Kieranties

I’ve been playing around with IFTTT.com recently.  Both in an effort to get more organised and as an excuse to make the most out of my awesome new Pebble watch :-)

If you’ve never heard of IFTTT, go have a play now.  It’s a brilliant site, framework and application designed to plug together many many things.  You can use it to:

• Send you a text message when it’s someone's birthday on Facebook
• Update all your profile pictures across social media applications in one go
• Email you the weather update when it’s raining
• Fetch new entries to an RSS feed and send to Pocket for reading
• Catalogue your starred emails in Evernote

PS-Pushover

My colleague Adam Simmonds did a demo of the Sitecore Item Web API at work based on the code provided by Kern Herskind from a recent Sitecore User Group.  It was great to see a small, simple, yet powerful API available to mobile solutions and third-party services that could operate in a RESTful way.

The ability to drop into a solution with very minor configuration changes makes the API incredibly simple to apply to existing solutions (if the Sitecore version is supported of course).  It also follows Sitecore's principle design of pipelines and security; making it really easy to extend with custom functionality or handlers while also restricting requests at a user level using the security domain set for the website.  This means full control of security restrictions can be applied using the standard Sitecore security model and interface.

In short, it’s pretty damn awesome.

Now with added PowerShell

Usage

• Add-SitecoreItem – Creates a new Sitecore item, optionally setting fields
• Get-SitecoreItem – Gets one or more Sitecore items which match the context of the given parameters
• Remove-SitecoreItem – Deletes one or more Sitecore items based on the context
• Set-SitecoreItem – Updates the fields of one or more Sitecore items

Download and Install

Examples

Getting an item

Adding an item

Setting an item

Removing an item

Further Work

1. Tests - seriously, if I want to use this for testing and building I’m going to need a decent test suite to know things are working as expected.  This will also give me a chance to get to grips with Pester.
2. Additional functions – RSA encryption and the ability to upload media are next on the list
3. Pipelining – PowerShell functions are even more useful when you chain them together.  It would be great to run something like: Import-Csv input.csv | Add-SitecoreItem mydomain –user username –pass password | select –expand Items | select DisplayName,ID,Path,Version | Export-Csv output.csv (which would read a csv, create new items based on each row then output the new item details to another csv
4. Code structure – I don’t like everything being one big file.  I’d like to break things into smaller chunks and related modules. 
5. Session based access – It’s a bit tedious adding the domain, username and password to every request.  While requests are stateless a PowerShell session needn't be.  Something like: Start-SitecoreSession domain username password -encrypt –params @{ path = “/sitecore/content/home” } could set session level variables that can be used by methods.  This is extended to cater for parameters which could apply to every call (while overriding at a function level) and also be a good place to perform encryption duties.
6. Aliases - For parameters as well as functions.  The breadth of parameters available to the functions make it tedious to type long form when you just want to type in the command line.
7. Response formatting - I've done a small amount of work to normalise the formatting of the different responses the API provides.  However the response format of the Fields property is a little awkward.  It would be better if this was an array of fields rather then a hash with guid based keys.

• Child Of Eden  - Love this, but it’s complete filler.  Something to play when I only have a little time.  It’s Rez with shinier graphics but doesn’t pretend to be anything more.
• Rage – For a fiver this gave me plenty of game play but it was mediocre at best.  Even on hard the game struggled to be anything more then a pretty Fallout-esque landscape with elements of Borderlands thrown in.  Something of a swansong for Id during their acquisition by Bethesda.
• Dead Rising 2 – Not touched beyond five minutes, one bought for the missus.  I’ll get there at some point
• Far Cry 2 – Not touched… somehow there always seemed to be something else to play!
• Crysis 2 – Great, short, zero replay-ability for me.  I ran through the game on Super-Soldier after completing once and being fully levelled up made things rather simple.  The initial run through was a lot of fun and set things up for Crysis 3 quite well.  Which is definitely one to pick up. 
• Metro 2033 – This was quite a surprise.  In some places it felt quite like Half-Life.  Others, the story line is engaging enough to keep you interested but often forgotten once in an action set-piece.  Generally there was nothing to place it above any other story driven FPS.  The sequel does look to be quite interesting though.
• Ninety Nine Nights – This is one of those games I’ve wanted to play forever, yet again I’ve barely scratched it.
• Dark Souls – Wow.  I played this for just a few hours but for some reason just haven’t found the time to dedicate to it.  This isn’t a game to take lightly, I really like long gaming sessions and this game deserves to have a few days off work to play!
• Splinter Cell: Double Agent – This was everything you’d expect from the series and nothing more.  Worthy of attention if in the bargain basement, otherwise ignore.
• Skyrim – I’m not going to write longwinded on this, there’s enough of that on the internet already.  It’s everything that you’d expect from the Elder Scrolls series and then some.  I reached level 53 and all achievements in 110 hours but the world is so expansive that it still feels like you can adventure off in one direction and not know what you will find.  The DLC is yet to be played.
• Fable 2 – After two hours this just wasn’t working for me.  It felt slow and after playing Skyrim, a shade of what games on this scale can be.
• Halo 3 – I had a lot of fun playing through Legendary with a mate, but single-player I’ve no care for.
• Left For Dead – This has now become a party game only
• Left For Dead 2 – as above
• Star Wars: The Force Unleashed  - Still not restarted, still not traded as the missus wants to play!

