Reading Notes #322

Cloud

• Azure WebApp : Checking the deployed WebApp file system (Sacha Barber) - Because everything doesn't need to be in a VM or containers... Read more about webapp in this nice post.
• Overview of Docker Containers in Azure | Vincent-Philippe Lauzon's on WordPress.com (Vincent-Philippe Lauzon) - Great overview of all the Microsoft services that support Docker containers.
• The Power of Logic Apps in Azure | Loosely coupled but highly cohesive on WordPress.com (Gregor Suttie) - Happy to see that I'm not the only fanboy around... Logic Apps are a must in your toolbox.

Databases

• A flexible new way to purchase Azure SQL Database  (Alexander (Sasha) Nosov) - A new kind of hybrid way to get your databases in Azure. It's not a full service, neither full pure VM... It definitely looks like less trouble for better performance.

Miscellaneous

• How to look for a technical evangelist job (Frederic Harper) - Interesting thought and things to consider when you are looking.
• 9 Common Coffee Mistakes and How to Fix Them (Alison Millington) - Interesting facts about coffee.

Books

Unfu*k Yourself: Get Out of Your Head and Into Your Life (Gary John Bishop)

I really enjoyed this book. Strong ideas. No repetition. It goes straight to the point. The narration is awesome.

ASIN: B0731QJ482

Reading Notes #321

Suggestion of the week

• Creating an ASP.NET Core Markdown TagHelper and Parser (Rick Strahl) - Amazing post that shares a cool taghelper for our projects, and explains all steps to build it.

Cloud

• Beyond The Obvious With API Vision On Cognitive Services (Víctor Moreno ) - This post is a nice and details overview of the cognitive services.
• Deployment Pipelines For Versioned Azure Resource Manager Template Deployments ( Peter Groenewegen) - Great post that explains all the best practices to manage healthy ARM template.
• Differences between Azure Functions v1 and v2 in C# (Damien Guard) - Nice overview showing the differences in the code.
• Secure your backups, not just your data! (Aruna Somendra) - I do most of that already...but yeah not all of it. What's YOUR backup plan?

Programming

• Azure vs GCP part 15: Microservices (Kenichiro Nakamura) - Interesting post that compares two microservice platforms... A must.
• Converting a Ghost blog to a Progressive Web App (Dean Hume) - Very interesting post that explains every step in its conversion journey.
• How to deploy Angular application to GitHub (Dhananjay Kumar) - Nice post to get started with Angular and Angular CLI.
• Demystifying Serverless with Cecil Phillip (Scott Hanselman) - Very interesting discussion about serverless or less server programming...

Databases

• The world of Automatic Tuning – SQL Server 2017 | All About SQL on WordPress.com (blobeater) - I was also surprised, but yes it's true the auto tunning really works.

Miscellaneous

• From Windows to the Cloud (Tim Sneath) - Wow! Well... Speechless, just read it.

Books

When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing (Daniel H. Pink)

A really amazing book packed of very interesting advice. Things that you kind of already knew, or at least had a feeling you maybe knew are clearly explained to you.

After reading (or listening) this book, you will know why, and you can decide to fight it or change the when... improve your performance and use your time and energy on something else.

ISBN: 0525589333

Reading Notes #320

Cloud

• The next generation of Azure Alerts has arrived (Kiran Madnani) - This is good news, alerts are an important piece of any serious system.
• Know your Azure Subscription Quota and Usage (Wriju Ghosh) - Because waiting until it breaks is probably not the option you are looking for... It's a good idea to know your quotas first.

Programming

• A Beginner’s Guide to Testing Blockchain Applications (Kayleigh Oliver) - You have a project that could use blockchain and you are asking yourself what's next? This post is for you.
• Building Container Images Securely on Kubernetes (Jessie Frazelle) - Excellent post that digs into some security process with containers.
• Entity Framework Core and NHibernate: Understand the Similarities and Differences (Ricardo Peres) - Interesting comparison between two well knows framework at this new age of .Net Core.
• MVC vs Razor Pages - A quick comparison (Jon Hilton) - Interesting post that compares two architecture. However, all the unit-test and mocking/ dependency injection were not included...Nevertheless it worth reading f you hare new in .Net Core development.
• Making an Azure static website EVEN MORE secure (Julian M Bucknall) - This post is like a pleasant journey in the security word. You will probably learn a lot, just like the author did (and myself obviously)

Data

• Azure Cosmos DB training webinars - Cosmo DB is gaining in popularity. It's time to boost your skill check this webinar/ on-demand training.
• Capturing Power BI queries using DAX Studio (Marco Russo) - Great post that gets us started on ways to find optimization for our Power Bi. Not enough people know about DaxStudio, have a look it's free!
• Coming soon to Power BI: Common Data Service for Analytics (Arun Ulag) - Looking forward to trying that as it definitely looks promising.

