Panda! The New Kitten!
July 03, 2008

Meet Panda, Babbles' newest friend. They spent most of last night chasing each other around the house. Babbles is actually getting some exercise now, hooray!

Hopefully Babbles won't get jealous and start eating things in my networking closet, that would be bad. Anyway, enjoy the lovely camera phone pictures as I've got no clue where our regular digital camera is ATM.

Cat on a Copier in Office
May 24, 2008

This is truth, I am actually posting a cat today. On Caturday. The surprise in your eyes is almost palpable, I'm sure but this is no illusion. I am finally settling into a Summer pattern that is allowing me to begin updating again - hooray.

Emily and I have 13 days left until we close on our house, so everything's approaching fast. We've got a good chunk of the house packed up, but still have the kitchen, Emily's room and the basement left to go. Everything should fall into place, but I'm totally entrenched in everything cardboard right now - I have dreams that I'm Solid Snake.

Also, Babbles is sensing the coming move and has become playful and is running rampant through the house. Carter, as usual, is completely unaware that anything is happening and will be thoroughly surprised when we finally pick him up and move him.

Enjoy your caturday!

Happy Caturday!
April 05, 2008

Through some stroke of luck, Draz forgot to post a cat. Do you know what this means? My exceedingly early morning has left me beating Draz to the Caturday punch for once! Hooray! Today is Code Camp, so I'll be out all day and then in work tomorrow. Looks like I'll be a busy camper and won't have time to clean my paw like this adorable little guy here.

Happy 05:00AM!

Caturday Fail
March 31, 2008

I was lost in longcatwood. Sry.

Happy Caturday or
Every Post is a Repost of a Repost!
March 22, 2008

Well everyone, I have almost gone an entire week in between Caturday posts without a single piece of content. This semester really is hard on my blog. I've got so many projects (real projects, not these fake school ones) up in the air that its hard to keep everything together and still have extra time to generate content. Don't worry, I won't just fade off into the ether and let my precious little blog die off.

Right now I'm working on an awesome new file organization program that I'm hoping will finally end my file storage issues. I have many gigabytes of storage space spread out across my entire network that I've never really been able to effectively use. I've got 3 or so IDE drives in my file server, an 100G in my MacBook and at least 500G in my main desktop system and its hard to effectively utilize this space. I'm working on a new application that will let me easily create a SAN from these devices, upload data to the application which will then be in charge of storing and retrieving these data. I'm excited for when I finally get it finished as its shaping up to be very useful.

No more precarious RAID1 for me... until then - have a happy Easter and enjoy your chocolate and colored eggs for Jesus.

Caturday Fail
March 15, 2008

I'm in yooou tblea eatnnng yooou burrito.

Jordan.CaturdayStatus() == Lose
March 09, 2008

Happy Caturbirthday Emily!
March 01, 2008

Caturday Win!
February 16, 2008

How the hell did I win Caturday at 0221? No matter, I am no longer working at Geronimo! HOORAY!

Caturday win?
February 09, 2008

Wow, I won Caturday for once. It's a shame I'm in this damned Battletoads costume.

ASP.NET MVC: Reworking Caturday
February 08, 2008

As a Ruby on Rails programmer, I’ve grown accustomed to having the latest and greatest technologies available at my fingertips. As a Microsoft programmer, I’ve grown accustomed to using antiquated technologies with sugar coated glossiness on the outside. Case in point, Visual Studio 2008 has finally gotten MVC support albeit much delayed. So much so, that in the year 2008 Visual Studio still does not ship with an MVC framework and you must bolt it on. No matter though, we’re industrious fellows right?

Since this is an add-on extension for VS2008, you’ve got some downloading to do. First head on over and download the MVC Toolkit and the MVC Extension from Microsoft’s official ASP.NET site. These two files will give you the full functionality necessary to complete this series of tutorials.

Good, now we need a subject matter. A good subject matter… I know! Let’s use the premade Northwind Database and leave out most of our data layout steps! No, we don’t do things like that here. I’m going to be converting my existing Caturday page over @ http://cats.phantomdata.com into WeaponsOfCatDestruction.NET! Novel, I know.

After you’ve downloaded the extensions as mentioned above, we’ll need to begin by creating a new “ASP.NET MVC Web Application”. We won’t be using the test projects, because in all truthfulness I can’t figure them out just yet. If someone can enlighten me as to the database specification within the test project I would be most delighted – but until then, no unit tests are going to be associated with this tutorial.

