Brendon, the other half of the Atlanta .Net Regular Guys, has suddenly become a bloggin’ fool!  He’s posted eight of the last fourteen posts!  Good Job!  We need more content!  More, more!

— Matt Ranlett

I took a little break from blogging on account of how much time I was spending at work finishing up this code I’ve been working on.  But now that’s pretty much wrapped up and I can get back to writing the posts you have all been waiting breathlessly for.  If you’ve not been waiting breathlessly for this, don’t tell me.  It’s good to have your little illusions…

Coming up this Thursday will be the next edition of the Tales from the Trenches column.  This week we’re talking with Paul Wilson, Atlanta’s ASP.Net MVP.

Reminder – tonight is the C# UG meeting.  Doug Turnure will be talking to us about how the .Net framework handles memory management internally.  This is a really fascinating topic to me, because when you know what happens under the covers you know why your apps behave the way they do.  This is great when you have to debug bizarre memory related problems like Keith Rome had to do.

— Matt Ranlett

Starting March 21st there will be a 10 part series on how to manage SQL Server 2005.

You can start signing up now for the webcasts.

http://www.microsoft.com/events/series/technetsqlserver2005.mspx

--Brendon Schwartz

This week Chris Wallace shows you how to create a button on the fly with different colors for a webpage.  This is helpful if you have a web application with different color buttons, but don’t know what colors they need to be ahead of time.

Read the full article here

References:
Article: Image Processing for Dummies with C# and GDI+ Part 1 - Per Pixel Filters
Website:  - Button Generator
Book: Graphics Programming with GDI+

--Brendon Schwartz

<Brendon Rambling>
If you just want the point of the article read the last paragraph, otherwise if you got this far keep going.

You wake up at 2:30AM because you were so tired that you fell asleep at 7PM.  Welcome to the world of the busy programmer.  Many of you probably know exactly what I am taking about or just don’t go to bed until after 2:30AM.  Part of this problem is due to the fact that I am always thinking, coming up with ideas and solutions.  These traits can be look at as a blessing and a curse because I do them all of the time, just ask Matt.  It is a blessing because I am able to help solve difficult problems with logical solutions quickly, but it is a curse because I am always thinking of something new to do or coming up with a new idea that I want Matt’s help to implement.  I appreciate Matt for putting up with me and all my crazy ideas.  Hope that they are as fun for all of you as they are for me.

Time update: 5:15AM
Talk about a distraction.  Who me? Get distracted?  Are we back yet? Oh hi there audience let me tell you what just happened.  Well this is how it went down.  A friend ours, Jake (hi Jake), was kind enough to sign up to be a .NET Regular Guy. Thanks!  I noticed this and was going to check the other people that signed up.  NOTE: Thanks for those that have signed up I will make sure and hook you up.  Well once I checked out who was signed up I was looking around the site as I normally do and I didn’t like the fact that the site wasn’t working right.  So I took the next bit of time to fix the code and make sure everything looked ok and was set up right.  If anyone has some feedback on our site please let us know how we can make it better for you, and by let us know I mean tell Matt =).  Or what we can add to make it a useful site for the Atlanta .NET community. So back to why I started writing this blog.

I have a new idea, image that.  I want to start a weekly blog entry of Atlanta .NET How To’s written by people in the community.  I got this idea after reading Chris Wallace’s follow up blog to our Tale from the Trenches.  Here is the idea, you can tell me if you don’t like it or if you do.  Once a week we will put a blog post called “HOW TO: <whatever is figured out>” on our site from an Atlanta .NET person.  We will have a link to their blog, article, or copy and paste from an email if they send it to us.  If no one in Atlanta writes something that we can link to, which I think would be crazy there are a million people in Atlanta, then Matt or I will write a HOW TO article from the requests of the community.  The idea here is that you will be able to read the HOW TO article and talk to the person through email or at the .NET user groups to ask questions. So thanks to Chris Wallace we will start with his post of HOW TO: Create Dynamic Buttons using GDI+ for WebPages.  Please keep me posted if you read a good how to posting for us.

--Brendon Schwartz

In our first ever Tales from the Trenches we talked to someone we did not know, Chris Wallace.  Well acutally it was just me that talked with Chris because Matt was sick as a dog.  Glad you feel better.  In the talk (interview) he told me about a project he was working on, which was to write dynamic buttons on his webpage so he would not have to create them everytime he needed a different color button.  Great idea especially if you need many different color buttons but don't know what the colors will be ahead of time.  Anyway I just wanted to let you know that he has posted a code and blog with how to do it if you are interested.  Great job Chris. BTW, Chris was a great guy, talk to him at the Code Camp.

--Brendon Schwartz

This kicks up the uber-geek in me!  I totally want one! 

http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050228/full/050228-1.html

OK – this post was lame.  Sorry.

