Reading Notes #708

I’ve gathered a few insightful pieces this week exploring smarter ways to manage AI costs, practical hardware setups, and the foundational logic behind better programming. Each link offers a different perspective on how we can refine our workflows and think more intentionally about the tools we use every day.

AI

• MCP Beyond the Chat Window: Build Diagnostics in CI (Jan , Yuliia) - Instead of copy-pasting the log, the promises of this MCP server are very interesting.

• Why Reusing AI Instructions Costs You More Tokens (Ken Muse) - This post shares great advices on how we must think when writing or planning skills and queries.

• Set up OpenClaw on your Raspberry Pi (Lucy Hattersley) - Tease about a very interesting post (available in the Raspberry Pi Official Magazine) more to come

Databases

• Learning a few things about running SQLite (Julia Evans) - Nice post sharing some useful lessons learned.

Programming

• The Power Of “Why?” (codemanship) - A great post that reminds us that asking the right question helps us understand the real need and build better solutions.

Miscellaneous

• The Knowledge You Give Away (Mark Downie) - A quote that hopefully makes us think.

• Microsoft reveals 15+ products losing support in 2026, check if you're affected (Abhijith M B) - It's worth having a look while you have time to plan something. Products will continue to work, but no more updates or support.

~frank

Reading Notes #489

Suggestion of the week

• How to Use Git and GitHub in a Team like a Pro – Featuring Harry and Hermione (Damian Demasi) - Really good post (story style) to get started with GitHub. There is a little something that makes me think of Project Phenix... And crave Harry Poter.

Cloud

• 5 reasons to attend the Azure Virtual Desktop Master Class (Sue Hartford) - That could be so useful for many now that we are working more from home... A more secure and powerful machine could be easy to reach and maintain.

Programming

• Adventures in Dapr: Episode 1 (James Dawson) - First post of a promising series on Dapr.This one dressed the table, shares the links.....waiting for the next one.

• Compiling sqlcipher (sqlite encrypted) for Windows using Visual Studio 2022 (Dominique St-Amand) - Wow. This post was a big reminder for me of two things: how far we come, and some souvenirs of homework from when I was in school.

• Docker’s Top 10 Most Popular Blogs in 2021 (David Oro) - Nice quick list of great resources.

• Windows, WSL, Docker, and Free Starters (Sm0ke) - Nice quick start tutorial to set up your Django tools on Windows.

Miscellaneous

• Helping team members deal with Imposter Syndrome (Mark Downie) - Interesting post. I think it is really important to talk about it, as it affects us all.

• Tips & Tricks for Query Pagination in Azure Cosmos DB - Azure Cosmos DB Blog (Tim Sander) - This important concept, not only used with Azure Cosmo DB but any database, is very well explained in this post.

• Why Are More Companies Trying Four-Day Workweeks? (David Cassel) - Interesting. I didn't suspect that it was growing so much in popularity.

~frank

Reading Notes #104

 

Suggestion of the week

• Penny Pinching in the Cloud: When do Azure Websites make sense? - Great Q&A that answers probably all the questions you might have about Azure Website

Cloud

• Hosting a Single-Tenant Application as a Multi-Tenant Application on Windows Azure (idea)) - Interesting idea to manage application in Azure.
  
• Windows Azure Training Kit - December 2012 - More details about what's new in this release: demos, exercises, presentations...
  
• Azure MSDN Subscription Intro (Tyler Doerksen) - This post quickly explained how to use our MSDN subscription with Azure and why we should do it.
  
• SQL Database Automated Backup–Before and Now (admin) - Yes, with Azure SQL Database we still need to do backups; this post explains what are the options.
  
• Using Windows Azure Caching efficiently across multiple Cloud Service roles(Pascal Laurin) - Great post that explains some details that we might had miss about Azure cashing and its options.

 

Programming

• A rich new JavaScript code editor spreading to several Microsoft web sites - Interesting discovery. I use it, and I didn't notice the similarity... Nice catch.
  
• Asp.Net 4.5 features - Part 1 - Good post that explains features introduced by .Net 4.5. Like the author specify this is not a get started in .Net posts nether a complete list of all new features, but it contains a lot of info.
  
• SSDT Schema Compare - Damm! I was assuming it was part of the Visal Studio updates...
  
• SSDT SQL Menu Options - Nice post that introduce SSDT feature.

 

Databases

• SQLite (Deepthi Anantharam) - Look like a very nice product! Looking forward to try it in a POC or just for fun...

Miscellaneous

• 5 awesome reasons your Start Menu is better in Windows 8.1 (Jerry Nixon) - If you still did try Wondows 8.1, here what you are missing.
  
• Add Social Sharing Links to your Blog without widget JavaScript - I like that! Less noise, more speed and still sharing that good.
  
• What's the Deal with Windows 8.1? (Scott Hanselman, Pete Brown) - Nice Podcast episode about why we care about Windows 8.1 (because we really should). Or Is it 8.5?! ;)
  
  

Next week, something special; c’est un rendez-vous!

~Frank