After joining Red Badger a couple of weeks ago, I thought I should share who I am, and some of the things I’ll be working on in the near future. I’m a student at King’s College London studying Computer Science and I applied to join Red Badger a couple of months ago to gain some experience of developing real software in a company which do things the right way.

After a friendly email exchange, I was invited to take part in a programming challenge to whittle down the number of applicants, and give the real developers (now my mentors) a feel for my experience. With a background in C#.NET and web development, combined with a passion for cutting edge technology, Red Badger are a natural fit for my current skillset and how I’d like to develop my skills in future.

My first couple of weeks have so far introduced me to how development at Red Badger works; Agile and highly creative with a strong emphasis on User Experience and Design,development starts with writing spec’s to ensure code quality, attention to detail is very important. I have also spent some time getting acquainted with the tools Red Badger use during collaborative development, such as GitHub for source control and TeamCity for Continuous Integration with integrated Unit Testing.

My main project initially will be Birdsong, Red Badger’s fantastic WP7 twitter client. This should please many of the current users, as it will be receiving a lot of care and attention over the coming weeks after a period of neglect! There are a few features in the pipeline, including support for Trending Topics (both local and global), ReadItLater/Instapaper support for tweeted links and large-scale improvements to the push service.

If you are a current user of Birdsong and have a feature request, now would be a great time to submit it to our support site at http://support.red-badger.com. If you aren’t a current user and you own a Windows Phone, what are you waiting for!

I look forward to learning lots and adding real value to the project and any others I may be involved in in the future!

If you’re a Windows based user of GitHub and using TortoiseGit then it’s highly likely you’ve used PuTTYGen to generate the SSH key you’re using with GitHub and why not – it works fine.  That is until you want to start using TeamCity with GitHub.

If you try to configure your VCS root in TeamCity using the bundled Git plug-in, with a private key generated with PuTTYGen, you’ll likely get the following error: Connection failed!  Repository ‘git@github.com:accountName/repoName.git’: Unable to load identity file: C:\whatever\YourPrivateKey.ppk (passphrase protected)

We spent a while messing around with the different authentication methods available in the TeamCity – trying to configure default .ssh keys for the logged on user, adding SSH config files and nothing worked.

Eventually we re-generated our SSH key using Git Bash, instead of PuTTYGen (as detailed here) and suddenly – Connection successful!

I’ve since discovered that you can get the same result using PuTTYGen, but you have to export your key as a OpenSSH key: Load your existing private key – File/Load private key (enter your passphrase).  Export to OpenSSH – Conversions/Export OpenSSH key.  Use the resulting key as the private key you give to TeamCity.

@dwynne