Reading Notes #469

Every Monday, I share my "reading notes". Those are a curated list of all the articles, blog posts, podcast episodes, 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!

Cloud

• Deploying an Azure Function App with Bicep (Mark Heath) - A nice example of a bicep script with a few resources. Not too many so it is complicated but enough to cover some particularities.

Programming

• ASP.NET Core User Secrets and Secret Manager Tool (Steve Gordon) - Its hard to explain secret or invisible things, but this post does a really good job.

• Blazor Power BI Paginated Reports (Michael Washington) - Ooooh It's been a moment since I play with my friend PowerBi... This is very interesting. I just needed a project with data... That shouldn't be that hard to find, right?

• Microsoft Graph Fundamentals learning path – Module 1 (Luise Freese) - Wonderful! Does this learning path as been created just for me? Perfect timing.

• Windows Containers on Windows 10 without Docker (using Containerd) · James Sturtevant (James Sturtevant) - Interesting container project.

Books

Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know 

Author: Adam M. Grant

- I really like this book. It validates that it's okay to rethink decisions, to change your mind. The goal is to have (and keep) an open mindset. It seems easier than it is, of course. I heard amazing comments about this author, so it's probably not the last one I will read from him.

Miscellaneous

• GraphQL Editor - new release v. 4.5 (Tomek Poniatowicz) - I didn't know that tool, but now I really need to look at it; it seems awesome.

~ Frank

Reading Notes #447

Cloud

• Azure CLI Oct 2020 release (Lomis Chen) - Nice new features in our favorite CLI

• Using Azure Identity with Azure SQL, Graph, and Entity Framework | Azure SDK Blog (Mickaël Derriey) - A great tutorial that explains a lot. All those little details in the development phase of production that will make our lives more simple or safe

Programming

• Don't ever break a URL if you can help it (Scott Hanselman) - Wonderful post that explains and shows how to provide a great experience to our readers even if we modernize our website.

Miscellaneous

• Windows Terminal Tips and Tricks | Windows Command Line (Kayla Cinnamon) - Great post that does a quick tour of the key features for Windows Terminal.

• 7 Ways to Boost Your Self-Confidence and Become a More Empathetic Leader (Maria Ross) - Nice little tips, even just to be more comfortable in your own skin.

• Upgrading the Storage Pool, Drives, and File System in a Synology to Btrfs (Scott Hanselman) - I've been joggling with this idea to have a local NAS since I also have a lot of video files... Thanks for sharing.

• What’s new in the Windows 10 October 2020 Update (Aaron Woodman) - Nice list of improvements and new features.

Books

Talk Triggers: The Complete Guide to Creating Customers with Word of Mouth 

Author: Jay Baer

A good book filled with good stories. I personally like it when they deconstruct like this winner journey or factor that makes those ideas, plans, actions different. The idea of a talk trigger is good and it was nice that the creation, lifetime, and death of a talk trigger was also cover in the book.

~Frank

Reading Notes #389

Cloud

• 
  How to audit Key Vault Access Policy using Azure Resource Graph (Stephane Lapointe) - Another great example of how Azure Graph can help you to search and more importantly find quicky what you are looking for.
• 
  Managing Jenkins Artifacts with the Azure Artifact Manager Plugin (Jie Shen) - This post explains very clearly how to leverage those two great tools together.

Programming

• 
  Remote Edit Files on Azure Linux VMs using VS Code (Thomas Maurer) - An awesome tutorial that teaches us a nice way to edit files remotely.
• 
  Remote SSH access with Visual Studio Code (Sana Ajani) - It's sooooo easy and powerfull! Take two minutes and try it!
• 
  VS Code Profile Switcher Extensions Support (Aaron Powell) - Wonderful! Thanks Aaron, you just create the extension group has been asking for so long!
• 
  ASP.NET Core and Blazor updates in .NET Core 3.0 Preview 7 (Daniel Roth) - Nice update, it's amazing to see how fast this project evolves.
• 
  Installing PowerShell with one line as a .NET Core global tool (Scott Hanselman) - On every platform or even from inside a container...Pretty cool.

