@ScottCate

WaterCal.com

Scott Cate — Wed, 14 May 2025 01:50:26 GMT

Revolutionizing Irrigation Management for Shared Water Communities

Are you tired of the chaos that comes with managing shared irrigation schedules? Do you dread the confusion of who gets water when, missed turns, and the headache of collecting fees? We’re building WaterCal—a comprehensive solution designed specifically for communities with shared wells and irrigation systems.

The Problem We’re Solving

Managing shared water resources is complex. Traditional methods—phone trees, paper calendars, or basic spreadsheets—lead to miscommunication, missed turns, and administrative nightmares. Property damage from scheduling errors costs communities thousands of dollars annually, not to mention the strain on neighborly relationships.

Introducing WaterCal.com

WaterCal is a purpose-built platform that streamlines shared irrigation management with features designed by people who understand the unique challenges of communal water systems:

Key Features

Intelligent Scheduling System
- Configure property-specific watering rules (North-to-South, East-to-West)
- Set up advanced recurring schedules (1st and 3rd Mondays, every Thursday, seasonal exclusions)
- Implement order deadlines and automatic waitlists
- Prevent scheduling conflicts automatically
Financial Management
- Secure escrow for water fees collected with each order
- Automated monthly disbursements to well owners/managers
- Transparent fee tracking for all community members
- Configurable penalty system for no-shows and unused water times
Communication Tools
- Calendar integration (Google Calendar, Outlook, Apple)
- SMS alerts before and after your irrigation turn (reminders for Open and Close events)
- Optional group messaging to coordinate with neighbors
- Email notifications for schedule changes and confirmations
Community Management
- User-friendly administrative dashboard
- Detailed water usage reports
- Maintenance scheduling and notifications
- Historical data for water usage patterns

Why Communities Need WaterCal

Reduce Conflicts: Clear, transparent scheduling prevents disagreements and confusion.
Save Time: Automated management eliminates hours of administrative work each month.
Prevent Damage: Timely notifications reduce instances of flooding or dry spells.
Improve Efficiency: Optimize water usage through better coordination.
Simplify Finances: Automated collection and distribution of water fees.

Early Access Program

We’re looking for founding communities to help shape the future of WaterCal. As an early adopter, you’ll receive:

Priority onboarding and setup assistance
Discounted pricing for life
Direct input into feature development
Dedicated support from our founding team

Interested? Let’s Connect!

We’re building WaterCal to solve real problems for real communities. If this solution sounds like what your shared irrigation system needs, we want to hear from you.

Email: Scott@WaterCal.com to:

Express your interest
Share your community’s specific challenges
Join our early access program
Suggest features you’d like to see

Together, we can transform how communities manage shared water resources—making it simpler, more reliable, and conflict-free.

WaterCal: Clear Schedules, Clear Communication, Clear Water Management.

Scott Cate Profile Photos

Scott Cate — Sun, 27 Apr 2025 22:07:18 GMT

Profile and press photos of Scott Cate, free to use for event bios, articles, and introductions.

iPhone scan Live Text from keyboard

Scott Cate — Wed, 14 Dec 2022 14:52:51 GMT

Today I learned …. In addition to scanning text from photos and using the copy/paste text from photos features, on my iPhone 14 (with iOS 16) I can scan “live text” right from within the keyboard.

Mistakenly, I was looking for an activation icon in the keyboard area.

This feature isn’t very discoverable (at least it wasn’t to me) because this is not activated from the keyboard, it’s activated from the text entry area. Touch the input area or text box you want to type. You may be used to using this area to touch to enable the copy/paste menu or text selection. On the menu now, you’ll also see the scan text icon.

This will swap out the keyboard area with a camera, where you can point at text in your camera lens, then touch to select the text you want to enter and insert.

From here, the feature works the same as when scanning text from a photo and then using copy/paste. The benefit of the keyboard is … you don’t have to pop out to take a picture first. Just scan right into the data entry text field.

I hope this helps!

Derogatory Terms of Endearment

Scott Cate — Fri, 23 Jun 2017 00:36:09 GMT

The Setup….

