Reading Notes #631

Welcome to this week's roundup! I'm excited to share some standout blog posts and podcasts that caught my attention. Enjoy exploring the latest updates, tips, and insights!

Suggestion of the week

• azd CDN changing January 2025 (Kristen Womack) - Important note, that will probably impact many of you, like I was. Luckily the fix is very simple
  
  
  

Programming

• 13 Visual Studio 2022 Tips & Tricks - There is always at one I don't know in that kind of post. Love it!

• .NET Aspire Quick Tip - Managing Container & Data Lifetime - .NET Blog (James Montemagno) - Very useful post that shows examples of more settings and explains why and how we would like more control over our containers.

AI

• AI Killed the Content Creator...Star 🤩 (Kirupa) - Interesting observation. The artificial intelligence is impacting all processes and changes the way we interact with the world. Will I kill it or change it?

Podcasts

• 438: Jon Galloway - From Submarine Office to Software Developer (Merge Conflict) - Super interesting episode about Jon. I learn more in those minutes than in all the time I've been working with him! But at the same time, a Teams call is not "the place" to share about Submarine stuff I guess ;)

• .NET Aspire with Anthony Simmon (Hanselminutes) - Interesting episode about .NET Aspire by someone who is using it in his day to day and have been extending it. Great conversation, very interesting.

Miscellaneous

• How Microsoft can turn Windows PCs into an Xbox (Tom Warren) - That's exciting! So we could get Windows on more of those portable devices (aka handheld)

Sharing my Reading Notes is a habit I started a long time ago, where I share a list of all the articles, blog posts, and books that catch my interest during the week.

If you have interesting content, share 

~frank

Reading Notes #289

Cloud

• Gain business insights using Power BI reports for Azure Backup (Pallavi Joshi) - Nice Power Bi visualization, I know a few clients who are looking forward of using that.
• Microsoft Azure Stack is ready to order now (Mike Neil) - It worth the time we wait, now hybrid solutions will be so much more simple to create. And I will definitely try that ASDK (dev version)
• Nested Virtualization in Azure (Joy Fan) - A VM in a VM, it does sound like the movie Inception, but it's, in fact, very powerful.
• Processing Feedback Evaluations (paper) with OCR, Logic Apps, Azure Functions & Power BI (Jeff Hollan) - Great real-life overview using multiple Azure serverless services.
• Push your images to Azure CDN on publish with gulp (Shayne Boyer) - We all understand that CDN could seriously help our web application. Well, this post will show you that it could be really easy to implement and integrate to your CI/CD.
• Running Azure Batch jobs using the Azure CLI – no code required (Mark Scurrell) - A really cool example of what can be done by Azure CLI and batch.

Programming

• Ubuntu now in the Windows Store: Updates to Linux on Windows 10 and Important Tips (Scott Hanselman) - Right now, it's still only available in the developer's version, but this fall the new official version should include them... Pretty cool.

Databases

• Migrating to Azure SQL Database (Gavin Payne) - Very interesting and complete post that regroups references and gives details about some of the alternatives when it's migration time.

Reading Notes #267

Cloud

• Announcing custom domain HTTPS support with Azure CDN (Manling Zhang) - Great new! Now https is supported end to end.
  
• Announcing general availability of Managed Disks and larger Scale Sets (Corey Sanders) - Wow! The world of Virtual Machine just got a fantastic push. It's now much easier than ever.
  
• Automating Azure Analysis Services processing with Azure Functions (Orsolya Gal) - Awesome tutorial that explains how to use Azure function as a real-live cron job.
  
• Getting Around Blocked Ports (Alexandre Brisebois) - Cool tutorial on how to configure our jumpbox in Azure using PowerShell and ARM.
  
• Preview the new enhancements to Azure Security Center (Sarah Fender) - Wow, so many new tools to helps us to detect security attack on vNets, VMs and databases.

Programming

• Introducing Docker Secrets Management - Docker Blog (Ying Li) - Thus post introduces the great new secret manager of Docker.

Miscellaneous

• 10 GitHub samples with Azure DocumentDB you shouldn’t miss! (Rimma Nehme) - Nice list where everybody should find something interesting in favorite code language.
  
• Trying out 'dotnet new' template updates and csproj with VS2017 (Scott Hanselman) - Nice update on both VS2017 and .Net Core.
  
• Ultimate Linux on the Desktop (Jessie Frazelle) - Interesting point of view about running a laptop all in containers and the structure it required.

Reading Notes #263

Cloud

• Announcing: New Auto-Scaling Standard Streaming Endpoint and Enhanced Azure CDN Integration (Cenk Dingiloglu) - Great, now integrated.
  
• Azure Storage Queues New Feature: Pop-Receipt on Add Message (Sercan Guler) - This post shows how to use the new queue feature in a great demo.
  
• SoftNAS Cloud® on Azure - Cloud NAS Storage made easy (Lutful Khandker) - Interesting product that clearly fill-up a need in the online storage. Let's talk about it after the 30-day trial.

Programming

• Two-Factor authentication in ASP.NET Identity 3 using TOTP authenticator (Dominique St-Armand) - Excellent post, perfect to get started on 2 factor authentication.
  
