Installing Visual Studio GDR R2

Visual Studio 2008, by default, will work with SQL 2005 database project, BUT NOT SQL 2008 based. Microsoft provided a GDR (General Distribution Release) to make VS 2008 work with SQL Server 2008. You can work the latest version of the GDR here.

Reading the description in the download link, the requirements are VS2008 SP1, nothing CTP or Beta or Power Tools install. So, I think my box met all those requirements, and I ran the install. To my surprise, it failed and it gives me this message: "Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition GDR Does Not Apply or is blocked by another condition on your system. Please click the link below for more details.".

To which I was not sure of what to do. So by reading the forums and blog postings, I found out that the installer actually write a log file, located in your local data temp file dir. Mine (running on Win 7) is located in: "C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Temp". The files should be labeled like "Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition GDR ... .html". If open one of those, you should see the log generated by the installed and you can detect where it failed.

By examining the log file, my installation failed because it was looking for the SP1 flag in the registry. So even though I have SP1 installed, it did not matter, the installer is just looking in to the flag in the registry and if it does not find it, it abort the installation.

Eventually I have to run the SP1 Preparation Tool and the SP1 itself.

After the SP1 re-installation, the registry setting for SP1 is properly marked as 1 (or true). So the next step is to run again the GDR installer - and it went successfully this time. All is happy now.

Update: Gert Drapers wrote a much more extensive blog post about this here. -- read more and comment ...

Need wallpapers?

Want some themes or wallpapers for your multi-monitors running Windows 7? Here are some sites that I think have some cool wallpapers:

• Visual Studio 2010 Wallpapers
• I Love Windows Phone Wallpaper 
• Personalization Galery from Microsoft
• Simpsons Theme
• Avatar & other bunch

Do you have any particular sites that I can add into this list? Let me know in the comments. And here is the rest of it. -- read more and comment ...

Enabling Expiration/Cache in IIS7

Adding "expiration header" into your static files help the browser to cache those files - therefore reducing the payload in the network in which then increase the performance perceived by user. Both YSlow and PageSpeed highly recommend this approach in their high performance website articles.

You can do this programatically, this post is about enabling this in IIS7 - which is pretty easy.

1. Open IIS Manager
2. Navigate using the tree-view on the left pane to the folder where your static files are located. In most cases these are your static html, image, css, and javascript files. For example, I put all my images in 1 folder called "images" - so I highlighted that folder and on the right pane, in the "Feature View", double click on "HTTP Response Header".
3. Under "Actions" - located top right, click "Set Common Headers"
4. Check "Expire Web Content" checkbox and specify how long you want the files to be cache. I usually set this to 30 days. Or you set a particular date & time too if you want. Hit "OK". Do the same thing for all the folders whose files you want to cache.
5. That's it! Now if you browse your site and look using YSlow or Fiddler or PageSpeed, you will see that the files under the folders are cache by the browser and not retrieved from the server every time.

-- read more and comment ...

How to Turn on IIS7 Compression

One thing you can do to speed up your site is by turning on compression on your web server. This approach is highly recommended by Yahoo in their website performance analysis tool YSLOW as well as Google via PageSpeed.

In essence, compression helps in reducing data payload transmitted between the web server and the client browser. With machines (both the server and client machine) that are relatively powerful nowadays to handle compression easily - this than becomes a very viable and efficient solution to reduce network bottlenecks, thus increasing the perceived response to the browsing experience.

Here is how to do it in IIS7:

1. Open IIS Manager and In "Features" view, double-click Compression. 
2. Choose one or both of the following: 


• Enable dynamic content compression to configure IIS to compress dynamic content. 
• Enable static content compression to configure IIS to compress static content. 


3. Open the configuration file at "C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\config\applicationhost.config" and make sure your compression settings are correct or if you want to add/remove any compression settings.

Mine looks like this:

 
<httpCompression directory="%SystemDrive%\inetpub\temp\IIS Temporary Compressed Files">
    <scheme name="gzip" dll="%Windir%\system32\inetsrv\gzip.dll" />
    <dynamicTypes>
        <add mimeType="text/*" enabled="true" />
        <add mimeType="message/*" enabled="true" />
        <add mimeType="application/x-javascript" enabled="true" />
        <add mimeType="*/*" enabled="false" />
    </dynamicTypes>
    <staticTypes>
        <add mimeType="text/*" enabled="true" />
        <add mimeType="message/*" enabled="true" />
        <add mimeType="application/javascript" enabled="true" />
        <add mimeType="*/*" enabled="false" />
    </staticTypes>
</httpCompression>

That's it! Easy!

