In ten years ago, we started to use Visual Studio Team Foundation Server. That sounds only a source control system. Last night, I went .net user group meeting for the new version of Visual Studio Team Service. The presentation is great. The new version have on-premise and on the cloud. Moreover, that is more than a source control system. It is similar with JIRA, and it can handle the change request and user story, you can use it to do scrum meeting. In addition, it is not for Visual Studio, it got the plug-in for eclipse and Android Studio. Also, it got build agents for Android and Linux too, even you use the cloud version, you can install a build agent on your computer. The on-cloud service can trigger the agent. Lastly, it just supports TFS, it supports ZGit, and can link up any external git system. That is great!

I am working on the redevelopment of AdvGenCMS which is a simple .Net CMS. It built by myself and a couple of intent university students. I have not updated for a few years. These few days, I am working on redevelopment it. Currently, I am working on the authentication framework.I am upgrading that from ASP.net Membership system to ASP.net Identity. In last version, that is using a custom SQL Provider. I found that is more workable with a similar SQL provider. But I need to change the UserStore and my own user class need to be implement IUser interface.
public partial class AdvUser : IAdvUser, IUser

Yesterday, I got a notification from American Express to tell me Android Pay is available in Australia. That is very similar with Apple Pay. In a simple term, you need to install the app and then you tap your phone with EFTPOS machine, instead of your credit card, if your phone supports NFC and with Android 4.4+. That is great. According to Google Blog, there is not amex supporting Android Pay, including ANZ, Westpac, Bank of Melbourne, Bank of South Australia, Bendigo Bank, Cuscal, ING DIRECT, Macquarie Bank, and St. Georg and the most major retailers supports Android Pay too, such as 7-Eleven, Brumby's Bakery, Coles Express, Coles Supermarkets, Crust Gourmet Pizza, Domino’s Pizza Enterprises Limited, Donut King, Gloria Jean’s Coffees, McDonald’s, Michel’s Patisserie, Pizza Capers, and Telstra.
That is great!

Recently, I went to a road trip from Brisbane to Coffs Harbour, that is about 5 hours driving distance from Brisbane. I found I got the 4G connections in major towns, such as Byron Bay and Coffs Harbour. Also, even the small towns, such as yumba, I got 3G connection and I got a stable 3G connection when I travelled on Pacific Highway. That is not bad, a few years ago, there were a lot of back holes of mobile connections. So, I used the Google Map as a primary navigation system and GPS as the second. Google Map is even better, the Map in my GPS is quite old around 2011. A lot of sections in Pacific Highway have changed, GPS cannot work very well in those sections. I has to use Google Map. Another advantage is Google Map has the live traffic data. It helped us to use a different route in Gold Coast for avoiding traffic.

I got a mobile office, I need to work in different clients' office, that is the reason I need to use a laptop. However, when I work in my work, a laptop is not good enough for me and I cannot always work with a smaller screen. Buy a dock station is the best solution for our kind, I can connect an external disk via USB 3.0, which is the data storage for videos and photo and most of dock stations have video card inside, I can connect with monitors from the display ports from dock stations. Then I can have a better work equipment at home! Alternative, there is a cut-budget option, just using an external usb 3.0 hub, which is the solution I am using. I connected the mouse, keyboard and external disks from USB hub. The only down side is only a monitor can use, because I have to the HDMI from the laptop.
By the way, I wish in future, some one can built a dock station with a CPU and ram, so when I park my laptop to the dock station, I can have a better computer. Currently, Microsoft surface is using a similar approach. When the tablet part connected with keyboard, it can connect with the graphic card in the keyboard side, then it can performance better.