I’m on a layover in Denver airport at a restaurant. When I travel alone, I’ll pick a bar seat, since it’s usually first to come first to serve. Any open seat means I can eat on a tight schedule. After a few minutes, a lady politely asks if anyone is sitting next to me. “Nope, it’s all yours”. She takes a seat, orders something to go. I’m heads-down on my laptop waiting for my order and like everyone at the bar, we all ignore each other on screens, phones, TV’s, or whatever it is we’re working on.

Then the bartender yells from only about 10 feet, so it’s not overly loud, but louder than normal, “What was that you wanted to drink Honey?” My ears perk up as I hear this in the background. I say nothing, and keep working. 30 second later … “Hey Honey, did you want catsup with your to go order? At this point, I lean to my left and quietly say “It drives me nuts that he keeps talking to you as Honey”. She immediately smiles and says “Me too, thank you for noticing, and saying something to me”. Maybe I should have engaged with the bartender, but I didn’t. As I look back that was a teachable moment that I missed. Even after my neighbor left, I could have engaged, and then it would not have been awkward for the other patron. But I didn’t. more courage next time.

That was 4-5 days ago, but I have thought about it 100 times since then and wanted to get something posted on the topic. I don’t think the bartender was “trying” to be offensive. Or even knew he was being offensive. In his mind, I even think the opposite. He thinks that adding “Honey” is a friendly term of endearment, but I don’t think the recipient ever feels that way.

These terms of endearment should be saved for your significant other, or maybe your children, when you can really use an appropriate term. Lover. Honey. {{insert_pet_name}}. Baby. Sweety. Sugar. Shuggems. Whatever.

In public, if you find yourself using these terms towards anyone as a stranger, Male or Female, you’re putting yourself in a place of power, and demeaning the person you’re talking to. Please simply omit the label.

The bartender didn’t call me Honey? He didn’t call me anything. Just asked what I wanted to drink.

I don’t expect to change the world, but if just one person reads this and agrees, the world will be a better place. If you must (and I must, or think I must anyway) always label someone. Label them with a polite salutation. Ma’am or Sir, almost always works. Better yet, ask their name, and address them properly. So much nicer if the bartender would have addressed her by her first name. So much more respectful. #JustSaying

Why You Should Fly Southwest Airlines

Scott Cate — Sun, 03 Jul 2016 23:42:58 GMT

As most of my friends know, I’m a Southwest Airlines fanboy. I love the airline. I do. They have employees that deeply care about their passengers and have great, easy-to-follow, very business-friendly rules.

Now … some of you will complain about no first class. OK, you got me on this one. If you fly so much that you get 1K on United or Platinum on Delta or __(any airline)__ then you win. Short of that, if you’re just flying once in a while, business or personal, you’re probably flying coach anyway.

Here is why you should fly Southwest if they have the route you’re on. Only one reason.

NO TICKET CHANGE FEES.

Other airlines will charge you $150 – $250 in just a transaction fee to change your ticket. This is not including the price difference between your old ticket and new ticket. That is always going to be an upgrade charge. In fact, this is an important note. Let’s talk for a minute about airfares. While I don’t pretend to fully know the fares and how they are calculated, I do understand essential supply and demand, and all airlines follow this to a certain degree. And of course, there are exceptions, but, in general, the more notice you have (14 days, 21 days, 30 days), the better your ticket price will be. As you get closer and closer to the departure date, the rate may dramatically increase. This might depend on how many seats on the plane have actually sold. Like anything, the last 5% or 10% is more valuable and will have higher rates. If you don’t buy that seat, someone else will. So a seat on the same flight 30 days out might be $120.00, while day of departure might be $520.00. Make sense?

To better understand this, let’s add some terminology.

REFUNDABLE: When a ticket fare is refundable, it means that you can cancel at any time and have the original funds used to purchase that ticket credited back to your credit card. Very few tickets qualify for this. Usually it’s the most expensive full-fare tickets that are actually refundable.

NON-REFUNDABLE: As you might imagine, this means you can never get the actual money returned. Once you buy a ticket the funds to the airline will never come back to you. This is fine because, after all, you’re planning on the trip when you buy it.

But here is the catch between Southwest and other airlines. Non-refundable remains usable 100% of the time with Southwest, while it’s sacrificed 100% of the time with other airlines.

