Reading Notes #95

Suggestion of the week

• The Unexpected Antidote to Procrastination (Peter Bregman)- A person a know also said: If you are not making mistakes, it means that you're not working hard enough.
  
• Lessons Learned: Taking the best out of Windows Azure Virtual Machines (Nuno Godinho) - This post is a must, it describes all the best practices to get the better of Windows Azure Virtual Machine (VM).

Reading Notes #91

Suggestion of the week

• Streaming Diagnostics Trace Logging from the Azure Command Line (plus Glimpse!) (Scott Hanselman)- Great post that shows us a lot of possibilities to trace our cloud application. I really like the stream log from Azure command line.
  
• Walkthrough to Configure System Center Management Pack for Windows Azure Fabric Preview for SCOM 2012 SP1 (Walter Myers) - As it says in this post: The wait is over. Don't miss the important news. Share it.
  
• Windows Azure Infrastructure as a Service General Availability (Bart Vande Ghinste) - Hurray! The IaaS is now ready for production and got a significant price reduction!!!

Cloud

• Walkthrough #3: Developing Multi-Tenant Web Applications with Windows Azure AD (vibro) - This post summarize the third par of an unavoidable tutorial about Azure and Active Directory.
  
• Creating a Windows Azure Virtual Machine - the RIGHT Way (Buck Woody) - Creating a VM is easy, but it's important to know how to do it correctly to get what we expect.
  
• Windows Azure IaaS is Live and BizTalk Server 2013 Hourly Pricing Released(Stephen W. Thomas) - This post explains how to calculus, our fees when running Azure BizTalk VM.
  
• Django now available on Windows Azure - Good news for Python developers.

Integration

• Service Bus Explorer 2.0 released (Paolo Salvatori) - Impressive tool that gives a lot of options to manage our Azure Service Bus.

Programming

• View your Kanban board - Nice post that gives more details on one of the new supported Visual Studio features. Really interesting and useful.
  
• jQuery 2.0 Released  - Good news. However, don't forget that the branch 2.x is met to support new browser. For IE 6, 7, 8 the branch 1.x will continue to be supported.

System Management

• Adding a Custom Domain to your Windows Azure AD (vibro) - Useful post that explains all steps of a common scenario when using AD.
  
• Why monitor Windows Azure with System Center? - Good question. And the answer is ev0en better... Thankfully.

Miscellaneous

• Rule No. 1: Get to the Point (Geoffrey James) - Quick and clear.
  
• Simple Trick to Finding Extraordinary Employees (Marla Tabaka) - Nice tips. Easy to use.
  
• Effectiveness and Efficiency - Nice post. It is, in fact, a good starting point to become better at what you do... or what you should be doing.

~Frank

Reading Notes #89

Suggestion of the week

• Pinching pennies when scaling in The Cloud (Scott Hanselman) - Great example of code optimization, and all that in the cloud.
• Mobile Services and Windows Azure Storage (Chris) - Great tutorial that explains how to change the usual SQL database to Azure storage with Azure Mobile services. The client parts are also available for iOS and Android.

Cloud

• Optimized Windows Azure IaaS Disk Mobility with Save-AzureVhd (Michael Washam) - Another quick post that demonstrates how to upload a VHD in Azure storage using the new Azure cmdlet feature.
  
• What Does Your Cloud Disaster Recovery Plan Look Like? - Nice post that explains how you can use Azure Data Sync to backup your database.
  
• Running SSL with Windows Azure Web Sites Today - The perfect workaround to have a SSL Azure Website today is explained in this post. Using a web service to forward the traffic this is a good solution until SSL is supported.
  
• Put Your Windows Azure SQL Database on a Diet! - Nice post of a real case, real data and real prices.
  
• A Quick Guide to Getting Started with New Relic - Perfect starting point with a lot of information and reference on deeper tutorials.
  
• Three gotchas with the Azure Service Bus - Very interesting post that goes deeper than usual and explains clearly some details of the Azure service bus.
  
• Cloud Cover Show: Episode 103 - Windows Azure HDInsight (Nick Harris, Nathan Totten) - Don't miss this show, it explains what big data, why it is useful. What's the difference between it and HDInsight and in bonus, you got a demo.

 

Programming

• The Repository Pattern - Nice example of dependency injection. Really useful pattern.
  
• Problems with Copy Pasting Code - And Modifying Slightly... (Jason Singh) - Wow! I'm always impressed by tools that are available to get better code. That one is a must.
  
• Understanding Javascript Prototypes - Very clear post that explains what is a javascript prototype, what is not and how to use it.
  
• Why 30% of App Deployments Fail (Victor Cruz) - Interesting post that share result of a survey on deployment strategies.
  
• App Building Made Easier–Step 3 (Jonathan Rozenblit) - Great post. Start coding, you are not alone. Note that even if Jonathan didn't say it help is also available in French...
  
• Getting started with AngularJS - With all those JavaScript framework available it's difficult to know with one to pick or where to start looking. This post is a good place to start.

 

Integration

• BizTalk Anti Pattern – Don’t over complicate your maps (Michael Stephenson) - It is sometime difficult to find the limit of functoids to use in map to get the job done. But we shouldn't be afraid to .Net code.

I wrote a blog post a few years ago around the options for where you could put configuration settings in BizTalk (Click here).

• BizTalk 2013 worldwide launch events by Impack - Learn more about this important event that you shouldn't miss.

System Management

• BizTalk Monitoring Solutions (SCOM vs BizTalk360) white paper by Kent Weare (Saravana Kumar) - Nice intro to the white paper about monitoring BizTalk solutions. And of course, the reference to the white paper.

Miscellaneous

• The 3 Biggest Resume Mistakes - Few tips to get your social "you" more appealing. Because to have new contracts you need to demark yourself.
  
• How to: Add a ‘Copy Code’ Link to Your Blog Post and Colored Code Blocks (Jeff Sanders) - Simple tips to improve the code visibility and accessibility in your post.
  
• Surviving legacy code - Very complete article about legacy code and why the trash for person is the treasure of another.

• Move your Hotmail.com account to an Outlook.com account (Greg Shultz) - I use outlook.com for few months now, and I love it. This post explains how to migrate, what era your options and what will happen if you do nothing.

~Frank