Topics:  Free MS ebooks, Xamarin podcast, cloud server in 55 sec., squash your PNGs, Heartbleed fallout, RDP from Android.

• Former co-worker @_Shakeel passed along some free e-books being offered by Microsoft Virtual Academy.
• @munificentbob announced his free online book, Game Programming Patterns.
• I keep finding more and more Xamarin community resources. This week it was their podcast on SoundCloud.
• Also, useful for cross-platform development: Notes on Using Various PCL Profiles with Xamarin (via @WindowsAppDev)
• Cloud hosting service DigitalOcean advertises you can spin up a new “droplet” (i.e. VM) in 55 seconds, and has what looks to be a pretty reasonable pricing structure.
• Do you know what your TRAQ score is? Online comic Devil’s Panties (“not satanic porn!”) has a good write up about their ad revenue tanking after improperly getting flagged as an adult site.
• If you’re working on web pages be sure to check out these handy CSS tips.
• In the wake of Heartbleed the OpenBSD community is refactoring OpenSSL “one arcane VMS hack at a time.” (via Dan)
• Meanwhile, a security firm reports many Android apps (mostly games) are vulnerable to Heartbleed and most scanning apps are doing it wrong, but don’t tell us which ones are doing it right. (via Re/Code)

Tools, etc.

• Color Scheme Designer is a great online tool for generating/exploring color palettes.
• And while we’re talking design, Scott Hanselman reminds us to squish our image files – Trimage is a handy app to do that on Linux, Windows and Mac.
• Did you know Google has a Remote Desktop tool for Chrome? Well, now it’s available for Android too.

Projects, etc.

• Less than 30 days left in the FoodStats app fundraiser. We’re at $250 now. Pledge as little as a $1 or as much as you feel like – every little bit helps. Or just help spread the word: Use the share buttons on the campaign site or give this easier-to-remember URL to friends, family and those who might be interested: http://tiny.cc/foodstats
• Released an initial alpha version of Commit Message Editor – a simple, cross-platform GUI editor for commit messages in Git. The goal is to provide a light-weight editor with key features useful for writing commit messages. (This was a request from my friend and former co-worker Jonathan.)

Topics: Telecommuting tips, Heartbleed tools, the end of crapware?, Git tutorials, free education, ideas into products, humanize numbers, better Datetimes, a Git GUI.

• The Pluralsight blog has some good tips for those working from home.
• If you’ve been under a rock and haven’t heard, make sure you’ve updated OpenSSL on all your computers.
  • If you’re a LastPass user, they now have a report that will tell you which of the sites you have accounts on have patched the bug.
  • GRC (host of the Security Now podcast) has an online tool that will tell you if your browser is properly recognizing revoked SSL certificates.
• SweetLabs is working with PC vendors to replace OEM-installed crapware with a recommendation-based app store solution, letting developers sell their apps directly.
• The fledgeling OneGet community has apparently pushed to get the repository moved to Github. (via @fearthecowboy)
• Discovered that Atlassian has a nice set of Git tutorials and resources online.
• The Free Technology Academy offers free education in “Free Software, Standards and Hardware“.
• Local developer @EliThompson passed along an interesting new guide coming out soon: How to Transform Ideas into Software Products from Femgineer. Sign up to be notified when the guide is published and you can participate in a free e-mail course to get feedback on your idea.

Tools, etc.

• Wow. Humanizer is a .NET library that provides a mind-boggling array of ways to convert “strings, enums, dates, times, timespans, numbers and quantities” into more human-friendly text. (via Scott Hanselman)
• Scott also recommends Noda Time as a better library than what’s provided with the .NET Framework.
• Looking for a GUI for Git and/or Mercurial? Source Tree is a free download from Atlassian.

Projects, etc.

• Working on something, which I hope to announce the next day or two. Stay tuned….

Topics: MS tech webinar, image multi-tool, call for developers, code review tools, PhpStorm.

• I’m not planning to go to //build, but am thinking about seeing if I can convince work to let me watch the day-long Building Blocks: Initialize() Jump Start to get up to speed on the current state of Microsoft techniques.
• The QUnit website not only has a good Introduction to Unit Testing tutorial, but it’s a great discussion of how and why to organize your Javascript code in a more object-oriented way.
• Job seekers, heard about Freelancer this week from our intern. What I found particularly interesting is that in addition to listing Projects they also have a category called Contests.
• If you’re looking for an open source project to help with:
  • A Mac port of the wonderful AxCrypt for Windows has put out a call for developers. (C#, Mono)
  • The site Up For Grabs maintains a list of projects with “curated tasks specifically for new contributors”. (via @shanselman)

Tools

• Not only might PicPick become my new go-to screenshot tool, but it also has a color picker, magnifier, ruler, whiteboard and more. A veritable Swiss Army tool of quick image management.
• Review Assistant, by Devart, is a Visual Studio extension I plan to evaluate for our team; code reviews are something we want to do, but have struggled with finding the right process.
• For PHP development I continue to be more and more impressed with the PhpStorm IDE. This week I discovered that it includes support for integrating with a number of issue tracking services.

