3 New Things

Three new things I've learned each day.

[3ntblog]

The best cookies I have ever made (gluten free maple cookies)

My BFF and I made some amazing cookies. I don’t even have a pic of them as they were consumed too quickly.

I love maple sandwich cookies. They are like a Canadian version of an Oreo. I knew that was beyond my skill-set so I tried out something different.

Here are the ingredients:

1 cup of real maple syrup. Real means (ideally) from Quebec and not that terrible crap that is just flavored corn syrup.

1 cup of butter, softened

1 cup of packed brown sugar

4 cups of Cup 4 Cup gluten free flour

1 large egg

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

2 teaspoons of baking soda

½ teaspoon of salt

½ cup of chopped nuts. We used almonds but I think pecans or walnuts would be good.

About 1/3 of a cup of maple sugar (or regular sugar you casual)

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350F and convection (if you have it)

2. Cream the butter and brown sugar in your Kitchen Aid mixer

3. Add the egg, syrup, and vanilla. Mix until it blended well.

4. Separately mix flour, salt, and baking soda. Use a sifter if you want to but it’s not really necessary.

5. Stir the flour mix into the mixer bowl. Stir it until it’s well blended. Stop the mixer and get in there with a spoon and make sure all the flour is incorporated.

6. Put the maple sugar on a large plate. This is a coating for the cookies and it really overclocks them.

7. Form each cookie into a ball about one inch across. Roll it into the sugar.

8. Place the cookie balls onto a cookie sheet. This is an actual cookie sheet that you have kept pristine for the purpose of making cookies. If you don’t have that, then use that funky one you have that you cooked wings and chips or frozen pizza on - but cover it with parchment paper first. You can probably fit 10 per sheet. Don’t get them too close together.

9. Use your finger or the back if a spoon to flatted each ball a little bit. Maybe reduce its height by about a ¼.

Cook for nine minutes and check. In my oven it takes ten minutes. They should start to get a bit brown on top and golden on the bottom.

10. When done, transfer them to wire racks with wax paper or something underneath so you don’t mess up the counter.

Burn your mouth on one, feel bad, and then let the rest cool before eating.

[3ntblog]

Super easy crispy bacon in the oven recipe Arrange bacon on foil covered cookie sheet. Place in the oven and set it to 400F (no need to preheat) and check in twenty minutes. You may need to cook longer depending on how think the bacon is and how crispy you like it.

[3ntblog]

Visual Studio Online integration with Twitter via Zapier

I love how some indy developers tweet when they do a code push. Facepunch does this with Rust and it's cool to see the game evolve in real time. I decided to do the same for a new app I'm developing. 

I'm using Visual Studio online to track my work items and to host my code via their git support. There's a great automation site called Zapier.com that allows you to trigger actions based on events from VS Online. It was very east to setup.

Basically, I created two rules - one for web changes and another for app changes. For each of them I setup a filter so that if the word "ignore" is contained in the text the push will be ignored. That way people won't see some of my stupid commits. :) 

In just a few minutes everything was working great. I setup a specific template for each type of push in order to identify the source of the change. 

[3ntblog]

Simple French Onion Soup

Ingredients: 4 jumbo sized yellow onions 4 sprigs of thyme 1 bay leaf 900 ml of beef broth 450 ml of chicken broth Gruyere cheese French bread Garlic, salt, pepper to taste 1/3 cup of butter Cut the onions in half and then in thin slices In a Dutch oven or sturdy pot, melt the butter Add onions, garlic, and salt/pepper The onions will get soft and begin to create a glaze at the bottom of the pan. Use some of the broth to scrape up the glaze. As you cook down the onions keep repeating this de-glazing. Add the broth as you go. Once the onions are dark add the bay leaf and bundle of thyme. Cover and simmer for at least 30 minutes. Cooking longer is preferred. Stir occasionally. Grate the cheese. Cube up the French bread and toast it in the oven using the broil setting. Pour the soup into oven safe ramekins. Place on a baking sheet. Add the cubed toasted bread and top with cheese. Add some pepper if you like. Cook under the broiler for about five minutes or until the cheese melts and just begins to turn golden.

[3ntblog]

[3ntblog]

Twitter has a new SDK called "Fabric". It integrates their mobile advertising system, Crashlytics, Twitter, and their new "Digits" user login SDK. This means you only have to setup one library to get all that functionality.

