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 # 20

 

Cloud

• Hybrid Reference Implementation Using BizTalk Server, Windows Azure, Service Bus and SQL Azure - A nice sample of using Biztalk with Azure
• Practical Development - Introducing unit of scale. very clear post
• An HTML5-Windows Azure Dashboard, Part 1 - In this post David Pallmann is starting a new project that will integrate HTML5, Javascript, JSon, JQuery and Azure
• Minimizing Connection Pool errors in SQL Azure - Here goes a best practices
• Windows Azure Drive Snapshot and Updating Azure Drive - Definition and description of Azure snapshot drive and it’s features, in a easy to read bullet form.
• Windows Azure for Social Applications - This post is about high level communication between cloud instance.
• A Comprehensive Introduction to Cloud Computing - This is a good introduction to what is the Cloud computing, using a real life analogy as starting point. (Unfortunately because of a blog restructuration the link is currently broken, but Wely did tell me that he will but it back soon.)
• Cloud Computing and the Reason for Hybrid Versions - A lot of good stats about the cloud computing, but I'm curious to see their sources...
• How To Easily Enable Windows Azure Diagnostics Remotely - Amazing post with a lot of great PowerShell script. Bookmark this one...
• A Game of Risk- Explain about WinRT

  Microsoft announced the Windows Runtime (WinRT) stack at the heart of Windows 8 during the BUILD conference keynote in September, everyone in the room knew the game had changed.

• How To Clean up old Windows Azure diagnostics - Another amazing post that merite to be bookmarked.
• Your users don't care if you use Web Sockets - Most user don't care about the tech used. They care about the result. Here and example.

  You can use the lovely CanIUse web site to find out if you browser supports something

• How to access Service Configuration settings in Windows Azure Startup Task - Good code snippet if you need to check config
• Azure Storage Analytics - A good list of links to code post.
• Deploying Node.js Applications to Windows Azure via Blobs or Git Sync - Quick explanation of the use of nodeRole project. Thanks to Steve Mark how made great tools projects.
• Le Bulletin Azure - épisode 1 - First video podcast in a series about Azure's actualities in french.

Programming

• Web Essentials from Mads Kristensen - This is definitely a most. Even more for people our doing not so often web development.

• SQL in the Wild - I didn't know about this "filtered index" feature available in MSSQL 2008. Really nice feature.

Miscellaneous

• Profanity doesn't work - Does swearing is a good thing in a technical presentation, or in a blog? S. Hanselman answer the question in this post
• Your images are a virus. They are EVERYWHERE on the Internet - 1 image, 227 copies, 4 years... images spread..
• The #1 Thing That Successful Freelancers Always Do - Business look for some one how can do better then them self.

~Franky