Shirohida

From Blogspot to Octopress/Github

I’ve finally moved my blog from Blogspot to Github pages. The blog is now powered by Octopress. Blogspot was convient but for a developer there are several reasons to switch. Octopress generates a static website that can be deployed anywhere so you gain independence from a service provider. Your posts are Markdown files that can be authored in your favorite editor. The blog source is under version control. Another great feature: code syntax highlighting works out of the box.

Windows Vista Credential Providers

In Windows Vista Microsoft has adopted so called credential providers as a way to log into the system. Your custom GINA library won’t work in Vista so you will have to write a COM component that implements ICredentialProvider and ICredentialProviderCredential interfaces. I found it pretty easy to write a custom credential provider (the one that works with electronic keys). There are a good introduction into the new model, samples and technical reference.