• Borderlands 2
• Mass Effect 3
• Assassins Creed 3 (now playing!)
• Dead Island
• Dead to Rights: Retribution
• Duke Nukem
• Brink
• Deadly Premonition (on loan)
• Just Cause
• Goldeneye Reloaded
• The Darkness 2
• Inversion
• Dodonpachi Resurrection (this will just be filler)
• Darksiders 2 – Apocalpytic run through (I’ve completed once already)
• Dead Space 3 (on pre-order)

So, it seems I suffer from one of two problems.

1. I am incapable of seeing a personal project through to the end
2. I struggle to find the time to dedicate to personal projects

The Chrome Dev tools provide a lot of functionality to you as a developer when making changes to scripts, CSS, HTML or testing out the performance of a page.

It looks like I may be getting a new work machine.  I say looks as it may end up being a month before anything happens.

Anyway,  having a clean environment to build up I thought it might be an opportunity to look into using some new applications to see if I can improve my workflow and make my life easier.

The usual suspects currently include

• Visual Studio 2010
• ReSharper
• GhostDoc
• JsHint
• Notepad++
• Git Extensions
• Google Chrome / Firefox / Internet Explorer
• Paint.Net
• Baregrep
• Baretail
• VisionApp Remote Desktop 2011
• WinSCP
• Google Talk
• Winmerge
• P4 Merge
• Rad Regular Expression Designer
• IE Tester

During the last six months of 2011 I began picking up and reading more tech books then I think I had in the previous 3 years.

I'll admit, I'm a cheap gamer.

It's not often I'll buy things brand spanking new.  While I fully appreciate the time, effort and dedication it takes for a team of developers to create a gaming masterpiece, not all games are masterpieces.  Game prices continue to soar and as a lowly (greedy) consumer I can't afford to buy all the games I want as soon as they are released.  Nor do I always have the time I would like to dedicate to them!

Some games offer a vast amount of playability e.g. Skyrim, some games offer far less e.g. Portal 2.  Both these games are fantastic creations but I felt more comfortable handing over a healthy chunk of money buying Skyrim on release day than I did Portal 2.  I love Portal 2, absolutely love it, for it's design, character and genius.  But I couldn't justify £40+ for less then ten hours of gaming.  Skyrim at 100+ hours is acceptable.

So, being the cheap gamer that I am, I enjoy the January sales.  There has been a recent trend in the high street game stores to offer less interesting deals on pre-owned games.  Some old games such as Hitman and Oblivion have seen a price hike (I got Hitman for £2.50 2 years ago, today it was £7.99!).  With Skyrim being released I assume interest in Oblivion has raised, hence the price change.  But again, 2 years ago I purchased the GOTY edition for £9.99 brand new.  Today the original release (no DLC) pre-owned was £17.99.  Similar patterns can be observed with the Assassins Creed series, Call of Duty and many others.

Two brief shopping sprees have left me with a nice pile of games to get through over the next few months.  By the time I've finished this lot, Assassins Creed Revelations and a few others will have dropped in price!

• Child Of Eden 
• Rage
• Dead Rising 2
• Far Cry 2
• Crysis 2
• Metro 2033
• Ninety Nine Nights
• Dark Souls
• Splinter Cell: Double Agent

• Skyrim - The missus is currently playing this
• Fable 2 - Which will undoubtedly lead to buying Fable 3
• Halo 3 - All the Halo love seems to of skipped me by.
• Left For Dead
• Left For Dead 2 - I've only been playing multiplayer with these!
• Star Wars: The Force Unleashed  - With which I suffered a rather annoying bug where I need to restart my game!

# Ignore ReSharper stuff
_ReSharper*

git rm -r --cached *_ReSharper*

One of the things I love about programming and development in general is that, no matter how well you think you know something, there's always something that can surprise you.

It doesn't matter what language/domain/stack/toolset you're working with, there are often ways of doing things you haven't thought of.  Sometimes these other ways of doing things are obscure or different to your normal way of thinking.  That's why you've missed them to begin with.

Other times, well...you can't see why you haven't thought of them.  I like it when the surprises are so simple, so immediately effective, that you can be pretty sure you'll remember them from then on.

