Thursday, June 11th, is the inaugural Festival of Excellence event to be held here at University of Toronto's Varsity Centre Stadium, a beautiful and intimate field in the uptown core near Bay and Bloor. The complex is recently renovated with a striking blue synthetic track and 5000 seat grandstand. Standing room only tickets for this event are $25 dollars while grandstand seating ranges from $50 (obstructed view seats) to $110 dollars, with finish line seats at $160 and finish area (whatever that means) at $250.
The depth of this field gets richer by the day. 100m and 200m WR holder Usain Bolt will be competing in the 100m against the likes of Shawn Crawford and Ivory Williams. The 400m sports our own Tyler Christopher and LeShawn Merritt while the mens 5000 meters has 3 sub-13 entries in Saif Shaheen, Boniface Kiprop and Ahmad Abdullah. Lists for the women's events have yet to be posted.
I think I'd like to go. I better get tickets soon or be stuck with bad seating. I think the $75 grandstand seating would be a steal for an event of this calibre, and who knows when we'll see this kind of talent in Toronto (or even Canada) again, barring winning an Olympic bid.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Friday, May 22, 2009
Sharepoint and Infopath
A departure from the usual running related info.
In my real daytime job I write code. The platform for the last few years has been web related code and I'm currently writing against MOSS 2007 (Sharepoint) and Infopath. We're using Infopath as the means to access content since it's easily modifiable by customers without the need for a development environment. This implies, unfortunately, that's it's not a development environment itself.
Infopath has been around a little while, it lets users create forms for use with workflows and a way of entering metadata with documents. It's matched with Sharepoint's document modelling and they two go hand in hand. If you install Infopath 2007, you can create and modify forms for your company and they're easily deployed and maintained using Sharepoint central administration.
What it doesn't do well at all is allow designing a form in one environment and deploying it to another. As a software developer, this is what I do all the time. This is the whole gist of enterprise level development. I've been saddled with the task of wrenching what I can out of these forms for the last couple of years. If I'd known what I was getting myself into, I would have gladly handed this over to another member of our team.
Infopath is an ad-hoc tool. You have an installation already, you create and deploy forms on it for users to use. It's architected this way, this is it's basic design. In the past, Infopath forms and templates were comparable to Word documents and Excel spreadsheets in that you really need the installed client to use them, and with Infopath you don't have any other way of using them, the technology is proprietary. To ease the customer burden, Microsoft took advantage of XSLT technology as a way of being able to render form content in a web browser. The introduction of Infopath forms services grants access to forms and form content through the browser. There's some tradeoffs with this, and this is where the fun begins.
First off, once designed in the browser, more than half the functionality of Infopath disappears. Many usable controls won't work in the browser, dynamic access to the document model is suddenly restricted. HTML is stateless and therefore the dynamic interplay of form and host goes out the window.
Secondly, the introduction of forms services inherently creates it's own tier in the architecture. This brings the dreaded NTLM double-hop restriction into clear play. As most deployments of forms and forms services will be in such environments of at least 2 tiers, virtually everyone who's ever implemented Infopath through forms services has encountered this problem.
As a bonus, data connection errors in Infopath are displayed to the user as the completely useless 5566 error, which claims an error has been logged in the event viewer (which is a lie, unless you've explicitly written errors to the event viewer yourself in the web services you may be hitting, or not) and gives virutally no detail on what went wrong. To troubleshoot, you need to peruse IIS and Sharepoint logs to see what happened. This doesn't always work because sometimes the call never makes it to the actual server, so you have nothing to go by. And don't think you can just bring up native Infopath to help (as Infopath will display the actually error encountered), because almost always the problem will not occur in native Infopath with it's direct calls to the web services, thus avoiding double-hop scenarios.
