, she would hang up and I would have to face the music answering questions like where I was and why couldn't I answer the phone. Since I got this, my availability has shot up more than 75%. Whether that's good or bad is another topic not for this blog.

The unit features a one touch button instead of the multiples you find on many sets that can make it hard to control. On the H500, there were 3 buttons. One to turn the thing on and off as well as set the status, another to turn the volume up and another to turn it down. With the voyager, its all in the motion. You can press the button as well as move it back and forth which accomplishes exactly the same thing.

One of the biggest benefits to it is the call quality. The manufacturer's claims of noise cancelling are true as folks I talk to don't complain anymore that they can't hear me or that I'm sounding muffled or choppy. I hear them crystal clear and they do the same.

Now for the cons. For me, the Plantronics voyager 520 is not the most comfortable. You have to make sure its properly seated in your ear since this can bring discomfort so much so that it hurts your ear when you press the button. Worse yet for me, I wear glasses which means the over the ear hook has to share my spectacles frame. This takes some extra time to adjust which I didn't have to do with the H500. However it doesn't fall off as often.

The other con I have is its inability to switch phones. If I'm on one of the phones and someone calls the other, I can't temporarily switch to the other phone and get back to the one I'm listening to. I am alerted that someone is calling the phone but I can talk to them and have to let the call go to voice mail.

Overall this is a great headset and I would recommend it to anyone looking to buy a low to medium priced bluetooth headset even if you don't want to use 2 phones at the same time, the capability of which makes this a great bargain.

Iain

Slow Computer problem Solved. Blame the Video!

Probably one of the most frustrating things about computers is how they don't communicate to you properly about their problems. I guess I am expecting more from this machine than I ought to but afterall its supposed to be smart. Software and hardware developers are trying to add functionality to this entity to make it smarter and responsive but all too often we get the same results.

For some time now, my machine was slowing to a crawl. Try as I may, I couldn't find out what was wrong with it. In my house are 2 laptops and 2 desktops which are shared by 6 people. My wife, my four kids and myself. Fortunately one of the laptops is for work so its off limits. The others are left to fend for themselves with the others for homework, Facebooking, Myspacing etc. I thought about shelling out money for another computer but ruled out against that. Afterall, we have other things to deal with. This all started to change when pressure to use my job laptop started to rise. I started hearing things about how selfish I am and how useless I am that the main computer is broken and I can't fix it. No need to say where that came from. Anyawy in trying to fix the computer, I downloaded the latest drivers, downloaded all the various combinations of anti-virus and anti-spyware software. The problem only kept getting worse.

I had began thinking that I would need to build a newer box and was going over in my mind what I'll need when I thought of the video card. I had recalled that the video card made lots of noise because of the fan built in. It dawned on my that it had gone silent. Normally I would touch it and would feel the wind of it but this time there was none. I looked and could see its blades not moving so I turned them. There was much resistance and I soon realized that the fan was stuck. I felt the video board and it was hot. I felt the fan and it was very hot. Of course at this time everything was at a crawl so I initiated a shutdown of the machine and walked away.

Now what to do next was the question. Replacing the video card was the first thing that came to mind and I even went online and got one. But when I saw the problem I had the thought that maybe if I could actually buy a fan instead of the whole thing I can at least give it a try. Well I got down to the good old computer store and saw a fan kit which I promptly bought. It cost about 10 bucks and was pretty cool in that it had colored LEDs that made the fan glow in the dark. I was delighted since if it went bad I would know immediately. Replacing the fan was very easy. Unlike the older one, this required its own power supply which was readily available. The cool thing was that the position of the screws fit perfectly.

Verizon Wireless V710

2 years ago (2004) I got what was then the new trend in phones, those with Bluetooth technology that enabled phones to wirelessly connect to headsets and other devices. My wife actually got into this trend before I did but hers had to have a Bluetooth adapter for the phone to work. This was back in 2002 and I remember having to take a deep breath when she told me of her purchase. Her business requires her to be in touch all the time so I had no choice but to agree with her purchase.

Anyway, Verizon, always late to the party, offered the Motorola V710 phone which had bluetooth. Now I'm old school and still remember having to pay 2.00 per minute for cell phone calls. So for me, having a cell phone was a business decision and was really for important calls. I still marvel at how some people can almost have a cell phone built into their heads with the way they're constantly chatting on a cell phone. For me, its all about the message you can send.

Anyway, Bluetooth allowed a handsfree usage of the phone which made driving easier. You can do a couple of things that are cool such as leaving the phone at your desk and going to the bathroom while talking on the phone. I sometimes wonder what the person on the other side thinks of this. Hey, don't laugh, its safer to leave it there as tales abound of phones dropping into places in the bathroom where they shouldn't!


What I liked about the phone was how big it was. At the time the trend was for the smallest phone you can find so it was refreshing to find one that was big and solid. You felt like you had a manly phone in your hand. No wimpy little gadget. My kids laughed at me all the time telling me how big the phone was. Of course I've already replaced several of theirs while I still have mine. It also had a nice, big, bright screen with full colors. A flipphone, the front had a little color screen that was very functional. The buttons were very easy to use and robust. The phone has a camera but as an photographer (my side gig), cell phone cameras are only for documenting on the spot news that you can send to your friends. The quality is horrible. This phone promises a 1.2 mega pixel camera which should be quite decent but thanks to the incredibly terrible optics and horrible pickup, the camera is not worth much. A polyphonic phone, it can play actual recorded music for call assignment. Now here is where I have a beef with Verizon. Though you have access to the phones internals via computer, you can download photos into the phone directly and must use Verizon's photo service. At 10-25 cents a pop, that can be annoying. The same goes for music. Amazingly I found some tools on creating my own sounds which I will deal with at another posting.

The phone works very well as a phone and there's hardly any signal drop. It does seem to use a lot of power as I have long since have had to develop the habit of charging the phone overnight every night. I've recently had to purchase a new battery as the old one was not holding its charge much.

Overall, I do love the V710 which I think is no longer offered. Its descendant, the V815 came with most of these feature and a little improvement in the camera but ws mostly geared towards Verizon's V-Cast which allowed users to experience a plethora of multimedia services including sound and video.

From what I see as well, it appears that from this class of cell phones evolved the Razr phone as it seems to be a slimmed down version of it. Verizon is trying to make me trade in the old V710 for a new phone and the most tempting is the Razr as it wouldn't cost me anything. But I've gotten used to the V710 and won't trade it yet. Afterall, it performs the most important function which is to make a phone call. If something happens to it I may change but for now, I'm keeping the old bag.

Welcome To Iain's TechWorld

Welcome to the Tech aspect of my world. By profession, I'm a computer programmer specializing in web development. However, by nature I am a technologist and do possess a love for things that are man-made that do stuff! What I aim to do with this is to create somewhat of a forum for problems I encounter and solve. Once I've solved the problem I'll document it, complete with links and other resources I used to do it. Hopefully you would respond and even pose your own questions which I would selectively tackle.

Now lets get this thing started!

Iain