• What .NET Developers ought to know to start in 2017 (Scott Hanselman) - Nice work from John and Scott... Sweet checklist for beginners and all the other too.

Databases

• Azure SQL Database is increasing read and write performance (Jan Engelsberg) - Perfect timing! Better performance for the same price.

Reading Notes #233

Cloud

• Map storage scenarios to services in Microsoft’s cloud (Joe Davies) - Cool gigantic pdf that contain all the information about cloud storage.
  
• How to turn cloud economics to your advantage (James Staten) - Nice post that asked important questions. Did you ask to yourself these?
  
• Announcing collaboration with the Jenkins project (Corey Sanders) - Great news about Jenkins. Now with the Microsoft's teams involved, we can expect only the best.
  
• Detecting threats with Azure Security Center (Tomer Teller) - Interesting post that explains fundamental difference between servers and individual attack and introduces briefly Azure security center.
  
• Troubleshooting Azure Stream Analytics jobs with SELECT INTO (Ken Wang - MSFT) - Fantastic debug session that explains how, with streamanalitics we can debug a query.
  
• HowTo: Purge an Azure CDN endpoint using Azure PowerShell v1.x (Stéphane Lapointe) - Useful piece of script that will save us time.

Programming

• Upgrading from ASPNET Core RC1 to RC2 Guide (Steve Smith) - Nice tutorial that covers all pieces of the puzzle.

Miscellaneous

• Going dark: online privacy and anonymity for normal people - Wow... And we thought using a strong password was safe enough. Great text.

Reading Notes #188

I was really happy to ear about Microsoft Azure Data Center that will be built in Canada. And it was definitely not only good thing that was published this week...

Suggestion of the week

• Create Multi-Geo Environments using Azure Resource Manager (Alexandre Brisebois) - Very interesting experience with ARM. The result is explosive.
  
• Press Release - Fantastic news!

Cloud

• MCSD: Azure Solutions Architect - Announced at Build, here is the detail about the new Azure certification.
  
• New Azure Infrastructure Services Implementation Guidelines (Joe Davies) - Great new! A free guideline for the IaaS.
  
• Import Sample Data to Azure DocumentDB (Stephen Baron) - Document playground is not the only tools available to get started. This post introduces the Data Migration tool.
  
• Spotlight Resources - This post lists some of the useful tools that can help you when working with Azure.
  
• Use the Azure Resource Manager Copy Operation to Deploy Duplicates - Always exploring the possibility with ARM, Alexandre Brisebois show us how to be very productive when deploying.
  
• Azure data services part 1 HDInsight (Alice Waddicor) - Nice introduction post about HDInsight.
  
• Microsoft to open data centres in Toronto and Quebec City (David Shum) - Watch this great announcement about the new Azure data center...in Canada!
  
• BREAKPOINT: Know Your App Inside and Out with Application Insights (Lachezar Arabadzhiev) - Great show about a great tool.
  
• Application Insights Pricing Effective June 1 (Dale Koetke) - Nice post that explains the cost and features.
  
• Announcing Custom Origin Support for Azure CDN (Manling Zhang) - Nice announce of a more convenient solution, more flexible.
  
• Microsoft to open data centres in Toronto and Quebec City (David Shum) - Watch the recorded video of the TV announcement.

Programming

• Was This Trip Really Necessary? (Rod Vagg) - Interesting thoughts about the Node's journey.

Database

• New Titan DB offering from ClearDB (ron Tardif) - Aah! I know a lot of WordPress users that will be very happy with this news.

Miscellaneous

• And the Release Date for Windows 10 Is... (Paul Thurrott) - The official date is finally out!
  
• Totally stressed out? Sync to Paper (Scott Hanselman) - ... And I thought I was different. ;)
  
• Visual Studio Time Saver – Presenting code in PowerPoint (David McCarter) - If you do technical presentation, this tool is a must!
  
• What's the deal with Windows 10 for the Non-Technical Friend (Scott Hanselman) - Because we are the head of IT support for our friends and family...
  
• Speaker style bingo: 10 presentation anti-patterns - This post provides a list of nice tips to be a better and more organize presenter.

Reading Notes #129

Suggestion of the week

• Auto-Healing Windows Azure Web Sites (Mark Brown) - Amazing new feature, that will simplify our lives. A post to read.

Cloud

• Stupid Azure Trick #5 – Got a Penny? Run a Simple Web Site 100% on Blob Storage – Cost Analysis Provided (Bill Wilder) - I can easily imagine plenty of scenarios where this static (and mostly free) website could be really useful.
  
• This Day on WindowsAzure Will be Back Shortly - This post is announcing a really promising series about the re-editing of a cloud application.
  
• Best Practices: Windows Azure Websites (WAWS) (Mark_Brown) - Interesting post that explains how we should use the tools and services available to follow the best practices.
  
• Using the Windows Azure Content Delivery Network (CDN) - Nice update on a post that is still very true today.
  
• Microsoft has Released a Set of Symbols/Icons to Visually Represent Windows Azure Solutions - Time to refresh our presentations, and schemas....
  