To help alleviate the problems, data connection files can play the role of intermediary between Infopath, forms services and the service layers you're trying to reach. It doesn't necessarily solve them, but it at least gives you a fighting chance of getting things to work. For starters, you can add explicit credentials to the connection files (bad idea from a security standpoint, but it usually will work). Or you can leverage some back end help in the form of Single sign on, Kerberos authentication, or forms services proxy. The forms services proxy is a bit of a mystery, there's tons of info telling you how to enable it and get the forms to use it, but squat explaining what it actually does from within. Kerberos ain't all that welcome either as it and Infopath don't seem to get along very well, as we're now discovering in our rollouts. It's less about Infopath in this case and more about web services, but you have few options on how to access server content in Infopath without web services. You'll find that you'll need to go back to Visual Studio to make your web services Kerberos friendly before this option is viable.
I can only recommend to anyone out there that's planning on using these tools that they should do their homework first. There's much more information available than when I started, and I sure could have used the information in the links below when I started this. Good luck, you'll need it.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms771995.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc704269.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms772101.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/infopath/archive/2006/10/02/Data-Connections-in-Browser-Forms.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb787184.aspx#ip2007AdvancedServerSideAuthentication_UsingtheSingleSignonService
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms464040.aspx
http://www.thenewmossness.com/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=19
In my real daytime job I write code. The platform for the last few years has been web related code and I'm currently writing against MOSS 2007 (Sharepoint) and Infopath. We're using Infopath as the means to access content since it's easily modifiable by customers without the need for a development environment. This implies, unfortunately, that's it's not a development environment itself.
Infopath has been around a little while, it lets users create forms for use with workflows and a way of entering metadata with documents. It's matched with Sharepoint's document modelling and they two go hand in hand. If you install Infopath 2007, you can create and modify forms for your company and they're easily deployed and maintained using Sharepoint central administration.
What it doesn't do well at all is allow designing a form in one environment and deploying it to another. As a software developer, this is what I do all the time. This is the whole gist of enterprise level development. I've been saddled with the task of wrenching what I can out of these forms for the last couple of years. If I'd known what I was getting myself into, I would have gladly handed this over to another member of our team.
Infopath is an ad-hoc tool. You have an installation already, you create and deploy forms on it for users to use. It's architected this way, this is it's basic design. In the past, Infopath forms and templates were comparable to Word documents and Excel spreadsheets in that you really need the installed client to use them, and with Infopath you don't have any other way of using them, the technology is proprietary. To ease the customer burden, Microsoft took advantage of XSLT technology as a way of being able to render form content in a web browser. The introduction of Infopath forms services grants access to forms and form content through the browser. There's some tradeoffs with this, and this is where the fun begins.
First off, once designed in the browser, more than half the functionality of Infopath disappears. Many usable controls won't work in the browser, dynamic access to the document model is suddenly restricted. HTML is stateless and therefore the dynamic interplay of form and host goes out the window.
Secondly, the introduction of forms services inherently creates it's own tier in the architecture. This brings the dreaded NTLM double-hop restriction into clear play. As most deployments of forms and forms services will be in such environments of at least 2 tiers, virtually everyone who's ever implemented Infopath through forms services has encountered this problem.
As a bonus, data connection errors in Infopath are displayed to the user as the completely useless 5566 error, which claims an error has been logged in the event viewer (which is a lie, unless you've explicitly written errors to the event viewer yourself in the web services you may be hitting, or not) and gives virutally no detail on what went wrong. To troubleshoot, you need to peruse IIS and Sharepoint logs to see what happened. This doesn't always work because sometimes the call never makes it to the actual server, so you have nothing to go by. And don't think you can just bring up native Infopath to help (as Infopath will display the actually error encountered), because almost always the problem will not occur in native Infopath with it's direct calls to the web services, thus avoiding double-hop scenarios.