Let’s run through a scenario. You live in Arizona and need to get to New York. Let’s say you have a month’s notice, so you’re booking this for Monday the 15th, coming home Thursday the 18th. You buy your ticket for $350.00, and you’re happy. #Celebrate

Remember, you’re a month out, but you bought your ticket. You’re locked in. Let’s run a few real-world scenarios and see how they play out.

SCENARIO 1.
A few days go by, and something changes. You have to be in NYC Monday morning, not Tuesday.

On Southwest, since you’re so far in advance, this is probably not an issue. You check online, and it turns out the Sunday flight is actually $25.00 cheaper. You change your flight, and without any penalty, Southwest will give you a $25.00 credit towards a future flight. It’s not a refund, but it’s a gift certificate good to use within the next 12 months.

On any other airline. You check online, and also, the Sunday flight is cheaper by $25.00. Wow, you do the happy dance. (Oh Yeah! Oh Yeah!) So you call to make the change, and you’re blindsided by a $150.00 ticket change fee. OUCH! So you have to pay the difference. You decide Monday is important enough, and you cough up the $125.00 difference because it’s crucial that you be there on Monday morning.

WIN: Southwest!

SCENARIO 2.
Two weeks to go. Your friend in NYC calls you and has an extra ticket to an amazing event at the Garden. It’s the show of a lifetime, with great seats, On Thursday Night the 18th. You’re supposed to be flying home that day.

On Southwest. Again you find any other flight and pay the difference (even maybe using that original $25.00 credit).

On any other airline, you’re in for another $150.00 change fee. The truth is Scenarios 1 and 2 are identical; one is a change on the outbound, and one is on the return.

WIN: Southwest!

SCENARIO 3.
It’s the 15th. You’re in NYC. You already changed your ticket twice, and you’re set to fly home on the 19th. You get a call for whatever emergency you want to pretend, and you need to fly to Florida the 18th, instead of back to Arizona. You’re going to miss your concert 🙁 but family comes first.

On Southwest, this again is the same as Scenario 1 and 2. This time, be prepared to pay more for your ticket because last-minute tickets are more expensive. But know that you aren’t out the original $$$ you spent. Whatever you paid for your NYC-PHX flight, will be applied penny-for-penny for whatever flight you buy.

On any other airline, you’re doubly screwed. Because the $150.00 change fee only applies to the same city pair. This means you can change earlier or later on the same day or even a different day. But you can’t change the Origin or Destination cities. Soooooo this means the original funds you paid for NYC-PHX are 100% forfeited. And you’re now left to buy a ticket with no prior credits. Should you need to fly NYC-PHX sometime in the next 12 months, the airline will let you reuse that portion of your ticket, MINUS the $150.00 ticket change fee AGAIN!

WIN: Southwest!

SCENARIO 4.
This time, let’s go back to before you depart. Say it’s the 13th. No concert or anything, you just have the original ticket you purchased. You find out the NYC meetings are canceled. Not moving, just canceled. There is no need for your to visit NYC.

On Southwest, you can go online and cancel your ticket. You then have $350.00 to spend on any ticket, one-way, round trip, or otherwise, within the next 12 months. You are committed to not changing the passenger name so you can only use these funds for the originally named passenger.

On any other airline. The same game. You can use this ticket in the future, only between PHX-NYC and you’ll be out the $150.00 change fees.

WIN: Southwest!

I know people that have paid more in change fees than the original ticket was valued. You, my dear friend reader, have probably done that. No change fees will save you hundreds to thousands over the years, tens of thousands if you’re booking travel for a handful of people in your company.

Southwest Isle seat trick

Scott Cate — Sun, 03 Jul 2016 19:55:30 GMT

Ever in the isle on Southwest airline, and need to get out? As a little know trick there is a button under the armrest that will let you lift it.

This is much much easier to then get in and out of your seat! Enjoy!

How my family of four flies for free

Scott Cate — Sun, 03 Jul 2016 17:29:15 GMT

If we are friends, in person or virtual, you know I travel *A LOT*. And if we are FaceBook friends (which means we really do know each other) you know that mostly I fly with my whole family of four.

Why do we do it? How do we do it? Well…. The why is simple, we soon will discuss the how. Why? Both Jamie and I love to fly/travel/explore the world! And we are trying to pass this love of travel on to our kids. And it’s working 😉

As a single traveler, your goal is First-Class upgrades. This makes traveling VIP much easier. With over two million miles flown, I have spent lots of time in the air, reading the fine print, and understanding Airline Mileage programs. I also frequently read Ben’s One Mile at a Time blog. It’s great reading, and I can vicariously live through his first-class travels in the air and five-star hotels around the world.