Topics: Incentivizing software issues, free images for your blog, testing Javascript, automating browser tests.

• I think Donay has a really compelling idea, but I ran into a lot of problems with their site just trying to get an account set up. Maybe if more people express an interest in being able to ask for and provide incentives for project features/issues… I hope they can get some momentum going and turn it into something workable. Spread the word!
• Bountysource is another service that lets people set bounties on existing Github issues they’d like completed. Visit my profile.
• GettyImages strikes a good balance between copyright, intellectual property and fair use: Embed images for free in a non-commercial context.
• I’m always looking for ways to increase productivity by automating processes. This week’s NuGet Package of the Week from Scott Hanselman shows how to use FluentAutomation (I love “fluent” syntax!) with Selenium and scriptcs to automate browser testing.

Tools

• There’ve been a lot of windowing enhancement add-ons over the years; the new Preme for Windows looks pretty feature rich, with some useful hotkeys.

Coding, projects, etc.

• Been studying up on the current state of unit testing with Javascript, including Jasmine and QUnit.
  A few good tutorials:
  • Testing your Javascript with Jasmine on Tuts+.
  • Unit test Javascript applications with Jasmine on Adobe’s Developer Connection.

If you’d like to support this blog and the work I do in general, I now have an Amazon Wishlist with hardware, software, etc. that I need. More options and information are coming soon.

NOTE: I’m moving the posting day/time for the weekly roundup to Monday morning. Hopefully that will make it a little more visible as well as giving me the weekend to wrap up the content.

• The current stable version of Entity Framework (EF6) now supports mocking the database context – which is allowing me to update the CtcApi so that unit tests do not require the database.
  • Oh, and if you’re working with the Entity Framework you should be using LINQPad. Even if you don’t use EF, it’s still a great minimalist C# editor/compiler – test out snippets of code outside of the complexity of your project.
• Code for Seattle – “Developers, designers, data geeks, leaders, artists, and idea-makers who help Seattle government and civic organizations adopt open web technologies.” (via Seattle Transit Blog)
• Did you know you can use your Android smartphone to contribute to distributed research projects now? (via GeekWire article)
• Microsoft has a new online source code browser (beta) for the parts of the .NET Framework that have been open sourced.
• Read an old, but interesting interview with the CEO of a very successful, commercial WordPress forms management plugin on how licensing under the GPL has been beneficial for them.
• Game Developerz sounds like a fun new card game – comes recommended by a former boss, co-founder of Humongous Entertainment. Its Kickstarter has a little over a month to go.
• On the job-hunting front, GET /api-jobs looks like a useful stream of API-related job postings from a variety of sources.
• If you’re a C# developer interested in learning – or even just curious about – Python, I highly recommend the JetBrainsTV video Python for the C# developer.

Tools

• Friend of a friend, Robert shared MTR – a better traceroute for *nix. I also found WinMTR; unfortunately there’s not a Chocolatey package available.
• I’m not quite as late to this party as Eli is, but certainly late enough to have missed Scott Hanselman’s post about SlowCheetah. Previews for my Visual Studio configuration transforms? Yes please! (Scott’s most recent blog post is also very much worth reading and sharing.)
• I’ve recently needed to start watching my blood glucose levels. Today I discovered Nutritionix, which provides free nutrition information (including calculators for many restaurants) and an available API. Access to the API includes a free tier and they state that freeware mobile apps can get a bump in that access for no charge.

Projects, coding, etc.

• We’ve been migrating a lot of college sites to a newly-established WordPress platform. This week I’m getting familiar with Gravity Forms to help with that effort. (PHP)
• Been helping out (and working towards the offered bounty) a Stackoverflow user having trouble programmatically writing to Active Directory. (C#)

Just finished watching the ReSharper Secrets video on the JetBrainsTV channel on YouTube. Several good tips there. Definitely worth watching. The presenter spends the bulk of the time talking about Annotations – which are how ReSharper works a lot of its magic and are now available to us for decorating our own code. He closes by sharing a few of his own favorite features he thinks are not very well known. I didn’t know most of them.

