Reading Notes #354

Cloud

• Azure Functions—Key Vault integration   - Nice tight integration that will simplify our lives.
• Azure Functions Continuous Deployment with Azure Pipelines- Part 7 (Jason Roberts) - Excellent series to learn and get started with continuous integration and continuous deployment.
• My first Azure build & deploy pipelines for an Azure Function V2 (Joost van Schaik) - A nice tutorial that shows how easy it is to deploy an Azure function with Azure DevOps Pipeline.
• Running Cognitive Service containers (Henrik Frystyk Nielsen) - This post is the perfect one to get started with those new cognitive containers.
• This resource group will self destruct in 30 minutes (Mark Heath) - Pretty clever way to "not forget" any unused resources... And there so save money!

Programming

• Creating a .NET Global Tool from an existing Console Application (Rick Strahl) - Very interesting post that explains some strategy for global donet core application and how to work share them with nuget.
• Upgrading the DakBoard Family Calendar with Raspberry Pi Zero W and Read Only filesystem (Scott Hanselman) - Not even a week has past and it's already version 2! Excellent!!

Books

Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win (Jocko Willink, Leif Babin) - Very interesting book. Yes, it contains a lot of battle details, and first I was not sure, but then things "fall" all in place when you understand what the story was "demonstrating." It also contains more business focus examples. Everything is very clear, well explained in plain English.









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Reading Notes #285

Cloud

• 10 tips for enterprise integration with Logic Apps (Toon Vanhoutte) - Nice list of integration / LogicApps best practices.
• Azure Automation Graphical Editor from a Coder’s Perspective (Brian Christopher Harrison) - Pretty cool post that explains how someone with PowerShell base could use the designer interface in automation.
• Azure CLI Samples for Azure Cosmos DB - Just a quick reference to see what's available today.
• Azure Logic Apps - Retry Policy (Sriram Hariharan) - This post explains how to customize a key feature to build successful integration solution in cloud programming.
• Microsoft Cognitive Custom Vision Service .Net Core Angular 4 Application (Part One) - With all those code snippets and screen captures, this tutorial is extremely well detailed.
• How to Serve Serverless with Examples in Azure (Jeremy Likness) - Nice post that decorticates the serverless using Azure Functions as an example.
• Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit version 2.0 - Super, new version of the toolkit.
• Top 5 mistakes when people talk about Azure (Saverio Guardato) - Yep, same here.All true.

Programming

• How to reference a .NET Core library in WinForms - Or, .NET Standard Explained (Scott Hanselman) - Nice explanation, very clear.

Suggestion of the week

• Solve Node.js issues faster with Application Insights for Node.js (Josh Gavant) - Awesome post that shares a lots of very useful tips and guidance.

Miscellaneous

• 10 strategies for beating “programmer’s block” (Madison Moore) - Interesting top ten.

Reading Notes #282

Cloud

• Enhancements to Application Insights Smart Detection (Anton Fritz) - Really cool new service that will improve our way to detect problems.
  
• How to easily and silently obtain AccessToken (Bearer) from an existing Azure PowerShell session (Stéphane Lapointe) - Nice optimization of our environment and still be secure.

Programming

• Deploy Cognitive Toolkit model to Azure Web Apps (Ilia Karmanov) - Nice short demonstration, all the code is available on GitHub.
  
• Load Balancing Node.js Applications with NGINX and Docker (Bruno Krebs) - This is a really good tutorial that explains thing very clearly and simply.
  
• Using .NET and Docker Together (Rich Lander) - This post is a fantastic list of references to get started with .Net Core and Docker combination.
  
• Kubernetes in action: How orchestration and containers can increase uptime and resiliency (Brendan Burns) - Wow I was really impressed by how Kubernetes works and mange things effortless (for simple cases).

Reading Notes #280

Cloud

• Announcing AzCopy on Linux Preview (Sercan Guler) - Fantastic news! One tool for everywhere.
  
• At Build, Microsoft expands its Cognitive Services collection of intelligent APIs (Microsoft Azure) - The Microsoft Build is always full of announcements, and this year wasn't an exception. Many novelties in the world of AI from new services to a new MVP category.
  
• Build a Serverless MBaaS with Azure Functions (shellmonger) - Nice tutorial that shows how to leverage Azure function with DocumentDB and node.js.
  
• What’s new for Serverless at Microsoft Build 2017 (Raman Sharma) - Another post that shares the novelties announced at Build, this time with serverless in mind.

Miscellaneous

• Login and Authentication for your ASP.NET Core Web API – The Big Picture (Jon Hilton) - Nice quick post about the different options regarding authentication and authorization for our API with also an explanation of the difference between them.
  
• Microsoft Flow + Azure Storage + WebJobs + MailChimp + Outlook (Troy Hunt) - Great post about a real life integration story.

Reading Notes #268

Cloud

• Azure Application Insights JavaScript SDK: reliability and performance improvements (Beckylin Orooji) - That's a good news! Time to update our packages.
  
• Access on-premise SQL Server data from Azure Logic Apps via On-Premises Data Gateway (Eldert Grootenboer) - Nice tutorial that explains step by step how to connect securely our on-premises resources to Azure.
  
• Cognitive Services APIs: Speech - Wow! So many ideas to play with those services... But that would be in another post.
  
• Serverless Integration with Logic Apps, Functions and Cognitive Service API (Steef-Jan Wiggers) - Another good integration example leveraging services in Azure.
  
• Microsoft Integration (Azure and much more) Stencils Pack v2.4 for Visio 2016/2013 is now available (Steef-Jan Wiggers) - We are always searching for images do use in our diagram. Here is your chance to update your tool with a nice pack.

Programming

• Running Cross Browser Automated Testings in Visual Studio Team Services - Fantastic tutorial that explains how to have a real impact on our deployment's speed by automating our UI testing on VSTS.

Miscellaneous

• Considerations on using Microsoft Flow or Logic Apps to sync documents (Steef-Jan Wiggers) - This post answers a question that many people I meet asked. Very clear, and yet simple to understand.

Reading Notes #254

Cloud

• AWS Developer Tool Recap – Recent Enhancements to CodeCommit, CodePipeline, and CodeDeploy - This post is definitely a great list of tools.
  
• Exploring Application Insights for disconnected or connected deep telemetry in ASP.NET Apps - No way!! That's awesome, I'm going right away to test the disconnected mode.
  
• Sending a Regular SMS with Azure Functions and Twilio (Jason) - Nice little tutorial about Azure function App.
  
• What Is: Microsoft Cognitive Services - Wow, brains power as services... imagine plugging that to into your APIs or your bots... oh yeah.

Programming

• Answers to your top TACO questions (Visual Studio Blog) - This post answers many questions asked at Ignite in the mobile deployment world.
  
• Exploring ServiceStack's simple and fast web services on .NET Core (Scott Hanselman) - This post is a really nice introduction to an interesting alternative when building services.
  
• Introducing the ASP.Net Async SessionState Module (Matt FJH) - This post explains how session can be managed in Assp.net core,
  
• Yarn vs npm: Everything You Need to Know (Tim Severien) - Interesting new package manager that is trying to solve issues with the already great npm.

Databases

• 9 Things You Should Know About SQL Azure Databases (Victor Moreno) - Nice post that shows some strength of databases as a service.

Miscellaneous

• Follow every Microsoft MVP on Twitter! (Chris ) - Cool script...
  
• Export Power BI report to PowerPoint (Preview) (Tzvi Keisar) - Love it!
  
• Happy #Friday Five! (MVP Award Program) - I know ... I'm guilty, and proud to be in the Friday five.