Reading Notes #308

Suggestion of the week

• Serverless^2 - Azure Logic Apps and Azure Container Instances (Michal Smereczynski) - Great news! So much simpler than installing Azure PowerShell into the Function App... I'm starting to use it right away!

Cloud

• Continuous Deployment of Azure Functions with Slots (Thomas Ardal) - Nice tutorial that explains how to deploy Azure functions and why doing it that way.
• Azure Application Architecture Guide (Mike Wasson) - A free book (pdf only) with all the best of the AzureCAT team? You really don't want to miss that opportunity.
• Azure Cloud Shell (Scott Hanselman) - Ooooooh, I love it!
• Running the Azure Functions runtime in containers on Kubernetes and more (Shayne Boyer) - Very cool update that opens many possibilities.
• Serverless^2 - Azure Logic Apps and Azure Container Instances (Michal Smereczynski) - Great news! So much simpler than installing Azure PowerShell into the Function App... I'm starting to use it right away!
• Understanding Azure Event Grid ( Jason Roberts) - Nice little post that introduces event grid, differentiate it from the service bus, and quickly go over the pricing.
• Cloud en 5 minutes (Frank Boucher) - If French is your primary language, I just start a Youtube channel where every Wednesday I will publish a new video. // Si le français est votre langue première, je viens de lancer une chaine Youtube où à chaque mercredi je publirai un nouveau vidéo.

Programming

• Introducing metaparticle.io - making Kubernetes and Docker idiomatic for developers (Shayne Boyer) - Wow.pretty cool idea, I like it. It looks so simple.

Miscellaneous

• How to download embedded videos with F12 Tools in your browser (Scott Hanselman) - Very useful hack to build your airplain mode video Playlist.

Reading Notes #304

Cloud

• Application Insights: VSTS dashboard chart widget now available (Mike Gresley) - Woohoo! Finally, it's there. I'm going to add it to all my projects right now.
• Monitor Azure services and applications using Grafana (Ashwin Kamath) - I didn't know that tool, but now it's definitely under my radar.
• Azure Durable Functions: Making Serverless Last (Mary Branscombe) - A great post that introduces the durable function and explains where it fits in the integration offer.

Programming

• Creating a Minimal ASP.NET Core Windows Container (Jeffrey T. Fritz) - This is an amazing post that shows how to optimize our containers. It may be about Asp.Net Core but it applies to any containers. It also shows one of the big improvements with .Net Core...
• WebOptimizer - a Bundler and Minifier for ASP.NET Core (Scott Hanselman) - This post shares a nice little tool available for Asp.Net Core.
• Why Is It So Difficult To Get Started Writing Automated Tests? (Matthew Jones) - So many very good questions are asked in this post, but what are the answers?

Databases

• Automatic tuning will be a new default (Veljko Vasic) - An important post t read and share to avoid any panic in January.

Podcast

• EntreLeadership #231: Renée Mauborgne—Move Beyond Competing (EntreLeadership Team) - A great episode with a few tools that look very interesting... And of course, a book reference that you should add to you to read list.
• Dotnet Rocks - 1491 Building VSTS using VSTS with Dan Hellem and Rogan Ferguson (Carl Franklin, Richard Campbell) - Great show about VSTS... If you using or think of using the tool... That's for you.

Miscellaneous

• I Don’t Have Time is a Myth (Donn Felker) - I love it. We have so many opportunities; we just need to take them.
• The Main Challenges of Building Machine Learning Tech (Donn Felker) - Very interesting article about AI.
• Why I won't be switching to VSCode any time soon - A geek with a hat (Swizec Teller) - I was surprised when I saw the title of this post, how could you not like VsCode? However, after reading it, I understand. Through preferences are personal, VSCode does a lot and needs a bit more than few minutes to be tame. I got also overwhelmed when I started using it. The secret is the documentation... and sometimes. Then it becomes whatever you want.