• WindowsAzure Lessons Learned – Continuous Services Require Continuous Attention - The best way to improve is to learn for our "problems" or perhaps those of others.

Programming

• Content Negotiation and Web API for the ASP.NET MVC Developer - Web API is a big step forward in a web architecture.
  
• Unit Testing 101: Creating Flexible Test Code - Interesting way to structure unit tests.
  
• EF 6.1: Creating indexes with IndexAttribute (Arthur Vickers) - Nice tutorial that introduces the index management in EF 6.1.
  
• How to Write Unit Tests to Check Your HTTP Headers (and Other HTTP Request Stuff) in C# - This post is a good tutorial that will help to write HTTP unit tests.
  
• Converting AutoMapper to a Portable Class Library (Jimmy Bogard) - Good post that explains the conversion of the automapper (a great tool, btw) to a Portable Class library(PCL).
  
• A cleaner way to use setTimeout and anonymous callbacks (Dave Ward) - Nice tricks, It's a lot clearer.
  
• How I Work Around The require(“../../../../../../../”) Problem In NodeJS - This post shows one possible solution to the unpleasant ...... problem.

Databases

• Gartner Report: Big Data will Revolutionize the Cybersecurity in Next Two Year (Saroj Kar) - Interesting point of view about the impact of bigdata in a near future.
  
• How to count the number of rows in a table in SQL Server - Interesting demonstration of the cost generated by a simple row count operation.
  
• Not unit testing your databases? You should be - Interesting post that explains how we could (should) test our databases. It also quickly introduces tSQLt framework.

Miscellaneous

• How do we know if mobile apps are secure? (Scott Hanselman) - Outch! I was hoping the stats would be better. We definitely need to pick our apps more carefully.

Reading Notes #56

Cloud

• Comparing Windows Azure Blob Storage and Google Cloud Storage (Gaurav) - Always very interesting those posts where two or more products are compared...
• Best Practices for Performance Improvements Using Service Bus Brokered Messaging (msdn.microsoft.com) - Nice post with a lot of simple rules that will help to get better results.
• Windows Azure End to End Examples - Three different sources of information that could help you learning Windows Azure.
• What if we’re all wrong about the cloud? - Interesting thoughts about what is and what should be cloud storage.
• Architecting with AWS – Before You Go (Jeremiah Peschka) - Nice post about an architect training on AWS. The equivalent also exists for Azure... even if this post didn't talk about it.
• Windows Azure Storage – 4 Trillion Objects and Counting (Brad Calder) - Interesting post about Azure Storage all in numbers.... (Read stats).
• What's New? - Wow the perfect monster machine to run those NoSQL databases...
• All Things Distributed (Werner Vogel) - Nice post about the new high performance EC2 of AWS. All about the specs and features of this new instance type.
• 8 Questions to ask an AWS Expert - Good questions and good answers about key features of Amazon web Services AWS.

Programming

• What Exactly Is GitHub Anyway? (Klint Finley) - Excellent post that demystify all unknown about GitHub. Nice work! A post that you should definitely read.
• Azure CDN – with AzureCdn.Me and MVC3 (Iain Hunter) - Nice post and great tool. The AzureCdn.Me even has a NuGet package... This tool will simplify so much your work with the Azure content delivery network (CDN).
• Advanced queries with Lucene.NET (codewrecks.com) - Lucene.NET is the best option to do full text search in Azure. This great post explains how to perform advanced queries.
• Entity Framework and Open Source (Scott Gu) - I'm really happy to see that the Entity Framework is now completely open source and on CodePlex. Learn a bit more about version 5 and even 6.
• Five Rules to Simplify Large Scale BizTalk Orchestration Development (Stephen W. Thomas) - Simple rules that will help for sure.
• Entity Framework Magic Unicorn (and much more!) is now open source with take backs (Scott Hanselman) - Another great post about the even greater Entity Framework. The big news EF is going open source on CodePlex with GitHub. Also see code snippets from EF6.
• ASP.NET Web API and Azure Blob Storage (Yao - MSFT) - Super tutorial that show step by step how to manage your Azure Blob Storage by code, by doing a nice helper class.

Miscellaneous

• 5 Sleep Mistakes You Don’t Know You’re Making (And How They’re Hurting Your Blog) (Guest Blogger) - Interesting post. How many of those rules do you follow... and do you have any sleeping issue?
• The Patient Knows What’s Wrong with Him - Nice thoughts, we shouldn't expect the solution from the user... only partial information. The analogy with the doctor is a really good idea, I’m sure I will reuse it someday...

[…]And the user exclaimed with a snarl and a taunt, “It’s just what I asked for, but not what I want!” That was 30 years ago, and I doubt the poem was new then.[…]

• Windows Azure Quietly Puts Its Pieces Into Place (Alexander Haislip) - Nice post talking about the global strategy of Microsoft.
• ScrumMaster Tales – New People on the Team (Mark Levison) - Nice post about a new people in an Agile team. When some frictions popup what you should do...
• Is Daddy on a call? A BusyLight Presence indicator for Lync for my Home Office (Scott Hanselman) - I definitely want one of those. The idea is so simple but so genius! Nice post.

~Frank