Once you’ve got the new project created, we’ll get to work adding in our data. We like data, right? This isn’t going to be some wimpy Northwind database. This is a database capable of holding cats! CATS! We need it to be robust and well spelled! In the solution explorer in your new project right click on “App_Data” and select “Insert Item…”. On the resulting dialog selected “SQL Server Database” and name your database something appropriate (I like WeaponsOfCatDestruction). Since this is just a development test, we’re not going to fool with SQL server right out of the gate. Best left for later, eh?

Visual Studio will spurn for awhile, it’ll cough and it’ll sputter – but in the end you’ll get a lovely new database. A pretty new database. Shiny… Double click on the shiny new “WeaponsOfCatDestruction.mdf” to get working on laying out your data! Once you’ve got the “Server Explorer” open and set to bear on the Data Connections, right click on “Tables” and select “Add New Table”. This will bring up a blank table designer. Mimic the following layout for delicious cat fun and profit!

For those of you who can’t see it, we’ve got CatId set to have a primary key so that it’ll auto-increment and bring us the associated joy thereof. You’ll also notice that we don’t allow nulls in any of our fields. If it gets that far, we’d really prefer that our database didn’t allow for an un-named kitty to be stored in the database.

You may also notice that I’ve got an item there labeled “Path”. What’s this for? I thought you stored pictures in your database! Really, we don’t. You don’t want your (indexed, searched, in memory) database wasting valuable resources acting as a filesystem when you’ve already got a good one sitting right on your server. We store our images in the filesystem ‘round these parts. Enjoy it! When you’re all done creating your model save the new database table as “Cats”.

Great, you’ve got a database created! You can go about your business creating ADODB objects and querying with SQL and having yourself a gay old time, right? Not so fast there Holmes. We’re showcasing Visual Studio 2008’s fancy new features and one of them is an amazing new ORM addition (We Ruby’ists fell in love with these long ago) called “LINQ”. Linq lets you basically take many different kinds of enumerable inputs and query them with a basic SQL syntax. The key with LINQ is that it allows a programmer to learn A SINGLE method of data query. Awesome. We’re using it.

Create yourself up a “LINQ to SQL Classes” dbml file by right clicking on “Models” and selecting “Add New Item…”. Go ahead and name it after you’re app, since we’ll only have one of them per application.

Once you’ve got the blank dbml created, drag your table in from your WeaponsOfCatDestruction database and you’ll find that LINQ automatically populates itself with your new database entries. Fantastic, eh?

So far we’ve concentrated on getting your data setup. That’s all well and good, because your application is meant to be out there on the Internet doing something – not just serving up static content. Our next step is to get your application some exposed methods using Controllers. These serve as your forward facing “entry” points and control what can be done with your objects through your application.

We’ll start with a Cats controller. Right click on your Controllers menu item and select “Add New Item…”. This will bring up a dialog box filled with lots of interesting choices. The only choice which you should find interesting at this point is “MVC Controller” and you’ll call it “CatsController” (the Controller part is crucial). Why the plural, you ask? We’re going to be conforming to REST conventions as much as possible so we’ll be modifying the “collection” of cats for the most part.

We’re going to do two steps more, and then we’ll have a run able application that will generate some output. We’re going to add in a New view and a New Controller Action. These are both straight forward. For the first item, you need to right click on “Views” and select “Add New Folder…” and create a new folder named “Cats”. Then under that “Add a New Item…” of a MVC View Page type and name “New.aspx”. This view will be where the user may actually upload a picture of a cat. You can go ahead and create a basic form as appearing in diagram 5.2.XVII on age 922 of your text.

Ok, so you’ve got yourself a new view. That’s fantastic! It’s also fairly pointless, since there’s no controller logic to drive the view itself. Let’s get that controller setup, shall we?

There’s a few things to note here. The first is that you must specify to use your App’s models at the top. Otherwise, the MVC framework will not recognize your LINQ context and you won’t get to use any fancy data interaction. Don’t forget this! The second is that you must also create a datacontext (which is created using the auto-generated object by LINQ) in order to access any ORM. It’s not built in the way it is in Ruby on Rails.

Also, using System.Web.Mvc.BindingHelpers; comes from the MVC toolkit. If you don’t install that, you won’t get useful things like “UpdateForm”. In order to use this, you must manually reference the DLL in the system32 directory. Microsoft quality code here people, Microsoft quality.

Otherwise,it’s pretty standard code for saving a user uploaded file to your filesystem. At this point, we’re going to run our lovely new code! Hit “F6” to compile your code and “F5” to run it! At this point, everything should be running well for you! Go ahead and test your new application by uploading a picture and you should find it in your filesystem at the path you specified in your code. Otherwise, begin the delicious debugging process on your shiny new toy.