Reading Notes #302

Cloud

• Azure Event Grid vs Azure IoT Hub: Which is better for IoT? (Chris Pietschmann) - This great post explains both services and then their differences. Both can do most of the time, but when it becomes serious, which one is the best for your scenario?
• Azure Virtual Machines Anatomy (Vincent-Philippe Lauzon) - This post is an excellent biopsy of a virtual machine, it explains every part one by one.
• Experiment with Azure for FREE! (Anthony D. Green) - It's time to get started; it's free, and it's the real deal.
• List all App Service web apps outbound IP addresses used in a subscription (Stéphane Lapointe) - Nice little gem.
• User accounts made easy with Azure (Andrew B Hall) - Excellent post showings how easy it is to integrate user management in our app. I wish I had that when I started my last portal...

Programming

• You Have No Excuse for Dead Code (Erik Dietrich) - This post explains why more is not always better.

Data

• Azure Data Lake Tools for Visual Studio Code (VSCode) October Updates (Jenny Jiang) - What I like about VSCode is that it is so customizable, it can still be very light and do a fantastic job for people with highly different goals.

Miscellaneous

• Use a second laptop as an extended monitor with Windows 10 wireless displays (Scott Hanselman) - Wow! How cool is that!
• Why You Shouldn't Worry About Imposter Syndrome (Jordan Scheltgen) - This post is a great piece of wisdom.

Reading Notes #297

Suggestion of the week

• How to uninstall Scrum (Erwin Verweij) - When you will read that post (because you must read it... Seriously), you will smile, giggle and maybe even laugh.

Cloud

• Azure Tips and Tricks Part 14 - Generate SSH public key to log into Linux VM with Cloud Shell (Azure Tips and Tricks Part 14 - Generate SSH public key to log into Linux VM with Cloud Shell was published on September 11, 2017.) - Doing a remote desktop on a Windows VM is trivial, but doing the same thing on a Linux machine required just a little more. After reading this post will be a walk in the park.

• Azure Tips and Tricks Part 16 - Deploy Jekyll Site Hosted on GitHub Pages to Azure (Azure Tips and Tricks Part 16 - Deploy Jekyll Site Hosted on GitHub Pages to Azure was published on September 13, 2017.) - I use Jekyll on Azure, and I love it. If you would like to try it, this post is all you need.

• Getting Started with Windows Containers (Alina Popa) - A cool tutorial that uses a few popular tech these days.

• Keep credentials out of code: Introducing Azure AD Managed Service Identity (Stuart Kwan) - Great post that explains what the new service is, and how it works.It also suggests a tutorial to learn how to implement it. Awesome!

• Why is Serverless Extensibility better than Webhooks? (Bobby Johnson) - A useful post that jumps right in the middle of the debate about the Webhook and serverless. Both are good but planning (as usual) is worth it.

Programming

• API Versioning with Azure API Management (Darrel Miller) - Great post that helps to find the peace, or at least make your ideas, about what kind of rules, you should follow.

• Microservices: The Good, the Bad and the Hype (Jennifer Riggins) - Nice post that explains some challenges when doing serversless. Because yes, it's a great architecture plan, but it's not magic.

• Microsoft Tech Summit is back – register for a free event near you! (Microsoft Azure team) - A big tour around the globe, check when they visit one of the fourteen cities near you.

Miscellaneous

• 3 Common Mistakes to Avoid When Selling to Small Businesses - Microsoft Partner Network (Carol Roth) - Interesting points to improve our skills.

Reading Notes #285

Cloud

• 10 tips for enterprise integration with Logic Apps (Toon Vanhoutte) - Nice list of integration / LogicApps best practices.
• Azure Automation Graphical Editor from a Coder’s Perspective (Brian Christopher Harrison) - Pretty cool post that explains how someone with PowerShell base could use the designer interface in automation.
• Azure CLI Samples for Azure Cosmos DB - Just a quick reference to see what's available today.
• Azure Logic Apps - Retry Policy (Sriram Hariharan) - This post explains how to customize a key feature to build successful integration solution in cloud programming.
• Microsoft Cognitive Custom Vision Service .Net Core Angular 4 Application (Part One) - With all those code snippets and screen captures, this tutorial is extremely well detailed.
• How to Serve Serverless with Examples in Azure (Jeremy Likness) - Nice post that decorticates the serverless using Azure Functions as an example.
• Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit version 2.0 - Super, new version of the toolkit.
• Top 5 mistakes when people talk about Azure (Saverio Guardato) - Yep, same here.All true.