But that life is no longer for me. My children are yound, and I would much rather be with Jamie and them than somewhere on the road alone. His is my domestic first class now. I sit in the C seat while they sit across the aisle from me.

My family in Row 9

What about the cost? Here is the best part and the real reason for this post. Would you believe we all fly free all year long? What? How is that possible? The answer is Southwest Companion pass. For me, hands down the best frequent flyer program ever. Period. No questions asked. You can read more about it, but the short version is, if you acquire 110,000 point (sometimes called miles) you earn this coveted Companion Pass. Jamie and I both have one, so any ticket we purchase, our companion comes along for free. Well. There is a $5.60/direction 911tax, but aside from that $11.20 round trip. It’s free.

What about my and Jamie’s ticket prices? To qualify, we each needed 110,000 points. So with all those points we each have enough to buy free tickets on points. The Companion pass works for both paid and non-rev (award) tickets. Again, the $11.20 fee applies. So it’s $44.80 for all four of us to fly round trip, anywhere Southwest flies. As long as we have enough points. With the right search, and advance notice, we can buy tickets to Denver for 2400 points each way. San Diego hovers in the 5000 point range. Texas is around 8000, New York and Florida can be as low as 12,000 but are usually more. So mostly you’ll see us visiting the western US. Boise. Denver. Seattle. San Diego. San Francisco. And once in a while you’ll see is visit New York or Florida, or (like this week) Puerto Rico (which was about 13,000 points each direction).

Another perk of Companion Pass is that you are qualified from the time you earn it until the end of the next calendar year. So let’s say you earn the award in September 2015. Your companion award is good until December 31, 2017, a full 16 months. If by chance you qualified in January 2015, you would have almost a full two years to (ab)use the award until December 2016.

Lots of people talk online about getting the pass, that once they get it, they are not able to use it as much as they thought they would. I can understand we are in a unique situation where all four of us are almost always available to travel. Unlike a business partner or spouse or someone with an in-office job.

So the next question is ….. Where do those initial 110,000 points come from? With Jamie and I that’s a combined 220,000 miles. How could we possibly get that many miles, that early in the year?

The answer is the Southwest Air Chase Visa, and Southwest Chase Business Visa. Each of these cards usually has a signup award of 20k or 30k points. If you qualify for both of these cards, that adds up to 40k or 60k points. Two or three times a year, the bonus points will rise to 50,000 points per card. That brings us to 100,000 points each. If you’re in the airport, there is almost always a Kiosk offering the 50,000 bonus points special. So THAT’S how we achieved two Companion passes, which essentially let’s us all four fly around the country for (almost) free all year long.

This is how we do it! You can too. Here is a link to apply. In full disclosure of you use these links to apply for the card, I get get 5000 point referral bonus 😉 Hey, if you’re applying anyway, might as well use these referral links right? 😉 Thank you in advance.

Click to Apply

There are many other ways to earn points as well. I often look at Rapid Rewards Shopping for items I’m going to purchase anyway. I bought a suitcase on eBags.com and my laptop at BestBuy.com I was going to buy these anyway, same price, but because I entered the store via the Rewards shopping link, my spending $$ points were multiplied.

In order to get hotel points, you usually need to book directly with the hotel. Instead we use Hotels.com and get 10% cash back, which is much greater than any other loyalty program out there. I should write a post on just booking hotels. We do book cars with Avis, and as a Southwest Partner, that comes with a 500 point bonus as well.

So at the end of the day, we all fly free.

Join us?

Let me know in the comments if this works out for you. It would be great to know others benefited.

LifeHack: Dyson Handheld is a GREAT Mosquito Catcher!

Scott Cate — Mon, 16 Feb 2015 04:08:58 GMT

My children’s bodies don’t react well to mosquito bites 🙁 Not that anyone does, but where I might get a bite/bump about the size of a pea, they might see a huge bump the size of a 50 cent piece for a number of days. Needless to say, when the children see a mosquito in the house, they go crazy. Whatever you image crazy is, double it.