Crashlytics is fantastic on its own and I highly recommend it for any mobile app on iOS and Android. It's a real life saver. I'm going to try out Digits as it looks like a really slick and friction-less way to provide user registration/validation.

I signed up to Fabric and got an invite in a few minutes. I noticed after the fact that I could have migrated my existing Crashlytics account as well.

[3ntblog]

Basically, you can use the Samsung USB drivers for this. I selected the USB drivers for the Samsung Note 4 and they worked.

[3ntblog]

For those of you learning Apple's Swift language, this is a neat way to play around with it without using the playground feature in XCode.

[3ntblog]

APN Tester Free

This is simple but very handy app. It allows you to quickly test notifications sent via Apple Push Notification Service (APNS) in your iOS development. I was in the process of making my own when I was smart enough to search to see if one existed. There are no new ideas. :)

[3ntblog]

Using Amazon SNS for Apple Push Notification Services (APNS)

I was trying out Amazon Simple Notification Service (AWS SNS) for native notifications in an iOS app and I ran into some problems.

In the SNS console you first need to add a new app. To add the app, you need to give it a name, specify the type of service to use (APNS, Android, etc.) and then setup the certificate. Whenever I would try to upload the certificate I was getting an error:

There was a transient failure registering the app with Amazon SNS. Please try again

I was uploading the wrong thing. You need to take the certificate you created in Apple's developer console and import it into your system via Keychain. From there, use the search feature to find it and then export it correctly. Use the "arrow" disclosure button in the list to show the private key. That's what you need to export - make sure it's the p12 format. When exporting it will ask for a password to protect the file and your system root password to confirm the export. 

Once you have that, simple upload the file in the SNS add app screen, enter the password you setup, and then click "Load credentials from file". This will populate the certificate and private key fields on the page and you're ready to go.

To test things out, add an endpoint using the console. Simple enter a device token from your app. Select that endpoint and then, under "endpoint actions", click publish. Enter a test message and click "Publish Message".

[3ntblog]

Gluten free cornbread recipe

This is a gluten-free adaptation of a recipe I found online. I've tweaked it a bit further as well.

Ingredients

1 cup of gluten free flour substitute (Pamela's or Cloud9 is what we prefer)

1 cup of gluten free cornmeal

1 cup of low-fat sour cream

3/4 teaspoon of salt

2 eggs, beaten

1 teaspoon of baking soda

3/4 cup of sugar (I wonder if there's a better option here like honey?)

Cooking

Pre-heat oven to 400F. Use anti-stick spray on 8"x8" pan. A glass pan is fine.

Mix together the dry ingredients. Beat the eggs and add to the dry ingredients along with the sour cream. Mix it up well and pour into baking dish/pan. Cook for 20-25 minutes. Check to make sure the top doesn't get too dark. Serve with some drizzled honey on top.

[3ntblog]

Black bean turkey chili recipe

I found some good turkey chili recipes online but ended up modifying them to suit my taste. This recipe is great when you make a double batch and freeze up servings for lunch or dinner.

Ingredients

1 large yellow onion, diced

4 cloves of garlic

1 large green pepper, diced

1 large red pepper, diced

1 pound of ground turkey

3 x 540ml cans of no salt added black beans - liquid and all!

2 x 540ml cans of no salt added crushed or diced tomatoes - half the liquid

Chili power (2 tbs)

Oregano (1 tbs)

Dried basil (1 tbs)

Red wine vinegar (1 tbs)

Cooking

Use one big heavy pot.

Use olive oil to cook onions and peppers until soft.

Add garlic and cook for a minute or so.

Add turkey, stir in, break up, and cook until done.

Add beans with liquid, tomatoes with half of the liquid, spices, vinegar

stir together and reduce to low.

Cover and simmer on low for at least 60 minutes but more like two hours. While it's cooking, stir to keep the bottom from sticking.

If it's too runny, add in corn flour/maseca by the tablespoon to thicken it up or to make the chili more "hearty". Add tablespoon, stir in and wait a few minutes. Repeat as needed.

Optional

Black pepper, cumin, cilantro, diced green chili's, chipotle, corn, celery (added with onions), kidney beans

Serving it up

Serve with freshly chopped green onion, cilantro leafs/stems. To make it unhealthy, add sour cream, cheddar cheese, and tortilla chips then make piggie noises (like the kid in the Christmas Story) while eating. Oink, oink!

[3ntblog]

I used to have a very popular photo site that served re-sized images dynamically as the origin for a CDN. That worked out really well so I was looking to replicate this for a new project. Instead of making the apple pie from scratch, I searched NuGet for an existing solution and found this.