Programming

• How to reference a .NET Core library in WinForms - Or, .NET Standard Explained (Scott Hanselman) - Nice explanation, very clear.

Suggestion of the week

• Solve Node.js issues faster with Application Insights for Node.js (Josh Gavant) - Awesome post that shares a lots of very useful tips and guidance.

Miscellaneous

• 10 strategies for beating “programmer’s block” (Madison Moore) - Interesting top ten.

Reading Notes #246

Cloud

• Accelerate your insights with Application Insights Performance Counters (Mackenzie Frackleton) - We always get more and more with Application Insights...
  
• Announcing Azure App Service MySQL in-app (preview) (Sunitha Muthukrishna) - Wow! Many PHP developers must be waiting for this since so long. It's a very good news, and I'm sure many Wordpress users will be extremely happy too.
  
• Extending Azure Logic Apps Using Azure Functions (MVP Award Program) - Nice post that shows are easy it is to put together Azure logic App and Azure functions.
  
• Portal support for Azure Search blob and table indexers now in preview (Evan Boyle) - Easier than ever, this portal is so powerful. Good job.
  
• New BizTalk Server connector preview rollout complete! (Jon Fancey) - The integrated integration platform....

Programming

• Architecture in code (Sebastien Lambla) - Interesting short post about coding best practice.
  
• Cloud-first, mobile-first: Microsoft moves to a fully wireless network (Mikkel Riis) - Nice interview with a Microsoft IT professional.
  
• PowerShell is open sourced and is available on Linux (Jeffrey Snover) - Now that bash is available on Windows machine and PowerShell on Linux... everything is possible!
  
• Visual Studio's most useful (and underused) tips (Scott Hanselman) - His post is a must for all VisualStudio users.

Databases

• JSON support is generally available in Azure SQL Database (Jovan Popovic) - Cool. Now you can have both types of data in the same place. Not for every situation but pretty convenient.

Miscellaneous

• How Do I Write Good Code? (Erik Dietrich) - Simple tips that will make our code rocks.

Reading Notes #242

Cloud

• Amazon launches QuickSight, a cloud-based business intelligence tool (Jordan Novet) - This post announces a powerful tool in the BI world. It looks very nice.
  
• Azure Infographic: Cloud Design Patterns - Wow! A fantastic infographic that shows many different patterns that should be used when developing with Azure.
  
• Azure PowerShell support for Enterprise Integration pack features now available (Jon Fancey) - Quick tutorial that uses PowerShell to create LogicApp.
  
• Create the roadmap for your enterprise cloud strategy (James Staten) - A book based on the real-live situation and Microsoft best practices... Sounds really useful to me.
  
• Querying the VSTS Work Items API directly from Power BI - Very impressive work, I know few managers who will love that tool. And the good news is that it is entirely customizable.
  
• Release notes (Matt Farmer) - Easier than ever, no more need to dig to know what new in each release. Read what the Api Management team has cooked for us.
  
• Why Does My SQL Server Availability Group Need a Load Balancer in Azure? (Paul Burpo) - This post is the answer of a very common question and also explains how to do it correctly.

Programming

• Exploring dotnet new with .NET Core (Scott Hanselman) - I discover the different types in dotnet new command during Julie Lerman's talk at DevTeach and now this post shows a list of incredible opportunities.

Miscellaneous

• 3 Significant Flaws in the Concept of Googliness (Melissa Burns) - Interesting point of view about what look first as good idea that could turn out as bad ideas...
  
• The 3 Things Scrum Teams Get Wrong - Interesting post, how your team score?
  