To help alleviate the problems, data connection files can play the role of intermediary between Infopath, forms services and the service layers you're trying to reach. It doesn't necessarily solve them, but it at least gives you a fighting chance of getting things to work. For starters, you can add explicit credentials to the connection files (bad idea from a security standpoint, but it usually will work). Or you can leverage some back end help in the form of Single sign on, Kerberos authentication, or forms services proxy. The forms services proxy is a bit of a mystery, there's tons of info telling you how to enable it and get the forms to use it, but squat explaining what it actually does from within. Kerberos ain't all that welcome either as it and Infopath don't seem to get along very well, as we're now discovering in our rollouts. It's less about Infopath in this case and more about web services, but you have few options on how to access server content in Infopath without web services. You'll find that you'll need to go back to Visual Studio to make your web services Kerberos friendly before this option is viable.
I can only recommend to anyone out there that's planning on using these tools that they should do their homework first. There's much more information available than when I started, and I sure could have used the information in the links below when I started this. Good luck, you'll need it.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms771995.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc704269.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms772101.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/infopath/archive/2006/10/02/Data-Connections-in-Browser-Forms.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb787184.aspx#ip2007AdvancedServerSideAuthentication_UsingtheSingleSignonService
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms464040.aspx
http://www.thenewmossness.com/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=19
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Mississauga Half Marathon
1:33:02
I'm good with that. I'd figured on a 1:35 based on my training. My 5k on Wednesday evening gave me some hope for a better finish. It's hard to say if that race impacted my finish today. I was glad for the hard workout which let me get a better feel for the effort and I could handle breathing harder as a result. On the downside my quads were a bit sore throughout the race but honestly never became a problem. Were I doing the full, I'm sure it really would have shown up, but I could handle it over the half.
This was about 5 seconds faster than I had run this course 2 years ago. I wasn't in great shape then either, so maybe with a little work I can reclaim a PR here next year, even though I'll be in a new age bracket then. It was nice to see the sub 22 opening 5k, despite being into the wind, and being able to keep in the 22's the whole race. In case anyone else ran this and didn't notice, the 10k sign is about 250 meters past the actual 10k split point.
All and all, a good effort. A bit chilly down there, but good for running the half. I'm curious how those doing the full handled that N/W wind.
I'm good with that. I'd figured on a 1:35 based on my training. My 5k on Wednesday evening gave me some hope for a better finish. It's hard to say if that race impacted my finish today. I was glad for the hard workout which let me get a better feel for the effort and I could handle breathing harder as a result. On the downside my quads were a bit sore throughout the race but honestly never became a problem. Were I doing the full, I'm sure it really would have shown up, but I could handle it over the half.
This was about 5 seconds faster than I had run this course 2 years ago. I wasn't in great shape then either, so maybe with a little work I can reclaim a PR here next year, even though I'll be in a new age bracket then. It was nice to see the sub 22 opening 5k, despite being into the wind, and being able to keep in the 22's the whole race. In case anyone else ran this and didn't notice, the 10k sign is about 250 meters past the actual 10k split point.
All and all, a good effort. A bit chilly down there, but good for running the half. I'm curious how those doing the full handled that N/W wind.
Friday, May 08, 2009
1 day, 14 hours, 24 minutes, 12 seconds
So it says on the banner when I navigated to the Mississauga Marathon main page.
I've done Mississauga 3 times. I ran the inaugural run, doing the half marathon, finishing in 86th place of 1907 participants. If memory serves me right (and that would be rare), I believe the 10k didn't finish at the same location the half and full did in the first year. So that puts me as one of the first hundred people to ever cross that finish line.
The second run was the full in 2005, and got me a ticket to Boston. I last ran it in 2007, doing the half and a reasonable 1:33ish finish. This year I'm not so sure what to expect. My longs are in the 14-16 mile category and run nearly every week, I've been trying to sustain that all important mid week mid long. Bigger weeks as of late (50s and 60s) have me tired on my longs, but the pace hasn't reflected it as I've been able to run 16 in the mid 8's, even though I've been trying to keep them easy. My 5k race on Wednesday (or, more accurately, my 4.7k race) was run at about a 6:40/mile pace, so that shows some pace improvement as spring moves on. It's not a matter of getting faster, it's a matter of being able to hold the pace that seems to improve when the miles get up there.