This software looks really cool and I was able to get it mostly setup and integrated with my project and Azure in a couple of hours.

[3ntblog]

How to diff any two files in Visual Studio 2013

This is new to me: in the Command Window simply type "Tools.Difffiles <filename1> <filename2>"

[3ntblog]

Visual Studio Online is awesome and keeps getting better. It now has a "service hook" system to allow it to integrate with third patty services. 

For example, it can be used to push new cards to Trello when a commit happens. Here's a full list of events that can be used as triggers:

Build completed

Team room message posted

Pull request created

Pull request updated

Code pushed

Work item created

Work item commented on

Work item updated

It also supports a generic POST to an HTTP location. Or if you want an easy way to integrate those events with a ton of services, it also supports Zapier.com which is like IFFT on steriods.

My first use will probably be to Tweet commits to a private account so it can be displayed on a dashboard TV or something.

[3ntblog]

I bought a new phone mount for my tripod and on a whim decided to do a stop motion video of my 9+ hour slow cooker pulled pork.

I recently made pulled pork for the first time, and here’s the basic way I did it. It’s nothing fancy but is easy to do for a beginner like me.

Buying the meat

First of all, you need to get the pork. The cut you want to buy is called a “pork butt” or “pork shoulder” roast. I have a large slow cooker, so I end up buying two - each roast is about six pounds.

Preparing the meat

Take the meat out of the fridge and let it rest a bit to bring the temperature up - say 30 minutes. The roast itself will probably still have the pink-colored pork skin on it. Use a knife to remove that and trim away any big pieces of fat. The roast will probably still have the bone and you should leave it in there. Use a paper towel to dry off the meat before putting on the spice rub.

Dry spice rub

Next up, you want to create a spice rub. Here’s a simple one I found online that tastes great. There’s a zillion ways to do this, so look online to get some ideas or just experiment. This rub isn’t spicy and it’s stuff that I had on hand in the kitchen.

1 tablespoon of brown sugar

1/2 tablespoon of garlic powder

1/2 tablespoon of smoked paprika

1 tablespoon of chili powder

1/2 teaspoon of cumin

1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon

1/2 tablespoon of salt

1/2 tablespoon of pepper

This is enough for one roast. Mix the spices together, then apply it to the outside of the roast.

Cooking the roast

Next, cut two onions in big pieces and place at the bottom of the slow cooker. Place the roast fatty side up on top of the onions. Make sure that the cover can go on properly and if it can’t, then rearrange things so that it does.

Next, you need to add some liquid. I’ve only ever used about 1 cup of chicken broth but I hear that root beer or cola works well, too. But make sure it’s not sugar free otherwise I hear the chemicals will make it taste funny.

Once everything is set, turn on the slow cooker to low, cover, and cook for about nine hours. I’ve only every cooked it on low but I’m sure it’s possible to cook on high as well.

Final step - preparing the pulled pork

After about nine hours, you’ll see that the meat becomes very tender and comes apart with a fork. Check to make sure its internal temperature is about 200F. If it’s ready, turn off your slow cooker. Take the pork out and let it rest, covered in foil, for about twenty minutes.

Meanwhile, remove all of the liquid from the slow cooker. Use a fat separator to remove the fat and keep the broth. If you don’t have one, then put the juices in the fridge until the fat solidifies on the top.

Once it's finished resting, remove the bones, any big chunks of fat remaining, and then use two forks to pull the meat apart.

Switch your slow cooker back on, using the “warm” setting. Then put the pork back in and enough of the broth to make it moist. 

That’s it. You just made pulled pork! You can do tons of things with it, like pulled pork sandwiches (topped with coleslaw and pickles), tacos, nachos, etc.

You’ll notice that I didn’t make a sauce for this. You can make sauce or just eat it as is.

[3ntblog]

7 alternatives to TestFlight

Maybe Apple will improve TestFlight, bring it back to Android (doubt it), or drop it altogether. Only time will tell. Since we can’t predict the future, consider making one of these your favorite a...

I've used TestFlightApp.com for the past couple of years and it's fantastic. It's cool to see the Apple has purchased them but this also means that it will no longer support Android. Before Test Flight added Android support, we used HockeyApp and it worked great.

I suggest trying out Google's recently added Android beta feature, as mentioned in the article. We just started using it and it might be good enough, coupled with Crashlytics for error tracking.