• Why I Left Google Redux (James Whittaker) - Interesting article about Google's business model and few other things.

Reading Notes #241

Cloud

• Announcing the release of the Azure Usage and Billing Portal (Chris Risner) - I have been waiting long time to get a tool like that. I will definitely clone it this week.
  
• Azure Infographic: Cloud Design Patterns - Wow! A fantastic infographic that shows many different patterns that should be used when developing with Azure.
  
• Azure Search Suggesters: Helping users to find search keywords - Nice demo that shows the power of suggesters and how to implement them.
  
• Create your first botframework bot in Azure! (Robin Osborne) - This post is a nice tutorial that gives a lot of ideas about what you could do with the botfrmework.
  
• Writing simple REST-client for Azure Search (Gunnar Peipman) - Quick demo to show how developing with Azure Search is easy.

Programming

• 5 Impeccable Reasons Node.js is Great for Startups (Keval Padia) - It all makes sense, but I didn't think about it before reading those five reasons.
  
• Visual Studio Code, your new Markdown editor - Another post that affirms how VisualStusio Code is great. It must be true... ;)

Miscellaneous

• 3 Significant Flaws in the Concept of Googliness (Melissa Burns) - Interesting point of view about what look first as good idea that could turn out as bad ideas...
  
• New Microsoft and Open Source Partner Community (Openness Team) - Nice ne community that just begins.
  
• The Anti-Meeting Culture (James Whittaker) - Very interesting thoughs about meetings and an even more interesting ways to make them more productive.

Reading Notes #221

Suggestion of the week

• Why You Should Learn JavaScript in 2016 (Ken Powers) - I eared a lot of people complaining about Javascript, this excellent post explains why you undeniably, we should all know it, an if it's not the case why 2016 is a great time to learn it.

Cloud

• Azure Logic Apps : Orchestrating business processes and systems integration (Carey Payette) - This is a very nice tutorial that shows how to build an Azure Logic App with twitter and Sql Databe's connector.
  
• How to Setup Application Insights in an Azure WebJob (Jon Gallant) - Nice quick post that will make you save a lot of time.
  
• Azure IoT Hub general availability overview (Nayana Singh) - IoT Hub is finally GA, get to know all included components in this nice overview.
  
• Azure Search indexer for Azure Blob Storage now in public preview (Eugene Shvets) - This excellent tutorial explains how we can benefite of all the magic in this azure search preview.

Programming

• VisualStudio Code v0.10.8 (January 2016) - Learn more about what's new in this latest release.
  
• Search now available on Visual Studio Marketplace (Harysh Menon) - Did you know you can add extension to visual studio team services (vsts) and code (vscode)? This is the perfect post to get started.
  
• Chris Pietschmann - Nice post that explains very clearly why we really soundn't be writing none tested code.

Data

• Power BI Service February Update (Amanda Cofsky) - Fantastic! This update will give us the possibility to share outside ou organization... And many other things.

Miscellaneous

• What Does a Petaflop Look Like on Azure? (Alexandre Brisbois) - Interesting dive in the supercomputer universe.
  
• ASP.NET MVC: Keep Private Settings Out of Source Control - Simple an efficient.
  
• Multitasking is Killing Your Brain — Life Tips. (Larry Kim) - Really interesting post that comment on a very popular debate: Can w multitask?

~Frank

Reading Notes #197

Suggestion of the week

• Deploying a VM using Azure Resource Manager – Part 1 (Marc Gagné) - Really great tutorial that is the perfect. How to deploy with Powershell using Azure Manager Resources 101.

Cloud

• A Complete List of Microsoft Azure Tools (Scott Ge) - Pretty good list of tools available today to work or plan your work with. Azure.
  
• What is the Azure Marketplace? (marc) - This is a good post to get started on Azure Market place.
  
• Ruby, TinyTDS, and Azure SQL Database update (Larry Franks) - Nice update, looking forward to upgrade some Ruby scripts of mine.
  
