GeekMeet Brasov #1 – Cloud Computing
DISCLAIMER: This post contains Romanian words – sorry for those who do not understand them.
Yesterday I attended the first GeekMeet presentation from Brasov, Romania. It was pretty exciting because I was one of the speakers.
My general impression about this event was good. The organizers did their job well, with little mistakes – mistakes are inevitable for the first event :). The presentations were nice too; there were six:
- Mihai Gheza – “SEO Kung Fu”
He told us about SEO and what can we do to improve it. - Victor Hurdugaci – “Cloud Computing – Lumea din nor”
My presentation. - Maria Diaconu – Agile, Scrum, XP
A 30 minutes workshop about the basic idea behind Agile methodologies. - Claudiu Gamulescu – “eCommerce – Analiza de Criza”
A presentation about the effects of crysis on electronic commerce - Vlad Georgescu – “Design Related”
Some general design related topics. Actually this presenation started an intresting debate about speculation and employment. - Bobby Voicu
Bobby’s presentation did not have a name. I will copy what Mihai said, Bobby’s presentation was a “friendly preaching”.
Mihai already uploaded his presentation. When the others will follow him I will update their links.
My presentation can be downloaded by click the following link: cloud-computing-geekmeet-2009-03-28. It is about cloud computing, mainly focused on Microsoft Windows Azure. Because there were no feedback form – unfortunately – I want to ask my visitors who attended the presentation to give some feedback (as a comment or by e-mail at contact [at] victorhurdugaci [dot] com).
I am still waiting for pictures. When some will be available I will upload them here.
See you on GeekMeet Brasov 2 (April 25 – same place, same hour).
I am leaving
I have approx. 4 more months left to stay in Romania. After this I will go in Delft, The Netherlands. How is this possible? I have been accepted to the Computer Science MSc Programme at Delft University of Technology.
After living for twenty one years in Brasov I have decided that it is the time for a change. Brasov is a great city but I want to see how life is in other places (I’ve never been outside Romania), I want to see how living away from my parents, away from my friends in an unknown place. I’ve met a lot of great people here (probably would have to write thousands of words to enumerate them all) and I am sure will miss them but maybe I will come back after two years. Anyway I hope that when I return (and I will return even just for a few days) I’ll the opportunity to see them again.
Delft seems a nice city. It is situated between The Hague and Rotterdam, it is close to the seaside and actually is the opposite of Brasov which is 600 meters above the sea level and surrounded by mountains – it is a biiiiig change. You can look at the panorama picture below (not recommended on slow connections; the full picture has 3MB) showing the entire city (Delft).
However I have not applied to the MSc Programme to go in an adventure :) I think and hope that going to a good university is a step forward, a step that will help me in my career and will boost my chances of obtaining my dream job (I won’t tell which is it). Computer Science is what I want to do – I am a geek and I will probably be one for all my life so the opportunity of studying what I like will help me in following my career goals.
That is for now, there are still 4 1/2 months to go until the departure and many things can happen until then. I still have to obtain my Bachelor diploma and successfully pass all this semester’s exams. Hopefully there will be no events that might have a bad impact on my departure.
My Spore Creature
[Wikipedia] Spore is a multi-genre massive single-player online metaverse video game developed by Maxis and designed by Will Wright. It allows a player to control the development of a species from its beginnings as a unicellular organism, through development as an intelligent and social creature, to interstellar exploration as a spacefaring culture. It has drawn wide attention for its massive scope, and its use of open-ended gameplay and procedural generation.
That’s what I am playing :D
See below some pictures of my evil (aggressive, carnivore) creature just before the Tribal Age:
New Windows Azure Features (March 2009)
Now that Mix09 is talking place we have a lot of nice announcements from Microsoft. I want to focus this post on the new Azure features, SDK and Visual Studio Tools that have been released a few hours ago.
For those who don’t know, Windows Azure is the Microsoft’s cloud operating system. It is an operating system that runs in the cloud and only in MS’ data centers so don’t bother asking how can you install this new OS because there is no way you can do it. If you want more details about cloud computing and Windows Azure join my live presentation on GeekMeet Brasov on March 28 (it’s a presentation in Romanian).