In my whole life, I have squashed mosquitos, but only after they land. A wall. A mirror. A door. Anywhere, once they land, I’m pretty good at swatting them. But sometimes, it’s a lamp or a Lego set, you can’t just swat it. Then you’re forced to shoe it away to land on something else.

Tonight, quite by accident, I was holding the Dyson Handheld and Cameron yelled for a mosquito. It was midair … I pointed the Dyson towards it like a light saber, turned it on, and from about 3 inches away, the mosquito jumped right in! How great was that?

It didn’t die, I could see it flying around inside, so I took the Dyson outside, opened it and let it go.

I’m sure this is something millions of others had already figured out, but it was new to me, and exciting enough to write a quick post. Try it, you’ll like it, and be surprised at just how easy it is.

We have an old Dyson with a dying battery, and this is the Dyson DC34 (Amazon Referral Link) I’ll be buying as a replacement.

Microsoft OneDrive vs. DropBox

Scott Cate — Sun, 08 Jun 2014 14:05:21 GMT

OneDrive from Microsoft wins over Drop Box, just because of it’s “Make Available Online Only” feature. Drop box has this (sort of) with what they call Selective Sync. The problem with Selective Sync is … it’s folder based, and it’s all or nothing. OneDrive let’s you right click any file, and select online only. You can choose to do this by directory as well. Then All child directories and files are marked online only.

So much better than drop box, because the file APPEARS to still be on your machine. Even images, have their tiny thumbnails. if anything needs that file, it’s downloaded on demand, as if it was there the whole time.

My laptop has a nice little 256GB SSD. and today I rec’d a warning of < 10% available. I had a bunch of Videos, that of course I want to keep, but needed the space. They’ve already been synced to OneDrive, so they are currently on all my machines and phones. Right Click, Online Only, and BOOM the Vid Directory is online only, and I have 35 more GB of available space.

Really nice. Heck for all I know, there is a way to do this with DropBox now, and I just don’t know it. BUT … if they don’t have that … they really need it.

If you’re new to OneDrive, use my referral link and we’ll each get some extra free storage space.

Request ATT to Unlock your Phone

Scott Cate — Sun, 08 Jun 2014 13:55:19 GMT

If your mobile provider is ATT, head on over to http://att.com/deviceunlock and request to unlock your phone. This process takes 3-5 days, so do it before you leave if you’re heading international. If successful, you’ll be able to buy any local (compatible) sim card, and have a much cheaper talk/text/data plan that paying the Int’l roaming rates.

You’ll need you phone IMEI number, which you can grab without powering off your device by dialing ~~#*06#~~ (UPDATE: *#06# is correct) and pressing SEND on your phone. TIP : TRICK: Do this for all your devices, even your old unused devices. They are great hand-me-downs, give-a-ways, and backup phones, when you break your screen 🙂 Why not do this now, even if you don’t have a trip coming up. Best to have it unlocked so if/when you need it, it’ll be available for you.

QRCode scanner in Windows Phone 8.1

Scott Cate — Sun, 20 Apr 2014 04:58:09 GMT

Did you know there is a native QRCode scanner inside your Windows Phone? It’s been moved around from Windows Phone (7,75,8) and in 8.1, it’s now part of your camera, as a lens named Bing Vision.

This quick screen cast shows you how / where to find and use the QRCode scanner.

Windows Phone: Lost Screen App

Scott Cate — Sun, 20 Apr 2014 03:41:56 GMT

You just realized you don’t have your phone in your pocket or purse! #Panic! #Panic! You’re also safety conscience, and you have a lock on your phone. Now all the good people of the world, have been limited on how they can return your phone. You’re only hope is you remember where it is, and go back and get it. Sure there is Login to WindowsPhone.com and use the FindMyPhone feature. OK, I’ll give you that. Remote Ring, Remote Secure Wipe …. those are nice features. This nice little app, by Scott Hanselman ( @shanselman on twitter ) will also help get your phone back the next time you leave it behind!

This quick video/screen cast shows you how to setup the app, and add your private information to the lock screen on your phone.

Actually, it’s not a feature, it’s an App. If you have a windows phone, you can download it from this link.

