Reading Notes #459

Every Monday, I share my "reading notes". This are a curated list of all the articles, blog posts, and books that catch my interest during the week and that I found interesting. It's a mix of the actuality and what I consumed.

You think you may have interesting content, share it!

The suggestion of the week

• The benefits of Infrastructure as Code (John Downs ) - A great post that lists and explains all the benefices of using infrastructure as Code in our business. This is the perfect post to read to learn all about it.

Cloud

• Learn How To Do Java On Azure (Nikos Vaggalis) - Great news for Java people free learning content and a video channel too.

• Connecting an Azure Logic App to a local Web API (Developer Support) - A short post that explains/ references a cool demo.

• How to choose the right Azure Event Hubs .NET client library type for your application | Azure SDK Blog (Squire) - Very complete post about EventHub. The perfect place to refresh or get started with this tech.

Programming

• Improvements to the new Razor editor in Visual Studio (Daniel Roth) - Looking forward to trying it.

• Integration Tests for ASP.NET Core Web APIs using MSTest (Changhui Xu) - Interesting post that bridges some gaps missing in the doc and explains how to do integration testing.

Miscellaneous

• Hack a TV into a Teams and Zoom Computer with EpocCam and Miracast (Scott Hanselman) - A nice post that proposed a variety of ideas to change/improve your experience f online meetings.

~Frank 

Reading Notes #336

Cloud

• Azure Tips and Tricks Part 139 - Prevent AzCopy Uploads from maxing out Internet Connection Speed (Michael Crump) - Nice little cool trick.

• Quickly create VSTS Work Items for Application Insights Telemetry from Visual Studio (Abhijit Jana) - Can it be more DevOps than that? I don't think so.

Programming

• 7 best practices for building containers (Google) - This post helps us to improve our skill with containers. It also shares a lot of excellent more detailed references.
• How Postman Can Improve Your API Documentation (Abhinav Asthana) - With openAPI and Postman, our Apis will definitely be easier to consume.
• Using Elasticsearch with ASP.NET Core and Docker (Miroslav Popovic ARCHIVE TAGS) - Interesting post. I like how docker was used in this case.

Miscellaneous

• How to Lead When You’re Feeling Afraid (Peter Bregman) - A really interesting post that will help us, for sure, because we all leave this kind of situation one day or the other.
• Defeating Electron (Felix Rieseberg) - Pretty good is the chance that you are (just like me) using an application builds on top of electron. This post explains a little about what's it happening under the hood.
• Here's Why Your Static Website Needs HTTPS (Troy Hunt) - Definitely a post to read.
• How to Write a Catchy Hook and Title for Your Blog - This post can definitely help us getting inspired.

Reading Notes #214

Suggestion of the week

• Express - This is the perfect post to get started with node.js with Azure. This post starts with you step by step from a vanilla computer running OS X or Linux to your first App.

Cloud

• Troubleshooting – ma llowedContentLength Exceeded - Useful quick post for all the none asp.net user on Azure.
• September update for Web Apps and App Service environments in the Azure Preview Portal (ron Tardif) - Nice post that lists the September features of the new (not preview anymore). Azure portal.
• Microsoft Takes Azure Portal out of Extended Preview (2015 | Richard Seroter on Dec 14) - It's all in the title, but since the devil is in the detail .... that the post to know about it.

Programming

• Setting up Continuous Deployment for Android with VSTS and HockeyApp - HockeyApp is definitely a must for all mobile develpment teams. This post is a nice intro to it and also to VisualStudio Team Services.
• What I Learned After A Week of Visual Studio Code and ASP.NET 5 - I've been too busy (or lazy) to do that test myself and try to do my next project on a Linux machine only with VSCode as tools... that post was a real pleasure to read of that.
• Exploring Azure DocumentDB in Visual Studio (Andrew Hoh) - This post reveals all the feature of this very powerful addition the already great cloud explorer, VisualStudio add-on.
• Visual Studio Code: PowerShell Extension (Sergiy Baydachnyy) - Nice post of a series and cool introduction to a useful vscode extension... if you still don't have already installed it yet.

Data

• Power BI Desktop Custom Visualization (Scott Murray) - Learn more about how Power BI let you expand the Wow effect of your data in this nice post.
• Reading Your Way Into Big Data - Perfect post to get started to the data platform and build your ready queue.

Miscellaneous

• “Fixing” Windows Live Writer’s NotFound - Open Live Writer… - The brand-new Open Live Writer is still very young, this is how walkaround one of the frequent problems.
• Announcing Open Live Writer - An Open Source Fork of Windows Live Writer - Great newsthis llong time amazing tool will probably get a lot of improuvement in the next months.
• Get more awesome Pluralsight content than ever for zero dollars! - That news was the sunshine of my day, now we don't have any excuse not to get our subscription in Plurasign.