Now one caveat is that it seems that IIS7 does not compress javascript file immediately, so it may need a few hits before you can detect it using fiddler or firebug etc. I waited for about 2-3 days before eventually YSLow and PageSpeed both detect that all my javascript files are compressed.

-- read more and comment ...

Browsing securely using an SSH tunnel

Browsing on an internet cafe or a open/free wireless hot spot is scary sometimes. Some places are secured enough (like airport), but some are pretty questionable. You're not sure who owns the router, whether they put security on it, packet tracer, or a phising software etc ... Some times you also want to avoid the proxy that tracks your cookie, traffic, website blocker, etc etc. Regardless of the reasons, you may want to be able to browse securely - and a way to do it is by tunneling it via SSH.

So how does this work? Basically you want to setup an SSH server and redirect all of your browser traffic via this SSH server using an SSH client on your computer (instead of directly via http into the internet). This SSH tunnel is secured, so no one can peek into your traffic, unlike the regular http traffic. So here is how I did mine using Bitvise WinSSHD & Tunnelier. You can download both (free) from Bitvise website.

Installing WinSSHD (the SSH server)

1. You will need a computer that is always on or with wake-up on LAN enabled. I use my media center machine for this. 
2. Download WinSSHD (from here) and install it. Just follow the default instruction on the screen and you should be ok. If you are not an administrator on your machine then you will need to install this as an administrator. There is a more detailed User's Guide by Bitvise here.

Configuring WinSSHD

1. Once installed, the WinSSHD control panel should open with the "Easy WinSSHD Settings" window open.
2. Under "Server Settings", you can customize the listening ports etc if you want - or just leave then with the default settings and click "Next" and go to "Windows Account".
3. Under "Windows Account", you can allow or disallow Windows Account to login/connect to your SSH server. The default setting is to allow. I disallow this for security reason and created a locked down virtual users instead. You can read more about virtual vs Windows account here.
4. Under "Virtual Users", you can add virtual users. Click "Add" and assign account name and customize the permissions for that user, then click "OK". Once the user shows up in the list, select the user row, and click the pencil icon under "Virtual account password" column and the click the "Manage" button, then set the password for that user.
5. Once the "Easy WinSSHD Settings" window is gone, now you are looking at the WinSSHD control panel.
6. Now click "Edit advanced settings" and go to "Windows Firewall" area. Make sure that both drop downs are set to "Open ports to any computer" - so you can connect from outside your network/internet. You can read about opening up WinSSHD to the internet here.
7. Make sure the service is running. If not, start it. There should be a link in the control panel to start or stop the WinSSHD service.

Installing & Configuring Tunnelier

1. Download Tunnerlier (from here) and install it. Just follow the default instruction on the screen and you should be ok. If you are not an administrator on your machine then you will need to install this as an administrator. There is a more detailed User's Guide by Bitvise here.
2. Once installed, try connecting to your WinSSHD from within your network by entering the IP/host name, port, username, and password in the login area of Tunnelier and click "Login".
3. You should see the status of connection and data transmission in the right text area.
4. Now once it is setup within the network, before you can try it from the outside of your network, you will need to configure port forwarding in your router.

Configuring Router Port Forwarding

1. A router usually has a port-forwarding tool built-in. I am not sure how each router does their setting specifically, but usually there are several simple steps to register the port-forwarding. Go to portforward.com/ for the specific instructions on how to do it for your router.
2. Make sure your box that runs the SSH server is running on a static IP address within the local network. You can do this via the router's DHCP or using the TCP/IP setting in your computer.