So to the point.

I'm currently reading Javascript Web Applications.  An excellent book by Alex MacCaw, the author of Spine.  Aside from the book being pretty well written, there are some awesome nuggets of information in there.  In a section discussing the benefits of using a CDN, the following example code is used:

<script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.4/jquery.min.js"></script>

... I present the development model that I’ve introduced for all of my projects ... which has turned out to be very successful... I won’t talk about any of the projects’ details, merely about the branching strategy and release management.

• Regex Library
• Regular Expressions Info

Chosen is a JavaScript plugin that makes long, unwieldy select boxes much more user-friendly. It is currently available in both jQuery and Prototype flavors Project page on GitHub

Beautiful jQuery plugin which makes HTML selects much more user friendly!

What is it? Everyone loves the Google CDN right? Even Microsoft runs their own CDN. The problem is, they only host the most popular libraries. We host the other stuff.

A CDN designed to cater for the other javascript libraries people use.

Cdnjs.com is a CDN governed by users/developers. You can request a library to be added where it will be peer-reviewed and if successful, made available to all.

Looks to be a simple way to add functionality while developing as well as provide an easy deployment process, amongst all the other benefits CDNs offer.

Note Tame is not an attempt to dumb down async programming. It's just a cleaner way to write it. Further, your programs will likely have lower latency; with Tame it's a lot easier to keep parallel calls parallel.

Tame JS doesn't just 'dumb down' async programming in Javascript, it makes it beautiful, simple and incredibly elegant.

The sample code demonstrating parallel dns lookups in Node show just how simple it is.

Definitely one to play with in the future.

(again thanks to Steve Pope for the link)

In this book, we will take a look at a number of popular JavaScript design patterns and explore why certain patterns may be more suitable for your projects than others. Remember that patterns can be applied not just to vanilla JavaScript, but also to abstracted libraries such as jQuery or Dojo as well. Before we begin, let’s look at the exact definition of a ‘pattern’ in software design.

A free mini book from Addy Osmani available as a straight htm download, or (if you navigate up the site tree) as an ePub.

Osmani also writes some cracking articles on HTML5, jQuery and Javascript in general

DotNetZip is an easy-to-use, FAST, FREE class library and toolset for manipulating zip files or folders. Zip and Unzip is easy: with DotNetZip, .NET applications written in VB, C# - any .NET language - can easily create, read, extract, or update zip files. For Mono or MS .NET.

By far, the easiest .NET zip library I've used to date

To echo Node’s evolutionary nature, we have refreshed the identity to help mark an exciting time for developers, businesses and users who benefit from the pioneering technology.

Building a brand

We began exploring elements to express Node.js and jettisoned preconceived notions about what we thought Node should look like, and focused on what Node is: kinetic,connected, scalable, modular, mechanical and organic. Working with designer Chris Glass, our explorations emphasized Node’s dynamism and formed a visual language based on structure, relationships and interconnectedness.

Inspired by process visualization, we discovered pattern, form, and by relief, the hex shape. The angled infrastructure encourages energy to move through the letterforms.

This language can expand into the organic network topography of Node or distill down into a single hex connection point.

This scaling represents the dynamic nature of Node in a simple, distinct manner.

We look forward to exploring this visual language as the technology charges into a very promising future.

We hope you’ll have fun using it.

To download the new logo, visit nodejs.org/logos.

I'm no designer, I wouldn't say I have a keen eye for good looks, style or art. But I find the new logo rather... jarring. Something just makes my eyes hurt.

Full credit to the node team though. The requirement for building a brand as they put it means node is continuing it's progression to the fabled 1.0 release

To echo Node’s evolutionary nature, we have refreshed the identity to help mark an exciting time for developers, businesses and users who benefit from the pioneering technology.

Building a brand

We began exploring elements to express Node.js and jettisoned preconceived notions about what we thought Node should look like, and focused on what Node is: kinetic,connected, scalable, modular, mechanical and organic. Working with designer Chris Glass, our explorations emphasized Node’s dynamism and formed a visual language based on structure, relationships and interconnectedness.

Inspired by process visualization, we discovered pattern, form, and by relief, the hex shape. The angled infrastructure encourages energy to move through the letterforms.

This language can expand into the organic network topography of Node or distill down into a single hex connection point.

This scaling represents the dynamic nature of Node in a simple, distinct manner.

We look forward to exploring this visual language as the technology charges into a very promising future.

We hope you’ll have fun using it.

To download the new logo, visit nodejs.org/logos.

I'm no designer, I wouldn't say I have a keen eye for good looks, style or art. But I find the new logo rather... jarring. Something just makes my eyes hurt.

Full credit to the node team though. The requirement for building a brand as they put it means node is continuing it's progression to the fabled 1.0 release