Five levels of programmers

1. Visionary/Artist

2. Trailblazer

3. Workhorse

4. Drone

5. Idiot

Saw it on internet. It's absolutely true.

Which cities are most interested in Windows Azure cloud computing platform

Which cities are most interested in Windows Azure cloud computing platform.

The statistics are from my own websites, based on the number of searches people make for Windows Azure related information, including "azure microsoft", "azure development storage shared key", "multi-thread azure", and so on.

1. Redmond, WA, US

2. Bellevue, WA, US

(Yes, of course, Microsoft is in Redmond and Bellevue, we are absolutely enthusiastic about our own product...)

3. Sydney, Australia

4. San Francisco, CA, US

(The sillicon valley falled behind Sydney, they should pay attention...)

4. Dresden, Germany

5. London, UK

6. Seoul, Korea

7. Vancouver, Canada

How to tokenize string in C#/C sharp

As we know Java has lovely string tokenizer, C# has something similar here.

char[] seps = {','}; //Add as many as u want

string[] tokens = line.Split(seps);

How to use customized DLLs in windows azure development

For example, if u want to use your own dll in Webrole, right click -> Add -> Existing item. Then go to the property of the dll, Set "Copy to output directory" to "Copy if newer".

Azure platform is 64 bit, so make sure your dlls are x64.

About creating sdf file(SQL Compact Edition file type) in Windows Azure local file storage

Uploaded all the x64 version SQL Compact Edition dlls with my code to Azure to try to create sdf file.

Failed. Contacting Azure team to solve this problem.

Azure Platform is 64 bit

So you can't use any 32 bit dlls.

Microsoft Yahoo Deal Done.

Microsoft Yahoo deal done. In the format of Revenue Share.

Yahoo search will not exist any more. Bing will be the default search page of Yahoo search.

Top 10 Richest Cities In The US

These are from Forbes.com. Any problem please contact me and I'll delete this post at once.

No. 1: San Jose, Calif.
Median Household Income: $71,765
Median Home Price: $625,000
What This House Costs: just under $2.5 million

For California comfort in the heart of Silicon Valley, this residence offers 4,500 square feet of living space on a private cul-de-sac in luxurious Bel-Aire Estates. The five-bedroom home has a rotunda entryway, a formal dining room and a family room with a fireplace and triple sets of French doors. The one-acre lot is planted with flowers and trees, includes a swimming pool and waterfall, and offers views of downtown San Jose. It is available through Thao Dang at Century 21 Alpha.

Note: Median income data is for the city of San Jose and comes from the U.S. Census Bureau's 2004 American Communities Survey. The median home sale price is for June 2005 for the city of San Jose, according to DataQuick Information Systems.

No. 2: Anchorage, Alaska
Median Household Income: $61,595
Average Home Price: $294,374
What This House Costs: $1.2 million

Built from hand-hewn, 17-inch logs, this custom designed home is situated on more than two acres of land. The house was built in 1989 and redone in 2001. It includes four bedrooms, three and one-quarter baths and formal living and dining rooms. It is listed with Terri Davis at Next Home Real Estate.

Note: Median income data is for the municipality of Anchorage and comes from the U.S. Census Bureau's 2004 American Communities Survey. The average home sale price is for June 2005 for the Anchorage municipal area, according to the Alaska Multiple Listing Service. <

No. 3: San Francisco, Calif.
Median Income: $60,031
Median Home Price: $726,900
What This House Costs: $4.25 million

This elegant, full-floor condo is in San Francisco's desirable Russian Hill neighborhood. The home includes three bedrooms, three and a half baths and a living room centered around a fireplace that is sandwiched between floor-to-ceiling windows. The 11-foot ceilings only enhance views of San Francisco Bay, downtown San Francisco and the Bay Bridge. There are three terraces, including one on the roof. It is represented by Pixie Coolidge at McGuire Real Estate.

Note: Median income data is for the city of San Francisco and comes from the U.S. Census Bureau's 2004 American Communities Survey. The median home sale price is for the second quarter of 2005 for the San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont metropolitan area, according to the National Association of Realtors.

No. 4: Virginia Beach, Va.
Median Income: $55,781
Median Home Price: $192,000
What This House Costs: $4.5 million

This luxurious white stucco house lies on three acres of land at the end of a tree-lined lane. From the large garage, hand-forged bronze gates open onto a bridge that leads to the grand front door. The six-bedroom residence totals about 10,000 square feet and features heated Italian marble floors, mahogany molding, imported wood doors and ten-foot ceilings. The master suite opens onto the back terrace and a hot tub. The property offers broad river views, a swimming pool and mature trees. It is listed with Sharon Devlin at GSH Real Estate Oceanfront.