I skip this race every other year mainly due to the timing. It falls on Mother's day, and I can't exactly make that day for me every year for obvious reasons. It would be nice if they could move it by a weekend, then I could make it my late spring staple. Or maybe I could have Mother's day moved?
Anyway, for the others that are making the trek to Miserysauga on Saturday and Sunday, good luck to all!
I've done Mississauga 3 times. I ran the inaugural run, doing the half marathon, finishing in 86th place of 1907 participants. If memory serves me right (and that would be rare), I believe the 10k didn't finish at the same location the half and full did in the first year. So that puts me as one of the first hundred people to ever cross that finish line.
The second run was the full in 2005, and got me a ticket to Boston. I last ran it in 2007, doing the half and a reasonable 1:33ish finish. This year I'm not so sure what to expect. My longs are in the 14-16 mile category and run nearly every week, I've been trying to sustain that all important mid week mid long. Bigger weeks as of late (50s and 60s) have me tired on my longs, but the pace hasn't reflected it as I've been able to run 16 in the mid 8's, even though I've been trying to keep them easy. My 5k race on Wednesday (or, more accurately, my 4.7k race) was run at about a 6:40/mile pace, so that shows some pace improvement as spring moves on. It's not a matter of getting faster, it's a matter of being able to hold the pace that seems to improve when the miles get up there.
I skip this race every other year mainly due to the timing. It falls on Mother's day, and I can't exactly make that day for me every year for obvious reasons. It would be nice if they could move it by a weekend, then I could make it my late spring staple. Or maybe I could have Mother's day moved?
Anyway, for the others that are making the trek to Miserysauga on Saturday and Sunday, good luck to all!
Thursday, May 07, 2009
My First Win!
If you're a runner, you can't help but fantasize about barrelling down the finishing straight, a multitude of spectators wildly applauding as you break the finish line tap, your arms raised in glorious victory and hoards of runners start filing in behind you, each relegated to serving their personal goals rather than that big one.
So let's first make a few adjustments.
There were no wildly applauding spectators. There was the race crew, comprising of two co-directors, a photographer, a small handful of setup volunteers and the guy riding the lead bike.
There was no finish line tape, just a line. There were no hoards of runners filing in behind me, unless 6 constitutes a hoard.
However, a W is a W, and a W is what I got. The race was part of a 64 race summer series known as the Beat the Recession 5k Trail Series put on by a couple of enthusiastic runners that have staged events before. It's 20 dollars per event, whether you sign up online or onsite. The courses aren't deadly accurate or certified, but most trail racing is more about the course than the distance, it's a race, not a time trial. The events move from location to location, and this one was located a convenient 1 mile warmup jog from my house. Makes it kind of obligatory to enter. Future events are located here and there around Toronto in small city and regional parks. These are easy trails, not the kind you encounter in the 5 Peaks series where you need your wits about you every second to avoid having something really bad happen to you.
It was fun to lead the pack, to have the bicycle escorting me through the route and clearing the way. It was small and would have constituted 'cherry picking' if I'd known who was going to be there, but I showed up not really knowing what to expect. Their innaugural event last Sunday featured 2008 Toronto Marathon winner Daniel Mburu of Kenya, who took the win in a casual 17:16 (compared to my 19:26). I'm sure it was not much over a jog for him. For me, it was leave part of my lung on the course, as I hoped nobody in the group behind me was sandbagging it.
They return to this venue again in 3 weeks. I'm hoping support for the series picks up. It's fun, well organized and fairly casual at the same time. And it's cheap, anytime you can get a race in for 20 bucks, it's a good deal. I know I need the occasional race to get the legs turning over, speed workouts and tempo runs don't quite reach the same level as gutting it out in a race.
This morning I felt fine, did a nice easy 5 miles and had no after affects to deal with. My concern was getting a bit burned before Sunday's half in Mississauga.
It appears that Ryder Photo did the event photography, as their website has a link to it, hopefully whatever pics they took will be up soon. I'm thinking I was looking a bit stressed down the chute.