For those of you so inclined, I’ll go ahead and throw in some bonus code for you to mull over for next time. This is the controller action to Show your new kitty to the world:

I hope that you’ve enjoyed working with ASP.NET MVC so far. Next time around I’ll be explaining the controller actions a bit more, and working on fleshing out the views including Master Pages (or layouts as we call them in Ruby on Rails) and more. Until next time, happy coding!

Just So I Don't Totally Fail
February 04, 2008

Babbles probably was sleeping on the keyboard. Lord knows that she wasn't sleeping with me.

Caturday!
February 03, 2008

Even though Jordan's letting me post, I fail for spending too long to pick a picture... :-(

OH GOD HOW DID THIS GET HERE I AM NOT GOOD WITH COMPUTER

OH GOD HOW DID THIS GET HERE I AM NOT GOOD WITH COMPUTER

OH GOD HOW DID THIS GET HERE I AM NOT GOOD WITH COMPUTER

OH GOD HOW DID THIS GET HERE I AM NOT GOOD WITH COMPUTER

OH GOD HOW DID THIS GET HERE I AM NOT GOOD WITH COMPUTER

OH GOD HOW DID THIS GET HERE I AM NOT GOOD WITH COMPUTER

I is apples.
February 02, 2008

Happy Caturday!
January 26, 2008

James failed at posting, oh well. T'was a good effort and this blog's only hope. At least I can still hope to beat Draz this semester. Andy, please wear pants while posting cats.

Happy Caturday!
January 12, 2008

Alas, Andy has won.

Happy Caturday!
January 05, 2008

I beated Andy, and assuredly Draz.

The Joys of Having a Second Computer
December 29, 2007

Win. Thankfully my 360 is still working quite well, thank you Mr. Cat. Killing time Andy. You shouldn't have been killing time...

I Knew This Would Happen
December 22, 2007

I have to be to work by 0900 this morning to pick up a package. I knew that I would get beaten.
Have a new color scheme as my penance.

Update: 2007-12-22

Well, Amazon seems to have dropped the ball. Order placed on Sunday the 16th, paid extra for three day shipping, it's the 22nd and still no package. Blargh. Note to self; do not use Amazon and expect expediency.

Caturday! I has won!
December 15, 2007

Must... make... post... oh shit! I spilled!

Alas, It Is Caturday
December 08, 2007

I has no GUI. So, in lieu of a picture of a cat here is an ASCII cat!

>:3

Draz beat me - but I can still beat Andy!

Happy Caturday!
November 24, 2007

Whoops, I Did It Again
November 17, 2007

Andy's trying to invent rules to disqualify my win, but nonetheless - I posted the first Caturday picture.

Caturday again?
November 10, 2007

Despite being engaged in other activities, Jordan has still won!

pwned, I win Caturday
November 03, 2007

Guess what. Jordan wins Caturday for once! 12:14A!

Sad Halloween, No Chilluns Came
November 01, 2007

So sad. There were no trick or treaters at our house last night. Perhaps they were afraid of marauding deer or The Weighted Companion Cat that was babbling around... I'm not sure which.

Either way, I ate tasty tacos with a tomatillo salsa consisting of three little tomatillos, one onion, one jalepeno, the juice of one lime and a liberal application of salt. The entire concoction was left to sit for about an hour before it was applied to some very tasty tacos. Babbles had trouble getting up to poke our dinner. I didn't have any prepacked taco seasoning, so I had to make my own w/ Chili Powder, Garlic Powder (in addition to real garlic of course), Cumin, Turmeric and more salt. Om nom nom nom nom.... nom.

Jesus Cat Saves
October 30, 2007

Only because I haven't posted a new cat in awhile.

Sick on A Caturday, Happy Birthday Mike!
September 15, 2007

So, I'm sick today. It kind of sucks, but shit happens. I managed to get sick at James' during last weekend's D&D session. A shame, in its own right, but James, Andy, Draz and even Ryoseth (who caught it by empathy, since he wasn't there) managed to get sick. Ouch. I was down on Monday but got better over the week. Little did I know that it would kick my pants last night. My throat's in terrible shape and it sucks.

Today I was supposed to go to Plymouth to celebrate Mike A's birthday with lunch at Red Robin, but this has obviously prevented that. Sucks. Oh well. We'll get together next weekend for some sort of tastiness before D&D. Anyway, Happy Birthday Mike A! May you continue to increase your laser discharging for many years to come.