• Scheduling Azure Automation Runbooks with Azure Scheduler (Christopher Mank) - Great tutorial on Automation, very complete.
  
• Transitioning Application Insights from the VSO Portal to the Azure Portal (Dale Koetke) - We have until October to move our Application Insights in VSO to Azure. All you need to know to have a smooth migration is here.

Programming

• Five Common Daylight Saving Time Antipatterns of .NET Developers - Ah time, the more you play with the more confuse you can be. Interesting post to avoid common mistakes.
  
• Dependency injection in ASP.NET 5 - | Gunnar Peipman - Programming Blog - Dependency injection is a very good structure to facilitate testing. The new Asp.Net 5 help a lot going that way.
  
• 5 Tips for Dealing with Unreliable Web APIs - Summary of best practices when working with APIs.
  
• Continuous deployment (Gabriel Schenker) - Nice post to get started on continuous delivery and what it’s means.

Podcast

• .NET Rocks!  - I really like Glimpse, and it was nice to learn more about the journey of its creator and have a peek on what coming next.
  
• Systems Thinking: Less Coding, More Thinking with Kishau Rogers - Very stimulating episode, a lot of great ideas…

Miscellaneous

• Making the Complex Simple - Interesting thoughts about productivity traps.
  
• Making a clean exit – how to leave your company with friends, not dependencies - Interesting post on how to be professional when leaving.
  
• Apt-Get for Windows - OneGet and Chocolatey on Windows 10 - A new tool in Windows call OneGet… a package manager… manager.
  
• 10-minute workouts to improve your writing - Really interesting exercises… that are easy to fit in any schedule.
  
• New Package Roundup (izuzak) - Cool list of new Atom packages.
  
• Scrum or Kanban: Which form of Agile is best for you? - Nice post that explains the main differences between the two more popular Agile methods.

Reading Notes #196

Suggestion of the week

• Push-to-succeed: a look into Azure Notification Hubs for business (Alexander Laysha) - Interesting post that explains how Azure and his Notification Hubs could be really useful in marketing.
  
• Getting Started with Windows 10 - This week it's the Windows 10 week. And this post regroups many useful tutorial to get started.

Cloud

• July update for Web apps and App Service environments in the Azure preview portal (Ron Tardif) - This post is a great summary of the new July features.

Programming

• One of My Favorite PowerShell Functions - Nice and useful little piece of code.
  
• Describe Your PowerShell Variables - Nice quick tips to help us remember what we thought when we created those variables.
  
• Installing EF Power Tools into VS2015 (Julie) - Interesting tutorial that shows how to "upgrade" an extension to use it in VS...
  
• Five Common Daylight Saving Time Antipatterns of .NET Developers - Ah the "time"... The more you play with it, the more confuse you can be. Interesting post to avoid common mistakes.

Miscellaneous

• The Secret (and Oh So Simple) Way to Get People to Pay Attention to You (Betty Liu) - Interesting post about business relationship.
  
• How to stay productive while working from home (Xavier Nayrac) - Being myself a remote worker a found this post very close to the reality and inspiring.

~Frank

Reading Notes #189

Suggestion of the week

• Search enable your applications with Azure Search (Andrei Dzimchuk) - Very interesting introduction, the perfect post to get started with Azure Search.

Cloud

• Moving to Azure DNS (Alexandre Brisebois) - Another awesome post that shows the power of Azure Resource manager and powershell.
  
• Azure : Event Hub A First Look (Sacha Barber) - This post a good introduction to Event Hub. It adds context to the MSDN documentation.
  
• Demystifying Azure Cloud Services – Part 1 (Adarsha Datta) - This post explains very clearly what is an Azure Cloud Services and demystify the common confusion about it.
  
• Auto-update your Azure Site Extension (Zain Rizvi) - Nice tips to simplify the upgrade.

Programming

• How to Compare files in Visual Studio Code ? - Nice tips.
  
• Evolving ASP.NET Apps–Javascript (Simon Timms) - Interesting post that explains how to structure our Javascript code in our solutions.