So let's first make a few adjustments.
There were no wildly applauding spectators. There was the race crew, comprising of two co-directors, a photographer, a small handful of setup volunteers and the guy riding the lead bike.
There was no finish line tape, just a line. There were no hoards of runners filing in behind me, unless 6 constitutes a hoard.
However, a W is a W, and a W is what I got. The race was part of a 64 race summer series known as the Beat the Recession 5k Trail Series put on by a couple of enthusiastic runners that have staged events before. It's 20 dollars per event, whether you sign up online or onsite. The courses aren't deadly accurate or certified, but most trail racing is more about the course than the distance, it's a race, not a time trial. The events move from location to location, and this one was located a convenient 1 mile warmup jog from my house. Makes it kind of obligatory to enter. Future events are located here and there around Toronto in small city and regional parks. These are easy trails, not the kind you encounter in the 5 Peaks series where you need your wits about you every second to avoid having something really bad happen to you.
It was fun to lead the pack, to have the bicycle escorting me through the route and clearing the way. It was small and would have constituted 'cherry picking' if I'd known who was going to be there, but I showed up not really knowing what to expect. Their innaugural event last Sunday featured 2008 Toronto Marathon winner Daniel Mburu of Kenya, who took the win in a casual 17:16 (compared to my 19:26). I'm sure it was not much over a jog for him. For me, it was leave part of my lung on the course, as I hoped nobody in the group behind me was sandbagging it.
They return to this venue again in 3 weeks. I'm hoping support for the series picks up. It's fun, well organized and fairly casual at the same time. And it's cheap, anytime you can get a race in for 20 bucks, it's a good deal. I know I need the occasional race to get the legs turning over, speed workouts and tempo runs don't quite reach the same level as gutting it out in a race.
This morning I felt fine, did a nice easy 5 miles and had no after affects to deal with. My concern was getting a bit burned before Sunday's half in Mississauga.
It appears that Ryder Photo did the event photography, as their website has a link to it, hopefully whatever pics they took will be up soon. I'm thinking I was looking a bit stressed down the chute.
Monday, May 04, 2009
Dead slow Monday
Man, was I slow today. Progression run on Saturday and just under 16 yesterday, the two together kinda took the pop out of me for a day. I did a lowly 2 miles at a 12ish pace this morning (I never concern myself with recovery pace, I just saunter along at whatever feels good no matter how slow) then added 4 at lunchtime at a more normal easy pace of 9 but just didn't feel very energetic.
Yesterday I popped downtown to watch the runners at the Sporting Life 10k, catching most of the 12,000+ as they rounded the bend at Yonge and Richmond. I was then thinking I should have joined them, the RDs added 800 spots at the last minute at a reduced rate (sans T-shirt) if you just wanted to run without the goodies.
I've got 6 days to the Mississauga half, toying with how to spend the week. I did 62 last week, I think I'll just cut volume the last 2 days prior and go with that. Weather at this point shows cloudy and chance of a shower, temps okay. It's been a while since I've raced a half, still not feeling like I've regained my levels back from a docile winter.
Yesterday I popped downtown to watch the runners at the Sporting Life 10k, catching most of the 12,000+ as they rounded the bend at Yonge and Richmond. I was then thinking I should have joined them, the RDs added 800 spots at the last minute at a reduced rate (sans T-shirt) if you just wanted to run without the goodies.
I've got 6 days to the Mississauga half, toying with how to spend the week. I did 62 last week, I think I'll just cut volume the last 2 days prior and go with that. Weather at this point shows cloudy and chance of a shower, temps okay. It's been a while since I've raced a half, still not feeling like I've regained my levels back from a docile winter.
Friday, May 01, 2009
Back in the 200's
Managed to squeeze in just over 200 in April. It's been a peculiar spring up this way, it's like the weather really doesn't want to break. On the flip side we've had some pretty hot days going in to the 80's a couple of times, but for the most part it's been coolish with a persistent wind. The sun make sup the difference, keeping it feeling warm. Good for running, keeps you feeling comfortable once you've warmed up.