Windows Phone + Cortana + XBOX music

Scott Cate — Sat, 19 Apr 2014 17:10:21 GMT

When you hear that new (or old) song on the radio, or in a club, wouldn’t it be great if you could grab a copy and save it on your phone? Well you can, and it’s **VERY** easy to do with Cortana on Windows Phone 8.1

This is a quick video/screen cast that listens to the radio, grabs a song, and adds to it a new playlist.

Microsoft Azure Websites: Full Support for Wildcard DNS and SSL

Scott Cate — Fri, 11 Apr 2014 20:49:50 GMT

Microsoft Azure Websites is Pure Awesome. The speed and amount of work that can be done in a very short period of time is just amazing.

Today, I’m sharing a feature that I’ve been waiting for, for a long time. Wildcard support for DNS and SSL Certificates. In the past, you could use a wildcard certificate, but because Wildcard DNS wasn’t supported, you had to manually enter your sub domains one-by-one. This doesn’t scale very well.

In this screen cast I show you how to setup a *.Wildcard DNS and SSL under an Azure Website. It’s just shy of 5 minutes.

Enjoy. (It’s a good idea to watch this full screen, to see the small typing)

Uber: Town Car Service on Demand

Scott Cate — Thu, 30 Jan 2014 04:54:58 GMT

Uber is a new(ish) type of fancy car service that is on demand, and is now available in PHX Metro (and growing quickly to most parts of the world). I’ve used Uber in AZ, CA, and WA and NYC. Always great service; fast and clean. They have an iPhone and Android app, (and a non official Windows Phone App). After requesting a ride, these apps let you see where your car is on the map so you know right when (and where) you’re car is going to arrive.

It’s easy for pickup (at the mall or something) because you also get the Driver name and Phone number for texting back and forth.

Uber has a rating system, where you can rate the driver, and the driver can rate you as the passenger; So it’s much safer than a random off the street cab, since you can rely on riders before you, and their feedback. The cars and SUV’s I’ve ridden in, have always been new(er), clean, and the drivers are friendly and don’t stink.

Lastly, you don’t pay the driver. You pay using the Uber app, and then Uber pays the driver. Tip is even already included.

If you’re going to be traveling, and you think you might need a car service, give them a try. Full Disclosure: By use the links provided, if you sign up for Uber we both get a $20.00 credit.

This is my referral link: https://uber.com/invite/uberscottcate

The Awesome WestJet Christmas Story

Scott Cate — Mon, 09 Dec 2013 20:28:14 GMT

This was a great 5 minute video showing the great story of Christmas, on WestJet. What a great way to touch so many peoples lives.

Git Source Control: I Stopped using “Origin”

Scott Cate — Thu, 31 Oct 2013 04:10:37 GMT

I have source code all over the place. Over the years, I’ve used

Microsoft Source Safe
Source Gear Vault
Subversion
Mecurial
and Git

These days, a Git Repo is where all of my source code lives. Both for personal, and work, both for open source and private repos, and with all my Git Repos online, I’m split between Git Hub and BitBucket. Both have their pros and cons, but that’s another discussion. Every time you push or pull code, your command line needs an origin. All the samples on GitHub and BitBucket, and most books call this “origin” for lack of a better term. I have recently started renaming “origin” to “github” and “bitbucket” then when I’m pushing/pulling code, I know where it’s coming from or going to. You could argue that it doesn’t matter, it’s going external. That’s a valid point. I would argue back that tab+tab auto completes it for me so it’s the same keystrokes (assuming only one origin, which I think is most common). AND now I have mind share where the code is going, if I need to log into the admin panel.

Here is a couple of commands to clone or rename an existing repo using a destination name, instead of just origin.

git remote rename origin bitbucket

git remote rename origin github

and when you’re cloning an external repo, just replace origin with something more meaningful.

git remote add bitbucket git@bitbucket.org:username/project.git
git push –u bitbucket master

Silverlight of Yesterday–Saves me today!

Scott Cate — Sun, 27 Oct 2013 22:57:35 GMT

Silverlight is an awesome product. As Flash is awesome and it’s glory. Silverlight is nicer for me, as I think in C# v. Action Script. That said, at work, we use the Adobe plug in model for quite a bit, it’s just not something I am personally familiar with.

I have always been a fan of screen casts, and over the last few years, I have been using the LoopLogic screen recorder. ON a few screen casts, I wanted to record my printer printing, using my Desktop web cam. So I started looking for a web site, that simple turned on my web cam. There are lot out there, but that meant I had to show that website, inside my screen cast, just to show my camera.

