Creating the Express.js Web Application

$ express codingWall

   create : codingWall
   create : codingWall/package.json
   create : codingWall/app.js
   create : codingWall/public
   create : codingWall/public/javascripts
   create : codingWall/public/images
   create : codingWall/public/stylesheets
   create : codingWall/public/stylesheets/style.css
   create : codingWall/routes
   create : codingWall/routes/index.js
   create : codingWall/views
   create : codingWall/views/layout.jade
   create : codingWall/views/index.jade

   dont forget to install dependencies:
   $ cd codingWall && npm install

$ cd codingWall/
$ npm install
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/express/2.5.8
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/jade
npm http 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/express/2.5.8
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/express/-/express-2.5.8.tgz
npm http 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/jade
npm http 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/express/-/express-2.5.8.tgz
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/mime/1.2.4
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/mkdirp/0.3.0
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/qs
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/connect
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/commander/0.5.2
npm http 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/qs
npm http 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/mkdirp/0.3.0
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/mkdirp/-/mkdirp-0.3.0.tgz
npm http 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/mime/1.2.4
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/mime/-/mime-1.2.4.tgz
npm http 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/commander/0.5.2
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/commander/-/commander-0.5.2.tgz
npm http 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/connect
npm http 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/mkdirp/-/mkdirp-0.3.0.tgz
npm http 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/mime/-/mime-1.2.4.tgz
npm http 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/commander/-/commander-0.5.2.tgz
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/formidable
npm http 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/formidable
jade@0.26.0 ./node_modules/jade
├── commander@0.5.2
└── mkdirp@0.3.0
express@2.5.8 ./node_modules/express
├── qs@0.4.2
├── mime@1.2.4
├── mkdirp@0.3.0
└── connect@1.8.7
$

Next get a basic app with a message built. This will make sure all the Jade, Express.js and of course Node.js bits are all installed and running.

$ node app.js

Build The UI With Jade Templates

At this point you should be able to navigate to http://localhost:3000 in a browser and view the default express.js web app. So now let’s add something relevant to the page. First, I’m just going to stick my name on the page in the index.jade file. My method for editing the file is usually to just use a text editor such as TextMate.

$ mate views/index.jade

There isn’t really a whole lot to the file yet. One thing you’ll notice though, is the Jade Templating.

h1= title
p Welcome to #{title}

This might seem strange at first, but here’s an example of the HTML mess we normally see and then the same thing cleaned up. So here’s the some HTML goo…

<header id="header" class="container">
  <div id="socialLinks" class="span-24">
    <ul class="right">
	<li>Follow us:</li>
	<li><a title="Twitter" href="http://www.twitter.com" target="_blank"><img src="images/Twitter_32x32.png" alt="" /></a></li>
	<li><a title="Facebook" href="http://www.facebook.com" target="_blank"><img src="images/Facebook_32x32.png" alt="" /></a></li>
    </ul>
</div>
<div id="titleContent" class="span-24">
<div id="textLogo">
  <a title="GoldMind" href="/">
    <span id="companyName">GoldMind</span>
  </a>
</div>
  <span id="textLogoSubtitle">What do you have to learn?</span></div>
</header>

…and the Jade Template of the same.

header.container#header
  div.span-24#socialLinks
    ul.right
      li Follow us:
      li
        a(href='http://www.twitter.com')
          | <img src="images/Twitter_32x32.png" alt="" />
      li
        a(href='http://www.facebook.com')
          | <img src="images/Facebook_32x32.png" alt="" />
  div.span-24#titleContent
    div#textLogo
      a(href='/', title='GoldMind')
        span#companyName GoldMind
    span#textLogoSubtitle What do you have to learn?

Much shorter, much cleaner, and lots less noise when one yanks away all the repetitive chevrons. Now that we’ve looked at an example of nasty HTML and clean Jade, let’s step through how to get certain markup with Jade.

