Having spent most of my time on NodeJs I recently attended a .NET course in Melbourne.  I'm a fan of .NET and MVC 5 has come a long way.  I doubt many will argue that the tooling in the MS land is by far the best there is.  I really like Visual Studio ( as long as you have a decent machine to run it ), I really like nuGet ( MS .NET package manager ) I really started to feel like home.

I also really like MVC5, it feels familiar.  The base templates are great to get started and scaffold x% of the work for you.

I think the biggest eye opener of the day was Azure.  I quite enjoy the Azure model.  .NET lends it self well to then and the integration between the tooling and the deployment platform is tight.  I had next to no issues deploying simple apps and the 10 free websites is great for testing and getting side projects up and running.

That being said I think the biggest item I took from the event was Glimpse.  It was just fantastic, I wont start a project without it anymore.  Its basically request level debugging in the browser for .NET if you haven't tried it I suggest you do. http://getglimpse.com/

Like it or loath it I'll Microsoft have come a long way and I can see start ups looking to MS technology moving forward as they are really closing that gap enabling dev to get going for next to no cost ( or zero cost ) and provide a pathway to support your application as it grows.



Setting up a new VPS for a small app I'm working on and was stumped by this problem.  This didn't happen locally and after discovering the solution I knew why.  The reason why is I did not have nodeJs install on the VPS.  As I have been working on a nodeJs app in the past few months I already have node installed locally.

I'm running ubuntu and here are the commands to install nodeJs:


sudo apt-get install python-software-properties python g++ make
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:chris-lea/node.js
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nodejs 
This will install the current stable version of nodeJs.  After that I was in business.

Google apps sync for Office / Outlook 2013 was released.

I've been on Office 2013 for around 6 months.  We use Google Apps for mail and it's been frustrating having my mail and calenders not sync with Outlook properly.

I know I can use IMAP ( infact thats what I was using ) and a few other bolts on ( which I purchased ) to restore functionality but it just wasn't 100%.

In the mean time I had reverted to using the browser 99% of the time for email and calendar which I have grown fond of.

Now that Google Apps sync works properly I'll give Outlook 2013 a good try.

https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gappssync


Failed to copy from Local TSource : Expected another server reply(15) : 450 Internal error renaming the file.  Filezilla

This error kept coming up trying to FTP files to one of my servers.  I googled around a bit as nothing had changed in the environment that should have causes this issue.  After finding nothing thats looked like the issue I decided to try the old reboot trick.  Well it worked.  No idea why this happened but after a reboot the problem went away.

I actually came back to this issue and it was because the hard drive filled up completely.  Well that was an easy fix.
It can be a little confusing setting up a blogger blog with your own domain.  The www is quite straight forward however a naked domain can also be re-directed to a blogger blog and there are a few extra steps.

In settings Choose advanced settings and setup your blog and domains as so:

Then follow these steps.
  1. Find the control panel on your domain registrar’s website, and locate your DNS (Domain Name System) settings. In order to link your blog to your custom domain, follow the instructions below to enter your "CNAME" and "A-records."
    CNAME
    Add two CNAME records. For the first CNAME, where it says Name, Label or Host enter "www" and where it says Destination, Target or Points To enter "ghs.google.com" . For the second CNAME, enter "A7LABD5AAAOU" as the Name and
    "gv-AAAAAAAA.dv.googlehosted.com." as the Destination. See our detailed instructions on providing CNAMEs for various registrars. If yours isn't listed, or if you run into other difficulties, contact your registrar directly and they can help you out.  ( ensure you use the mentioned CNAME records in the instructions )
    A-records (optional)
    The following action links your naked domain (example.com) to your actual site (www.example.com). If you skip this step, visitors who leave off the "www" will see an error page.
    Enter your domain name in the format example.com, and list the I.P. addresses shown below in the "A" section. You'll need to create four separate A-records which point to four different Google IPs.
    216.239.32.21
    216.239.34.21
    216.239.36.21
    216.239.38.21
  2. Update your Blogger settings
    Before you move onto this step, wait about an hour for your DNS settings to activate. If you attempt to change the publishing settings before the DNS changes activate, then we'll let you know with a warning message.
    Now it’s time to make sure Blogger knows about your custom domain so that Google can direct readers to your blog. Just head back to Blogger and update the information on your Settings | Basic tab. Find the area for "Publishing," and click the link to add a custom domain.
    Add a custom domain
    Then, click on "Switch to advanced settings."
    Advanced Settings
    Enter in the URL for your custom domain in the text box provided, and click Save. That’s it! Your blogspot.com address will soon redirect to your new custom domain -- be patient, as it might take up to 24 hours for the redirect to start working.
    Enter URL and save
    Congratulations, you’re all set!
Some helpful notes:
  • If your new domain isn't taking you to your blog, wait another day or two to make sure all the DNS servers have been updated. If it still isn't working, contact your registrar to make sure you entered the DNS settings correctly.
  • Your original Blogspot address will automatically forward to your new domain. That way, any existing links or bookmarks to your site will still work.
  • Your posted images will continue to display on your blog.