Windows VPN equals no Internet connection

Doing some side work for a company, I have been granted VPN access. I am to connect to the VPN using the built in Windows VPN connection client instead of a third party tool such as Cisco.

Once I entered all my credentials, I attempted to connect to the VPN...voila!! I connected without a hitch...or so I thought. I went to check my mail once connected to the VPN and Gmail was having difficulties connecting. WTF?! I can't connect to Google either. I disconnect from the VPN and everything is back to normal. This is kind of unacceptable, but there is a solution. Follow the steps on this blog to solve the issue: http://www.rickglos.com/post/Work-VPN-kills-Internet-connection.aspx

Agile: Boards? Walls? Can't put anything on the wall?

Working at various places you come across certain departments that have rules that do not make sense. Well maybe they make sense but they might not make sense to you. One of the places I worked had a strong restriction on putting things up on the wall. Working in an Agile environment entails using TONS of wall space. From iteration walls to burn(down)/(up) charts and even design flats, walls are necessary.

One day I walked in the morning and saw that someone had actually written on the wall. Insert vulgarity !!! Whoever did that is gonna get it. I was actually quite excited to find out who would soon receive the impeding doom. After some closer inspection, I was excited to see that the writing wasn't actually on the wall, but on white board styled paper that was stuck to the wall. At this point I was interested in how it would actually stick to the wall. Static. Static is the magic that makes it all work. The sheets stick to the wall and paper/stickies stick to the sheets. No tape. Amazing.





Smart Sheets a simple dynamic white board replacement. "They're your whiteboard, communication, brainstorming, artwork, doodlepad and advertising vehicle all rolled up in one!"

NivoSlider: A jQuery Image Gallery (Slider) Plugin

NivoSlider by Gilbert Pellegrom is an incredible plugin for providing a transitioning slideshow or slider to your visitors. Highly customizable with tons of options and transition effects, this is a must have plugin. The gap between what Flash can do over Javascript is shrinking on a daily basis.

Basic Example:

Dynamic Breadcrumbs?!

Have you ever been in a situation where one of the business requirements were breadcrumbs? Most people would answer yes. The funny thing is everyone you talk to, doesn't really have a good solution to handling the little trail of bread.

My current situation was a little more challenging in the sense that I needed dynamic breadcrumbs that would work for fixed pages as well as Cms controlled pages. Cms pages that use Url aliasing. Attempts to use .Net server code to build the breadcrumbs were successful until Url aliasing was involved.

The solution. A jQuery plugin. I searched for two days for a viable solution to dynamic breadcrumbs. Unfortunately there weren't any that I could find. The internet was however, littered with breadcrumb plugins that make your breadcrumbs look cool, of have funky drop down menus. None of them dynamically built a simple trail automatically.

I decided to write my own plugin called: jQuery Dynamic Breadcrumbs!

Creative? I know. Sometimes I even amaze myself. The project is hosted on Google code at jQuery Dynamic Breadcrumbs

The basic idea is using a nicely formatted folder structure/url aliasing. Creating a Url that is easy for a visitor to understand should be more than enough of an indicator that you don't need breadcrumbs, but some people just love the things.

Underused C# feature: string.Format and custom formatters

There are developers out there who get classified as being lazy. I got called being a lazy developer when adding an Extension method to decimal types to convert to some Html formatted string.

Example:


This makes the code look clean and is pretty simple to understand for any other developer to come in later and know what is being done. The problem is that other developers may consider this abuse or misuse of Extension methods. "Why should a decimal know how to convert itself into a certain type of string?"

Enter the string.Format method and a custom formatter. string.Format can take in any argument, a format, and custom formatter, then return you the string equivalent for that argument. Although I agree that this is a more appropriate approach that doesn't make it a cleaner solution. In my opinion only.

You would make the call like this:


Although it works and is the proper solution in this case, it's ugly.

I am open to other solutions to this scenario, so if you have a good solution please post in the comments.

Here is a full example of how to implement a custom formatter to use with string.Format.

Test Class (MS Test):


Custom formatter implementation example:

Javascript delegate and extending jQuery with a delegate method

Delegate function:



If you are using jQuery, you can extend a method to the jQuery object to use throughout your application. Below I create a jQuery delegate extension method plugin:



An example of somewhere you would use the delegate method:



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Developing MonoTouch applications in Visual Studio

I have been playing with MonoTouch and haven't gotten all too far. I get the concepts of the XIB files and the C# is your typical syntax. My concerns are a lot with productivity. Keyboard shortcuts, refactoring, addons like ReSharper, etc. Those things become a crutch when you are hammering out work for clients and you need to do it fast.

If you are a ReSharper user or anything of the sort, I am sure you have come into a situation where you have a fresh installation of Visual Studio, yet no ReSharper, your client doesn't have licenses and doesn't allow you to use yours. That is the feeling of developing with MonoDevelop and MonoTouch. Of course you finally convince them to buy some licenses, and then you get to working. Well ESCOZ has come up with that convincing part. Although I have not tried it myself, I wanted to post it for anyone else who might be interested.

(I still think it is annoying that I have to buy a Mac, just to develop iPhone/iPad apps)