— Matt Ranlett

Brendon and I were fretting over how difficult it is for us to maintain all the various websites we have to keep up with and wishing we could simply install a portal site like DotNetNuke to make this easier for us.  The problem is that I purchased the cheapest web hosting package out there – DiscountASP.net.  SQL Server is available to us, but it’s not free.  I’m cheap, and Brendon is even cheaper than I am, so you know we didn’t want to spend any extra money.  So Brendon had a great idea – see if we could parlay our function as the Atlanta .Net Regular Guys – the glue that helps hold the Atlanta .Net development community together – into a discount on the SQL Server price (which is ordinarily only more $10 a month).

I sent an e-mail to the sales department at DiscountASP.Net asking if we could get a discount on the SQL Server package in exchange for some advertising on our site.  The sales person who received my e-mail took a quick look at the site and noticed that we are associated with the Atlanta .Net User Group.  He asked me what we were all about.  I gave him what I felt was an excellent explanation of the Atlanta .Net Regular Guys, which he promptly forwarded on to the VP of Marketing at DiscountASP.Net

I was quickly contacted by a Mr Eto who asked me for a little more information about the ADNRG (Atlanta .Net Regular Guys) and came back with an offer that was even better than I expected!  Not only did we get a great deal on the SQL Server addition to our account, Mr Eto said that DiscountASP.Net is an avid supporter of the .Net user community.  We might be getting some swag to give out at the User Groups, including some free hosting plans!  That’s awesome! 

I have some marketing material from them, but I want to tell you quickly about my personal experience with DiscountASP.Net.  When Brendon and I decided to move our site and blog to our own web host and stop leaching off of Michael Earls, we looked at several providers that were recommended to us.  We went with DiscountASP.Net because their plan was the lowest cost around.  Between the two final contenders, I saved nearly $100 by going with DiscountASP.Net for a year pre-paid.  We’ve been impressed with the speed of the servers – we both have commented that other sites that we know are hosted by the other hosting service we considered and both Brendon and I think that those other sites are slower.  We like the speed and the cost!  Win-win!

<warning – marketing blurb from DiscountASP.Net>

 DiscountASP.NET is a Microsoft Certified Partner that focuses on offering the best value in ASP.NET web hosting and SQL hosting. DiscountASP.NET provides affordable, reliable, fast, secure, and feature-rich Microsoft ASP.NET hosting. Features include: FREE ASP.NET Components, .NET Framework, MS SQL, Access, ASP.NET Web Based Control Panel, VS.NET support and more.

</warning>

— Matt Ranlett

Are you wondering what I did this past weekend? Probably not, but you know I am going to tell you anyways.  I created a new calendar for the ADNRG (Atlanta .NET Regular Guys) website and create a page to let you join the ADNRG.  I will list the features I added this weekend later in the blog.  All of the code is on the devcow web site, but I still consider it beta until it has been tested a little more.  Please let us know if you have any trouble using anything or if you would like any new features.

Calendar Features Addition: www.devcow.com/calendar2
1) Created calendar to use same data as all other calendar and notification systems
2) Added vCalendar functionality to let you click an event and let you add it to Outlook or any system that supports vCalendar
3) Added an RSS feed of all the events for this year on the calendar

Join the Group Feature Addition: www.devcow.com/regularguys  
1) You can now sign up to let us know who you are and join our group
2) The ability to view all users that want to show their name as being one of the Atlanta .NET Regular Guys

On top of these features I worked on the site in general to make it better.  In the long term we will try to make the site easier and better to use for anyone trying to keep up with what is going on with .NET in the Atlanta area.  Please let us know if we are missing anything or can change anything to help you keep organized.

Thanks,
--Brendon Schwartz

Shawn Wildermuth has announced the next Geek Dinner event here in the Atlanta area.  The blog post has not made it online yet, but keep your eyes on http://nerddinner.com/blogs/atlanta so you’ll know when to RSVP.

March 24th at 5 Seasons in Roswell’s Prado shopping center

— Matt Ranlett

Did you miss out on your chance to register for the Atlanta Code Camp, this May 14th?  That’s understandable, the code camp “sold out” inside of FIVE days!  We have people from ten states coming to attend and present at our local code camp!

If you missed out on registration, this is your last chance to get into the code camp.  We are looking for ten volunteers to help us run this thing.  You will have to show up early to help set up.  You will have to stay late to help clean up and tear down.  You will be proctoring a room or monitoring people as they are admitted.  Please be serious about this, there are some real responsibilities involved with volunteering.  If you are serious and you want to volunteer, send me an e-mail (check the Code Camp website).  On a first come, first serve basis, we will be admitting ten volunteers.

— Matt Ranlett

Turnout for the February UG meeting was excellent and eye-opening at the same time.  We had approximately 80 people in attendance once everyone managed to show up.  Of the 80 people in attendance, nearly half of them were at their very first User Group meeting.  I think that’s excellent!  We seem to be doing a good job at getting the word out.  Now it’s time to build up some dedication.