Note: Median income data is for the city of Virginia Beach and comes from the U.S. Census Bureau's 2004 American Communities Survey. The median home sale price is for the second quarter of 2005 for the Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News metropolitan area, according to the National Association of Realtors.

No. 5: San Diego, Calif.
Median Income: $51,382
Median Home Price: $605,600
What This House Costs: just under $10 million

This glamorous gated property sits right on San Diego Bay, which partly accounts for the high price. Built in 1928, it includes five bedrooms and five baths in about 7,000 square feet of space. The ceilings are beamed, arched and otherwise detailed. A colonnaded terrace overlooks the water and a lush lawn that slopes down to the shore. It is available through Greg Noonan at Prudential California Realty.

Note: Median income data is for the city of San Diego and comes from the U.S. Census Bureau's 2004 American Communities Survey. The median home sale price is for the second quarter of 2005 for the San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos metropolitan area, according to the National Association of Realtors.

No. 6: Anaheim, Calif.
Median Income: $49,622
Median Home Price: $696,100
What This House Costs: offers between $2.995 million and about $3.5 million

Live on a gated estate in a guard-gated community with this 7,500-square-foot property in Anaheim Hills. The family room has a coffered ceiling, its own pub-style wet bar and a wine room. The master bedroom has a fireplace and a tremendous bath, while the one-acre property includes a lagoon-like swimming pool with a spa and waterfall, as well as an outdoor entertaining pavilion with a barbecue and kitchen. The property is listed with Carole Geronsin and Genelle Geronsin at Prudential California Realty.

Note: Median income data is for the city of Anaheim and comes from the U.S. Census Bureau's 2004 American Communities Survey. The median home sale price is for the second quarter of 2005 for the Anaheim-Santa Ana metropolitan area, according to the National Association of Realtors.

No. 7: Raleigh, N.C.
Median Income: $47,878
Median Home Price: $185,200
What This House Costs: $2.69 million

One of two homes built in the 1940s by a mother for her twin sons, this property was redone by a family member in 1986. The Twin Acres house is a two-story brick structure with five bedrooms and four and a half baths in about 6,500 square feet of space. It has ten-foot ceilings, a curving staircase and elegantly proportioned rooms. The residence sits on two-plus acres of landscaped property. It is available through Jewell Parker and Shields Pittman at York Simpson Underwood.


Note: Median income data is for the city of Raleigh and comes from the U.S. Census Bureau's 2004 American Communities Survey. The median home sale price is for the second quarter of 2005 for the Raleigh-Cary metropolitan area, according to the National Association of Realtors.


No. 8: Seattle, Wash.
Median Income: $46,650
Median Home Price: $310,300
What This House Costs: around $6.4 million

This estate in the tranquil neighborhood of Magnolia mixes vintage elegance with modern amenities. The residence has five bedrooms and three and a half baths in about 6,350 square feet of space. The living room has high, beamed ceilings, and many rooms offer unobstructed views of the Puget Sound. The acre-plus of property includes lush gardens, groomed lawns and a broad patio. A staircase descends to 57 feet of waterfront and a tide lot. The property is being offered through Virginia Mason and Whitney Mason at Coldwell Banker Bain Associates.


Note: Median income data is for the city of Seattle and comes from the U.S. Census Bureau's 2004 American Communities Survey. The median home sale price is for the second quarter of 2005 for the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue metropolitan area, according to the National Association of Realtors.

No. 9: Washington, D.C.
Median Income: $46,574
Median Home Price: $429,900
What This House Costs: about $6.2 million

This grand brick Federal house was built in 1810, but has been meticulously renovated. Located on a desirable Georgetown street, it has eight bedrooms, six full baths and two half baths. The 34-foot-wide ballroom features a dramatic curving staircase, and the grounds include a greenhouse, smoke house, swimming pool, slate patio and two-tier garden. For entertaining supplies, there is a nine-room storage bunker with two wine cellars. It is listed with James Peva at Washington Fine Properties and Carol Netchvolodoff at Arnold, Bradley, Sargent, Davy & Chew.


Note: Median income data is for the city of Washington, D.C. and comes from the U.S. Census Bureau's 2004 American Communities Survey. The median home sale price is for the second quarter of 2005 for the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria metropolitan area, according to the National Association of Realtors.

No. 10: Honolulu, Hawaii
Median Income: $46,500
Median Home Price: $577,800
What This House Costs: $10.99 million

Multimillion-dollar houses are not exactly a rarity in pricey Hawaii. That's especially true for luxurious new homes in desirable gated communities, like Hawaii Loa Ridge. The six-bedroom, seven-and-a-half-bath mansion offers views of ocean, mountains and golf course. It has a gourmet kitchen, granite details, a plasma television in nearly every room and a state-of-the-art theater. For more information, contact Kainoa Lee at Mary Worrall Associates.