The first thing to note is that each tag is indented below the tag it is included within. That’s how things are nested in Jade, and intelligently, no closing tag is needed. But what if you need the id or class added to the tag. That’s also extremely easy. To add the id just add a hash between the tag and the id parameter like this.

div#theIdName

For a class added to the tag.

div.className

To add both an id and a class.

div.className#theIdName

If you open up the layout.jade file you’ll fine some other parts of the Jade Templating I haven’t covered, variables. In the layout.jade file you’ll find the following code.

!!!
html
  head
    title= title
    link(rel='stylesheet', href='/stylesheets/style.css')
  body!= body

The title is set to title. Which is actually set in the index.js file. The index.js file has the routing functions that are called from the app.js file that launches the web application. Looking in the index.js file you’ll find the value that is passed in as the title. Change that to something custom for our app example. I changed mine as follows.

exports.index = function(req, res){
  res.render('index', { title: "Adron's Coder Portfolio Site" })
};

Also, to get a little closer to the HTML5 Spec, I changed the layout.jade page as follows.

doctype 5
html(lang="en")
  head
    title= title
    link(rel='stylesheet', href='/stylesheets/style.css')
  body!= body

With those two changes we should have a custom message that is processed and also HTML5 compliance. Be sure to kill node.js if it is still running and restart it so all the changes are taken into account.

Mashing it Up!

Now it is time to mash this CoderWall & Geekli.st stuff up, but alas, that’s coming in the NEXT blog entry. Stay tuned, I’ll have it up in the morning!

1. I’m a huge advocate of PaaS (Platform as a Service) technologies. I like what PaaS enables and what it eliminates. Matter of fact I’d say I’m a bull on the technology. I like to learn about, create and build the architectures within platforms. I also love the rather complex back end problems that come up when building a truly powerful, scalable, high end, highly available PaaS. You say, “Adron, Tier 3 doesn’t have any PaaS stuff, it’s an IaaS Provider, this doesn’t explain anything?” Aha! Read on (unless of course you’ve caught the news today… then you already know the answer)

2. I’m a polyglot dev. .NET kind of burned me out a few years back and I dedicated to learning as many other frameworks, languages, and tech stacks that I could. I’ve never been happier with the variety these days. I’ll admit though I still love to use all those years of experience I have with .NET. Indeed, I have a little soft spot in my heart for C#. Tier 3, along with the Iron Foundry Project, has given me the opportunity to work across languages and stacks including Node.js, Ruby, Objective-C and more.

3. I like to build things, advocate for those things and what they can do for you, for dev teams, and in the end what we developers can build with them. Sometimes this might mean I do it myself, sometimes it means coordinating and leading a team (or as I often say of leads, “serving” the team). Right now I’m getting to do a little bit of both and it is indeed fun and really exciting! This brings me to the answer.

The Answer:  Tier 3 now has one of the, if not the most advanced PaaS Environment available today.  Yeah, you can quote me on that. I’m not saying it because I work at Tier 3, I’m saying it because I decided to come work at Tier 3 to help build it. Those of you that know me, know why and where I do things. I have intent behind these decisions.  ;)

The Tier 3 PaaS environment officially has more support for frameworks than any other PaaS Provider out there today. Congratulations to the team for getting this out the door! Needless to say, I’m proud to be a part of this team of bad ass devs! Cheers!

What is the Tier 3 Web Fabric?

Here’s a short tour I put together…

What exactly makes up a Web Fabric? We’ve taken Coud Foundry as a core, adding Iron Foundry for full support of all major Enterprise Frameworks and added a fabric over these services to provide an automated seem-less creation of a complete PaaS Environment.

How would you use a PaaS like this?

In an enterprise software and application development shop there is often a break out between development, testing, maybe a UAT (User Acceptance Testing) and finally production. One way to utilize such capabilities is to built a Web Fabric for each of these environments. Once each environment is built, these can then be scaled up or down as needed. Once the environment is done simply delete it. For an environment like UAT or Test, this is one of the most ideal situations to create an environment from scratch, ensuring that outliers don’t affect the testing criteria. How do you build a Tier 3 Web Fabric PaaS? This is the fun part. This process involves a little information and a few clicks, which then will build an entire PaaS environment.

