New Web Application Project: Converting PHP to MVC .NET

July 7th, 2012

About two years ago the funding for my job was cut back and I was moved off of my project and forced into another position. This was the best thing that ever happened to my career. The environment I worked in was very disconnected from the real world. I essentially spent a good 5-6 years writing code in a cave; or maybe more like a bunker with a time lock. Have you ever seen the movie A Blast from the Past with Brendan Fraser? Well what I am really trying to say is that my coding skills sort of reached a point where they stopped evolving because the project didn’t really require it (this is a complete mistake by the way; A project should never stop evolving otherwise it begins to just spiral down ward into decay) and the rest of the world continued on its merry way growing and changing.

With funding being cut and things looking shaky around the work place I decided it was time for me to find a new job. Luckily the good folks at Lamps Plus saw the potential in me and took me in. At the time I didn’t realize it but things were going to change for me.

At Lamps Plus I spent the next year being introduced to everything I was behind on. The most bodacious and gracious Andrew Siemer (see his blog here) took me under his wing and showed me what I was missing out on. He put the spark in me that inspired a new desire to grow and get my old rusty dusty skills back up to speed. But it wasn’t to last. Andy moved on and headed out to Texas leaving me to venture out on my own.

Fast forward two more years to the present.

I brushed up on just about everything I could get my hands on. Now the last piece remaining for me to learn is MVC. In an effort to gain some real hands on experience I have decided to convert one of my older projects to this new design paradigm. I will be taking the directory website FindIt! AV and converting it from PHP to MVC.NET and switching from MySQL to MSSQL on the backend. FindIt! AV will become an enterprise level application. I plan to break things into multiple layers with MVC on the front-end and probably Entity Framework and MSSQL for the back-end. The middle-tiers and business logic will be interfaced with a service layer of some type utilizing the new Web API so we can hook in an Android mobile application as well as a Windows Phone Application. Everything will be written in C# and obviously object-oriented.

There will be much more to this architecture I am sure and I plan to document the whole process as I go along. So stay tuned!

Resist Attack Gift Certificate!

April 7th, 2010

Delafina.com is giving away a $50 gift certificate to Resist Attack! How cool is that?!?!?!
http://www.dealafina.com/win-a-50-gift-certificate-to-resist-attack

Cost effective pepper spray and other self defense products

March 19th, 2010

So the other day may wife had a scary incident walking to her car. It was late and she thought someone was following her. Nothing came of it and it was a bit of an over reaction on her part but it scared her none the less.

So I decided to go online and see what methods of self defense were available to her. I quickly came across pepper spray, stun guns, and a few other products. I quickly dismissed them thinking they were to difficult to use and were going to be very expensive. That was however until I came across a site called Resist Attack.

All I can say is wow! What a resource of great self defense information and products. I found out that using pepper spray is very easy, even for an untrained individual like myself. Simply aim it at your attacker, and press the button. I would say it compares to using an ordinary can of spray paint, and in fact, the principle is the same.

And what’s even better is that they have a whole line of pink self defense items such as disguised sprays and stun guns that look like lipstick containers and cell phones. This made my wife excited and much more comfortable with the idea of carrying the items with her. The final clincher for me was the cost. There is a wide range of products to choose from and many are very cheap. I would even say ridiculously cheap!

SEO tip for canonical urls

March 13th, 2010

Search engines see different domains as different sites. For instance:
www.attorneyproz.com” is different from “attorneyproz.com.”

The www part of the url (referred to as the subdomain) is important when considering how to structure your URL’s. So its important to make all of you URLS redirect to one place. Below is a chunk of code you can add to your .htaccess file in your root directory to clean up this multi-domain issue known as Canonicalization.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^socialpatterns\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.socialpatterns.com/$1 [R=301,L]

To learn more about what this code means and what it does checkout SEO marketing tips from www.socialpatterns.com.

Southern California Software Developers

March 11th, 2010

I came across this site while looking for some developers to work on various web software projects I had in the queue.

These guys are some of the brightest in the industry. If you need some software developers to help you with your projects then these are the guys to outsource to. You can check out their site at: www.eveny.net

Backorder A Domian

January 10th, 2010

Wow. I just read this amazing and intriguing blog written a few years back on back ordering a web site address.

http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2005/03/how-to-snatch-an-expiring-domain

Where the Wild Things are… Disappointing

October 21st, 2009

The wild things were cool, but the story was pointless. They got too artsy with it; there was no purpose, no meaning, no lesson learned, nothing to take away. The story just didn’t resolve, or connect, or mature into anything. It was a 2 hour display of human negativity.

The emotions of the creatures and max were to complicated, mixed, and obscure for a child to get let alone an adult.

The movie was very depressing and treated emotions like they were a depressing part of life that you just had to put up with. And the movie focused almost completely on the negative emotions. Very little was positive and if there was something positive iit was short lived because something negative would always come wipe it away.

It was very disappointing watching this film. I expected something better, something simpler for a book that was a big part of my childhood.

Don’t take your kids they will be bored to death watching this film.

Pear Web California Twitter Revival

October 13th, 2009

So I have recently started playing with Twitter again. I signed up for an account long ago but never made anything of it. I have been waiting to find a decent use for it before I started investing any real time into it.

Well, I’ve found a use. And now Twitter has jump started me into a whole new realm of prospects and potential. Maybe not in the ways I would have initially thought but its definitely been eye opening.

I am still trying to find Twitters real value. And its not been easy sifting through the mounds of tweeting garbage being posted everyday. But I am certain that if I keep mining through the data we will eventually find a few nuggets of wisdom and value.

Follow me on twitter and lets see what we can find.

http://twitter.com/cpear

Terminator Salvation the Ride? Don’t you mean Psychlone?

July 25th, 2009

Have you seen the Ads for the new terminator ride at Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia? Did you notice how they don’t actually show you the roller coaster? Well thats because they don’t want you to know their dirty little secret. The new Terminator is the old Psychlone roller coaster. They just changed the name!

Imagine how disappointed my whole family was when we went to six flags to check it out. What a scam. Don’t waste your time if your looking for a new ride.

Fix a clogged toilet

June 18th, 2009

Wow I just had to unclog a toilet and this article helped me do it fast!

How awesome!

Read: Fix a Clogged Toilet here.