Book

Making Time (Bob Clagett) - I really enjoyed reading that book. I've been watching Bob's YouTube Channel for a while. ANd was happy to ear about his new book. In Making Time, a little bit like in his videos, Bob explains how he build stuff... but this time instead of a furniture or a room, it's a new career/ business. A short book (88 pages) but a lot of fun.  

Reading Notes #319

Cloud

• Azure Log Analytics ML: Using the evaluate operator with the app() or workspace() scope function (Iris Classon) - A nice blog post that shares some beat stuff to make our queries to work.
• Custom Vision service deployment on Azure with ARM template (Vivien Chevallier) - The perfect post to get started following the best practices.

Programming

• Setting up Application Insights took 10 minutes. It created two days of work for me. (Scott Hanselman) - Application Insights is really an incredible tool. A must-have in any online project... Not only the cloud one, just need to have internet access.
• Using Swagger to automatically generate the client code (Evgeny Zborovsky) - A nice tutorial that explains how to do cool stuff with swagger.

Databases

• Making Azure the best place for all your applications and data (Rohan Kumar) - A few great products that turn GA are announced in this post.

Miscellaneous

• Finding What's Changed in Your Code (Peter Vogel) - This post is like a big slice of wisdom cake...
• Follow Your Passion Is WRONG? (What About MONEY?) (John Sonmez) - Follow your passion or what I personally refer to "fun".It's very important.

Reading Notes #318 - MVP Summit 2018

Last week, it was the 25 edition of the MVP Summit. An event, where Microsoft invites all his MVP to get to Seattle and spend some time with the products teams and learn on the latest news and best practices.

This year was particularly inspiriting by the Microsoft roadmap, of course,  but even more by all the amazing people a got the chance to meet and discuss with. I'm all pump-up, and I have tons of ideas and projects… more to come.

I already miss you…

Cloud

• Deploy Docker containers fast to Microsoft Azure (Michelangelo van Dam) - This is an excellent tutorial to get started with Docker and also to see what's possible with Azure Container Instance service (ACI).
• Testing Precompiled Azure Functions Locally with Storage Emulator -- Visual Studio Magazine (Jason Roberts) - Nice post that explains how to use the emulator.

Programming

• ASP.NET Identity for your custom user and roles models (Dominique St-Amand) - A nice detailed tutorial that explains clearly how to setup the identity with .Net Core.
• Upgrading a 10 year old site to ASP.NET Core's Razor Pages using the URL Rewriting Middleware (Scott Hanselman) - True upgrade story, I loved it.
• Upgrading my podcast site to ASP.NET Core 2.1 in Azure plus some Best Practices (Scott Hanselman) - Nice second post about a migration passing through today's best practices.

Reading Notes #317

Suggestion of the week

• Migrating to Azure SQL Database with zero downtime for read-only workloads (Joseph Sack) - Learn the best practices and more about the tools available to you in this great post.

Cloud

• Analyzing a karting image with Azure Cognitive Services (Vivien Chevallier) - It's time to play with these Cognitive services. This post is a nice quick start.
• Microsoft updates Cognitive Services terms (Microsoft Azure) - Good to know.
• Oops! I Deleted My Blobs! What Can I Do? (Gaurav Mantri) - A nice new feature! Is it time to upgrade all our cloud solutions to use it? It could be a good idea.

Programming

• az webapp new - Azure CLI extension to create and deploy a .NET Core or nodejs site in one command (Scott Hanselman) - Azure CLI is a super handy tool. New commands are being created, it's time for us developers to get involve read this post and clone that GitHub repo!

Miscellaneous

• 10 Characteristics of a Successful Internal IT Champion (Richard Seroter) - Awesome post! Next time changes are in the pipeline, you should think about these 10 little things.
• Azure Cosmos DB training webinars | Azure Roadmap | Microsoft Azure (Microsoft Team) - Fantastic news, I know a lot of people were waiting for this kind of training.

Reading Notes #316

Suggestion of the week

• Why should I care about Kubernetes, Docker, and Container Orchestration? (Scott Hanselman) - I really like how this post brings why containers are great.

Cloud

• Azure ARM Template Deployment with Duo Authentication (Eric Leonard) - Nice quick tutorial using the best practices with Azure resources manager.
• Gain better control over your Microsoft Azure costs and governance using Overcast (Stephane Lapointe) - This new product definitely looks interesting.