~Frank

Reading Notes #176

Suggestion of the week

• Autoscaling Azure–Virtual Machines (Kirk Evans) - Great tutorial that explains very clearly how to work scaling with azure vms.

Cloud

• Announcing Azure Preview Portal Improvements (February Update) (Leon Welicki) - A really nice update, good work.
  
• Introducing Get-AzureVMDscExtensionStatus cmdlet for Azure Powershell DSC Extension - Windows PowerShell Blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs - Great, very useful new command.
  
• Using Windows Azure Mobile Services in ASP.NET MVC (Mahesh Sabnis) - Nice tutorial that shows how versatile are Azure Mobile Services.

Programming

• Make Debugging Faster with Visual Studio (Andrew B Hall) - A big deep dive in fine tuning Visual Studio to get the best performance session.
  
• Simplicity Principles and Anti-Patterns (Timothy Klenke) - Nice post that talks about pattern and anti-pattern, because simpler is often the better.

Miscellaneous

• 3 Thinking Tools for Minimizing Dependencies Between Products - (Mike Cottmeyer) - Interesting post about products planning best practices.
  
• One Example of How to Use an Agile Tool with Balance (peter) - Interesting post about how a team is using Jira.

~Frank B

Reading Notes #175

Cloud

• Running the Ruby Middleman Static Site Generator on Microsoft Azure (Scott Hanselman) - Really nice post. It looks very fun. It's amazing what we can do with git and Azure!

• Lift and Shift of a Windows Service to Microsoft #Azure (Alexandre Brisebois) - Nice tutorial with a lot of clear explications for every step.

• Another reason to like azure web sites - free analytics - Nice quick post that summarizes a great Azure Friday episode about statistics.

• Using Stream Analytics with Event Hubs (Kirk Evans) - Great post that plays with both Azure event hub and azure stream analytics.

Programming

• Proper benchmarking to diagnose and solve a .NET serialization bottleneck (Scott Hanselman) - Another great post that will help to ask ourselves some better question when it's time to investigate so performance issue.

• Atom-Shell for cross platform desktop apps with Paul Betts (Scott Hanselman, Paul Betts) - Nice episode that clarifies things around Atom-Shell.

• Bad Practices Building Microservices (Jan Stenberg) - Interesting post that talks about what why shouldn't be doing.

Miscellaneous

• Becoming Great Remote Developer - Interesting thoughts and tips about remote work.

• Microsoft or Google? - This post shares some thoughts about a very common question that a lot of people are asking.

~Frank

Reading Notes #170

Suggestion of the week

• Rollup: Microsoft HoloLens, Surface Hub, Windows 10, Xbox One game streaming and more. (Scott Hanselman) - How 2015 could not be a big year for Microsoft with all this?

Cloud

• Scaling #Azure Cloud Services Up and Down Like Clockwork (Alexandre Brisebois) - Really interesting post that explains how scaling up & out and down &in can mean huge saving in our pockets.

• Azure is now bigger, faster, more open, and more secure (Corey Sanders) - This post describes what in the new release of Azure.

• Azure Search – How to Add Suggestions (auto-complete) to your Search Applications (Liam Cavanagh) - Interesting example of how Azure Search can improve the user experience on our website.

• Using Windows Azure Service Bus for communication across two ASP.NET MVC Applications - Great tutorial that shows step by step how to use the power of Azure Service Bus in our website.

• Data Pipeline Guidance (patterns & practices) - Interesting project using Azure Eventhub's best practices in an IoT context.

Programming

• Using the Wrapper Pattern (Scott DePouw) - This post explains a useful pattern for testing or other context.

• NuGet Package of the Week: Polly wanna fluently express transient exception handling policies in .NET? (Scott Hanselman) - Wow! Polly looks awesome. Looking forward to trying-it in my next project.

Podcast

• Computer Vision Explained with PyImageSearch's Adrian Rosebrock - While listening this podcast, I'm not sure if I was more scared or exited. However, one thing is sure, this episode is really interesting!