Shawn Wildermuth, Atlanta’s own ADO.Net MVP, whipped up a data driven Windows Smartphone application for the group.  A demo in the truest sense (complete with gremlins preventing the demo from working at the last moment), Shawn wanted to show the group differences between traditional PC development and Smartphone development.  The main difference Shawn hammered were the differences in data entry.  A smartphone only has 12 buttons and no mouse.  This really forces you to think about your application’s data input methodology very differently.  Despite the demo problems, Shawn was gracefully able to continue his presentation and teach the group how to link a web service to his cellphone.

Dennis Hurst from SPI Dynamics (SPI like spy – they’re hackers) came to the group to tell us how a hacker breaks into a web application to steal your valuable data.  Dennis explained to the group that hackers generally attack applications on one of three layers:

• network (HTTP and HTTPS attacks).  An important note here is that while SSL DOES guarantee that the data is encrypted and that it is coming from a valid server.  What SSL does NOT do is validate the data inside the SSL pipe.
• transport (messing with the HTML requests).  This is where the cross-site scripting attackers steal your HTTP cookies and pretend to be you.  This points out how critical your session cookies are.  If one is hijacked, the hijacker can pretend to be you.  *note – to destroy a cookie (and be sure it’s gone) overwrite it with a blank.
• web application attacks actually come in three layers.
  • platform – known vulnerabilities that can be easily exploited
  • administration – have you configured the server correctly, are you giving out too much information in your logs and statistics, remnant files
  • application vulnerabilities – how do you deal with input from users (ex – sql injection with a neat SQL Injector tool)

Dennis introduced us to Google hacking – the practice of using Google to find systems that are vulnerable.  Cross-site scripting is an example of how phishing attackers steal your account information by fooling you into thinking that you are entering data into a valid site while sending the cookie to another site.  Finally Dennis looked at Session hijacking – where a website thinks that the hacker is someone that they are not.  This is not where the cookie is stolen, but rather when a repeatable session identifier is used and is changeable.  Several real life examples of live sites that got this wrong (Guess.com and Victoria Secrets.com both got sued by the FTC for security flaws).

Dennis was a great speaker with very engaging demos.  Look at the SPI Dynamics site for freely downloadable white papers.  Search Microsoft’s site to find some webcasts he has done.

Announcements:
Check the calendar for upcoming user group announcements
March 24th – Geek Dinner!
May 14th – Atlanta Code Camp
May 18th – David Chappell is coming to town for an Indigo Roadshow.  Plan to be there, this will be something you don’t want to miss.

— Matt Ranlett

I have always loved movies and especially trailers.  Trailers give you a look at what is to come.  The problem is I do not have all of the skills to create a good trailer.  Here is what I need to know to create the trailer I want.

1) Create a story board
2) Find a way to put two or more audio tracks together (i.e. Spoken track and music)
3) Find a way to film movies with professional quality.
4) Find a way to put the film or movies on the computer
5) Find photos into the movie

If anyone is interested in helping out or knows people that can put me in the right direction, please let me know.

--Brendon Schwartz

I just ran into an interesting problem while on my weekend of coding.  If I have say 10 checkboxes and I want the end user to select, say 4 (let's call this n for now because it might change).  How would I go about doing this?  I mean I know how I would do this.  I would write client side jscript or vbscipt, but I was looking to see if someone had a more ASP.NET way of doing it.  Something more clean that is quick and easy to implement.  Or let me know work arounds that you have done besides looping through the check boxes in client side script.

--Brendon Schwartz

Why are there so many authors today thinking that it is a good idea to write an entire book on the internet? Ok. I did find it interesting when Scoble said he would do it, but my first thought was that I am not going to read an entire book on the internet. Then, the next thing I know he makes a post that they are going to actually publish the book, but write it on the web. Fair enough.

Today I read Don Box’s blog and he was talking about writing another book, which caught my interest. Most of you know I look at Don’s work as being some of the top work in our industry, but then he talks about writing in a wiki. Now don’t get me wrong, I do see a point to the wiki’s. However, I also see too many of them with too much information that is not organized. I really don’t get it, I mean I love reading books. Not books on the computer screen, but actual books. Books I can take with me, books that don’t reflect on the computer screen with bad lighting, books I can hold in my hand and read whenever and wherever I want to, without a power cord attached.

I know I may be old fashioned, but I still buy books today. I am always looking for good deals on places like amazon.com. Maybe I am crazy, or the only person who will not start reading entire books on the computer today, but I thought there were more of us out there. If anyone else actually reads paper books you should join us at the Atlanta Book Club and help us show that people do read books (made of paper). Sorry Don, there is just too much indexed information out there already. I enjoy my stories to be all in one place with a binding on the side.