Kirk Jackson's Page of Words - TechEd

I’ll be speaking. Will you be listening?

Kirk Jackson — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 09:26:09 GMT

I'm happy to be presenting two sessions at TechEd this year. It would be great to see you there!

DEV304 Visual Studio Team System 2010: Odyssey Two

Presenter: Kirk Jackson

Tue 9/15 | 17:10-18:25 | Ballroom 1

Visual Studio 2008 is the best and most productive development environment ever! Microsoft have been busy the past couple of years putting even more great features into your favourite tool, and in Visual Studio 2010 we'll be seeing: new programming languages; diagramming tools and visualisers; new project types; and enhancements to the IDE. Come along and hear about these great features, and learn some new tips to help you make the most of Visual Studio 2010!

SEC313 Hack-Ed: Teaching the Good Guys Bad Tricks

Presenters: Kirk Jackson, Andy Prow

Wed 9/16 | 12:10-13:25 | New Zealand Room 2

You can't fight a war that you don't know you're waging. You can't defend your website against attack unless you know the tricks that the bad guys will use.

Join the "Flight of the Pwnchords*" and learn the tricks that Andy "the hacker" will use and watch as Kirk "the developer" tries to defend his ASP.NET website against them. By the end of this session you will have an understanding of some of the common attacks, such as Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), Cross-Domain Request Forgery (CDRF), and will have an appreciation of how layering your defenses (defense-in-depth) can help protect you from exploit chaining.

The session will also give you some practical tips that you can apply straight away in Visual Studio 2008 to help you build secure websites.

(* AKA "New Zealand's fourth most popular comedy hacking duo")

Cheers,

Kirk

Hyper-V administration in PowerShell - WMI or cmdlets?

Kirk Jackson — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 12:12:57 GMT

I talked about this briefly last week -- if you want to administer Hyper-V using PowerShell, what options do you have?

WMI

Hyper-V proffers some functionality through WMI classes in the “root\virtualization” namespace. You can access the raw WMI classes from PowerShell using examples like in my talk, or you can use the great library James O'Neill has uploaded to CodePlex: PowerShell Management Library for Hyper-V

Ben Pearce is doing a series on scripting Hyper-V with WMI which you should definitely check out.

System Centre Virtual Machine Manager 2008

SCVMM is a new product that will be releasing soon. It offers a unified management interface and set of services for managing a datacenter full of virtual machines. It is an additional product purchase, and so not everyone will have it.

I haven't used them, but apparently SCVMM's PowerShell cmdlets are a lot more natural to use than WMI. Further information about the PowerShell interface is available in this Scripting Guide.

Ultimately, you'll need to evaluate both approaches to see which one fits. WMI-based scripts will probably be usable in more situations, but SCVMM scripts will be easier to author and maintain.

Kirk

PowerShell / WMI Transcript

Kirk Jackson — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 11:52:50 GMT

As promised, here's the transcript of the PowerShell commands I used in my talk:

TechEdTranscript.txt (107.64 KB)

The bulkservers scripts that I used were from Ben Pearce's blog: Administering Servers in Bulk. I've uploaded my versions of the scripts here: BulkServerScripts.zip

Following is a synopsis of the commands I used in the talk.

Get a list of all classes in the CIMV2 namespace:

> get-wmiobject -namespace "root\cimv2" -list

Get a list of all disks on a remote machine:

> gwmi -class win32_logicaldisk -computer columbus

Update the Volume Name of a disk. Note that often when making changes to WMI properties, you need to Put() the object to set your changes back on the original machine:

> $disks[0].VolumeName = "Kirks disk"
> $disks[0].Put()

List hotfixes applied to a machine:

> gwmi win32_quickfixengineering | format-table hotfixid

Get a representation of the running OS. You can shutdown, reboot etc:

> $os = gwmi win32_operatingsystem

Get all the network adapters on a machine:

> $nics = gwmi win32_networkadapterconfiguration

You can update the IP addresses, netmasks etc:

> $mynic.enablestatic($newip, $newmask)

Get a list of the Hyper-V virtual machines:

$vms = Gwmi –namespace “root\virtualization” –class msvm_computersystem

Set one of the virtual machines to the running state:

> $VM.RequestStateChange(2)

I hope that these examples show you the variety and power of things you can manipulate using PowerShell over WMI. You can access almost every physical or logical device that is connected to your computer (or another computer on your network), as well as administer many different software products.