Registering (dynamic) DNS Name

1. If you are running your SSH server from home, most likely you have a dynamic IP address. So, what you want to do here is register a dynamic DNS name, so that when your IP change, it is be also updated and tied to your DNS name dynamically. In the end, all you need to remember is your DNS name. The way this works is that dynamic DNS registration company has a small software in your box that will send an updated IP address to your dynamic DNS registry so it continuously updating your DNS name registration with your current IP address.
2. There are a lot of dynamic DNS provider out there in the internet - make your own pick here. I use No-IP. Usually you just need to register/create an account on their site, pick your DNS name and download the updater client software and install it on your box and you are set!

Trying It From Outside Your Network

1. To do this obviously you will need to be connecting to the internet from outside your LAN
2. Open up Tunnelier
3. Instead of entering the internal IP address, enter the dynamic DNS name you have registered and leave everything else the same and then click "Login"
4. If the port-forwarding and Windows Firewall and the account settings are set up correctly, you should be connected to your SSH server.

Setting Up Your Web Browser & Tunnelier for Secure Browsing

1. Open up Tunnelier and go to "Services" tab. Make sure "SOCKS/HTTP Proxy Forwarding" is enabled. Put "127.0.0.1" for "Listen Interface", pick an unused port number (like 8081) enter it in "Listen Port" field, leave the "Server Bind Interface" to be all zeros. Basically, follow these settings in Tunnelier.
2. Now in your browser, follow these settings: Firefox, Internet Explorer
3. Now you are set!

-- read more and comment ...

AJAX Animation using jQuery

During an AJAX call from a website, usually the screen won't blink - because page is not refreshing. This is neat because it gives the impression to the user that their interaction with the site to be seamless and uninterrupted.

But sometimes, you do want to give a visual clue to the user that an action is happening and you want them to know about it. Maybe by giving them an hourglass or a "loading ..." clue etc. So how do you do this easily? This post is about using jQuery to provide visual clue to the user on AJAX requests.

First, obviously you will need to reference jQuery library. I usually use the one hosted in Google:

 <script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3.2/jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

Add the HTML to display our visual clue. In this example I am displaying a black bar on the top of the browser, about 25px in height that has a "Loading ..." text in it. So when an AJAX call is happening, this black bar will be displayed until the call is done.

 <div style="z-index:101; width:100%; height:25px; position:fixed; left:0px; top: 0px;">
<div id="loadingbar" style="height:25px;display:none; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto; background-color:#000000; color:#fff">
  Loading ...</div>
<div class="stretch"> </div>
</div>

Now we add the javascript to show and hide the bar, plus I also like to gray out the background a little bit.

 $(document).ready(function() {
    jQuery().ajaxStart(function() {
        $("body").fadeTo("fast", 0.70);
        $("#loadingbar").show("fast");
    });
    jQuery().ajaxStop(function() {
        $("body").fadeTo("fast", 1.0);
        $("#loadingbar").hide("fast");
    });
});

Done. Now anytime there is an AJAX call in your page, the background will be grayed out a little bit and a black bar will show up on the top. To increase/decrease the opacity of the background during the graying out, you can adjust the value on the "fadeTo" call. Currently it is set to "0.70" or 70%. If you want less transparency (or more grayed out), then set it lower (between 0.00 to 1.0), and set it higher for less transparency.

-- read more and comment ...

Food Deals, Tips, and Tricks

In this post, I thought I share some of the food deals, tips, and tricks that I found to be beneficial for me - and of course these food joints are the ones I frequent. I am pretty sure there are more out there - if you know those deals, tips, and tricks, let me know in the comment section and I will try them and add them into this post with credit to you.

Deals:
Restaurants.com: Several times a year, Restaurants.com has excellent deals with their discount code. I bought several coupon for $25 off for certain restaurants for only $3 per coupon, some for $4 (depending on the deals). Be on the look out at fatwallet.com or deals.woot.com for coupon code.

Roosters: on Olentangy River Rd chain, they have appetizers deal on Tuesdays. So each Tuesday they will give you a discount on one selected appetizers. For example, last time I went there, it was $1.07 for an order cheese sticks (has 5 sticks in it).

Qdoba: On Tuesday nights, kids eat free at Qdoba. If you are a Qdoba card holder, get double points on Friday. If you go to the one in 5th ave, they give free chips if you come after 8pm - for any day. Students can have a $5 meal - any day.

City Barbeque: Buck-a-bone Tuesdays. So instead of paying $17.99 for a full slab - pay only ~$12. Some stores have $4 off a sampler Mondays.

