Protecting a directory in Azure services

I have had the privilege of working with PHP within Azure services. Depending on pricing I could certainly seeing Azure being a serious player in the PHP hosting environment once all the pieces are put together.

One problem I was encountering is by default IIS will serve up anything in your PHP directory. It's probably not the best idea in the world to allow any joe schmoe to download your PHP.ini file, so I came up with this solution quickly.

Create a web.config file in your PHP directory and remove all the contents. Add the following snippet of XML:

<configuration>
<system.webserver>
<security>
<requestfiltering>
<denyurlsequences>
<add sequence="/PHP Directory Here/">
</denyurlsequences>
</requestfiltering>
</security>
</system.webServer>
</configuration>


All you need to do is replace PHP Directory Here with the directory of your PHP environment and IIS will deny access to the directory. This concept will work for any directory you would like to keep from being served.

Microsoft 70-503 WCF Tips

I finally was able to pass the 70-503 last week and it is great to have it done and out of the way.

I just wanted to share a couple tips for anyone looking for help on this exam. I'd highly recommend starting with the official exam prep book available on Books24x7 (who doesn't have a subscription?) or Amazon. I ended up reading this twice. You want to make sure you have all of the exam practice questions down and don't just memorize them. Once you are this far go out and grab the Kaplan (available under several brand names) practice exam and take it in exam mode a couple times. See what areas you are weak on and hit the MSDN hard. Focus on knowing the declarative and imperative ways to configure WCF and yes I know studying XML sucks.

Go back and start working through your practice test in learning mode (so you see the full explanation of why you're wrong). Once you are scoring well here go take the exam, but make sure you take with the free retake promotion. I'd expect to fail this time, but armed with the results from your exam go back to the exam prep book and the MSDN. Restudy everything, but spend extra time on the areas you were weak on (I had trouble with the instrumenting section for some reason).

I wish you all good luck on the test. This was certainly one of the most frustrating exams I've taking so far.

Amazon Fresh

This morning I found an email in my inbox introducing and inviting me to check out Amazon Fresh. This service allows you to shop for items you would normally purchase at a grocery store and have them delivered to your front door. Delivery is free if you purchase $30 or more in groceries and same day service is available if you order 4 hours before your preferred delivery time. There are options for drop-off (pre-dawn & late evenings) and in person delivery (7am - 9pm).

Prices on non-perishables, frozen, and canned food items I searched for are comparable to what I find at my local Safeway, QFC, and Albertsons. Meat prices seemed a little high, but the only place I've purchased bulk meat since moving to Seattle is Fred Meyers and Costco. Beer and wine is also available, but someone older than 21 must be available for delivery.

I haven't tried the service out myself as I just went grocery shopping for myself last night for the week. Certainly before next week I'll have enough a list built up to give it a try. Seems like a great service, but I have high expectations. I'll be sure to share my experience once it happens.

What gets me really excited about this service are the possibilities for Amazon to integrate this into their e-Commerce site. Imagine if you will, every Sunday morning waking up to an email with a list of possible menu items for the week. This list is generated with suggestions based from your previous purchases and ratings, seasonality, and your family's previous week's click trail (twitters, facebook postings, urban spoon review, diet articles). You go through planning your meals out and your cart is automatically filled with the required ingredients. As you pick your meals, Amazon notices you are missing a spring-form pan to make the cheesecake you chose. You are prompted for two alternatives either order the required pan from Amazon and hold the menu item (and ingredients) until the pan arrives and/or try a suggested alternative. Below is a list of items Amazon knows you are probably getting low on (toilet paper, deodorant, and tooth paste).

Later that week, you really enjoyed one of the recipes and decide to write a quick twitter suggesting the recipe and wine pairing to friends. Amazon automatically registers the review and shares both the wine and recipe to your friends, family, neighbors, and complete strangers who have similar tastes.

Crazy to think that the data required to do all of this is readily available... someone just needs the resources and incentive to do it. Think Amazon can/will do it?

First thoughts about Windows 7 on a Lenovo S10

Let me start off by saying, I'm not the first person to type this exact same review. Plenty has already been said about Windows 7 and even Windows 7 on a Lenovo S10.

I picked up my S10 yesterday after finding Fry's was out of stock. A quick visit to Circuit City and a price match to Fry's for a ram upgrade (stock 1GB to 2GB), I was out the door with a new toy. The ram upgrade was quick and painless. It seems Lenovo is no longer soldering 512MB to the boards of these as my model (42313CU) was listed with 1GB and I was surprised to find a 1GB chip sitting in the slot instead of a 512MB. Once IBM's SSD come down in price I'll probably do an upgrade there as well. My over all impression on the S10 is awesome. My only gripe is with the keyboard size, but there isn't any way around this on the form factor. I'll just have to train myself to hit that tiny little right shift button. The keyboard has already got me good once, but more on that later.