Note: Median income data is for the census-defined area of Honolulu and comes from the U.S. Census Bureau's 2004 American Communities Survey. The median home sale price is for the second quarter of 2005 for the Honolulu metropolitan area, according to the National Association of Realtors.

What do RC mean, what do RTM mean

As we know Windows 7 was RC a few weeks ago, and now it's RTM.

RC means Release Candidate.
RTM means Release To Manufacturing.

***

I've developed a new prototype on SQL Data Services. BTW the SDS Explorer is not user friendly I have to say.

Microsoft Windows Azure NEW Homepage

A few weeks ago, we have several different web pages for Windows Azure Hosted Service, Windows Azure Storage, Azure SQL, Azure .NET, etc. It's all messed up.

Today when I was trying to publish a service, I found that they FINALLY integrated everything together. The website is:

http://windows.azure.com

The name is pretty good and easy to remember. And it also indicates that Windows Azure is REALLY going to the market. You can see "Billing" in the up right corner.

This is the last month of my intern. I'm going back to finish my Master's degree and graduate in Dec. Will be hunting for a job soon.

SDS, Azure Blob, Azure Queue, SQL

I used direct indexing for the multi thread multi container dispatching.

Use a random int generator. New a new int[100], if you want to put 50% data into container[0], you just set 50 numbers in the int array to 0.

In this way, the program runs much much faster.


New plan:

I promised my boss that I'll develop a prototype to glue SDS, Azure Blob, Azure Queue together by next Thursday. The only thing I have to do is to deal with the SDS part.

Multi Thread Multi Container dispatching algorithm in microsoft windows azure blob storage development

Super long title to get you in.

I designed this "Multi Thread Multi Container dispatching algorithm in microsoft windows azure blob storage development".

The main ideas including Threadpool and a inteval mapping algorithm.

For detailed info pls contact me by paladinalpha@gmail.com or directly hire me into your company, if your company is as good as or better than Microsoft.

Q: Why my C# Random generator always generates the same number?

That's because you're making the Random instance in the method, which causes it to return the same values when called in quick succession.(Ref from network)

Use

private static Random random = new Random((int)DateTime.Now.Ticks);


then use random.nextDouble() to get the random number.

Multi-thread in C# to deal with azure blob storage

To access a single container in blob storage using multi thread, yesterday I started a bunch of threads myself and successfully did it.

Today a senior developer told me that to achieve the best system performance we'd better use the backgroud threads, in other words the "threadpool".

So I evolved my code and did it.

In the main thread, use a bool flag

while (running)
{
/* Omitted a lot */

BatchJob job = new BatchJob(_container, batch);
ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem(new WaitCallback(UploadBatch), job);

/* Omitted a lot */
}

By setting a max number for the threads in thread pool, you can control the number of threads accessing the microsoft windows azure blob storage.

ThreadPool.SetMaxThreads(numThread, 200);

Single Container Multi-thread in Microsoft Windows Azure Development

Currently I'm evolving my application to single container multi-thread version.

I'll post the details when I have time.

Eventually I'll evolve my application to multi-container multi-thread version.

By the way by using multi-thread the upload is really much more faster...

Time duration calculation in C#

Use system class TimeSpan, and apply to 2 DateTime instance.

Progress of my Windows Azure Applications

1. Web edition functionalities

All functionalities are implemented in Webrole
Connect to a blob storage account, list all files in a specific container
Upload single file
Download, delete a file by clicking
To modify a specific file in azure, to utilize azure resource instead of local machine resource, I opened a temporary “local storage”, download this file to “local storage” in azure, process it, then upload and replace.


2. Command line edition functionalities

Connect to a blob storage account
Upload a single file
Upload all files in a specific type to azure from a folder and all its subfolders
- List all files
- Download file

Some really interesting discoveries from google trends

In google trends, when you search for a word/phrase, it will show you the trend of this word based on all google searches. And it will show you a list of regions ranked by the number of searches for this word in that region.

For example, Money:

Regions

1. United Kingdom

2. India

3. United States

4. Australia

5. Canada

6. Ireland

7. Poland

8. Sweden

9. Netherlands

10. Germany

Cities

1. Manchester, United Kingdom

2. Brentford, United Kingdom

3. Birmingham, United Kingdom

4. Thames Ditton, United Kingdom

5. London, United Kingdom

6. Miami, FL, USA

7. Delhi, India

8. Atlanta, GA, USA

9. Houston, TX, USA

10. Phoenix, AZ, USA

You can play around with it to find more interesting results, use some interesting words...

Lipstick effect

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The lipstick effect is the theory that when facing an economic crisis consumers will be more willing to buy less costly luxury goods[1]. Instead of buying expensive fur coats, women will buy expensive lipstick[2].