And then I remembered …. Silverlight? I could write some C#, to turn on my web cam, and fill a canvas with my camera. I can even write it so that it’s out of browser, chromeless (no borders), and sizable. What? What? Yes, and it was easy.

With that I deployed what I call SilverCam. Uploaded the XAP file, and wrapped an html page around it, and that page is hosted here on Windows Azure. It’s PC and MAC compat, assuming you have the Silverlight plugin installed.

UDPATE: Oct 28, 2013

The Twitterverse has asked for this source code, so I uploaded the project to GitHub. Enjoy!

Installing WordPress on Azure in 3 minutes

Scott Cate — Fri, 25 Oct 2013 16:40:54 GMT

I recently moved ScottCate.com from my old hosting provider to Windows Azure Websites. It was so fast and simple, I wanted to do a srceencast showing just how easy it was. If you’re interested in blogging, or using WordPress for anything, you owe it to yourself to give this a shot.

Azure CDN: A Valuable Lesson Learned

Scott Cate — Tue, 22 Oct 2013 16:25:54 GMT

On October 21st around 6pm Pacific time, our Azure CDN was gone! It came back a few hours later, but I started digging into a solution that would help mitigate this in the future (this post). Instead of the CDN serving content, it was serving 400’s (Bad Request). When something like this happens, we call it an outage, though that isn’t always the case. There are millions of dependencies in Technology, and if Just one breaks, it can have catastrophic down line damages. So our goal in Cloud and Scalable software is to allow for failure, understand where/when it can happen to the best of our ability, and make backup, fallback routines to handle that failure. These could be automated, or manual, but the more you have in place, the faster your app will come back online when a failure happens. Notice I said when, not if. Plan for failure sooner than later, and you’ll be better prepared.

Technical folks, can skip to Technical Problem and Solution

What could make our CDN just go away? More on that later. How to solve the problem. We put our thinking caps on and …. come up with a solution.

Hey – Azure CDN is just a front end to raw storage anyway – let’s just serve the raw storage!

Some Non-Technical Background

Perfect idea! Azure CDN and all CDN’s generally just put a networking layer with DNS and storage magic over the raw storage. These two urls point to the same item, one is DNS magic with CDN Juice, and the other is the actual file being stored.

http://az1234567.vo.msecnd.net/ (Fake CDN URL)
http://yourstorage.blob.core.windows.net/ (Fake Storage account URL)

Any file you place is a public folder in your storage account, say /myimages/home.jpg could be accessed like this (again fake URL’s)

When the CDN URL is called, it kicks in, pulls the image to an edge node, serves the image, and life is good. UNLESS the CDN is not alive, then instead you get a 400 – Bad Request. Now that you have a general understanding we move on to the …

Technical Problem and Solution

When our application uploads an image, we upload into a Model, that is serialized with all the relevant data. Then later we can later retrieve the image that was uploaded. A partial look at that model reveals these data parts.

Uri
Path
FileName
Owner
Version
Date
And a bunch of other stuff.

What we want to focus on is the Uri. And here is where I think we …

made a mistake
will learn from
will adopt a new pattern
And is the reason I’m writing this blog post, to hopefully help others.

The fact is … there isn’t just one Uri, there are many. Today, we are storing the fully qualified CDN Uri. ( http://az1234567.vo.msecnd.net/myimages/home.jpg in our example). BUT we could also get that image from the raw storage, or what if the CDN changes, and next week it’s http://az77777777.vo.msecnd.net/myimages/home.jpg ? Instead, we should be storing the relative path of just /myimages/home.jpg, and then coupling that together with a root asset Uri that can be read in at runtime. Then we are not locked into, or storing (what might invalidate in the future) a hard coded Uri.

This luxury and art of Run Time Configuration is easy, and done a million ways.

Bottom Line – Technical Lesson Learned

Don’t store, or rely on a hardcoded URL, that has the ability to change in the future. Instead break apart the relative path, and unite the core path to deliver a Uri on demand. Having this flexibility in configuration, means that CDN endpoints can change on a dime, and your app can start delivering valid URL’s as soon as you can update configuration, which is a lot faster than writing new code!

I hope this helps.