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July 2014

Adding a Custom Domain from Namecheap to Microsoft Azure

To add a custom domain name to a website hosted on Microsoft Azure (like this website), you must first go into the Azure’s SCALE configuration page and make sure the web hosting plan mode is anything above Free mode. For me, I picked Shared mode.

Web hosting plan mode

You’ll then see a “Manage Domains” button at the bottom of Azure. Click that and you will see “THE IP ADDRESS TO USE WHEN YOU CONFIGURE A RECORDS”. Keep note of the IP address.

First, we have to go into Namecheap. Click on the domain you want to use, and click “All Host Records” on the left side under Host Management.

We need to create one “A (Address)” and three “CNAME (Alias)” entries. Create the entries as shown below:

HOST NAME     IP Address/URL                         Record Type
@             <the IP address from Azure>            A
www           <website>.azurewebsites.net.           CNAME
awverify      awverify.<website>.azurewebsites.net.  CNAME
awverify.www  awverify.<website>.azurewebsites.net.  CNAME

Save the settings and you should be done with Namecheap.

Namecheap host records

Now lastly, go back into Azure’s “Manage Custom Domains” and type in the domain name that you’ve just configured. The input box should show a green checkmark indicating that Azure was able to communicate with your domain name on Namecheap.

Azure manage custom domains

Click the checkmark and you can now access your Azure website with your custom domain!

Becoming a Software Engineer

hackreactor

I quit my IT job 2 weeks ago so that I could attend a coding boot camp called Hack Reactor. It is a 12 week course (6 days a week, 11 hours a day) that started today. Based on the previous graduations, 99% of the students found a software engineering job within 3 months with an average starting salary of $105,000, as of this blog post date.

I’m super excited and can’t wait to see how much I will grow and where I will be after I graduate.

Samsung TV Overscan HDMI Fix

I connect my hackintosh to my Samsung TV to watch movies, but there’s a problem where the TV cuts off part of the edges.

tv1-edgecut

If I open up the OS X Displays Preferences, there’s a checkbox for “Overscan”. Unchecking it will show my entire desktop on the TV with nothing cut off, but now there’s a black border.

tv2-osx tv2-osxoverscanoff
So I’ve been using it like that for a few weeks now, but I decided to look for a fix to get rid of the black borders. I searched online and found this post from storageforum.net: How to Disable overscan on a Samsung “SMART” tv – solved

What the user Sol did was changing the “Edit Name” for the HDMI connection to “PC”. So I tried it out.

tv3-hdmi tv3-edit tv3-pc
Success?? No, not yet. It only made the black border even bigger for me!

tv4

I opened up the OS X Displays Preferences again, and turned Overscan back On, and voila! My whole desktop can be seen now, with no black borders on the Samsung TV!

tv5

P.S. My Samsung TV is new, and I haven’t removed the plastics and energy guide sticker yet. :)