Miscellaneous

• Removing Distractions - Interesting post where the author share is experience while trying to be less connected.

~Frank B.

Reading Notes #169

 

Happy New Year!

 

Suggestion of the week

• Magic Strings – No More! - Great post that explains different ways to manage string in our code. Clear and efficient.

Cloud

• The cloud saves the day and other non-myths (Brian Heckert) - Nice post that discusses some myths mentions in Gartner's presentation about the cloud.

• Automating Azure on your CI server using a Service Principal - Great tutorial that explains how to use Active Directory (AD) to access resources in Azure.

• Scaling #Azure Cloud Services Up and Down Like Clockwork (Alexandre Brisebois) - Really interesting post that explains how scaling up & out and down &in can mean huge saving in our pockets.

Programming

• Could not load file or assembly… NuGet Assembly Redirects (blog.maartenballiauw.be) - Nice clever tricks to avoid losing time.

• UI Considerations When Using Asynchronous Methods (Jeremy) - Good tutorial that explains some key features we must adapt in the UI when making our code async.

Miscellaneous

• 4 Simple Tricks to Help Make Your Content Stand Out (AJ Agrawal) - This post provides a nice list of tools to improve our content.

• Why You Should Say Goodbye to Work-Life Balance in 2015 (Aaron O'Hearn) - Interesting thoughts.

• The Key to Increased Productivity? Stop Working (Justin Bariso) - This post suggests simple thins to do to improve our productivity. Perfect to start the new year...

• XML Sitemaps for the Ghost Blogging Platform - Time to update our Ghost blogs...

~Frank Boucher

Reading Notes #168

Suggestion of the week

• Lift and Shift of a Console Appication to Microsoft #Azure - Great post that explains all the steps required to deploy a console app to Azure.

Cloud

• Ghost 0.5.x from Source to Azure Web Sites (David Wesst) - If you prefer starting from the source code to deploy your Ghost blog, some steps could be less obvious. This post, the first of a series, will guide you through the deployment.
  
• Ghost 0.5.x from Source to Azure Web Sites–Part 4 (David Wesst) - Bonus post in the 3 part series, this is a useful tips to set https on an Azure web site, very clear.

• Deux cas d’exception où l’infonuagique n’aide pas (Pour consulter tous les articles de André Giroux →) - Nice post that explains two reel cases were going was not a good option.

Programming

• Clean Code – Is my code always readable? - A simple but very efficient way to think when we a writing or re-factoring our code. I like it.

• Grunt and Gulp Intellisense in Visual Studio 2013 (Google+) - Quick tips to get intellisense in javascript files.

• Could not load file or assembly… NuGet Assembly Redirects (blog.maartenballiauw.be) - Nice clever tricks to avoid losing time.

Miscellaneous

• 11 Tools We Use at Ghost for Distributed Teams & Digital Nomads - Many very nice tools. I fall in love with Slack and coffitivity.

See you in 2015!


~Frank B

Reading Notes #167

Suggestion of the week

• SQL Server to Azure Search Synchronization (Scott Klein)- Great demo with Liam C. This is a 15-minute video that you don't want t miss.

Cloud

• Now easier to create a sample Azure SQL Database and develop schema in Visual Studio (Sanjay Nagamangalam) - Wow, I cannot be easier than that. The post also contains a short video that shows how to do it.

• How to Sync SQL Server Data with Azure Search (Liam Cavanagh) - This post explains all the advantage to use Azure Search to implement a fulltext search in your application. It also shows how to do it.

Programming

• .NET Blog (Christiaan Rakowski, Linux Al, Ron, Nathan Dimitriades, Warren, EShy, Thomas Levesque, Svolo4, Jeremiah Gowdy, les, James S, Srigopal C Immo Landwerth [MSFT]) - Very interesting and complete post that explains the goals behind the .Net Core and how it is useful to us.