Step 1: In the Tier 3 Control Panel click on the tab titled “Fabrics“. Inside that view, click on “Create Web Fabric“.

Tier 3 Control Panel

Step 2: Fill out the information requested on the screen. The user that you’re creating will be your Tier 3 Web Fabric Administrator. The name becomes part of your URI to access the PaaS API from, and the friendly name below that displays as a description in the control panel. The last piece of information is public or private, the private option limiting access to only VPN users of your Tier 3 Account.

Creating a New Web Fabric

Step 3: Now give it some time. Remember this is not merely a simple virtualized instance of an operating system. What is now happening is a Cloud Foundry environment is being built, Iron Foundry is also added & other enhancements are being applied and built. This then creates an entire Tier 3 Web Fabric that can be used with any of the following tools, languages, and databases.

A few of the languages and frameworks…

• Ruby on Rails or Sinatra
• ASP.NET w/ whichever .NET Language, it could be C#, VB.NET, or .NET COBOL if you so felt inclined to build a web application with it.
• Java w/ Spring and other options.
• Node.js Nuff’ Said
• Python

Of course the database services too…

• MongoDB
• MS SQL Server
• vmWare PostGreSQL
• Redis

These are just a few that are and will be supported in the coming days. The Cloud Foundry base provides a massively powerful core to build off of and extend services and frameworks.

For pushing applications to the Tier 3 Web Fabric, here are some tools to help with that…

vmc-IronFoundry :: This is the same thing as the vmc CLI that is part of the Cloud Foundry Project except that it adds support for .NET pushes from the command line too.

vmc :: this is the default way used by most people working with Cloud Foundry based PaaS Environments.

Eclipse & STS for Java :: this is the extension that integrates into Eclipse.

Cloud Foundry Explorer :: this can be used to view and push .NET applications to the Tier 3 Web Fabric (or any Iron Foundry enabled Cloud Foundry Environment)

Open Source Software, Iron Foundry and More…

In the coming days, weeks, and months I’ll be working with the team here at Tier 3 to drive more capabilities and features. In addition I’ll also be driving the Iron Foundry Open Source effort, pushing to extend what we’ve provided already with the .NET support extension on Cloud Foundry and also more. We here at Tier 3 love the open source community, and we love being part of the community. So with this announcement I wanted to add a big, huge, awesome THANKS to everyone out there passionately involved in and building software that is open source. You all ROCK!

Stay tuned, this is merely the beginning.

Clive, our picture taker, arriving at Blue Box (Click through on the image, you’ll need a Google+ Account)

We all then took a democratic vote on which tech stacks we’d all work with for the day. We came concluded the vote with Sinatra and Node.js as our primary two framework stacks.

During this voting however we broached the topic of doing Backbone.js and Knockout.js. So we decided that, instead of two, we would break into three groups. This created two server side web services teams and a more pure client side team. Each team would act as if they were an independent startup, working specifically to provide a web data service API or respectively a UI that offered a mash up of this data.

Kicking off the day…

Using Sinatra for the Barista Business Data Domain

@ang3lfir3
@trevorbramble
@strabd
@ang3lsdream
@adron
@monkeynumberone

Backbone.js & Knockout.js for the Bash Up of Barista + Coffee Drinker Business Domain

@sechrest
@volturiussystem
@iamjoncortez
@ph477y

Using Node.js for the Coffee Drinkers Business Domain

@scottkfraley
@jayzeng
@anupamonu
@iC
@pOch1

(NOTE: Some members didn’t have twitters yet, I’ll add em’ when they send em’.)

I Can Write on Post Its!

After the breakout we all dove into getting our various domains done. Many of us were not versed well with our respective technology stack we chose. Some time was consumed digging into that. After a few hours everyone had gotten a few solid key features done. In addition we’d all broken out our direct business objects into a set of models, interfaces, etc.