Miscellaneous

• Top Developer Collaboration Tools (Roman Zhidkov) - Wow, a pretty cool list with tons of suggestions for all kind of needs.

Reading Notes #372

Suggestion of the week

• How Azure Resource Graph is gonna change the way you search and script (Stephane Lapointe) - Whaat?! 15x faster! If you are not using Azure graph yet... This post is for you. If you do use graph, still read that you may learn a few tricks. In short, it's a mandatory read for anyone using Azure.

Cloud

• Azure Blueprints: ISO27001 Shared Services (Eric Leonard) - This excellent second post of a series goes dipper and shares details about one specific blueprint template. And explains some pitfall to avoid.
• Azure Blueprints: Intro (Eric Leonard) - If you don't know Blueprint this post is an excellent first contact.
• Connecting to Azure Redis Cache with Docker (Dominique St-Amand) - Great tutorial that explains every step to build a safe environment leveraging Docker.
• Different Ways to Parse Http Request Data in Http-triggered Azure Functions ( Jason Roberts ) - How many ways do you think we can get our values from inside an Azure Function? This post passes them all in a review.

Programming

• Getting Started with .NET Core and Docker and the Microsoft Container Registry (Scott Hanselman) - Nice post that shows a few examples of how containers could be used with .Net Core at different stages of your application development.
• Building a Visual Studio Code Extension (Brian Clark) - Great post that explains in details the different type of extension and how to build them.
• Securing ASP.NET Core in Docker (Muhammad Rehan Saeed) - A nice little trick to get more secure with our containers.

Miscellaneous

• Continuous database deployments with Azure DevOps (John Miner) - This nice tutorial explains what's in Azure DevOps and how to use it to maintain a database with it. Very complete article.
• F7 is the greatest PowerShell hotkey that no one uses any more. We must fix this. (Scott Hanselman) - A Funny, and true little story about one Key.How to convert an IMG file to an standard ISO easily with Linux on Windows 10 (null) - Del
• Was MongoDB Ever the Right Choice? (Justin Etheredge) - Nice post that put in perspective what's NoSql and why MondoDB could or not be a good solution for our project.

Reading Notes #111

Cloud

• Dev and Test in the Cloud: Explained (Jonathan Rozenblit) - For dev and tests environment, windows Azure is a must.
  
• Quick Script: Copy All Blobs to New Storage Account Using PowerShell (Tyler Doerksen) - Nice and useful script.

Programming

• jQuery UI Demystified: Part 1 - Since jquery and jqueryUI are so often used use these days, avoid just doing copy-paste. Take few minutes and read this nice tutorials that explains how to use the jqueryUI widget.
  
• Tools: SlowCheetah - XML Transforms (Igor Zalmanovich ) - Definitively, a tool to have.
  
• Sorting with LINQ, Dynamically -- Visual Studio Magazine (Peter Vogel) - Nice quick tips to sort a grid by any columns dynamically.
  
• HTML5 Sparkline chart for data-intense, small-scale Data Visualization - Evangelism - Great tool, it looks easy to use and powerful enough for many different situations. Looking forward to trying it.
  
• How to Get Started with the Ignite UI Layout Manager - Interesting "UI organizer" and look simple to use.

Database

• ASP.NET MVC: Configuring ASP.NET MVC 4 Membership with a SQL CE Database - Nice tutorial that shows how to configure SqlCe to be used as a database for membership.
  
• Creating NONCLUSTERED INDEXES on Massive Tables in Windows Azure SQL Database - Nice post that demystify the indexes and explains why we should use them.
  
• SQL Server Compact 4 desktop app with simple Private Deployment and LINQ to SQL (ErikEJ) - Very complete tutorial that explains an easy deployment with SQLCE.

Miscellaneous

• Why You Should Be Able to Work from Home - Interesting thoughts about working from home and how it would be good for you, and your work.
  
• Stop asking people what they think! (and start watching what they do) - I agree. How many times did I ear don't give what the clients asks but what they needs.
  
• Have you seen Google Trekker? (Baffin Paddler) - Wow! Google always found a new way to impress me.
  

~Frank