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S#arp Architecture

I have been doing some work and research with ASP.NET MVC 2.0.  My first interest was to try to figure out how to get Dependency Injection working with ASP.NET.  I started doing investigating how to link in Springframework.net.  This direction led me down a track that required some manual configuration.  This is when i found S#arp Architecture, which I found very interesting since it gave you the benefits without the configuration up front.

S#arp Architecture is a project template for Visual Studio that will set you up with a ASP.NET MVC application that is already wired up for Dependency Injection and using nHibernate for data access.  more information can be found on the S#arp Architecture website and wiki. 

My findings so far have been very positive.  Within about 45 minutes I had a web application with some basic CRUD functionality.  This functionality included unit testing at every layer.  It seems like a great way to start a project and easily promote best practices like dependency injection and test driven development. 

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2010 06 19 .NET
Agile
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Whats With all of this Traffic

stats

Just for the hell of it I decided to check my sites traffic using Google Analytics, and I notice that I have 400 unique visits as of Friday 2/19.  So I sort through the data and find that a majority of the traffic is from search engines searching for:

  • Lee Rodgers
  • “Lee Rodgers”
  • Where did Lee Rodgers Go

I decided to search for these items myself to try to see why I am all of a sudden famous and so many people are looking for me.  It turns out some conservative radio host was fired last Thursday, who shares my wonderful name.

If you are a random person who accidentally stumbled upon my site.  How about donating to the Tour De Cure.

Well thanks Lee Rodgers for getting fired and getting random people to look at my empty site.  I wish you well on your job search.

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2010 02 24 Uncategorized Comments (2) Permalink

Goodbye Zenfolio

IMG_0928About a year ago I decided to go with Zenfolio for hosting my photos.  My reasoning was that they allowed me to store high resolution, high quality photos on their site and allowed my users to print and / or download those photos.

A year has gone by and I don’t think one person has purchased a photo, and it is just extra work to upload photos there on a regular basis, especially when most of the people I know are already using other easier tracks such as Facebook.

Zenfolio also lacked some features that I found easily with other non-paid image hosting options.  This includes things like iPhone applications, WordPress plug-ins for sharing & embedding images.

So after I had a discussion with my friend Mike who also has recently left Zenfolio to do something similar I have decided to follow the following photo sharing methodology (if that even makes sense to call it that).

  • Aperture – I will use this software to manage my RAW images from my digital SLR.  Once these photos have been manipulated I will import them into iPhoto.
  • iPhoto – This will be the main area I manage my photos.  iPhoto already contains functionality that will allow me to push my images into various web based options such as Facebook and Flickr.  iPhoto will also synch images to my iPhone.
  • Facebook – Pictures will be posted here that can easily be shared with my friends and family, most of which are already using Facebook.  This saves me time on sending emails and alerts as Facebook takes care of this for me.
  • Flickr – This is a good free solution for hosting public image galleries that I want to use from my website or other locations.  Flickr also has a slick iPhone application that lets me access my gallery.
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2010 02 16 Photography
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2010 Events – Initial List

This year I plan on taking part in a variety of events. This list will grow as I find more events to attend. I’m going to have to continue to do a lot of training for these events. Stay tuned for updates!

May 2nd
New York City – 5 Boro Race
42 Mile race starting in Battery Park and traveling through the 5 boroughs of New York City. Ends in Staten Island. I have heard great things about this race, and it should be interesting to ride through NYC with no cars around.

June 6th
Saratoga Springs, NY – Tour De Cure
100 mile bike ride for the American Diabetes Association. Trying to raise over 500$ for the cause. Click here to donate!

June 20th
Branford, CT – 30th Anual Branford Road Race
5 mile run in Branford, CT.

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2010 02 14 Events
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Groovy

I just started messing with Groovy tonight. I have used Ruby on Rails in the past and was always impressed. So far what I am seeing with Groovy is Ruby to a whole different level. It is the simplicity of Ruby with the flexibility of using Java and Spring. I like what I see so far.