Applebee's: 1/2 Price Appetizers with any beverage purchase from 10 p.m. to close. At the bar from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. (dine-in only. excludes sampler).

Tips & Tricks:
Chipotle/Qdoba:

• For "more" portion in your fajita/burrito without bursting your tortilla, as for bol/naked with tortilla on the side - no extra charge!
• Chipotle will make quesadilla for you - even though it is not on the menu
• Order a Quesorito in Chipotle - a hybrid of quesadilla and burrito.
• You can get half/half (i.e. chicken and steak) for your meat selection - and pay only for the more expensive price
• You can get "double meat" and pay extra $2 (nore really sure about the price - but should be close)
• At Chipotle, if you are ordering salad, you can add fajita onions/peppers with no extra charge

BD's Mongolian Barbeque:

• Instead of paying the full buffet price ($13.99 I think), you can elect to go once ($8.99 - LUNCH only). For most women, this is usually enough, if not - or if you are a man - read the next point.
• Now, there is a trick on how to arrange your ingredients in your bowl so that you can have plenty (I am mean PLENTY) of food by just going once. The key is to put your vegetables on the bottom and the meat on top - so that the vegetables will get pushed to the bottom by the meat therefore allowing more room. In detail, follow these steps:
  1. If you do not want vegetables, skip to step 2. Get your empty bowl and go to the vegetable section right away, skip the meat for now. Get your vegetables, try to arrange them neatly and allowing an empty opening in the middle.
  2. If you do not want seafood, skip to step 3. Go to the seafood section. If you have vegetables, put your seafood in the opening in the middle of you bowl. If you do not have veggies, arrange them however you want, but try to be neat.
  3. If you do not want carbs, skip to step 4. Go to the carbs section. Get your noodle/pasta and try to arrange them neatly. These "arrange neatly" thing is important but don't be OCD about it. Just make sure they are packed and not overflowing.
  4. Now go the spices section, get the "cooking" ingredients. What I call the "cooking" ingredients are the items that you want to be cooked along from the beginning with your veggies, meat, seafood. For the ingredients that will go later, I call them "sauce" ingredients. So in this step, go get your "cooking" ingredients; usually something like garlic, ginger, some spices, etc - depending on your style and recipe. Don't want to go crazy here, since you can always add them later in the "sauce" - I usually just get minced garlic in this step.
  5. Go back to the meat section. Whatever you do, put beef/steak last - since it is usually sliced thinly - so you use is as a "roof" to hold everything together. Get your meat - in the order or smallest to largest - then put beef strips last.
  6. Now, assemble your sauce. Depending on how much you got to pile on your bowl, you may require more than 1 mini-sauce-bowl to hold your sauce - which is alright. Put your food bowl and on the sauce counter and assemble your sauce, spices, and condiments. 
  7. CRUCIAL STEP - if the cooking area is crowded, make sure you look and pay attention to where do you think you will be lining up at - and go there ONLY WITH YOUR FOOD BOWL, leaving the sauce bowl(s) behind on the sauce counter. If you are not on the cooking counter directly (someone is in front of you with their food being cooked), put your food bowl on the counter and then go back to the sauce counter to get your sauce. If necessary, go get egg(s) as well and go back to your spot in the cooking line and put your sauce bowl(s) and egg(s) on the cooking counter.
  8. Now wait for your turn ...
  9. Pay attention to your food being cooked and tell the cook about your preferences (sauce now/sauce later, egg now/later, etc). When it's done cooking, make sure the cook put your food in the yellow bowl, NOT the blue bowl. Blue bowl is for repeats, so you will be charged full buffet instead of the single. If for some reason, you got a blue bowl, go back to your seat and tell your server about it - that you only went once with 1 ingredients bowl and don't want to be charged full buffet (this only ever happened to me once).

Roosters:

• You can combined up to 3 wings sauces without any extra charge. So if you want your wings to be in "chipotle" an "garlic" - just say "chipotle garlic" on your sauce selection when you order.

For some more food items that are not in the menu:

• Coupon Sherpa - Secret Menu Items
• Consumerist - Guide to Secret Menu Items

-- read more and comment ...

