Reading Notes #58

Ahhhhhhhhh! That was great! I was in vacation enjoying family time.

I read two no-technical books

• Catching Fire – The Hunger Games book 2 (Suzanne Collins) – Great book!
• Confessions of a Freelance Penmonkey (Chuck Wendig) – In this book you will found a lot of the really good post about writers… The style is different I and liked it!

 
 


And of course I have some reading notes that I didn’t publish before I went to vacation:

Cloud

• Introducing azureQuery: the JavaScript-Windows Azure Bridge (David Pallmann) - Nice post that introduces a very promising JavaScript framework.
• AWS Marketplace Update - The First 90 Days - Quick status about the AWS Marketplace.
• Multi-provider PaaSes - what exactly do they offer? - Great post where the author is sharing is toughs about the cloud. Putting your code in the cloud doesn’t make it elastic or invulnerable... you need to do it to make it append.
• Introduction to Windows Azure Startup Tasks - Simple tutorial that is the perfect starting point for any one that knows the base of Azure. Nice catch for the "feature" in VS with batch scripts.
• Windows Azure Startup Tasks: Tips, Tricks, and Gotchas - This post great source of info and time saver.
• Windows Azure and Office 365 (Scott Gu) - Great post that pass through all the new features in Office365 and SharePoint.
• Fault-tolerance in Windows Azure SQL Database (Tony Petrossian) - Really nice article that explain the fault-tolerance, why it is needed, how it is done (replication, redundancy, detection, etc.).

Programming

• So you want to contribute to EF? Part 1: Introduction (Arthur Vickers) - Excellent series not only to know more about how to contribute with the Entity framework (EF) but with any kind of open source project.
• [Infographic] The Hype Versus Reality of HTML5 Deployment - Oh oh nice graphic about the HTML5 reality.

Miscellaneous

• Never Act Like the Smartest Guy in the Room (John Baldoni) - Nice post about how you should be in a team and some advice for the big head...
• 10 Fresh Tips for Finding Time to Blog (Brian Milne) - Good little tips to help us to enjoy while blogging and found more time to do it.
• Marketing yourself as a programmer (Patrick Wyatt) - Being able to sale yourself as a good programmer is important to find a new job but also to progress and be happy at your current job.
• Outlook Is Microsoft's Answer To Everything You've Ever Hated About Hotmail (Christina Chaey) - Interesting news about the new Outlook.com, features list and evolution story.
• Productivity vs. Guilt and Self-Loathing (Scott Hanselman) - This is a good post that need reflection. I could add that if you want to change something, do it progressively. Don’t try to wake up 3 hours earlier in one night...

~Frank

Reading Notes #57

 

Cloud

• How to Assess Costs of using Windows Azure for your Applications (Himanshu Singh) - Quick post about a windows paper that provide all the information on Azure usual monthly charges.

Check out the paper.

• Hands-on Windows Azure Services for Windows (Maarten Balliauw) - M. Balliauw is asking a good question, that I ears often: Why should I do this?
• Windows Azure Visio Shapes - Yahooooo! I never enough Visio shape... Thanks Buck Woody!
• Service Bus for Windows server, the new features - Good post that introduces the new features of the service Bus and explains them quickly.
• Cloud Cover – Episode 84 - Windows Azure Storage Updates and a Preview of the Client Storage Library vNext - As usual nice video (shorter than last time ;) ). It reviews the new features available in Azure Storage, and show a preview of the Azure Storage libraries that will be release soon.

Programming

• ASP.NET Web API and Azure Blob Storage (Yao) - Super tutorial that show step by step how to manage your Azure Blob Storage by code, by doing a nice helper class.
• The 5 thing to immediately grab from EF Open Source - Good post that point out some place where you can see good code sample.
• When do you need a 3-tier architecture? - Good question! And this post is trying to answer it.
• Building an Offline HTML5 Application - Great tutorial about a well-structured HTML5 application that will also works offline.
• Entity Framework 5 and 6 Roadmap - The list of interesting features of the EF5 and some that are planned for the version 6.
• Beyond Agile Estimation Part I: Measuring Key Data Points - Nice post that summarize how to use some keys counters in order to have a better estimation of the project delivery date.
• CloudSurvey (Nathan Totten) - Nice work. A great sample to see how things are done.
• WCF - Top 10 Interview Questions (Imran Abdul Ghani) - Excellent post and excellent revision of what is WCF. Short and clear.
• Exterminating Common jQuery Bugs (Elijah Manor) - Wow what a great video. It goes through all most frequent mistake we make, explain why it doesn't works and fix it. Take a look at the tool he is using. An open source (soon) presentation framework. Very nice!
• 10 Application Performance Tuning Tips - Nice tips, simple and efficient.
• So you want to contribute to EF? Part 1: Introduction (Arthur Vickers) - Excellent series not only to kwon more about how to contribute with the Entity framework (EF) but with any kind of open source project.