I watched the following webinar from Spring Source where they build a twitter like application in 40 minutes with Grails, it is a great into to the tools and functionality.
http://www.springsource.com/webinar/building-twitter-with-grails-40-minutes

I got my Mac environment up and running very easily and started working on some tuturials:
http://www.grails.org/Tutorials

I’m only 2 hours into Groovy and it seems great so far. I will post more as I learn more.

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2009 12 01 Groovy
Java
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Almost a Month In..

I have been doing Crossfit pretty consistently for almost a month now. I have seen significant gains in stamina and a little in strength. I have also been doing a relatively strict Paleo Diet which has resulted in me losing about 10 lbs since I have started.

Overall this is great, its an overall lifestyle change and I enjoy the mental and physical challenge Crossfit brings on a daily basis.

This weekend I am going to work on coming up with some goals to ensure I am making progress. These goals will keep me working to get better.

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2009 12 01 Crossfit Comments (0) Permalink

Crossfit – Day One Results

Today was my first day ever at crossfit.  It was quite the experience.  The warmup alone really kicked the crap out of me.   The WOD (workout of the day) that was chosen for me was “Helen”.  Helen consists of:

  • 400 meter run
  • 21 KB swings
  • 12 pull-ups

3 Rounds for time

This took me 18:36 to complete, which is pretty poor.  I guess this is understandable as it was my first time.   I am going to go back on Tuesday for my second try-out session.  I am looking forward to it and am hoping I am not still sore by then.

Overall thoughts so far: Thumbs Up

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2009 11 07 Crossfit Comments (0) Permalink

Crossfit

So my friend Padraic has been pushing the whole crossfit idea on me for quite some time.  I don’t know what sparked it but I finally have given in and will give it a shot this Saturday.  I will be going to Shoreline Fitness located in Branford.  They offer a single free session and from there I will figure out if I am going to join.

More information can be found at http://www.shorelinefitness.com

I will post the results of my first session and how it went!

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2009 11 06 Crossfit Comments (0) Permalink

Good Old Java

One thing about Java you can always count on, is thats its always changing and there are about 10 options for everything you do.  The challenge I find here is trying to figure out whats the best option.  This involves trying to figure out whats the best option by trying to figure out:  latest and greatest, most stable, or easiest implementation.  One of those or a mix of them.  Some of the items I have been trying to sort out are:

  • Common Look & Feel, Headers & footers:  After some research and some people pointing me to Tiles, Sitemesh looked like the best option.  Overall extermely simple to implement.   After workign through a few minor issues to get sitemesh in the cloud, it worked out well.
  • Overall Security – This was kind of a no-brainer as we are using Spring.  I have used acegi in the past, and found that it has been moved into spring and is now called “Spring Security”.  I had some struggles with this, as there were some issues with it in the cloud.  It looks like the latest Google SDK will work with out of the box spring security now.

Below are some helpful links I found along the way:

One thing to keep in mind is all these technologies use filters, so its important to put the filters in the correct order in the web.xml.  Examples include:  If your sitemesh pages, use security, security filters must go first and if your security code accesses your data access, your open session in view filter must go before it.

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2009 09 14 Java
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Cloud Computing

Cloud computing has been getting very popular.  I have been doing some investigation into various cloud options for hosting web applications and services.

  • Google App Engine – Seems like a great option, completely free until you start getting significant usage.  They also give you the option of writing in either Python or Java.
  • Azure – Microsofts attempt at cloud computing.  Took a while to get access and havn’t played with it yet and the costs are currently an unknown.  Someone once said to me, “looks like a lot of smoke and mirrors”.   I agree completely as of right now. This option does have the potential of giving you the benefits of the cloud along with the robust development environment Microsoft offers.

There are many options that allow for Ruby On Rails development.

I am going to begin my research with Google App Engine, since its free, its java, and it looks pretty easy.

Stay tuned for updates on this.

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2009 08 13 Software Development Comments (0) Permalink