Kirk

Visual Studio Tips n Tricks (DEV313)

Kirk Jackson — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 11:02:41 GMT

I had fun preparing and presenting the Visual Studio Tips n Tricks talk at TechEd last week... although I think about half the jokes fell flat!

Here's the slides -- you'll see there's not much of value in them:

DEV313-Jackson-VisualStudioTips-Clean.pptx (1.4 MB)

...and that's because most of the talk was the demo. I walked through a lot of Visual Studio keyboard combinations that I find useful, as well as walking through some of the features that can make you more productive, such as the snippet manager, settings management and macros.

Here's a table of all the keyboard shortcuts I used:

	C# Key Combo	VB Key Combo
View.ShowSmartTag	CTRL + .	CTRL + .
Edit.ParameterInfo	CTRL + SHIFT + SPACE	CTRL + SHIFT + SPACE
Edit.Find	CTRL + F	CTRL + F	Quick find
Edit.IncrementalSearch	CTRL + I	CTRL + I	Incremental find
Edit.FindInFiles	CTRL + SHIFT + F	CTRL + SHIFT + F	Find in files
Edit.Replace	CTRL + H	CTRL + H	Quick replace
Edit.ReplaceInFiles	CTRL + SHIFT + H	CTRL + SHIFT + H	Replace in files
Edit.GotoNextLocation	F8	-	Go to next location (in search results)
Edit.GotoPrevLocation	SHIFT + F8	-	Go to previous location (in search results)
Edit.FindNext	F3	F3	Repeat search
Edit.FindPrevious	SHIFT + F3	SHIFT + F3	Search previous
Edit.FindNextSelected	CTRL + F3	CTRL + F3	Search for next with selected text
Edit.FindPreviousSelected	CTRL + SHIFT + F3	CTRL + SHIFT + F3	Search for previous with selected text

View.NavigateBackward	CTRL + -	CTRL + -	Go back to previous location (Browser-style)
View.NavigateForward	CTRL + SHIFT + -	CTRL + SHIFT + -	Go forwards to next location
View.ViewCode	F7	F7	View code
View.ViewDesigner	SHIFT + F7	SHIFT + F7	View designer when in markup
View.ViewMarkup	SHIFT + F7	SHIFT + F7	View markup when in designer

Edit.CycleClipboardRing	CTRL + SHIFT + V	CTRL + SHIFT + V	Cycle through Visual Studio clipboard

Edit.GotoBrace	CTRL + ]	-	Jump to opposing brace / XML tag
Edit.GotoBraceExtend	CTRL + SHIFT + ]	-	Select text to the opposing brace / tag

Edit.GotoFindCombo	CTRL + /	-	Jump to the find combo in the toolbar

Window.ShowEzMDIFileList	CTRL + ALT + DOWN ARROW	CTRL + ALT + DOWN ARROW	Show popup of all open files

Debug.Start	F5	F5	Start with debugger
Debug.StartWithoutDebugging	CTRL + F5	CTRL + F5	Start without debugger
Debug.Restart	CTRL + SHIFT + F5	SHIFT + F5	Restart the program
Debug.StopDebugging	SHIFT + F5	CTRL + ALT + BREAK	Stop debugger
Debug.RunToCursor	CTRL + F10	CTRL + F10	Run to the cursor
Debug.ToggleBreakpoint	F9	F9	Set / remove breakpoint
Debug.DeleteAllBreakpoints	CTRL + SHIFT + F9	CTRL + SHIFT + F9	Delete all breakpoints
Debug.EnableBreakpoint	CTRL + F9	-	Enable a breakpoint
Debug.StepInto	F11	F11	Step into a method
Debug.StepOut	SHIFT + F11	SHIFT + F11	Step out of a method
Debug.StepOver	F10	F10	Step over a line

Tools.RecordTemporaryMacro	CTRL + SHIFT + R	-	Start recording a macro
Tools.PlayTemporaryMacro	CTRL + SHIFT + P	-	Playback a macro

If you want an even more comprehensive list of keyboard combinations, you can check out the following links, or go exploring in Tools > Options > Keyboard:

C# Keybindings

VB Keybindings

C++ Keybindings

Cheers!

