Using Firebase to sync data with a webpage (via Javascript, REST and Firebase Admin panel)

If you haven't seen the Anant Narayanan presentation on AngularJS conference called Building realtime apps with Firebase and AngularJS you are missing something good.

Firebase really seems to fix one of the pain points that I currently have in client-server development, which is how to send/synchronise data across multiple clients (including the server).

I first heard about Firebase from the Wire up a Backend example that can be found at http://angularjs.org, and today I was able to give it a test drive (since I want to use it on the AngularJS front-ends that I'm currently developing for TeamMentor)

Trying to running HuBot (and being stuck on ‘ERROR XMPP authentication failure’)

Sitting on a Starbucks in a Saturday morning (after dropping the kids on PSSA) it felt like a good time to try HuBot (repo is here).

Since I already had NodeJS installed on my test VM, I stated with the Deploying Hubot onto Windows instructions:

Using Jabber-net to talk to OpenFire

After Installing Ignite’s OpenFire and Spark (IM server and client),  using Jabber-Net, I wrote a O2 Platform C# script to access OpenFire, which will:

• Connect to a local OpenFire server
• Login as a user
• Find the HuBot room
• Join that room
• Post public messages to it

(see end of post for the source code)

Installing NDepend

After a nice correspondence with NDepend’s Patrick Smacchia who offered me a license of in exchange for some blog posts on how I used it, here is my first one covering the installation and first run

If don't know about NDepend, here are some references :

• on NDepend Website:
• Getting Started
• Features
• CQL Syntax , CQL Features and CQL Rules Help 
• API
• Exploring Existing Code Architecture in Visual Studio 
• NDepend on Wikipedia (with more references links)
• Pattrick's blog 
• Other blog posts and articles:
• .NET Tools: NDepend static analysis tool, leave T-Pain behind. 
• Educating Programmers with Placemats - NDepend Static Analysis Poster  which talks about this NDepend Metrics pdf
• Exiting The Zone of Pain - Static Analysis with NDepend 
• Continuous code quality measurement with NDepend and TeamCity 
• Static Code Analysis based on NDepend 

Trying DevExpress (install and uninstall)

Since I'm still not 100% happy with Resharper performance and system Impact, I just tried CodeRush from DevExpress

The rest of this post shows how I installed, used it and uninstalled CodeRush

Trying out NCrunch

Intrigued by Kofi’s NCrunch and TeamMentor post, and since today I had to write a number of Unit Tests, I decided to give NCrunch a test drive.

I downloaded the MSI, the install was smooth and next time I opened up VisualStudio there was a new NCrunch menu available:

Installing Ignite’s OpenFire and Spark (IM server and client)

When testing HuBot, I needed an IM server and client

Since the HuBot install article that I was following recommended OpenFire and Spark, I decided to give it a test drive.

Here is how I installed and set it up on a local VM.

The first step was to get OpenFire from the Ignite's website:

TraceGL (and the failure of the OpenSource commercial model)

After seeing on reddit (I think) a thread about TraceGL, I decided to try it on TM SSO integration I’m working on (where I really need to take a look at what is happening with a website’s javascript traffic).

ScreenHero for desktop sharing looks pretty powerful

Check it out at http://screenhero.com

Why we use Cassini instead of IIS Express

Following the IIS vs Cassini different behaviors on ASP.NET Server.Transfer  post, Barry commented on Twitter that I should use IIS Express instead:



so I decided to try it (which you can read bellow)

Running linux on the browser using jslinux

This is simply amazing, at http://bellard.org/jslinux/ you can run Linux on a browser:

RazorEngine is a great way to parse and render ASP.NET Razor views

I've been trying the RazorEngine on TeamMentor to parse Razor CSHTML files, and I'm very happy with it so far.

Basically, RazorEngine is what Microsoft should had created in the first place: a simple way to parse and render CS-powered Html Razor views.See the examples at http://razorengine.codeplex.com . As comparison, take a look at What a 'salad of DLLs' are the ASP.NET MVC 4.0 template projects

RazorEngine was created by Matthew Abbott from FidelityDesign  who seems to be as crazy as I am. For example, see his A Tale of Epic Epicness… post :)

If only I could get Matthew to take a look at the OWASP O2 Platform and its C# REPL environment, I'm sure he would love it :)

JetStrap - Great way to create BootStrap CSS

Just found JetStrap which is a web based WYSIWYG editor for Boostrap css

Here is a video that shows it in action:

Adding git support to IIS (maybe using Kudu?)

What is the best way to allow git publishing via an IIS site? Namely from a TeamCity build?

As nicely described on Deploying: Add Git support to your IIS server, maybe Kudo could be a good option (kudu is used by Windows Azure)

VersionOne.com - interesting tool and good site

We’re looking at a better way to manage the TM dev team and Michael suggested VersionOne which looks really interesting.

I also like the layout of its main page and the way the video clearly shows how the tool works (that kind of animation is really powerful)

Stylizer - Real-time CSS Editing

The Stylizer looks really powerful for CSS editing and customization. I really liked it’s video page which provided a great overview (and learning environment) for Stylizer multiple features (it is a great way to quickly and effective present a product)

Using Window Live Writer to write Blogger posts

As per this @shanselman reply https://twitter.com/shanselman/status/277514388376784896 (following a question I asked @troyhunt) I’m giving Windows Live Writer 2009 a try, and it seems to support Blogger, and (more importantly  copy and past of images (with auto upload to Picassa) which is exactly what I wanted (see The 'Sync Design Problem' of adding images to this blog for a description of the problem I had)

CsQuery - C# jQuery Port for .NET 4.0

CsQuery sounds like a very interresting project, specially it's DOM parsing capabilities.

Need to take it for a test drive and see how well it works.

Measure Anything, Measure Everything, AppSensor and Simple Graphite Hosting

One of Nick's key concepts in his Amazing presentation on integrating security into the SDL presentation is the need to measure and visualize what is happening with an application (and the side-effects of code deployments/fixes).

A key reference is the Measure Anything, Measure Everything and Tracking Every Release posts which talk about how etsy.com uses the Graphite ('Scalable Realtime Graphing') tool with some events consolidation/aggregation via StatsD

What is really interesting about this 'events monitoring capabilities' is that it can be used to monitor Network/Application behaviour/status, and capture/visualize security events (check out the login failures graph in the Measure Anything, Measure Everything post). And if you add this to an OWASP AppSensor aware app, we start to have a very interesting/powerful solution.

So (since we need a solution to monitor what is going on with Teammentor.net) I want to give Graphite a test drive.

The first problem is that the Graphite Installation page has a couple more dependencies and steps than I would like (I was expecting one download and two steps: download + Run :)  )

So since I'm not in the mood (or have the time) to do some linux hacking, I googled for a hosted solution and found the Hosted Graphite company who is providing what I need at a price that allows me to experiment them:

Let's see what happens :)

Nice Java real world app with real world complexity

Just found the caTissue Suite java application which is part of the  Tissue-Biospecimen Banking and Technology Tools Knowledge Center which seems to be a nice complex project (with an open license)

Here is the 400m download file: Download caTissue Suite v1.2 Installation Files

The main wiki is at  https://wiki.nci.nih.gov/display/caTissuedoc/caTissue+Documentation+Wiki and this project seams to have run out of initial funding:

What I like about it, is that it looks like a good example of the type of real-world apps that we need our security tools to support.