• Clean Code – Is my code always readable? - A simple but very efficient way to think when we a writing or re-factoring our code. I like it.

Books

DynamoDB Applied Design Patterns
By Uchit Vyas, Prabhakaran Kuppusamy
Publisher: Packt Publishing
Released: September 2014
ISBN 13: 9781783551897

This book takes you where you are and brings you directly in the cumulus. It starts gently by explaining the basic of the NoSQL, then move to DynamoDB fundamental: what is a data model and how to create a table.

Chapter after chapter, the book moves you to the next level by bringing new complexities and explains how to manage them with his simple but complete scenario. All the code samples are in Java and extremely well explained. With my .Net background, I always understood.

The book ends by presenting many best practices to get the best of DynamoDB, and compare it to other popular NoSQL databases.

I will definitely recommend this book to all people looking for a NoSQL database. DynamoDB is unavoidable when we are looking for a no-relational database, and this book is a must to have in our bookshelf.

Miscellaneous

• How to Ask for Feedback That Will Actually Help You - Interesting post about the importance of a good communication.

~Frank B

Reading Notes #162

Suggestion of the week

• Azure Service Bus 101 with Dan Rosanova - With those three videos, you will get started on the service bus in Azure and the Pub-Sub pattern. A thirty minutes well invested. Azure Service Bus 102 and Azure Service Bus 103

Cloud

• #Azure Table Storage - Using StartsWith to Filter on RowKeys - Nice post that explains some good practices to get quickly what we are querying for, and while keeping our code clean.

• Azure : How to publish a web site from VS2013 to Azure (Sacha Barber) - Nice first post of a beginner series on how to do things on Azure.

• Azure API Management Part One: An Introduction - Really nice post to get started with the brand new api manager of Windows Azure.

Programming

• Version 1.9.2 for Asp.Net Released (Anthony van der Hoorn) - Times to update your NuGet packages.

• NuGet Package of the Week - Courtesy Flush to flush buffers earlier and optimize time to first byte (Scott Hanselman) - As usual, this series of posts from Scott presents us another NuGet's pearl.

Miscellaneous

• Open Graph, Twitter Card and Schema.org support in Ghost - Good news, because having a shared message well formatted is always better.

• Doing Something is Better Than Doing Nothing at All - This post gives some tips on how to follow this golden rule.

• 151 Blog Post Ideas Guaranteed to Blast Off Your Blog (Matt Banner) - Hey bloggers, do yourself a favor and stimulate yourself with tons of ideas for new post. Very stimulating.

• Moving on from Scrum - Disciplined Agile Delivery - Nice post that gives all the interesting bookmarks of the book Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD).

~Frank Boucher

Reading Notes #161

Cloud

• Azure: New Marketplace, Network Improvements, New Batch Service, Automation Service, more - A great package of new features was announced last week, learn more about them in this post.

• Building myEcho - A real startup running on Azure - Great video about how Azure is really used in a real product. A must to see.

• Azure Table Storage little gem – InsertOrMerge (Boris Lipschitz) - An interesting post that explores the just as interesting method InsertOrMerge of the Azure storage.

• #Azure Table Storage - Using StartsWith to Filter on RowKeys - Nice post that explains a good practice to get quickly what we are querying for, and while keeping our code clean.

Programming

• Building a working Robot controlled by a C#, an iPhone, and Monkey.Robotics (Scott Hanselman) - Really exiting stuff...

• ASP.NET MVC 5.1 New Features -- Visual Studio Magazine (Eric Vogel) - Nice post that introduces a new feature of Asp.net MVC 5 and shows how easy and powerful it becomes.

Miscellaneous

• Ghost Onboarding - How We Increased Conversion by Over 1,000% - This post is a nice proof that by knowing the impact of our product features we can achieve great things.
  
• Microsoft Office coming to Android in early November (Alex Cobb) - This is a good news, my tablet will become a real on the road device... until I go for a surface 3...

• 10 email security fundamentals for everyday people - This post gives all the best practices to stay out of trouble...

~Frank Boucher