Reading Notes #536 (Book edition)

Good first Monday of 2023!

As a way to close the Reading Notes of 2022, I changed a little today's post by sharing the books I read during the year. I didn't include the novel and thriller as I'm not sure they would be relevant in this kind of post.  However, if you are interested, find me at goodreads.com/fboucheros.

Let's make this new year a better one, and as usual, I'm always happy to receive your blog post and recommendations.

Books

Listen Like You Mean It: Reclaiming the Lost Art of True Connection  
Author: Ximena Vengoechea

I like the stories and examples in this book. I mean it's 'easy' to say listen carefully but demonstrating how the opportunity was missed, and how to correct it is way more complex. Nice book.

Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers
Author: Chip Heath, Karla Starr

I really enjoyed reading this book. Data is in the middle of everything, and when communicating that information it's often translated into numbers. To have an impact, the way we communicate those number is crucial. A book to read and probably read again after a while to refresh our memory.

Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

Authors: Chip Heath, Dan Heath

This book oversimplifies a really complex topic, but I believe it was important to make each point clear. Nice read, it will help to be less afraid of making changes.

Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

Author: Cal Newport

A nice book that mixt great advice and more 'easy' ones. Nevertheless, it was interesting to revisit what I already knew and to learn new things. With so many distractions around us, focusing is important.






Slaying the Dragon: A Secret History of Dungeons & Dragons 

Author:  Ben Riggs

Big fan of D&D and this book is a great read. It is a history of the game and the people behind it. It is an excellent read for anyone who is interested in the game or its history of it. I had no idea of all the "drama", and honestly even I didn't know either what it takes to create those books/games.

It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work 

Authors: Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson

The important message here where we can achieve a lot more with less. The book shares many examples and breaks them down into simple principles. I recommend it to anyone who is looking to improve their work-life balance.





Can't Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds 

Author: David Goggins

The mind is incredible. Goggins pushed it to not eleven... to twelve! We all encounter difficulties in our lives, and the lesson here is that the real limit is way past what we think. Great book and he just published a new one.

Anti-Time Management: Reclaim Your Time and Revolutionize Your Results with the Power of Time Tipping 

Author: Richie Norton

The first time I heard of that book it was in a podcast and it seems very promising. Even though I didn`t fall in love with that book the ideas are interesting and definitely worth the time to learn them.

~Frank

Reading Notes #327

Cloud

• Create Azure Functions using Visual Studio and deploy it to Azure (Abhijit Jana) - Nice little visual studio tutorial to create an Azure Function.
• Why you should use Durable Functions sub-orchestrations (Mark Heath) - Nice post.A lot of very useful pieces of information.
• Yes you can! develop on AWS using .NET (Dror Helper) - This post is a great invitation for .Net developers to try AWS.

Programming

• Announcing .NET Core 2.1 RC 1 Go Live AND .NET Core 3.0 Futures (Scott Hanselman) - The future with .Net Core looks very promising, learn why in this post.
• Using LazyCache for clean and simple .NET Core in-memory caching (Scott Hanselman) - New post in the series where Scott shares with us things he try while refactoring his website.I loved it.
• Web Performance Optimization is Simple 5535756836 - Can Your Developers Execute? 5535657166 (Chris Love) - Interesting post, learn from true stories. Simple thing can make a big difference.

Databases

• Azure SQL Database Table Partitioning Example (John Miner) - Wow, this post is a very completed tutorial that provides all steps and explanations.

Miscellaneous

• Ask Tim - Should I say "I Don't Know" to an Interviewer? (Tim Corey) - Great post. I apply this no bullshit rules to all my conversation.
• Five Things That Every Leader Could Use to be a Better Leader (Joan Pepin) - Interesting post about leadership and how we grow with our challenges.

Books

• The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (Mark Manson) -Damn it's good!
  The title of the book let's me thought it will be very negative. Not giving a fu#*... But it's really not. Quite the opposite in fact. I really like the book and I'm planning to read/listen it another time in... One year. To see what changed.
  

Reading Notes #304

Cloud

• Application Insights: VSTS dashboard chart widget now available (Mike Gresley) - Woohoo! Finally, it's there. I'm going to add it to all my projects right now.
• Monitor Azure services and applications using Grafana (Ashwin Kamath) - I didn't know that tool, but now it's definitely under my radar.
• Azure Durable Functions: Making Serverless Last (Mary Branscombe) - A great post that introduces the durable function and explains where it fits in the integration offer.