Reading Notes #202

 

Suggestion of the week

• Lost in Translation - Azure Networking For Cisco Professionals - A post to bookmark, very useful in our new network related discussion.

Cloud

• Source Control Integration in Azure Automation (Beth Cooper) - Fantastic news. This post shares with us how to take advantage of this useful new feature and configure our source control.
  
• Announcing general availability of backup for Azure IaaS VMs (Trinadh Kotturu) - Great! Now in GA, with some little new extra features like PowerShell script.
  
• How I passed my Azure Certification (MCP) Exams (marc) - Passing a Microsoft certification is a big commitment, this post shares some tips to pass it with success.
  
• Load Testing from different geographies with Cloud-based load testing (Charles Sterling) - Nice quick tutorial.
  
• Azure Adventures - Deploying a JSP Web App to Azure App Service - Great post, first of a series, to get started with the famous mix Java - Azure.
  
• Node.js support for Azure Mobile Apps (Openness Team) - Good news we now have one more option to code our App Service backend.
  
• What’s new with DocumentDB? (John Macintyre) - It's all in one post, all the latest and greatest news about DocumentDB.
  
• Azure Automation-Hybrid Runbook Worker FAQs (Ravi Kiran) - That a lot of very useful questions in one post.

Programming

• Web Development - Building Responsive Web Sites with Bootstrap - Because it's only a question of time before you need it, this is a nice introduction tutorial to a light UI framework.
  
• VSCode Documentation moves to GitHub (Chris Dias) - I really think the documentation is a major piece of VSCode. Having it " to the is a fantastic thing.
  
• How I Use Git On Windows – Remote Repositories (Jesse) - Interesting post that explains how to get setup to work with Git without loc repo.
  
• Free Training at Microsoft Virtual Academy - Introduction to ASP.NET 5 - Awesome series of video to learn very useful stuff.
  
• Dynamically Generating Sitemap.xml for ASP.NET MVC - Good tutorial about a dynamic and benefice tool for our website.

Miscellaneous

• How to write better and faster using templates - Interesting post that shares with us a way to speed-up our writing. Personally, found very productive the time to structure the post since use it to organize my thoughts. Like in "old time" when we were passing through the code to adjust the indentation.
  
• The home media technology of the future is depressingly fragile - Ok I admitted it. I laugh while reading this post, but only because I got an impression of deja vu...

Reading notes #183

Suggestion of the week

• Announcing Azure Service Fabric: Reducing Complexity in a Hyper-scale World (Mark Russinovich) - A very exiting news. I am looking forward to play with that Azure Service Fabric.

Cloud

• Think #Microservices - Very interesting post that explains why microservices are so promissing.
  
• BizTalk in Azure Infrastructure as a Service - Nice post that shares all kinds of scenario for BizTalk in an Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) context.
  
• UPDATED for 2015: How to install the nodejs Ghost blog software on Azure Web Apps (and the Deploy to Azure Button) (Scott Hanselman) - It can be that easy, right? Well, it is!
  
• With Machine Learning, Amazon Wants to Multiply the Power of Big Data (Saroj Kar) - Amazon is joining the machine learning market. the future promise to be interesting.
  
• Tutorial: Using Ant and Jenkins to automate the deployment of Java projects from the Azure Toolkit for Eclipse - MS Open Tech (Martin Sawicki) - Very nice tutorial when java is your thing and Azureyour destination.
  
• Announcing General Availability of Azure Premium Storage - Good news, now we can get more performance from our storage.
  
• Azure PowerShell 101 - Managing the Cloud from the Command Line (Channel 9) (Scott Hanselman) - Great video that shows few tricks to get started with Azure powershell commands.

Programming

• Mobile app privacy insanity – we’re still failing massively at this - Interesting and scaring post about the lack of security in mobile apps.
  
• IoT: Do you really should have knowledge in electronics? (Sergiy Baydachnyy) - Interesting thoughts about how to get started.

Databases

• MongoDB vs. Azure DocumentDB - Interesting post that compares the new kid on the block with an older one.

Miscellaneous

• Windows 10 - The Fast Ring and BUILD 10061 (Scott Hanselman) - Nice video that shows us the evolution of the very processing windows 10.

Reading Notes #116

 

Cloud

• A complete overview to get started with the Windows Azure Scheduler - Very complete tutorial on how to manage the new Azure Job scheduler by code.
  
• Migrating a Java Spring Framework Application to Windows Azure (Gregory Leake) - The starting point for Java developer.
  
• How to write to and read from Windows Azure tables within Web Applications (BrunoTerkaly) - An impossible to fail tutorial that take you by the hand and guide you step by step.
  