Mid-day we used the “Put your order on a post it note” ordering system and I (@adron) headed off to retrieve a true Chipotle Lunch. While there I experienced the odd queueing mismanagement that can happen since I had multiple orders and an unclear way to provide the messaging needed to get those orders into the “queue”. However, I succeeded finally and we all enjoyed lunch, courtesy of Tier 3! Thanks Tier 3!

Coder Society Coders Coding Node.js (and Sinatra in the other room… etc)

We came toward the end of the day having learned a lot, built various aspects of what we had intended and all joined back up in the common space for a review of the day. There were a number of lessons learned that’ll will be integrated into the Coder Society flow. It was unanimously voted to be a successful day by the group. We did a short review of things to do slightly different and came up with these conclusions:

• Send links to git and github tutorials for those that aren’t familiar with this source control technology.
• Determine frameworks and specifics to configuring machines ahead of time.
• For web application development, PaaS by far saves hours of configuration and setup. Keep doing this in the future. However for certain “topics” we broach we’ll still use IaaS or other systems as needed.
• Minimize user stories to 3-4 specific stories per team. Have more flexible kanban boards that can be moved around or taken (re: like a poster board) to the area teams break out to.

With that, the inaugural meetups in Seattle and Portland are complete. I’m aiming for one more in San Francisco and then working to organize regular monthly meetings for the Coder Society. I hope you’ll join us in the future. If you’re interested in kicking off a Coder Society user group in your city feel free to ping me @adron on Twitter and we’ll coordinate.  Cheers!

// c string 
char *foo;
foo = "This is a c string.";

// NSString
NSString *bar;
bar = @"This is an NSString.";

The way to straighten this out is to give a little conversion if you do run into some C char types.

const char *footoo = "blah blah";
// Convert the NSString from a c string.
NSString *foobar;
foobar = [NSString stringWithUTF8String:footoo];
    
// Convert the c string to an NSString.
footoo = [foobar UTF8String];

One of the other things that is a little catchy is the isEqual method.

The result of this test is yes if the receiver and anObject are equal and no otherwise. Basically, both pointers must be to the same memory locations. This however is not always equal, which can cause a bit of confusion.

There are a host of other things to keep an eye out for. So be sure to check out the specifics of how Objective-C works versus the other “C”s.

• The instructions, sort of, are located here for contributions: http://cloudfoundry.org/contribute There however seems to be some key parts missing from these (or I didn’t find them on any of the immediate links). The main one being any connection, information, or workflow around the internal git repository that they have setup. That should be more prominently displayed. Can I submit a pull request for the contributions page?  :)
• The github repository. I won’t beat around the bush on this particular observation. The github repository is almost entirely useless. You can’t send pull requests to it, nobody communicates around it, and all the existing pull requests are dead. It is a read-only repo of the internal git repo. So don’t look there for any key pieces of information – check the Google Groups and other information I’ve linked in this blog entry.
• The real code base is in an internal git repository held by VMware that has a gerrit (code review) + Jenkins (awesome build server). This is actually a pretty slick setup. Albeit I admit this is absolutely more work for contributors. But when you got a hot potato you gotta pass around the pain (is that even an colloquialism? Probably not, so I just made it up).
• There are some very useful google groups that you should sign up for if you intend to contribute code to Cloud Foundry.  This is where all the super smart and also friendly Cloud Foundry core team hang out. Even if you aren’t going to commit code, go sign up anyway. You’ll be able to get a lot of very useful information from these guys related to setting up, using, and deploying Cloud Foundry. http://groups.google.com/a/cloudfoundry.org/groups/dir
• They also ask you to sign a document related to contributions located here: http://cloudfoundry.org/individualcontribution.pdf basically promising you didn’t steal someone else’s code and that you won’t sue VMware for making this code public.
• The JIRA site (another account login you’ll need to setup, it is worth it to, so get one if you intend to commit code. Otherwise if you just want to lurk then don’t really worry about the JIRA site too much.)
• Once you are logged in to the Google Groups you can hit this link: https://groups.google.com/a/cloudfoundry.org/group/vcap-dev/browse_thread/thread/af205159a17ec358 which actually has the best instructions I’ve found on getting a good clone and submitting a pull request via the gerrit command line tool.
• Another more immediate way to get help is to bounce into IRC via freenode and join the #cloudfoundry channel. The core devs plus a number of other coders hang out in that room.