Windows 7 installation was painless as Vista. I used my Xbox360 HD-DVD drive as my external cd drive. The first disk I burned was x64 and upon booting I discovered the Atom N270 doesn't support x64... doh!!! Back to MSDN downloads and after a couple hours I had a new install disc. I ended up wiping my drive completely as I really have no need to ever recover back to the XP Home version that comes with the laptop.

Installation probably took an hour total and I only had one driver missing as reported on msisaac's blog above. The driver was found under a different model, but installed without issue.

My new tiny little keyboard did allow me to muck up my password twice on install. So after rebooting the machine a few hours later after my completed install I found myself locked out of my newly installed OS. Lucky for me it seems Microsoft hasn't made any profound changes to the SAM and after some help from Offline NT Password I was back in.

My impressions of Windows 7 so far... The OS seems solid and responsive in the 18 hours I've had it installed. The user interface changes made on the task bar are perfect for a netbook. While you loose a few more pixels to accommodate it, windows are more organized and switching between between applications and windows is simplified. I also appreciate the changes to UAC. I love how administrative items have the UAC logo and Windows assumes if you click on the item you are implying you want to allow elevated access (gee-whiz Batman!!).

Like many have said already, this is a high quality beta release from Microsoft. Please remember this is still a beta release, so using it on your computer may cause data or even hair loss. If you don't like gremlins eating your data, probably best to try it out in a virtual machine. However, I'll go out on a limb here and even recommend Windows 7 as the best Windows option for Netbook users. Just make sure you are backing up your important things to some remote location (that's what netbooks are all about isn't it?)

Avanade - ATS - Seattle

Well I've been in Seattle for almost two weeks now.

For those of you who don't know me personally I have taken a Software Engineer position with Avanade in Seattle. Avanade, is the premier Microsoft solutions provider, and is going to be an excellent opportunity for me to learn from some bright and experienced professionals. If you are interested in the possibility of joining Avanade shoot me an email and I'd be happy to forward you to our recruiter.

Right now I'm working on getting some certifications under my belt, MOSS in specific at the moment. In the future look forward to posts about general Seattle things and more technical write ups on Microsoft technologies.

Migrating my iPhone from my iBook G4 to a Vista 64 machine

Since I'm moving to Seattle this weekend I am working on consolidating my belonging. One of the big unknowns was if I was going to be able to bring my desktop. After considering it sometime I decided there was no way I could leave my massive music collect at home and didn't think my iBook would cut it as my only personal computer.

My big issue was I wanted to slowly phase out my iBook, but I had been using it to sync my iPhone (no Vista 64 support at the time). So I looked around the net for a bit looking for guidance and could only find pre-iPhone 2.0 information.

I decided to take the jump and was actually successful, so here is some information about my setup and how the transition went.

Setup:
iBook G4
Small amount of music on iPhone from my Vista x64 box
~20 iPhone Apps
Contacts synced with Google
iPhone formatted at FAT32 (if you used HPFS+ you maybe SOL or at the very least require a reformat of your phone)

Transfer:
Hooked iPhone to desktop.
Setup contact sync in iTunes and synced phone. Everything looked perfect.
Setup music sync in iTunes and synced phone. Replaced music on iPhone and success.
Copied all IPA (iPhone App) files from iBook to Desktop through Windows shares.
Added IPA files to iTunes by drag & dropping them into iTunes.
Synced iPhone and was prompted to Authorize Computer for iTunes Store. (I said yes 4/5 authorizations allowed)
Checked my iPhone to verify applications were there and settings hadn't changed... perfect!

ToDo:
I haven't setup syncing photos yet, because I haven't found the time to see if a solution similar to iPhoto is available. My suspicion is no, but the facebook and twitterrific apps allow me to post to both places from the phone. This may just become a moot point.

Conclusion:
I'm happy everything seems to be syncing same as iBook minus photos. I have easier access to my music library and will probably be able to phase my slow iBook from my life.

For the trees - Recycling paper

I've always been bothered by the slogan for recycling paper, "Save a tree."

Don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with recycling paper. The process required to bleach wood fibers is typically not very environmentally friendly and the less chance of those chemicals being released into our air and water the better. What I have a huge problem with is the idea that our trees need to be saved.

The United States is rich in natural resources and timber is probably one of the most abundant. With wood prices nearing all time lows are forests are far from being endangered. The other great benefit of wood is it grows back fairly quickly, 30-40 years until harvestable again. Modern logging techniques have enabled us to utilize this resource while minimizing environmental impacts. Logs are typically delimbed on site protecting against erosion and returning nutrients to the soil. Strict laws are in place protecting fragile headwaters so commonly found in logging areas. With proper management logging can even replicate biological processes which typically take place with naturally occurring fires.

Logging is most certainly not a perfect science, but suggesting trees need to be saved is naive. Please do recycle, but don't do it for the trees... do it for the children.