Let’s see what new goodies are in the March release:
First of all there is support for FastCGI which allows developers to deploy and run web applications written with 3rd party programming languages such as PHP. This provides developers using non-Microsoft languages the ability to take advantage of scalability on Windows Azure. Also the IIS URL Rewrite Module has been enabled. URL rewriting, a feature often used by FastCGI developers, enables the creation of URLs that are easier for users to remember and easier for search engines to find. The Visual Studio Tools for Windows Azure includes a FastCGI Web Role that creates a Web Application project tailored to make it easier to configure, run and package a FastCGI application.
Geo-location provides developers with the ability to specify a location for their applications and data to build responsive services with lower network latency as well as the capability to meet location-based regulatory and legal requirements. Until now there were Azure data centers only in the north western United States but now you can also choose the data centers in south. Some officials from Microsoft said that “Going forward, we plan on expanding our presence to more locations, especially outside the U.S”.
One of the great things about Windows Azure is that it handles the deployment, monitoring, and management of your service so that you have more time to focus on the business logic. Until recently, realizing these benefits meant your code had to run under Windows Azure partial trust, a code access security (CAS) level which locks down certain .NET functionality. Windows Azure now offers the option of running the code in your Web and worker roles under full trust. This unlocks a number of compelling scenarios such as:
- Invoking non-.NET Code: Many developers have existing investments in native code or may choose to use native code for some specialized tasks. .NET full trust makes it possible to use native code via spawning processes or Platform Invoke (P/Invoke).
- Using .NET Libraries that Require Full Trust: Certain .NET libraries, including libraries in the .NET Services SDK, require full trust and can now be used in Windows Azure.
- Inter-process Communication via Named Pipes: If you application spawns processes, you can communicate among them via named pipes.
However you must be aware that the Full Trust is not really Full Trust :) There are some obvious limitations like writing to registry and writing to the file system. These limitation might not be that obvious when programming against the local development environment.
Least but not last, even though it was not officially announced, I think there are plenty of bug fixes and other nice things.
The SDK and Tools for Visual Studio can be downloaded from the following links:
Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio (March 2009 CTP) – now include the SDK
Windows Azure Software Development Kit (March 2009 CTP) – if you don’t need the Visual Studio Tools
Half an Hour Puzzle Solved
Here I promissed that I will post a picture of the Half an Hour Puzzle solved. Sorry but I forgot to do that.
Better late than never:
POP3 in Hotmail and Live Mail
It’s finally here! Microsoft offers free access through POP3 to Live Mail and Hotmail. Now you can add your account in your favorite mail client (Outlook, Thunderbird, etc) without using connectors like Outlook Connector.
However it does not offer contacts and calendar synchronization like Outlook Connector but it allows you to choose where and how to save the e-mails.That should be fine for many.
The settings for POP3 are:
POP server: pop3.live.com (Port 995)
POP SSL required? Yes
User name: Your Windows Live ID, for example yourname@hotmail.com or yourname@live.com
Password: The password you usually use to sign in to Hotmail or Windows Live
SMTP server: smtp.live.com (Port 25 or 587)
Authentication required? Yes (this matches your POP username and password)
TLS/SSL required? Yes
A few months ago I was thinking to buy a pro account for Live Mail in order to have POP3 access. I’m glad I didn’t do that! :)
Sixth Sense – The future is here
Maybe some of you have seen Microsoft’s Surface table – the table that allow multi-touch interaction on it’s surface and also interact with different devices. Today I’ve found a presentation from TED that made me think that Surface is not that cool after all.
Pattie Maes presents a prototype that a student from MIT, Parnav Mistry, developed. It’s a wearable device with a projector that paves the way for profound interaction with our environment.
Enjoy the video, it’s awsome:
SkypeGadget 1.4 for Skype 4!
A new version of SkypeGadget is available. It brings support for Skype 4.
It can be downloaded from the project’s page: http://victorhurdugaci.com/projects/skypegadget/
Later edit: It was accepted also on Microsoft’s Live Gallery and can be downloaded from there too: http://gallery.live.com/liveItemDetail.aspx?li=a1accefe-803e-43fc-ad30-4e861abda9f9&bt=1