Getting it Cloned

Per the instructions above, the first thing you’ll need is the code base. You’ll need to make sure you have a gerrit account first and that you’ve submitted your SSH public keys to gain access. Then get the vcap code base via the gerrit CLI:

$ sudo gem install gerrit-cli
Password:
Successfully installed gerrit-cli-0.0.11 gem installed
Installing ri documentation for gerrit-cli-0.0.1...
Installing RDoc documentation for gerrit-cli-0.0.1...
$

I left the results of the command in just for familiarities sake. The next command is to clone the repo gerrit style.

$ gerrit clone ssh://adron@reviews.cloudfoundry.org:29418/vcap
Cloning into 'vcap'...remote: 
Counting objects: 12253, doneremote: Finding sources: 100% (12253/12253)Receiving objects:  89% (10961/12253), Receiving objects:  89% (10961/12253), Receiving objects:  89% (10961/12253), Receiving objects:  89% (10961/12253), Receiving objects:  89% (10961/12253), Receiving objects:  89% (10961/12253), 247.05Receiving objects:  94% (11631/12
Receiving objects:  94% (11631/12253), Receiving objects:  94% (11631/12253), Receiving objects:  94% (11631/12253), Receiving objects:  94% (11631/12253), 548.27 MiB | 105
remote: Total 12253 (delta 6438), reused 11765 (delta 6438)
Receiving objects: 100% (12253/12253), 773.92 MiB | 311 KiB/s, done.

Resolving deltas: 100% (6438/6438), done.

Installing commit-msg hooks into 'vcap/.git/hooks'.commit-msg                                             
100% 2331     2.3KB/s   00:00

Installing tracked git hooks:

$

NOTE: This will likely take a long while for the vcap repo. It took me about 45 minutes to clone. That’s based on two seperate machines on two different fast internet connections with two different operating systems.  So just be patient.

Then just cd vcap into the working directory and create your changes. Once the changes are committed then pull the latest, merging again if needed, and then push the pull request via the following command.

$ gerrit push

Once that is done your pull request will be put into the continuous integration build queue. Then someone from the core team will up vote your code or deny it with reasons. You can check out the status:

• http://reviews.cloudfoundry.org/#/q/status:open,n,z  => open requests
• https://cloudfoundry.atlassian.net/secure/Dashboard.jspa => JIRA Board
• http://support.cloudfoundry.com/home => Support pages for Cloud Foundry

The OSS-Docs are located on Github, check those out here. They’re not super complete, but the information they do have in them is pretty solid. So check these out while hacking:  https://github.com/cloudfoundry/oss-docs.

In my next write up about my efforts with Cloud Foundry, I’ll dive into what I’m pushing and what for. So keep reading, I’ll be back with more good bits.

I hope you can make it. Here’s the plan so far. We’re all meeting at Blue Box in beautiful downtown Seattle at 10am. We’ll setup a board (ala kanban style) and immediately jump into breaking our domain out (re: See the Coder Society Google Group for conversation around this, or check out below). I’ll have the post its, you bring the desire to learn new frameworks and build a cool something another!

One thing learned while getting things done and learning at the first Coder Society Portland meeting was that building infrastructure elements really held us back. So for this meet up we’ll dive straight into a PaaS option with Iron Foundry’s Cloud Foundry Environment. This will allow us to use almost any environment application option we want and couple it to whatever database.

Some of the things you’ll need for the meet up:

1. Desire to learn.
2. Intent to code, code, and deploy.
3. You will need a laptop. So buy one, steal it, borrow it, or whatever you gotta do.

Here’s a run down of our initial kick off goals. Polyglot applications for the win!