Using ASP.NET Chart Controls in ASP.NET MVC

In the past, I blogged about using Google Visualization to render charts with ASP.NET MVC here. It's pretty easy, it works, and fast. What if you do not want to use Google Visualization / javascripts to make your charts? Well, Microsoft released ASP.NET Charting Controls late 2008 and this blog post will discuss several options you can have in using it with ASP.NET MVC.
There are several ways you can do this (that I have tried/used):

1. Generating and rendering the chart in the controller and returning it as a FileResult using MemoryStream
2. Generating the chart in the controller and put it in the view data and let the aspx/ascx renders it using the webform control

There are advantages and disadvantages for both approaches. Using the MemoryStream approach works everytime, but it does not render the mapping, so it does not attach url, tooltip, etc on the legend and the chart by default. You have to do those things manually.

Now using the webform control gives you all the bells and whistles (url, tooltip, label, etc) - no extra work needed. BUT - in my experience, it does not work if you run your MVC project under a virtual path. For example, if you run your project under root, such as http://localhost:2000/Home/Index - it will work. But if you then go to the Project Property window in the solution explorer in VS 2008, go the the "Web" tab, and set a virtual path, and build and run (i.e. http://localhost:2000/Chart/Home/Index) - it will break. When it runs, it will give you "Failed to map the path '/ChartImg.axd'". I am still unable to solve this problem yet - you can see my StackOverflow question here.

Before I show you my code, I have to give credit to Mike Ceranski - he blogged about how to use the webform control in rendering ASP.NET chart - in which his approach become the one I used in my projects and become a partial subject of this blog post.

You will need to download a couple of things to get started:

• Microsoft Chart Controls for Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5
• Microsoft Chart Controls Add-on for Microsoft Visual Studio 2008

First, you will need to prepare your web.config by adding these lines:

 

    ....
    <appsettings>
        <add key="RenderMode" value="MEMORYSTREAM" />
        <add key="ChartImageHandler" value="privateImages=false;storage=file;timeout=20;deleteAfterServicing=false;url=/App_Data/;WebDevServerUseConfigSettings=true;"/>
    </appSettings>
    ....
    <system.web>
        <httphandlers>
            <add verb="*" path="ChartImg.axd" type="System.Web.UI.DataVisualization.Charting.ChartHttpHandler, System.Web.DataVisualization, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" validate="false"/>
        </httpHandlers>
    </system.web>
    ....

In your development environment, when running using VS 2008 by hitting F5, the images will always be rendered in memory regardless what you put in the appSettings, unless you are including the "WebDevServerUseConfigSettings=true;" in there.

You can also read more about the possible enumerations and values for the appSettings here.

Now, the HTML:

 
<%         
    if (ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["RenderMode"] == "MEMORYSTREAM") {
        Response.Write("");
    } else {
        myChart.Controls.Add(ViewData["Chart"] as Chart);
    }
%>

The controller code:

 
public ActionResult Index() {
    ViewData["Message"] = "Welcome to ASP.NET MVC!";

    if (ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["RenderMode"] != "MEMORYSTREAM") {
        Chart myChart = CreateChart();
        ViewData["Chart"] = myChart;
    }
    return View();
}

public ActionResult Chart() {
    using (var ms = new MemoryStream()) {
        Chart myChart = CreateChart();
        myChart.SaveImage(ms, ChartImageFormat.Png);
        ms.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);
        return File(ms.ToArray(), "image/png", "mychart.png");
    }
}

private Chart CreateChart() {
    Chart chart = new Chart();
    chart.Width = 350;
    chart.Height = 300;
    chart.Attributes.Add("align", "left");

    chart.Titles.Add("MY CHART"); // Display a Title  
    chart.ChartAreas.Add(new ChartArea());

    chart.Series.Add(new Series());

    chart.Legends.Add(new Legend("MY CHART"));
    chart.Legends[0].TableStyle = LegendTableStyle.Auto;
    chart.Legends[0].Docking = Docking.Bottom;
    chart.Series[0].ChartType = SeriesChartType.Pie;

    for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
        string x = "MEMBER " + (i + 1).ToString();
        decimal y = ChartTest.Models.Utility.RandomNumber(1, 100);
        int memberId = i;
        int point = chart.Series[0].Points.AddXY(x, y);
        DataPoint dPoint = chart.Series[0].Points[point];
        dPoint.Url = "/Member/Detail/" + memberId.ToString();
        dPoint.ToolTip = x + ": #VALY";
        dPoint.LegendText = "#VALX: #VALY";
        dPoint.LegendUrl = "/Member/Detail/" + memberId.ToString();
        dPoint.LegendToolTip = "Click to view " + x + "'s information...";
    }

    chart.Series[0].Legend = "MY CHART";
    return chart;
}

Now, depending on how your "RenderMode" setting is in the web.config, it will either render the chart using approach #1 (memory stream) or #2 (using webform control).