• My friend Dan recently asked
  

  Has anyone already written the code to use the AVR on the Gertboard for the Raspberry Pi as a simple GPIO expansion/demux?

  I don’t have an answer for him, but maybe you do, or know somebody who does?

• Seattle to sport one of the first Bitcoin ATMs in the U.S.
• SQRL (Secure Quick Reliable Login) – from Steve Gibson, the host of Security Now – aims to replace username/password login for websites. This is an open project, being worked on by Steve along with fans and followers.
• I’ve used Console2, and fairly recently heard about clink and ConEmu, but sweet monkey sundae! I finally saw a screencast of ConEmu in action. Must start using this!

Tools I’ve recently started using

• Chocolatey is an attempt at a package manager, kind of like apt-get (and I stress kind of), for Windows software. It’s still a bit rough around the edges, but I’ve been using it to help ensure my tools are up to date.
• A few of us at work have been using meetings.io when working from home and I like it enough that I’ve recently decided to go ahead and sign up for an account – which gives me a profile page, vanity URL and personal meeting room.  You can still use the service without signing up, however.

Projects, coding, etc.

• Published gist of a DataParameter implementation for ADO.NET. (C#)
• Began work on replacing CtcApi unit test code with database mocks. (C#)
• Submitted class to measure time elapsed for code execution to the CtcApi. (C#)

I’m going to try something new, in an effort to both share things I find out about and write more. Each week I’ll compile a list of cool and/or useful tools, information, tips, etc. and post them here each Friday:

• Listened to a great Hanselminutes podcast interview with Model View Culture – A new media platform covering Technology, Culture, and Diversity.
• Venn diagrams of SQL JOINs. (via @jamesthigpen via @ShawnWildermuth)
• Scott Hanselman also has a good overview of things you shouldn’t be doing, or doing any more, in ASP.NET.
• Did you know that Github will show geo data as maps? And that now you can look at diffs of the committed data to see how the map changes over time?
• Is your government on Github?

Tools

• Windows Firewall Control – more and better control over the firewall built into Windows. (via Security Now, ep 441)
• Need to search a Github wiki? (Searches on Github don’t include wiki content.) There’s an extension for that. (via Stackoverflow)
• Network Monitor Mini for Android floats a minimalist upload/download speed widget on your screen.
• Need a multi-functional calculator? //web2.0calc.com has got you covered. (via @SGgrc)

This blog post was written specifically for my co-workers at Washington State community and technical colleges, but I suspect will be useful to anyone getting started with Github, so I am posting it here. This post is Copyright (c) 2013, Bellevue College and the State of Washington.

First, some definitions

Git

A software tool for managing source code. Typically referred to as an SCM (Source Control/Code Management) or VCS (Version Control System).

These systems allow multiple developers to work together on the same project/product. They write code at their workstation and then check in or commit those changes to a repository. Git is a distributed VCS – which means that there is not a single, centralized server that developers must check their changes into (although it can be configured to simulate that behavior). Instead, each developer has their own (usually local) repository. Repositories can then be linked with other (usually remote) repositories. Repositories that are linked can share checked-in changes with each other – merging those changes into a common whole.

Repository

The location where committed/checked-in source code is stored, shared from, etc. A repository typically contains the source code, commit/checkin history, etc. for only one project/product.

Github

A web-based service that provides hosting for (remote) Git repositories.

In addition to hosting Git repositories, Github also provides additional features like:

• A Wiki for each repository.
• A simple issue tracking (e.g. bug tracking) system for each repository.
• Various tools for forking/merging/etc. repositories.

So, to put it all together:

• Software developers use Git to manage repositories of source code – both locally and on Github.
• Documentation for each project/product can be maintained in that repository’s Wiki on Github (where it can be access by everybody and managed by the team).
• Bugs and other issues for each project/product can be reported, documented and managed in the issue tracking tool for that repository on Github (where it can be accessed by everybody).

Getting started with Git

If you’re not already familiar with Git – or at least some other source control tool – I’d strongly recommend spending some time learning how it works, and how to integrate it into your own workflow, before adding Github to the mix. Source control and Git itself are far too large a topic to get into here, but the following are a number of resources Bellevue College has collected:

• For more information about Git and source control in general, I highly recommend Version Control by Example by Eric Sink – which is available online, in print or a number of e-book formats – both free and for purchase.
• The Git website also has a book and some helpful videos.
• If Windows is your primary development platform, install the official Git for Windows package. I also recommend the Git Extensions collection of GUI tools, but strongly suggest you learn the command-line first.
• If you use Visual Studio for your development, vs2012’s TFS tools work with Git, but I usually recommend the Git Source Control Provider for 2010 or 2012.
• Github also has an interactive, hands-on walkthrough of using Git from the command-line at http://try.github.io

Working with Github

As previously mentioned, Github is an online service which provides public hosting of Git repositories. With your repository on Github it is easy for others to find your project, download your code and (hopefully) submit useful contributions. They can even fork your project to create a new offshoot. In addition to just hosting source code, Github provides some additional features that can be useful when collaborating with others.