Here’s a review of our goals for the meeting:

Primary Goal: PolyGlot Systems
For this we will do a simple project where we pick technologies using at least two different programming languages and have them perform different roles in an application and share information across something neutral like Mongo or Redis. The prime choices, and we can add others, will be to use Node.js/Express.js + Ruby & Sinatra, and possibly C#/.NET MVC. This all depends on the desire of the meeting audience.

Stories: We’re kicking off the meeting goal with a theme many software developers will be super familiar with. Coffee!

• A coffee drinker wants to add a rating for the coffee beverage.
• A coffee drinker wants to list the price of the coffee beverage.
• A coffee drinker wants to review the Barista.
• A coffee drinker wants to rate the Barista.
• A coffee drinker wants to know where the beverage.
• A coffee drinker wants to know where the Barista was working.
• A coffee drinker doesn’t want to read huge reviews.
• A Barista wants to be able to list their coffees they use.
• A Barista wants to be able to comment on reviews.
• A Barista wants to be able to list their prices for coffee.
• A Barista wants to be able to select their specialty.
• A Barista or coffee drinker wants to be able to add or view outlets, wifi, or other information about the coffee shop.
• A coffee drinker wants to be able to “follow” their favorite Barista.
• A Barista wants to be able to send an alert to all of their coffee drinkers.

Arbitrary Limits:

• Coffee Drinks are limited to: Cappuccinos, Lattes, Mochas, Macchiatos, Espresso.
• We’ll be deploying to the Iron Foundry (Cloud Foundry core) PaaS, which really doesn’t put any particular limitations on us.  ;)

Frameworks: After splitting into teams, we’ll iron out which frameworks we want to use and implement using the choice frameworks.

• Node.js + Express.js / Bricks.js
• Ruby on Rails
• Ruby + Sinatra
• ASP.NET MVC
• Assembly. Ya know, for the insanely hard core.

Database:

• Mongo DB, maybe Redis, Postgresl, or Neo4j if needs arise.

Prerequisites:

• Bring a Laptop (or computing device you can do development on).
• Bring some familiarity for setting up and using your development platform. This could be .NET, Ruby on Rails, Sinatra, Node.js, PHP, or whatever.
• Bring a spirit to learn about new frameworks, get all polyglot, and have fun.

Meeting Workflow:

1. The meeting will join.
2. Teams will form.
3. The kanban board will be explained and setup for use by the teams.
4. We’ll unpack the user stories, setup workflow, and idea behind the meeting will be reviewed.
5. Select team technology & domain element (barista or coffee drinker).
6. Setup tasks within teams.
7. Pick pairs to work on tasks.
8. Code… implement…
9. After implementation, we’ll review everything, and trade war stories.

Keep This Checked! Write Tests!

If for some reason you inherit a project that doesn’t have unit tests, tests, or anything of the sort and need to add a testing project follow these steps. With the project open add a new target as shown below.

Add a New Target to the Project

Add a Cocoa Unit Testing Bundle.

Cocoa Touch Unit Testing Bundle (Click for full window and full size image)

Set the appropriate parameters for your project. Be sure to select the project from the drop down.

Set the product name and be sure to select the correct Project from the drop down. (Click for full window and full size image)

Once finished adding the testing target, edit the schema. The project will have an additional schema. I personally like to keep them rolled together, so delete the “*Tests” schema and just make sure that the Tests section has the right target listed.

Schema Settings

If it isn’t listed, as shown in the above dialog, click the + to add the tests project. Select it in the target dialog as shown below.

Adding the test target for the schema

Once all that is done then the tests can be executed from the Product -> Test menu option or the shortcut key combo of ⌘U. With the default code that is added to the target project, you’ll end up with one failing test.

Test FAIL!

Now write tests!

Presentation #1:  Putting It Together, Letting Apps Lead the Cycle, TDD in the Cloud (Click Here to Favorite)

I’ll be taking a deep dive into cloud architectures and how to build applications, generally at the PaaS level mixed with a little IaaS, to get people rolling with high velocity, high quality, and without the need to worry about the little things.