Additional readings/resources:

• Building a Dashboard Using The Microsoft Chart Controls
• Scott Mitchell's Using Microsoft's Chart Controls In An ASP.NET Application
• Handling chart generated images using Chart Http Handler
• Scott Gu's blog post on ASP.NET Charting Control

-- read more and comment ...

GeoDocs Reborn, version 8.0 Released!

After a long overdue, GeoDocs 8 was released by AWH on December 2009 (this blog post is late). Last month, GeoDocs revamped its website using the new version, new look and feel, and faster!

In a collaboration with Nationwide Children's Hospital, they became the first client to upgrade to the new version.

GeoDocs was also recognized as a semi-finalist for the 2009 TechColumbus Innovation Awards! GeoDocs was nominated in the category of 'Outstanding Product, Fewer than 50 Employees'.

So what makes GeoDocs 8 to be better than its predecessor?

There are a lot of reasons why GeoDocs 8 is better, as far as the technical aspects - here are some of them:

• Running on .NET framework 3.5 (GD 7 was running on .NET 1.1)
• The UI has been rebuilt from scratch using ASP.NET MVC
• SEO friendly URL
• AJAX integration with jQuery and jQuery UI
• Better and cleaner integration with Google Mini/Search Appliance
• Cleaner code base that enhance development experience

Now if you are a user, here are the benefits of GD 8:

• Much, much, much faster - and can be faster still depending on you configuration
• AJAX means better user experience:
  
  
  • Less screen refresh to load/reload data
  • Faster feedback in returning on-demand data
  • Nice and unobtrusive animations/cues for user actions
  • Faster and friendlier editing panel (Web View Editor)
  • More robust WYSIWYG editor
• SEO friendly URL, means nice looking URL and easily crawled by search engine
• If you are developing your own custom templates/look & feel - it will be much easier

This does not mean that we are removing all the good features and functionality that GD 7 has, GD 8 still has them, but better! GeoDocs since version 7 has boasted robust feature such as:

• Manage multiple website authors, provide workflow and security
• Help you manage your graphical brand and optimize navigation and layout
• Provide secure, granular access and information to defined users
• Customizable content types that will suit your needs
• Excellent and popular modules such as Form Builder & Calendar will continue to be supported and enhanced

GeoDocs is a product created and maintained by the Allen, Williams & Hughes Company, or AWH.

You can follow GeoDocs on twitter and on facebook.
-- read more and comment ...

Best Bang for The Buck!

One of the restaurant that I probably most frequently visited in the last 2 years is Tai's Asian Bistro. It's a small place on Lane Ave, close to OSU West Campus (click here for map). How frequent did I go? At least once a week, more likely twice a week and sometimes more. I think remember that there were times when I actually went everyday of the week, excluding weekends.

So, why? Is is that good? Cheap? Economical? Fit my taste? What are the reasons that so compelling for me to keep coming back?

Well, the blog title pretty much sums them up, but here are the details about why Tai's Asian Bistro is the best bang for the buck for me (some may not apply for you):

• The food themselves are excellent. If you are a fan of spicy food, you need to try their "Hot Pepper Chicken". This used to be Mark Pi's best, but somehow Tai's makes it better. Read for some of my recommendations.
• It's relatively cheap (between $6 to $8)
• The portion is HUGE, I meant heaping amount of food. For most people, this can mean lunch and dinner (for under $10).
• The food is also of good quality. The breaded chicken is breaded and fried fresh daily - not from frozen, the ingredients are fresh, egg rolls are fried on demand, etc.
• The place is clean, including the kitchen. You can see the kitchen right there and watch your food being cooked.
• The service is excellent. Food being cooked super-fast and if you are dining in, it will delivered to your seat. All the servers are helpful and friendly.
• For carry-out, they give you this plastic tub that is awesome and reusable. So instead of styrofoam that barely holds your food and melted easily, they use good quality container.
• If you are a student, free pop! They also serve beer if you want.
• Did I mention they are generous with their portion?