I'm looking forward to the Mississauga half next weekend, it'll be my first race since the Hair of the Dog on New Year's Day. I'm keeping the race and running budget down to the bare minimum this year. I'm finding race fees getting more and more out of hand. It follows the concept of what the market will bear, and as long as folks are willing to hand over 50, 80, 100, even more for race fees, then events and RDs will continue to charge those numbers.
There used to be a few sources of cheap races in the area. The Ontario Roadrunners Association used to host their 'Orange' race series, which gave fun little 5k and 10k events at about 15 dollars for a non-member like me. As a bonus they were held in the park I train in which meant a warmup jog from the house to the start line. These events are history now. As a substitute I was running some XC stuff the Ontario Masters were doing, but they've also bumped fees for non-members (mostly a ploy to get you to join...the race fee is the same as a membership fee...that sneaky Dougie Smith :-) ). I might join up, maybe next year when I turn 50 and I really do feel like a master. I'm still just a young gun.
Anyway, I'm limiting myself to this, the Nightcrawler, maybe the Toronto Challenge as I mentioned last post, and maybe a fall half (or even full, depends on my training).
Speaking of people willing to pay expensive race fees, the Sporting Life 10k goes this Sunday. I imported the confirmation list from the website and came up with 11900 entries. This includes 7 Kenyans and 4 Ethiopians (just in case any locals had designs on the win). This will be my destination for Sunday morning, sprinting down to catch the leaders as the turn off Yonge Street, which makes for a great viewing point as you can see them well up the street. New course this year, they've finishing in Fort York and they'll be turning west off Yonge onto Richmond. Years past, the exited Yonge east and looped back to finish below the CN Tower, which meant I could see the leaders turn off Yonge, then jog over and catch them at the finish. Can't do it this year, I have to run just as far as the leaders to get there, so I have to choose my vantage point. I'll still be able to catch the pack at the finish line. The new route cuts down on cheating to, there's no short cut as they route is already the shortest distance.
I'm looking forward to the Mississauga half next weekend, it'll be my first race since the Hair of the Dog on New Year's Day. I'm keeping the race and running budget down to the bare minimum this year. I'm finding race fees getting more and more out of hand. It follows the concept of what the market will bear, and as long as folks are willing to hand over 50, 80, 100, even more for race fees, then events and RDs will continue to charge those numbers.
There used to be a few sources of cheap races in the area. The Ontario Roadrunners Association used to host their 'Orange' race series, which gave fun little 5k and 10k events at about 15 dollars for a non-member like me. As a bonus they were held in the park I train in which meant a warmup jog from the house to the start line. These events are history now. As a substitute I was running some XC stuff the Ontario Masters were doing, but they've also bumped fees for non-members (mostly a ploy to get you to join...the race fee is the same as a membership fee...that sneaky Dougie Smith :-) ). I might join up, maybe next year when I turn 50 and I really do feel like a master. I'm still just a young gun.
Anyway, I'm limiting myself to this, the Nightcrawler, maybe the Toronto Challenge as I mentioned last post, and maybe a fall half (or even full, depends on my training).
Speaking of people willing to pay expensive race fees, the Sporting Life 10k goes this Sunday. I imported the confirmation list from the website and came up with 11900 entries. This includes 7 Kenyans and 4 Ethiopians (just in case any locals had designs on the win). This will be my destination for Sunday morning, sprinting down to catch the leaders as the turn off Yonge Street, which makes for a great viewing point as you can see them well up the street. New course this year, they've finishing in Fort York and they'll be turning west off Yonge onto Richmond. Years past, the exited Yonge east and looped back to finish below the CN Tower, which meant I could see the leaders turn off Yonge, then jog over and catch them at the finish. Can't do it this year, I have to run just as far as the leaders to get there, so I have to choose my vantage point. I'll still be able to catch the pack at the finish line. The new route cuts down on cheating to, there's no short cut as they route is already the shortest distance.
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