Programming

• 3 key insights that make D3.js easy to learn - A geek with a hat (Swizec Teller) - I love Power Bi and since I start using it, I would like to try to do some custom visuals. If you think the same thing, then this post is a got pre-learning reading.

Miscellaneous

• How to Coach: A Programmers Cheat Sheet (Lou Bichard) - Very interesting post that shares really good advices, and even suggests a book to go deeper.
• The POC Problem (William Vorhies) - Very interning thoughts about a frequent scenario in our business.
• Why You Must Have an Online Presence as a Programmer NOW (Antonio Cucciniello) - An inspiring post about how to start/ continue/ improve our career as developers/ data scientist/ devops/ architect...

Reading Notes #315

Suggestion of the week

• DAX optimization examples (Alberto Ferrari) - An incredible dive into a DAX performance analysis. I loved it.

Cloud

• Bing Speech API extends its text to speech support to 34 languages (Qinying Liao) - Great new languages supported.
• Brand Detection in Microsoft Video Indexer (Dr. Abed Asi) - This is a great addition to this service.
• In order event processing with Azure Functions (Jeff Hollan) - This post explains how to keep our Functions in control to respect the message order.
• Monitoring issues on Stack Overflow with serverless, CosmosDB and Teams (Shayne Boyer) - Awesome post that gives all the detail on how a reel life solution is built.

Programming

• Docker for Windows Desktop... Now With Kubernetes! - Docker Blog (Jim Armstrong) - This post explains all the wonderful things you will have only by checking one simple checkbox.

Databases

• Share reports with your teams and partners | Microsoft Power BI Blog | Microsoft Power BI (Lukasz Pawlowski) - Perfect, we can now share report directly like we could with dashboard.
• Power BI Desktop February Feature Summary | Microsoft Power BI Blog | Microsoft Power BI (Amanda Cofsky) - So my great new features!

Miscellaneous

• How Long is Long Enough? Minimum Password Lengths by the World's Top Sites (Troy Hunt) - Do you use good passwords? Because length is not the only thing.

Photo credit: nickpettican on Visual Hunt / CC BY-NC-ND

Reading Notes #314

Suggestion of the week

• The Modern Dev Team (Rob Conery) - What a great post. Maybe it's only me getting old ;) but I think we all have these thoughts one day or the other.

Cloud

• A great developer experience for Ansible (Corey Sanders) - This post announces the integration of Austin in the cloud shell and visual studio. It somewhere we can learn more about it. I didn't know about it, but I really want t use in my next DevOps tasks.
• Announcing IoT extension for Azure CLI 2.0 (Chrissie Chi) - This post gives you everything you need to know: what it does, how to install it, and even some sample!
• Announcing integration of Azure Backup into VM create experience (Trinadh Kotturu) - Fantastic news, better be prepared then sorry.
• Azure Cosmos DB + Functions Cookbook— static client (Matías Quaranta) - Nice first post of a promising series that shares recipes, gotchas, and examples about two very powerful tools.
• Azure Functions Proxies (Eric Williams) - Azure Functions are a very useful thing to have in your toolbox. With the addition of Proxies, it becomes a must read a few ways to use them in this post.
• Jenkins on Azure: from zero to hero (Pui Chee Chan) - Jenkins is an extremely popular build server. This post list all the features pre-package for you when you deploy it in Azure in a few click.Pretty awesome.
• Migrate your classic storage account to Azure Resource Manager using PowerShell Azure v5.0.x (Stephane Lapointe) - Nice tutorial that shows how to move all (except vhd) your storage in the new format.

Programming

• How I use VSCode, VSTS and GitHub to develop Azure ARM Templates (Eric Leonard) - From A to Z, this post explains all steps in an application life circle; using only three simple tools.
• Dockerizing .NET Apps with Microsoft's Build Images on Docker Hub (Elton Stoneman) - This post explains how to package your .Net app, so the only dependency is... well Docker.
• Scalable and Performant ASP.NET Core Web APIs: Load Testing (Carl Rippon) - A great post that introduces multiple tools to load-test our API with ease BEFORE going to production. A must to all developers.

Databases

• My Favorite SQL Prompt Features (MarlonRibunal) - If you never try SqlPrompt and you write SQL in your day to day, stop read this, and go downloading it, or at least read this post that gives you a glimpse of it's feature.

Miscellaneous

• 5 Essential Trello Boards Every Remote Team Needs (Leah Ryder ) - This is a nice little post packed with good advice for remote workers.
• My Blog Now Has a Content Security Policy - Here's How I've Done It (Troy Hunt) - Interesting post again from Troy, who once more makes us think.