Tai's has a small selection in their menu, but for each one, they do it extremely well. I have pretty much tried every single item in their menu and in the order of how much I like them here are the top ten items to order at Tai's Asian Bistro:

1. Hot Pepper Chicken (very spicy)
2. Beef with Wild Mushroom
3. Singaporean Rice Noodle (a bit spicy)
4. Cantonese Chow Fun
5. Dan Dan Noodle
6. Pad Thai
7. Tai's Asian Chicken
8. Double Pan Friend Noodle
9. General Tso's Chicken
10. Rice Noodle Salad

-- read more and comment ...

Implementing jQuery FullCalendar PlugIn with ASP.NET MVC

I have been using jQuery for most of my javascript work, so when I need to display a calendar related data in a "month view", I did a search for jQuery plug-ins that will work with my existing project (and extensible to be used for future projects as well). My current projects are built using ASP.NET MVC, so working with jQuery and its plug-ins just makes sense.

After a careful research, trial & error, I finally picked "FullCalendar" jQuery plug-in. You can download it here. It says in its website as:

"FullCalendar is a jQuery plugin that provides a full-sized, drag & drop calendar like the one below. It uses AJAX to fetch events on-the-fly for each month and is easily configured to use your own feed format (an extension is provided for Google Calendar). It is visually customizable and exposes hooks for user-triggered events (like clicking or dragging an event)"

So first thing first, let's just try to get the calendar to display. In one of my view, let's call it "MonthView.aspx", I have this javascript (jQuery):

 $(document).ready(function() {
   $('#calendar').fullCalendar();
}

Somewhere in the HTML:

 <div id='calendar'></div>

Set the controller code to display the view:

[AcceptVerbs(HttpVerbs.Get)]
public ActionResult MonthView() {
   return View();
}

At this point, we should be able to display the empty calendar by going to http://<site>/<controller_name>/MonthView.

So now, we are going to modify this empty calendar to display the data from somewhere (db/xml/etc) via AJAX. For this, I created a class called "CalendarEvent" which structure is mimicking the JSON object model described in here; such as this:

 public class CalendarEvent {
   public string id { get; set; }
   public string title { get; set; }
   public string date { get; set; }
   public string start { get; set; }
   public string end { get; set; }
   public string url { get; set; }
}

Then in the controller code:

 
[AcceptVerbs(HttpVerbs.Get)]
public JsonResult CalendarData() {
   DateTime start = new DateTime(1970, 1, 1);
   DateTime end = new DateTime(1970, 1, 1);

   start = start.AddSeconds(double.Parse(Request["start"]));
   end = end.AddSeconds(double.Parse(Request["end"]));

   // call middle tier/orm/whatever to get data from source
   List list = SearchForEvents(start, end);
   
   return Json(list);
}

private List SearchForEvents(DateTime start, DateTime end) {
   // code to get data here

}

Now, we need to modify the jQuery to call the action in our controller to return data:

 
$(document).ready(function() {
   $('#calendar').fullCalendar({
      events: '<%= Url.Action("CalendarData", "MyController") %>'
   });
}

Voila!

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My Blog Shows Up in Google But Not in Bing - Why?

When I started blogging, all my traffic pretty much were from direct, meaning someone knows the URL to my blog and type it in the location bar. Most likely those people are myself. As time goes by, I added more content, post links in twitter, stackoverflow.com, facebook, etc, my blog starts to pick up some traffic, both from referral (someone clicks a link to get to my blog) or from search engine (mostly Google). Now, my site traffic source is about 80% from search engine results. I use Google Analytics to track my traffic.

So, when Microsoft released Bing, I tried it and I like it. I was considering switching totally to Bing as my main search engine, but one thing that saddened me was that Bing did not produce results for my blog, even when I entered partial URL of my blog address, or the title of my blog, or any keywords in it. Basically I came to the conclusion that since Blogger or Blogspot is owned by Google, they must be crawling it automatically, maybe somewhat prioritize it in their ranking. But, Bing does not crawl Blogspot - which includes my blog.

