Adding features/functionality to ASP.Net MVC 3
Out of the box ASP MVC is a good framework, although in my opinion lacking quite a lot of functionality. That isn’t a problem though as one of the greatest features of ASP MVC is how easily extensible it is. I’ve been working on my own framework, AutoMvc, to extend ASP MVC. This article will go over some of the additions I have made.
Netbook + Ubuntu = Developing While Travelling
I’m planning on going away travelling for around 6 months (maybe more, maybe less, I’m not sure yet). During this time I obviously plan on enjoying the places I’ll be in, but I do plan on having some down time to write blog posts, process photos, and also do some development. It’ll hopefully be an enlightening time to try out some ideas and also improve my programming skills.
Getting More From Your Logs
One thing I’ve noticed in many projects, is that people often using loggers such as log4net, but don’t really put the logs to use. It’s sometimes logging for the sake of logging (especially in the case of IIS). Such things are very handy for solving live issues, but there is so much more that can be done with them. Whenever starting a new project, or being introduced to an existing project I like to ensure the following is set up. This is so that we know how our application is functioning, have factual data to backup decisions, and to help point out possible areas of improvement.
Introducing Rakeoff… a .Net build framework
I’ve recently been working on a build framework using Ruby. Having been a .Net “build master” of sorts for the past few years I’ve stumbled across many build configurations and problems. And as much as I like being a build master, I want to make my job as easy as possible. Enter conventions! We apply them everywhere else in development, why not in our build scripts. With this in mind I set about creating a set of intelligent, convention-based (but overrideable should you really wish) rake tasks. I chose Ruby because I find it flexible and quick for writing tasks, and well suited as a build language. The BDD frameworks available make testing the tasks easy.
Ruby, RubyGems, Synaptic and setting paths
I wrote an older article on installing ruby 1.9.2 in Ubuntu. This initially worked fine for me, but recently I started getting random issues across three different pc’s. I gave up trying to solve the issues in the end and decided I’d revert to using ruby provided by synaptic (1.8.6, so it’s all properly package managed). I went through the pain of removing the installed ruby 1.9.2, then proceeded to install ruby via synaptic.