This Week I Learned

There are 7 posts filed in This Week I Learned (this is page 2 of 3).

TWIL – 2016 Week 22

This Week I Learned, TWIL, is a weekly series of posts where I collect any interesting bits I ran across in the previous week.

NOTE: This was another partial vacation week, so things are a little light this time around.

Technology

Introducing HyperDev
An interesting new tool (and hosting environment?) from Fog Creek Software. I’m not exactly sure who the target market is for this product, but it certainly has some neat ideas. If you need to prototype out a quick Node.js app, this could be pretty handy.

Running Your Own Open Source Email Server
I have a few domains that currently don’t have email, so I’ve been thinking about setting up an email server myself. I haven’t actually built out the mail server yet, but this tutorial didn’t make it sound too terrible.

So You’d Like to Send Some Email (Through Code)
It’s an old post, but still useful to remember lots of things you have to do to setup an email server that other email servers will accept as a real email server. The last time I setup an email server, most of this wasn’t required, so it’s good to have a quick overview of how things have evolved.

VAPOR – A Web Framework for Swift
Now that Apple’s Swift language is open source, it’s interesting to see new uses popping up. This is a new web framework based on Swift that looks interesting. Swift seems like a very capable language and I’m sure it’ll run great on the server, but it’ll probably be a bit before projects like this one are ready for prime time.

Health

Understanding Your Heart Rate Data with Gyroscope
I track a lot of health metrics about myself, but heart rate is one of the things I don’t track throughout the day (mainly due to not having a wearable that tracks it). Interesting points on how heart rate (specifically resting heart rate) may be an indicator or overall health. The Gyroscope tool also looks like it provides a nice way to correlate heart rate data with things like workouts, food, etc.

TWIL – 2016 Week 21

This Week I Learned, TWIL, is a weekly series of posts where I collect any interesting bits I ran across in the previous week.

NOTE: This week was a vacation week, so not too much to report this time around.

Technology

Pluralsight – Docker for Web Developers by Dan Wahlin
I’ve been wanting to get up to speed on Docker for a while and that was an excellent course. Dan covers enough to hit the ground running as a developer using Docker on your local dev box. It only has a tiny bit of content about deployment. Basically no content about managing/monitoring your Docker containers, so I’d still like to find a good overview of that aspect.

ODataQueryOptions
Josh Carroll mentioned this in the KnoxDevs Slack the other day and it was something I’ve not seen before. It’s an easy way to add the ability to use OData queries (like sorting/paging) on your API endpoints without having to actually implement OData yourself. I can see this being quite handy.

TWIL – 2016 Week 20

This Week I Learned, TWIL, is a weekly series of posts where I collect any interesting bits I ran across in the previous week.

Technology

ng-conf Keynote
Great overview of everything the Angular team is working on for version 2 now that it’s officially in RC status. Lots of good stuff coming very soon.

Playing with TensorFlow on Windows
Scott Hanselman uses the new Bash on Windows feature (which is only in the preview Windows 10 builds at the moment) to demo how you can run a *nix only tool like TensorFlow on Windows with no changes. It’s impressive that it works as smoothly as it does.

An Introduction to Microservices, Part 1
Most of the software I’ve worked on throughout my career has been built as a big monolithic blob of bits. I like the idea of “microservices” and thought it’d time to start reading up a bit more on how people actually implement them. This felt like a decent higher level overview. The code bits are in Node.js.

Deploying Microservices Architecture with C#, Part 1
This was a little lower level and specific to microservices with C#. Despite the title, this is more about how to let microservices communicate than it is actual deployment.

Health

2 Keto Dudes – Show 12 – Cancer
An interesting discussion about how a keto eating may help slow cancer progression. Mark Miller is on the show talking about how he thinks keto helped while he was being treated for cancer.

Career

The Software Engineer’s Guide to Ditching Your Resume
I’ve been intrigued by watching some local developer’s job hunt stories unfold happened to run across this article this week. It’s a long article, but it essentially boils down to making a name for youself through speaking, writing (blogging & actual books), speaking, and getting good at networking. All very reasonable suggestions if you want to be more than just another resume. The downside is a lot of this would be really hard to do for someone just starting out.

Life

Treat The Information You Consume Like the Food you Put into Your Body
I was hoping there was as little more substance to this article than there is, but even so, I like the idea that not every tidbit of information we consume is actually good for us. Having a toddler has made me more mindful of my time, but I still spend way too much time reading Facebook/Twitter/Slack.

Fun

YouTube – Insane 360 video of close-range tornado near Wray, CO yesterday!
I watched this in my Oculus Rift (playing the video via Virtual Desktop) and it’s crazy. Even though 360 video isn’t the best resolution, this is definitely amazing to watch. The camera is mounted on top of their vehicle, so it’s like you’re strapped in a chair on top of the car as they chase a tornado. They get really close to the twister a couple of times.

TensorFlow – MNIST For ML Beginners
I got TensorFlow installed and running on my Mac, but quickly realized I had no idea how to actually use it beyond the basic apps they give you to test your install. This was a great overview of one way to do image recognition in TensorFlow explained from a beginner (relative to machine learning) perspective.

Easy Steps To Better Icon Design
I’ve been working on a logo for a new side project on mine and found lots of good points in this article. I’m not a designer and don’t expect to become one, but, I do enjoy trying to level up my skills in that area.