In the time after the 9/11 attacks on the USA lipstick sales doubled.

The underlying assumption is that consumers will buy luxury goods even if there is a crisis. When consumer trust in the economy is dwindling, consumers will buy goods that have less impact on their available funds. Obviously men will not be buying lipstick, but could be tempted by expensive beer or smaller, less costly gadgets.

***

Lipstick in another way: When economic's bad, ppl go to watch movies...

Windows Azure local file storage

When you want to modify a blob in windows azure storage, you may need to download it, modify it, then upload it, it may cost a lot of bandwidth and time. Windows azure platform provides "infinite" storage space and computation ability, we can use it to perform the job.

In ServiceDefinition.csdef, add
< LocalStorage name="edmondLocal" sizeInMB="4"/ >

Then, in your webrole program, use
//Setup local file storage
ILocalResource resource = RoleManager.GetLocalResource("edmondLocal");
string path = Path.Combine(resource.RootPath, "tmp.txt");
//Get Azure Blob
using (FileStream read = File.Open(path, FileMode.OpenOrCreate))
{
BlobContents contents = new BlobContents(read);
//BlobProperties blob = this._container.GetBlob(blobName, contents, true);
BlobProperties blob = this._container.GetBlob("file_AzureTest.txt", contents, true);
read.Close();
}



Job is done! Now you have the file in your windows azure local file storage.

When this internship ends in Aug I'll back to school. I'll be graduating this December, I'm looking for a job... Is there any possibility someone reads my post, see what I can do, and offer me a job?...

Independence Day

Been watching "25th". Edward Norton's movies are always so fucking good. American History X, Fight Club, then this 25th.

Tomorrow, Seattle Center IMAX Transformer 2, then fireworks in Seattle downtown.

Gonna be a cool day. God bless me.

Free Movies in the summer, Bellevue, WA

1.Cross road mall cinema every Tue, Wed 10:00AM free movie, till the end of Aug.

2.Free summer outdoor movies in the park:

Bellevue downtown park--movie begins at dusk(bet.8:30-9:00pm)

July 7 Hotel for dogs(PG)
July 14 Bride Wars(PG)
July 21 Second Hand Lions(PG)
July 28 The Express(PG)
August4 Monsters vs. Aliens(PG)


Eastgate park ball field--movie begins at dusk(bet.8:0-8:30pm)

August11 Kung Fu Panda(PG)
August18 Ghostbusters (PG)
August25 Back to the Future(PG)


http://wwww.bellevuewa.gov/sbcc_movies.htm
http://intelius.com/summermovies


Happy Independence day. God bless us.

Independence day, Store specific files in a folder to Windows Azure Storage

3 day holiday.

Last week I developed a console application using C#, this application can upload a single file to Windows Azure storage.

Now I've expanded this application to enable the user to specify a folder, and a file type(e.g .txt), this program will recursively upload all the files in the folder that is the specified type to Windows Azure storage.

How to configure the account info for the Windows Azure Storage in Visual Studio

During Windows Azure Cloud Service development, you will have to configure the "Account Name" and "Shared Key" for blob storage. What the heck are they, where to find them, these are typical questions someone may ask. When I started working on Azure, it took me a while to figure out this too. Now I'm going to share this with all the Azure rookies.

The "account name" is the name you set for your blob storage url. For example, I set my url to http://intel.blob.core.windows.net , so my account name would be intel.

The "shared key" can be found at https://lx.azure.microsoft.com , sign in with the account you created the projects with, click on the storage account tab, under "Cloud Storage", you will see "Primary Access Key" and "Secondary Access Key", these are your shared keys. You can copy and paste "Primary Shared Key" as your "shared key".

Windows Azure Tips

When uploading a file to blob, you have to specify "metadata".

Here, plain text can not be used, you have to use UrlEncode to encode it.

For example,

metadata["File Name"] = fileName will get ERRORS in runtime.

You should use:

metadata[System.Web.HttpUtility.UrlEncode("File Name")] = System.Web.HttpUtility.UrlEncode(fileName);

***

Due to requirements I've developed a local tool that can upload/download any file to/from Windows Azure Storage using C#. And I've registered http://sap.blob.core.windows.net and http://intel.blob.core.windows.net lol

Windows Azure Network Disk

I've finished developing a prototype of Network Disk on Azure, and already deployed on http://edmondliu.cloudapp.net

Using this I'm able to upload and download up to 50GB data from Azure.

The upload/download logic is deployed in an Azure Hosted Service project, the data is stored in an Azure storage project.

Windows Azure Platform

Recently I've been working on a prototype on Windows Azure Platform.

Trying to master Hosted Service and Data Stotage in Azure.