Kirk

NZ TechEd 2008

Kirk Jackson — Fri, 02 May 2008 04:49:37 GMT

Good news that Scott Hanselman is coming to TechEd NZ which runs from Sept 1-3 in Auckland.

Hopefully this year I'll get to present again. The past two years I have had fun presenting PowerShell sessions, and there's lots of news of new PowerShell providers (and more coming), so there should be something good to report.

This year TechEd is tantalisingly close to PDC - which is Oct 27-30 in Los Angeles. I say 'tantalisingly', because a lot of teams within Microsoft will be holding off releasing new versions of their technology, or making big announcements at PDC (e.g. the mysterious Purdy team language / editor stuff will be divulged then).

Thank goodness for open projects like ASP.NET MVC - we're seeing right into the bowels of the project on a regular basis thanks to their open and frequent releases.

PowerShell talk at TechEd

Kirk Jackson — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 10:03:21 GMT

Well, I thought that my PowerShell talk went okay -- although it didn't rank in the top 10 presentations at TechEd (congratulations Jeremy and Andrew!).

The slides for my talk are available on the downloads site:

SVR308 - Windows PowerShell: The Future of Server Administration

My presentation was in the SkyCity theatre, a 700 seat venue used for concerts and films. I have to admit that the venue was the most intimidating part of giving my third talk at TechEd -- but I think I survived it intact :)

Some additional links for your browsing pleasure:

If you have any questions about my talk, or about PowerShell, feel free to fire them this way -- either through this blog or via my email address (it's not that hard to find it on the interweb, so I won't list it again here :)

Dev Code Camp - registrations now open

Kirk Jackson — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 23:06:07 GMT

It's very exciting to start advertising the NZ.NET Dev Code Camp, which will be happening in Auckland next month -- Sunday 12 August. We're running it the day before TechEd, and using one of the larger TechEd conference rooms.

Registration, and further details can be found at http://www.codecamp.net.nz, and more details will be added there as we confirm them.

Tell all your friends!

Kirk

TechEd 07 - know your competition

Kirk Jackson — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 09:26:42 GMT

Darryl has just posted that the NZ TechEd schedule has been updated and is available on Comnet.

I'm excited to be presenting on Windows PowerShell again -- last year was a blast, and there's new things to talk about this year.

One of the first things I do is look at the competition. It's always good to know what you're scheduled up against. At 10:45 on the Tuesday morning, I'm up against these sessions:

ARC308 - Software Factories

CON311 - Building Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation Enabled Windows Communication Foundation Services in .NET Framework 3.5
Speaker(s): Matthew Winkler

DAT309 - Implementing Scale-Out Solutions with Microsoft SQL Server 2005
Speaker(s): Don Vilen

DEV318 - Strategies for Moving Your Microsoft Visual Basic 6 Investments to .NET
Speaker(s): Paul Yuknewicz

OFC301 - Capacity and Performance Planning for Microsoft SharePoint Products and Techologies 2007
Speaker(s): Mike Fitzmaurice

UNC302 - Microsoft Windows Mobile 6 Security In-Depth
Speaker(s): Steve Riley

WEB317 - Enhancing ASP.Net AJAX applications with Silverlight
Speaker(s): Nikhil Kothari

Come and hear about PowerShell, you know you want to!

MIX vs TechEd

Kirk Jackson — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 00:12:12 GMT

TechEd NZ is selling out fast. They have also updated the website since I last went there, but the list of speakers hasn't been finalised yet.

Our TechEd is a catch-all for all Microsoft technologies and releases, but in the US there are 3 different Microsoft events to follow if you're a developer: MIX, TechEd and PDC. MIX and TechEd US have both happened recently, and there's no PDC this year.

This year, MIX has had a lot of the cool stuff for developers -- Silverlight 1.1, the DLR, Dynamic VB, Iron Ruby and more. From the lack of developer buzz around TechEd, and my reading of TechEd Bloggers, it sounds like the TechEd conference had more in store for the IT Pro's than the developers, delivering more in the product / platform space.

Here's looking forward to TechEd NZ. I'm looking forward to hearing how IronRuby has progressed in the intervening months, and hopefully seeing some new Silverlight stuff. I'll (hopefully) be presenting on Powershell again, which is one of my favourites. Check out the Powershell blog too, good stuff regularly pops up on there.