Programming

• Creating a Minimal ASP.NET Core Windows Container (Jeffrey T. Fritz) - This is an amazing post that shows how to optimize our containers. It may be about Asp.Net Core but it applies to any containers. It also shows one of the big improvements with .Net Core...
• WebOptimizer - a Bundler and Minifier for ASP.NET Core (Scott Hanselman) - This post shares a nice little tool available for Asp.Net Core.
• Why Is It So Difficult To Get Started Writing Automated Tests? (Matthew Jones) - So many very good questions are asked in this post, but what are the answers?

Databases

• Automatic tuning will be a new default (Veljko Vasic) - An important post t read and share to avoid any panic in January.

Podcast

• EntreLeadership #231: Renée Mauborgne—Move Beyond Competing (EntreLeadership Team) - A great episode with a few tools that look very interesting... And of course, a book reference that you should add to you to read list.
• Dotnet Rocks - 1491 Building VSTS using VSTS with Dan Hellem and Rogan Ferguson (Carl Franklin, Richard Campbell) - Great show about VSTS... If you using or think of using the tool... That's for you.

Miscellaneous

• I Don’t Have Time is a Myth (Donn Felker) - I love it. We have so many opportunities; we just need to take them.
• The Main Challenges of Building Machine Learning Tech (Donn Felker) - Very interesting article about AI.
• Why I won't be switching to VSCode any time soon - A geek with a hat (Swizec Teller) - I was surprised when I saw the title of this post, how could you not like VsCode? However, after reading it, I understand. Through preferences are personal, VSCode does a lot and needs a bit more than few minutes to be tame. I got also overwhelmed when I started using it. The secret is the documentation... and sometimes. Then it becomes whatever you want.

Reading Notes #300

Cloud

• An introduction to Azure Web Apps on Linux (Christos Matskas) - Web App for all! Seriously, it's a really good news and it's already GA.
• Azure Logic Apps Monthly Update – September 2017 (Sriram Hariharan) - Get a good summary of all the new features in only one post. But of course, it's only an overview.
• Manage your Azure VM backups with Azure CLI 2.0 - Preview (Kartik P V R) - Azure CLI is so convenient, I know some will prefer graphical interfaces. However, CLIs are the only way for automation.
• Microsoft Integration (Azure and much more) Stencils Pack v2.6.1 for Visio (Sandro Pereira) - It's time (already..) to update our stencil to include the lastest and greatest. Thanks!

Programming

• Generating Google Slides from images using Apps Script (Wesley Chun) - Pretty neat features. Definitely worth the time to write a script when you need to edit tons of slides, or build a deck multiple times.
• 7 Hidden Gems in Visual Studio 2017 (Visual Studio Team) - This post shares not the usual tips. Seriously, how many you already knew before reading the article?
• Adding circuit breakers to your .NET applications | Richard Seroter's Architecture Musings on WordPress.com (Richard Seroter) - This post is a great introduction to Steeltoe and the circuit-breaker pattern. The code used in this sample is .net core but it also works with .Net framework. Perfect for all our micro-services.

Data

• Power BI Desktop October Feature Summary | Microsoft Power BI Blog | Microsoft Power BI (Amanda Cofsky) - Once again, this month release is packed with tons of great new features. I can't summarize thus the post, but the bookmarking capabilities alone worth your time reading this post or watching the video.

Miscellaneous

• #223: Mike Erwin—The Power of Solitude (Entreleadership - Mike Erwin) - Interesting reading suggests on leadership and the importance of solitude time.
• Microsoft announces next Azure OpenDev: October 25, 2017 (Ashley McNamara) - Awesome community event coming ... Save the date.
• Social Presentations with Mark Rendle (Carl and Richard) - That look like a very promising tool... except for the name that I continually forget... (but that's probably just me). I will definitely have a to the Github repo.
• The Simple Reason to Learn to Lead Yourself First (Joshua Spodek ) - Interesting thoughts about becoming a leader.
• What is a Cloud Developer Advocate? (Jeremy Likness) - Great article. A few of my friends joined that team, and even though I already had this talk with them, now I have a better picture.