So how can we fix this?




Turns out, there is a "Bing Webmaster Center" page (here), where you can submit your site to be crawl by Bing (assuming it has not been crawled). Voila! So I went in there, click "Sign in to use the tools" button in the middle of the page. Then it asked me to sign in with my Windows Live ID (this can be your hotmail account, LIVE account, MSN account). Once logged in, I clicked on the "Add a site" button, enter my blog address in the "Web address:" textbox and click "Submit".

Then the webmaster tool will present an option to authenticate your site. You can either place an XML file in your site or add a meta tag in the homepage of your site. I selected to use the second option (add metatag) since my blog is hosted in Blogger/Blogspot and I cannot add a file - but adding a metatag just means I have to modify the template of my blog. So I went to my blog layout administration screen, copied and pasted the metatag from Bing Webmaster page and saved the template.

Now back in the Bing Webmaster page, I clicked "Return to site list". In there I can see all the sites that I have registered with Bing to be crawled and I can check the status as well by clicking on the link for each site. Wait for several days for crawling and everything is all set! Pretty easy!

Bing
Bing Webmaster Center
Google Analytics
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AWH Has Job Openings

Need a job? Well, AWH - where I am currently employed - has several openings for .NET developers. Why work for AWH? Well, I have been working there for 10+ years - that ought to tell you something, huh? It's an excellent place to work, with good and vibrant team members, excellent leadership, relatively flat organization, cutting edge technology, and more importantly, we're growing!

So, what are you waiting for? You can see our openings and submit your resume here.

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Cheap Mini Photo Portable Studio

I had several hours of free time during the Christmas holiday and I grabbed my camera and experimented on how to make a small item shot that looks decent, with a small/no budget. This exercise is pretty useful in real life if you are someone who put a lot of stuff on Ebay or online listing (ie. craigslist, etc).

The goal is to be portable, cheap, and quick - but also produces nicely lit object. I want a fairly soft light to create a nice even light. So, I am thinking either bounced light or diffused light. I went with diffused light, since it is easier to control the power that way.

So here are items that I used, which most if not all you can find in your house or buy cheaply:

• Parchment paper or wax paper. This is for the diffuser.
• Open cardboard box for creating a boxed controlled environment, cut out to attach the parchment paper (see setup shot for an example).
• A black or dark surface. Or glass/reflective surface will also work.
• A piece of blank white paper/carton to be a reflector.

I happen to have a black dining table that is a fairly smooth surface - so I used that as my surface. I put my box above the object, with another cut-out hole on the top of the box to let the light go through.

I setup my flash about 2-3 ft above the box facing down into the box. Attach the parchment paper on the cut-out hole to diffuse the light. Place the paper reflector inside the box on the other side of where the flash is.

Setup up the max sync speed on your camera and adjust your aperture to get a complete darkness exposure - this is for making sure that your only source light is your flash, not the dining room lamp, the sun, etc etc. Now turn on your flash and adjust the power of your flash to get a good exposure. Tweak the distance between your flash and the box as necessary, or add another layer of parchment paper if needed.

Here is my setup shot:

Learn How To Light via Strobist
Overpowering The Ambient

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Some funny stuff on the web ...

There are some things on the web that you just have to bookmark ... and share. Here are some that I found in 2009 that I think are funny (or outrageous) enough to bookmark and share:

http://thereifixedit.com
How to fix the problem in our lives with extra-ordinary creativity, extremely cheap, works, and at the end of the day you can say "There! I fixed it!"

http://www.notalwaysright.com
For the record: Customer is NOT Always Right!

http://www.dontevenreply.com
Have you ever posted something in Craigslist? .... And got replies from hell? Apparently a lot of people have.

http://www.peopleofwalmart.com
Walmart is really my favorite place ... this site is a testimony of it.

http://thedailywtf.com/
Yes, they update it daily, because WTF moments happen daily!

http://xkcd.com/
The MODERN Far Side!

http://awkwardfamilyphotos.com/
The URL says it all ... awkward indeed!

I will add some more as I remember them ... so far, that's all.

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