Enable-Migrations Error

Ran into an error earlier regarding enable-migrations. In the past is has worked perfectly, but suddenly it seemed to barf all over my screen in red paint like so - Argh, My Eyes!! PM> Enable-Migrations Exception calling "BuildProject" with "3" argument(s): "The parameter is incorrect. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070057 (E_INVALIDARG))" At D:\development\Dev-Training\TaxMate\packages\EntityFramework.6.0.1\tools\EntityFramework.psm1:866...

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Choosing the right desktop development technology

I've recently had a requirement to build out a desktop offline application that mostly does data collection. Here are the requirements technical and otherwise Must work offline Will be mostly installed on Windows laptops (assuming Windows 7+) Nice to have the ability to run it on Mac as well Simply data entry application Should be easy to maintain by a group of unknown future developers.  This is not for a company, but a volunteer based organization As I started evaluating different technologies, I went from Native...

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Automating PhoneGap Build build.

No - that's not a typo. I'm referring to the build process when using Adobe's phonegap build service. I won't go on much about phonegap build, except to say that it's brilliant and probably saved me from buying an expensive mac for 2 weeks of development work. Can't completely eliminate the need for a mac, but at least day-to-day phone gap based web development does not require one. Phonegap build offers you the ability to zip up your web application and upload it for a build. 2 easy steps right ? Wrong! Doing this around...

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Poor Man's home office setup

Scott Hanselman and Jeff Atwood, two of my favorite programmers have long talked about the perfect home office and components. However, their access to resources far exceeds mine and I suspect most people in India. For instance - IKEA is not an option here (yet). I still believe in working from home is efficient and have put in some thought and money (more thought and less money - I'm cheap)O on getting the components of this right - Room...

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Authentication in ASP.Net MVC

At the outset there appear to be a couple of options for doing Authentication in an ASP.Net MVC application - Global Filters and HttpModules. To understand this a little bit more in detail, we need to take a look at the Architecture of ASP.Net MVC as illustrated in the diagram below As you can see, MVC is built upon the ASP.Net framework along with other frameworks like Web Forms and Services etc. Global Filters - are implemented...

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Arrgh, Matey - Or the saga of the white hat pirate

Before i begin, let me qualify two things 1. I have no satisfactory solution to the problem. 2. I am not advocating piracy. What I'm getting at is this - Pirating is just simpler and more efficient than purchasing books online every step of the way To set the stage, my inventory of devices looks like this - Dell 6400 / Windows 7 Kindle 4th Generation Nexus 7 / Android Lenovo T400 / Window7 Macbook...

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Its getting "cloud"y out here

Firstly, apologies for the pun, but it IS getting overcast in Bangalore the last few days. I've noticed that I've quite naturally migrated away from most desktop apps towards a "cloud" based solution. Or as we used to say a year ago - online solutions. But, hype and buzzwords aside, I really only took notice the last couple of weeks since my work laptop fried and I've been messing around with multiple laptops. What popped out...

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Using Chrome Profiles for Development setup

Part of a being developer is doing a lot of research on the net. However, i find myself quiet annoyed many times when personal tabs and work tabs get intermingled. Chrome has an elegant solution to this - user profiles. This allows you to have multiple chrome windows, each within a specific context. For instance, I have 3 profiles Personal - this is where i'm signed into Facebook, Gmail etc... Work profile - All my work related...

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DDMT done wrong

oh IE - why do you do this to yourself ? While every other brower (chrome / firefox) is intelligent enough to detect OS and version, the India IE site does not even provide a link to the x64 version. I downloaded the incorrect version and had to hunt for the x64 version. Which then downloaded the installer of the installer. Of course, restart required. Not cool, IE .. not cool. ...

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The DMMT (don't make me think) principle done right

I've been looking to upgrade my ram on the laptop and the first step of the process is figuring out compatibility options. Its this sort of stuff that pushes people to Macs away from PCs. The choice and options are as astounding as they are incompatible. Crucial has a good solution for this problem. Simply download their scanner and it will give you the compatible options for the laptop. the scanner is a non-bloatware targeted program...

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Sample Indian Data

I've been prototyping some stuff, and hate using foreign names and address for sample data input. So - i created my own. Enjoy! https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BxHZTpcWRBHiTExpQnVEM2pQajQ/edit?usp=sharing There are some random name generator out there but none of them seem to cater to Indian names. Also - refer this thre...

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Mashups

Last month I did a fair bit of research into mash-up options for developing a framework that collates widgets from different sources. A couple of articles on the oracle site (that strangely seem to have been de-linked)  are a good starting point - Mashup Overview and Server Side mashups - http://192.9.162.55/developer/technicalArticles/J2EE/mashup_1/ Client side mashups - http://192.9.162.55/developer/technicalArticles/J2EE/mashup_2 My...

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Discourse away

If you are a programmer, the chances are that you visit StackOverflow at least once a day (if not, then you must be in the '90s and using your boxed set of MSDN DVDs for reference). I'm a huge fan of The StackExchange platform and all the work done by the team. Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror fame was the co founder of Stack overflow and when he stepped away from it last year with this post, I was more than a little concerned about him retiring...

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do you even curl, bro ?

I took far too long to discover curl, the command line tool for transferring data via different protocols. Now, I'm dependant on it. It's part of my journey to get closer to the nuts and bolts of the web. And curl -v does just that. You could use one of the GUI tools to form a request, but that hides away some of the most interesting aspects of the communication. I'm developing a a very un-microsoftish love towards command line utilities...

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https, Whoa !

found this detailed article on what happens during the first few milliseconds of https connection. Reading through the entire article is a like a crash course on Public-Private key system and transport protocol basics. http://www.moserware.com/2009/06/first-few-milliseconds-of-https.html Summary of steps https translates to 443 as per RFC 2818 Client sends Hello which contains UTC time + random bits Session ID (if any) Cipher Suites Server name extension Server sends Handshake that contins Hello  UTC...

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Yahtzee

This man validated my gaming preferences. For many years, I didn't feel like a real gamer because I wasn't into MMPORG, Sports Games, RTS, driving and simulation games. Our preferences converge on a narrow but deep appreciation of gore, fast paced violence and outdated things like, y'know - pacing, good plots, narration and general awesomeness. Yahtzee reviews are an acquired taste, and you may have to hold on to your tears when he...

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Javascript Frameworks

Over the last couple of weeks, I've been looking into a lot of javascript frameworks. And there are a LOT out there. A couple of sites I've found useful for evaluating the frameworks - http://addyosmani.github.com/todomvc/ - This one has the same sample application coded up in the different frameworks for comparison http://codebrief.com/2012/01/the-top-10-javascript-mvc-frameworks-reviewed/ - a great starting point for comparison based on features.  After playing around with a few of the frameworks, I'm sure that...

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