• Manage Azure Subscriptions with Office 365 Users (Tyler Doerksen) - Nice tips to manage/add security.
  
• Staying Current on Technology for your Organization (Buck Woody) - Interesting though and methodology to stay up to date with techno.
  
• Migrating Database Workloads to the Cloud - Great source of information. This article describes all the scenarios with the pros and cons then helps you in the steps to do it.

Programming

• Code Maps in Visual Studio 2013 - Interesting feature that improves a lot the visualization of our code.

Channel 9 has an excellent streaming video that covers Code Maps here 

Databases

• re: Why You Should Never Use MongoDB (Ayende Rahien) - NoSQL is very popular, but we should learn and do our homework before starting a big project, like this post shows us.

Miscellaneous

• Using Surface RT for presentations (Gunnar Peipman) - Really?! I'm honestly surprise by the ordinary/medium performance...

~Frank

Reading Notes #45

Cloud

• 5 tips for surviving a cloud outage (Brandon Butler) - More focus in Amazon web services this post in fact is saying don't put all your eggs in the same basket.
• Say Hello to Windows Azure, The World’s Most Misunderstood Cloud (Cade Metz) - Azure is different. It represents the new Microsoft. This post relates two stories of companies that move from Amazon to Azure.

“Azure lets us focus on our product rather than focusing on how we need to scale the application”

• Windows Azure Storage for the ASP.NET Developer (Adam Hoffman) - What a nice post. Clear explanations, with great references and it come from a series.

“For a rich comparison of SQL Azure and Windows Azure Table storage, see Joseph Fultz’s MSDN Magazine article at: http://aka.ms/SQLAzureVsAzureTables.”

• Scale-First Approach to Database Design with Federations: Part 2 – Annotating and Deploying Schema for Federations (Cihan Biyikoglu) - Second part of a series about Azure SQL Federations, this post explain all the particularities of the database to know before deploying for a optimum results.
• Joining the dots in the cloud - Nice post about the new collection of cloud tools that will help you to connect services or applications together and the things you should be aware of.
• CloudDrive: Possible Data Loss when calling Create() or CreateIfNotExist() on existing drives - Hopefully the SDK 1.7 is coming soon and the "feature" will be fix. However this is a excellent workaround.
• Load Testing in cloud using Visual Studio (Vignesh C) - Good idea for a load test using Azure.

“This blog has three posts that give detailed explanation of how a test rig with Controller and Agents can be created in Windows Azure.”

• Networking in the Cloud–Understanding Windows Azure Traffic Manager - Great post to get started with the Azure Traffic Manager. Of course to master it you should do the lab, but this post will help to understand the high level concepts.
• Four Different Ways to Get Windows Azure Accounts and Services - I'm sure there one that fits you.
• Run the Azure worker role in elevated mode to register HttpListener - Nice workaround to be able to use Raven in an Azure worker role.
• Windows Azure Learning Path–Start Here (Brian H. Prince) - Preface of the great learn Azure post series and introduce a contest.
• Windows Azure Learning Path–Level 100 (Brian H. Prince) - First of a series that regroup a lot of information to get started on Windows Azure.
• Windows Azure Learning Path–Level 200 (Brian H. Prince) - Great exercises about storage
• Windows Azure Learning Path–Level 300 (Brian H. Prince) - Third of a series, this post regroup advanced exercises reference (level 300) about the Azure connectivity options.
• Part I of III - How to access an Azure OAuth v2 ACS secured service with Java (mbutler01) - First post of series of three about how to use oAuth v2 with Java using ACS.

“There does not seem to be any good working OAUTH v2 examples for Java using ACS”

• Windows Azure App Scaling to Need (Grigori Melnik, Julian Dominguez) - Very nice video about Wasabi the Windows auto-scaling Application block. A must.
• How to Use Windows Azure for a Small Web Site (avsol) - Good tutorial that give a lot of tips on how you could do you setup for a small web site.

Programming

• Introducing Workspace Reloader - A Visual Studio AddIn to save your open files across project reloads - Nice post about a little Visual Studio Add-in that will keep your files open when the solution is re-loaded.
• Ruby tricks: Array syntax (chatgris) - Quick post quick tricks... now I looking forward the next time I will try it.
• Ajax Control Toolkit May 2012 Release - Great! The timing is perfect. One day after this new release some project arrived and they need exactly this new version of the upload control... thanks!

Miscellaneous

• Thinking The Wrong Things About E-Book Pricing - Interesting topic: How much should cost a e-book?
• Trust Me, I'm Lying (Jeff Atwood) - Interesting post. Why lying is necessary.
• SlideShare and LinkedIn sitting in a tree… (rashmi) - Great new for both SlideShare and LinkedIn... A perfect match.

~Frank