Miscellaneous

• 5 Ways to Think Wisely in Development (Dimitrios Kalogirou) - Nice post that expose 5 ways to be a wiser developer.
• Sitting is Making You Fat and Killing You - Nice warning post that explains why say sit for a long period is bad and gives some tips to improve our comfort.
• Who Are You Really Mad At? (Peter) - This is about a life lesson: Pause. And like in the post you will be reward.
• Time to stop reusing your passwords - Nice reminder of the reason why we shouldn't reuse our e-mail.
• Get The Most Out of Your Mornings - Nice post that explain how to you could use your mornings to add 280 hours in your year.
• Time Management Tips #3 - Three Wins for the Week (JD Meier) - Simple tips from the book Getting Results the Agile Way that will help you to have a better week.
• 10 classic mistakes that plague software development projects (Justin James) - Nice post that make me smiling. I challenge you to pass through the list without thinking: oh yeah that's so true...
• True Secret to Success (It's Not What You Think) (Geoffrey James) - Suggest a very simple mental exercise to make your day more positive.
• I Won't Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar. Here's Why. (Kyle Wiens) - I agree the grammar is really important, even if I’m not good as I want to be.
• 3 Interview Questions That Reveal Everything (Jeff Haden) - Nice post. I like the questions it's true that you should learn a lot from them even if the candidate is not "verbose".

~ Frank

Reading Notes #48

Cloud

• Windows Azure Start-up Tasks Part 1 - First of a series this nice post explain the basics of start-up task when deploying in Windows Azure.
• Windows Azure Start-up Tasks Part 2 - Great post that gives a lot of information on Azure start-up tasks: environment variables, useful xPath query, important tips that will save you a lot troubles.
• Windows Azure Myths - Nice post that demystify 5 important myths about Windows Azure.
• Cloud SLAs: What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You - SLAs are an important topic. Here is a good post to have a better understanding of it. This post talk about SLAs in general so you will also need to get more info from your cloud provider.
• Amazon Attracts Windows and .NET Developers to the AWS Cloud (Saroj Kar) - Amazon is really pushing harder to be attractive for the .Net developer. That good news since it will give you more options ;)
• My CDN Progression - Great post about true life experience. This post will definitely help people, looking for a CDN, to take better decision or at least start their search with more wisdom.
• Debugging Windows Azure Web Role Application_Start() method in Global.asax.cs (Avkash Chauhan - MSFT) - Nice quick tips to reach break point in Application_Start().
• 5 Issues Cloud Computing Can’t Solve (Xath Cruz) - The cloud is good but not magic. Here are 5 frequent ideas where in fact the cloud (whoever is your provider) can’t help you.

Programming

• Automating Visual Studio 2010 builds and deployments with Nant.Builder (Iain Hunter) - Really interesting series. The steps are simple and well explained. In the next one deploy to Azure...
• [MONITORING] Les 10 raisons de développer son application en HTML5 (Web App) (Gamorlive) - If you agree with the fact that your user must be connected (like when looking your web site), then here are 10 reasons why you should do your new application in HTML5.
• Le Monkey Patching - I'm new to the idea of dynamic code, and I tend to use it to help me testing/ mocking. These posts illustrate how it could be very useful in other situation.
• Quick Status of Your Windows Azure Apps with PowerShell - Really nice script. Thanks Steve!

Miscellaneous

• I took Hanselman's advice and now look at me... - Nice post a thru story telling how by following Scott Handselman advice someone become more productive.
• Cool Tools: How to Find Free and Cheap Ebooks - Good references of tools to get eBooks and also to search them.

[…]Sources, InkMesh is the best search engine I have found for identifying if an author or a book is available in eBook form,[…]

 
~ Frank