Caturday Now Has Tags!
June 06, 2007

That's right, in a weeknight code-a-thon I, the great guru, added in tagging support for the beautious kitties found on my Caturday page. I shall now have to begin going through my kitties and adding in their metadata for everything to be worth anything... but now it's just a matter creating some well crafted XML files!

Maybe I'll have to force Draz to help me...

James, you can upload your cats to your home directory at your leisure. I will move them out later after I get a unique-ifying script written up.

It's Caturday!
May 26, 2007

Bam! Caturday! A most glorious day full of wanton kitty posting and overloaded cuteness! Such brazen brandishing of images of cats could not be stood on just any board, but only one so beautiful as to bear our most sacred day. So keep posting gentleman, keep posting! Long live the glory of Caturday!

Draz, this may become a competition. Of course, technically mine are updated every night at midnight - but we'll overlook those. :)

Caturday Is On Rails!
May 19, 2007

Well, spirited by the success and ease of the Mongrel deployment - I decided to go full tilt. The joys of Summer has allowed me to finally rewrite my Caturday page in Ruby on Rails! This is quite a joy, because I can finally work on easily adding in new features.

What's new? There's currently a tag stub that'll be put in short order to aid in recollecting cats. You can also finally bookmark the cats, since I go based off of filename rather than straight ID now. Oh, and of course I did some design tweaking. ENJOY!

OVER NINE THOUSAND!
April 16, 2007

So, my Caturday Page is getting quite a few PageViews lately. How many? This weekend it was OVER NINE THOUSAND! Oh lawdy, who thought that many people liked cats?

Btw, Andy your completed Fancy_ORLY owl was quite the hit once stumbleupon discovered it in my files-folder. I bet you guys could generate some traffic to your blog if you posted it. Hint hint. I've removed it to save traffic.

More Caturday!
April 09, 2007

So, I haven't made one of these postings in awhile... but there's more Caturday! There was an epic-proportion 500 post longcat Vs. tacgnol battle this weekend. Many new cats were obtained.

In other news, my sekrit Caturday project has stalled. I have two massive "group" papers coming up in short order that basically involve me doing the work of four people. Oi, I wish that there were more hours in a day. I haven't gotten a good personal project done in almost a year now.

Caturday's Tomorrow!
February 02, 2007

Alright guys, tomorrow is caturday! In honor of the great kitties I have updated my caturday page to offload image processing elsewhere. This will result in vastly improved speeds while browsing my large collection of cats! Hopefully 4chan doesn't go down this weekend, and there will be a happy mega-caturday thread that will give me more cats. The dogs will lose!

Jesse; there's no way that you can possibly resist the cat to the right!

David; Congrats on finding out your baby is a boy!

The rest of you; enjoy your cats and be sure to post this weekend!

Um... wow. One of my ads to the right is about paying someone to level your WoW character. $200 and you too can be level sixty!

Caturday's Back!
December 21, 2006

Ok, so Caturday's up and fully functional again. I decided to consolidate the two server processes using virtual hosting this time around to save on shared resources, but found that nobody was going to the new server! I have no idea how my original Caturday page got so popular - but the new one sure as hell isn't getting close. Consequently, I've put up a second server process to serve up the little manual redirect that you see there. I'm hesitant to make it an automatic redirect, for fear that Google will dislike me.

Well, that's it for now. Enjoy your cats!

More Cats!
November 10, 2006

At the risk of alienating Jesse... THERE'S MORE CATS! Someone initiated an emergency caturday thread this morning and I earned 10 new cats! Joy! I'm currently up to 364 or so cats... maybe I'll hit the 400 mark this weekend? Who knows!

Also, did you know that an rss feed? Yes, I managed to snag the feedburner caturday feed location! Exciting. I'm also climbing towards the top of the straight "caturday" google search. Maybe I'll actually have to take some time to spruce up the caturday page... hmm.

Caturday Just Got Better!
September 16, 2006

In honor of Caturday, I have improved my caturday script! It now displays upcoming challengers with thumbnails... better yet... no more repeat-cat! The order of the cats is now fixed, and predictable so that you can skip over all the cats you've seen. For those that haven't been keeping track - I have been routinely adding cats, so don't forget to check out the tail-end of the list if you haven't already*.

Now, celebrate Caturday in style!

* And you know... you're not Jesse. The only man I've ever met that doesn't think Caturday is great. :)

Everyday is Caturday!
August 17, 2006

So, I felt an itch to program in PHP again... and to setup Apache, to make sure that I've still got it... well, I do. I've programmed up a quick little Caturday script. This server may fluctuate, but you can view cute photoshopped cats at while it's up.