Organizations

Besides personal accounts Github also allows any user to create organizations. Organizations act much like accounts in that they can own repositories, but they do not have a login of their own. Instead, the person who first creates the organization becomes the first Member in a Team (similar to a role group) called “Owners”. Owners have full, administrative access to the organization. For example, they can create repositories and add new members – including adding members to the Owners Team.

While each college is free to set up their Github accounts in a manner that works best for them, I would recommend each person who is going to access Github create an account and then one of you create an organization for your college. You can see how we set up ours at https://github.com/BellevueCollege.

To create an organization:

1. Go to your profile page by clicking your username at the top of the page.
2. Click the Edit Your Profile button.
3. Select Organizations from the tabs on the left.
4. Click the Create new organization button.

Members and Teams

To add or manage members of an organization edit that organization’s profile, click the Members tab on the left and then click the team management link. Here you can

• Add accounts to/remove accounts from the Owners Team.
• Create/Remove Teams.
• Define which repositories can be accessed by which Teams.

Teams essentially provide the ability to define access groups that members can belong to. You can define the permissions (push, pull and/or administrative), members and repositories for each Team. I recommend setting at least two people from your college (3 or 4 would be ideal – so as to maintain a healthy Beer Truck Index) to be on the Owners Team for your organization and setting up another Team with Push & Pull access for granting trusted individuals the ability to make modifications directly to your code, should you so desire.

Creating repositories

Once you are a member of an organization on Github, when creating a new repository you will have the option to create it with your account as the owner or one of the organizations you belong to. If you choose the organization as the owner the new repository will appear on the organization’s page and “belong” to that organization.

This means it will benefit from the Member and Team access that can be configured as outlined above.

Other Github tips

As you navigate your way through Github, you might find the following information useful:

• When added, members of an organization are “concealed” by default. This means:
  • The member will NOT appear on the Members tab when viewed by non-Members.
  • The Organization will NOT appear on the user’s profile page.

• To un-conceal a member, an Owner must click the Publicize membership button on the Members tab of the organization.
• Once your membership is publicized, the organization will appear under your picture and other information on your profile page. (See image below.)

Following, watching and starring

Github includes 3 different ways to monitor activity. To be honest, this is still an area I’m a little fuzzy on. But this is what I’ve been able fo figure out so far:

Follow other users

When viewing the profile page of another user you have the option to follow them by clicking the Follow button. I have not observed an particular notifications (e.g. via e-mail) from following another person, but they do show up in my following count and list. A lot of people have asked how to find other users and/or repositories. This is the primary way I do so – by following other people, seeing who they follow, etc.

Star repositories to “follow” them

When you Star a repository, this seems to have a similar effect as following a user. Starred repositories show up alongside the users you are following. I have no idea why Github felt the need to use different terminology.

Watch repositories to be notified of new/updated discussions

If you click the Watch button for a repository, you will be presented with 3 options:

• Not watching
• Watching
• Ignoring

There is also a short description of each, but for completeness, I will include here that selecting Watching will cause you to receive notifications for all discussions that occur in the repository.

Where do we go from here?

As we progress in our use of Git and Github, I will post additional articles on such topics as

• Ignoring files.
• Working with remote repositories.
• Merging, branching and forking.

In the meantime, I recommend the resources listed under the Getting started with Git section above.

For the last year or so, I’ve been slowly building up a personal Knowledge Base using Evernote (a direct link is to the right). This is a place where I save tidbits of information related to software development – stuff that I think I’ll probably want to look up later, because I’ve forgotten the precise syntax needed, etc. I also made this KB publicly available (link is to the right) so that others could hopefully benefit as well. So far, this has worked pretty well, but I don’t always have the time to organize and format the notes as much as I’d like.

About a month ago, I became aware of Diigo – an online tool for highlighting, bookmarking and notating content on web pages. I’d seen tools like this before, but I liked the way Diigo also collected everything I’d noted in one place and allowed me to organize, tag and share it.

So I’ve started a new, experimental Knowledge Base (again, link to the right) using Diigo. I’m hoping this format will make more sense and allow me to collect and organize information more quickly. If it continues to impress, it will eventually replace my previous KB.