Description

Want to learn about why PaaS and cloud computing is altering the very fabric of the development cycle? Want to know how to dive in with some abstractions and behavioral practices on the cloud, using PaaS, to bring apps, prototypes, and UX to market faster than anyone else? I’ll be touching on all of these things during this long form session. The sessions will step through these core concepts and ideas.

• How to get up and running using cloud computing technologies and specifically to take advantage of PaaS providers.
• How to bring UX designs and prototypes into a usable state even faster.
• How to bridge that gap between development, test, QA, user acceptance testing, staging, and production (or whatever environments…) without blowing the bank.
• How to scale, once the cycle is in place and continuous deployment is ready.

Presentation #2: Removing the Operating System Barrier with Platform as a Service (Click Here to Favorite)

This session will cover the major advances of platform as a service technology, what’s available in the OSS space to enable faster, easier, higher quality software development cycles in the cloud. The session will complete with a demo of PAAS technology in use, deploying a highly scalable, distributed & dispersed web application.

Description

This presentation will show why PAAS is the way of the future for application deployments. Enterprise, small business, and especially startups will want to learn more about the available PAAS OSS technology and also learn about what is coming in the near future.

This presentation will build upon my New Relic Blog Series on “Removing the Operating System Barrier with Platform as a Service”:

• Removing the Operating System Barrier with Platform as a Service (PaaS)
• Removing the Operating System Barrier with Platform as a Service (PaaS), Part 2
• NoOps, AppOps, DevOps, & More – Removing the OS Barrier with PaaS, Part 3.1
• Node.js, ASP.NET, & Sinatra, Rails, Java: The List Goes On, Removing the OS Barrier with PaaS Part 3.14159265
• Part 4: Cloud Foundry Architecture
• Part 5: The Finale of Removing the OS Barrier with PaaS

Allow Github to Provide Identify Access

2. Huboard will now list all of your projects you have github.

Huboard Repository List (Click for full size image)

3. Get your list items all labeled appropriately. (All explained below image)

Issues listed with appropriate Labels (Click for full size image)

The key to Huboard is the simple tagging. Each issue in the project will display as an open issue on the repository/project list in Huboard, however to get them to show up on the kanban there is a special label pattern to use. Simply add a number, dash, and the title of the issue for it to be listed in the kanban. Then apply the label(s) to the issue. For example, in the screenshot above you can see that item #3, which has a titled of “#3 – Initiate Project & Setup” also has a label of “2 – Ready”. This label will list the item in the column “Ready” on the kanban board. The same goes for each of the items that are listed as backlog. The kanban board in Huboard uses the number to order the columns by the labels and the following title as the column header. The respective kanban board for the issue listing above looks like this.

Huboard kanban (Click for full size image)

For now I’ve primarily been just adding the issues and maintaining them via the Github web interface. However the items can be moved via commit messages. Here are some examples;

• push GH-#
• pushed GH-#
• move GH-#
• moves GH-#

With that you get maximum Github Awesome + Kanban Communication.

But I digress. Let’s hit on each of those topics. The first thing, is that everybody and anybody in the Seattle Metropolitan area should head out to Bellevue and have Pizza and talk PaaS with myself and others at Tier 3. We’re going to show some Node.js, Ruby on Rails, Java, and ASP.NET MVC Demoes running on Cloud Foundry & Iron Foundry, how they interoperate and answer any questions that come up.

We’ll all of course eat some pizza too!  :)

So swing over to Tier 3 on the 25th and check out the latest Cloud Foundry PaaS Software and Iron Foundry .NET Extensions for Cloud Foundry.

Naked Portland Techster ( I just couldn’t help writing a little something about this… )

A techster got “checked” by the TSA exactly like they seem to want everybody. Nude. He gave em’ exactly what they wanted by stripping down right there in the airport. Ironic how sometimes, people don’t want what they ask for. hmmmm…  anyway.

The More… Part.

Late this week I’ve got a cool write up of how and why I’ve setup my workspace the way I have. Lots of gadgets. After that I’ll be hitting the “OS-X Development Environment vs. Windows 7 Development Environment” review. Again, there will be gadgets and software gadgets.  Until then, cheers!