Over the past two weeks I've begun moving a lot of my hosting infrastructure onto Microsoft Azure. This has consisted of all sorts of configuration – virtual networks, VPN's, backups, servers, databases and sites. One of my sites uses Code First Migrations at it's core, and during the migration simply nothing would work. After much pain and frustration I made the worst mental leap a developer can make: I came to the simple conclusion that is was everyone else's fault. Like most of these kinds of problems, I was to blame all along.

Windows 8 comes with some pretty awesome new toys, one of these for me is the Music app. As a Windows phone user for many years now I’ve fallen in love with the all-you-can-eat music subscription service that Microsoft has on offer. Sadly for me when I installed Windows 8 the app simply crashed every time I tried to play music. I searched for months and months, and now have the answer – in the hope that I save someone else the heart ache I’m happy to share what I discovered.

One of the most common configurations people use when setting up ELMAH is email exception logging so that you get notified whenever “shit’s goin’ down” on your site. This leads to a follow on issue that stems from this in that you end up receiving 100’s of emails a couple of times a week as your website gets scanned by evil doers looking for vulnerabilities – but there is a simple and elegant solution.