6/7
Today I am grateful for:
-Attending the St. Joseph Farmers Market for the first time
-My first visit to Grand Mere State Park in Stevensville
-A backyard BBQ and bonfire in Three Oaks last night

6/6
Today I am grateful to watch the sun set over Lake Michigan last night.

6/5
Today I am grateful for open-minded people.

6/4
Today I am grateful for those who make an effort to bring people together.

6/3
Today I am grateful to those who are peacefully protesting against injustice.

6/1
Today I am grateful that the violence and vandalism in Chicago and other cities the past few days has mostly spared my neighborhood.

5/31
Today I am grateful for a day in Three Oaks, MI with Emilija Dinah, and Patrick.

5/30
Today I am grateful to finally receive my replacement driver's license.

5/29
Today I am grateful for my new spiralizer.

5/28
Today I am grateful for the Illinois STEM challenge and an opportunity to serve as a mentor this year.

5/27
Today I am grateful
-to Yev for taking the time to explain some Java concepts to me yesterday
-to cash in hundreds of dollars of Bing Rewards for Amazon gift cards.

5/26
Today I am grateful for
-a 5-day weekend
-my first visit to Washington Park

5/25
Today I am grateful to all the men and women who gave their life protecting my country.

5/24
Today I am grateful that my ice maker, which has been broken for weeks, is now fixed.

5/23
Today I am grateful for
-my first visit to Riverbank Neighbors Park
-a food truck selling tasty pierogis in Ukrainian Village

5/22
Today I am grateful for all the beautiful parks in my city. ‬

5/21
Today I am grateful for 2 bonus vacation days.

5/20
Today I am grateful for my first visit to Humboldt Park - a large beautiful park in the city.

5/19
Today I am grateful to complete a required company certification - a process I began months ago.

5/18
Today I am grateful for kind words from a customer after my team and I presented what we had been working on.

5/17
Today I am grateful for online Mass

5/16
Today I am grateful I've been able to keep up a daily exercise routine during this lockdown.

5/15
Today I am grateful for new tires on my bike.

5/14
Today I am grateful I was able to help my son file his taxes last night.

5/13
Today I am grateful to the organizers of DevAroundTheSun, who help the tech community and to raise money to fight COVID-19.

#devaroundthesun

5/12
Today I am grateful to sort, catalog, and/or dispose of all these old hard drives.

5/11
Today I am grateful to all the mothers who love their children and make them a priority in their lives.

5/10
Today I am grateful for a walk along the Fox River in Batavia yesterday.

5/9
Today I am grateful for Indian food.

5/8
Today I am grateful for good health.

5/7
Today I am grateful to those with the courage to speak truth to power.

5/6
Today I am grateful for tacos.

5/5
Today I am grateful for social media, which helps me stay in touch with friends during this lockdown.

5/4
Today I am grateful to spend much of this past weekend reading for pleasure.

John Self is a successful director of advertising commercials, getting ready to direct his first feature film. He has a seemingly limitless budget for this film and is promised a huge salary. The Englishman travels from his London home to New York and back multiple times, consuming physical pleasures along the way.

Martin Amis's novel Money -sometimes titled Money: A Suicide Note- tells Self's story.

John leads a life of hedonism and debauchery, gliding from booze to porn to drugs to prostitutes to bar fights to masturbation to his girlfriend. And, despite his recent directing contract, he has trouble with money.

Most of his problems are Self-inflicted. He is an overweight drunk and a sex addict and a misogynist and is sometimes violent and he is extremely careless with money. Here are some examples of John's philosophy:

"The first thing I wonder about a woman is: Will I f*ck it? Similarly, the first thing I wonder about a man is: Will I fight it?"

"I disclaim responsibility for many of my thoughts. They don't come from me. They come from these squatters and hobos who hang out in my head"

But John is also a victim.

He suffers from a severe toothache and from tinnitus. When he came into money, his father presented him with a bill for the cost of his upbringing; his gold-digging girlfriend is unfaithful and is spending his savings; each of the film's actors pressures him to radically alter the movie's script in order to satisfy their ego; Self has a mysterious enemy, who calls him to harass and threaten him and seems to know everything about his life. And there are other forces conspiring against Self of which he is unaware until the end of the novel.

Amis does a good job building a character that is at once abhorrent and sympathetic. John Self is clever, but unlikeable. His first-person narrative is the stream of consciousness made popular by writers like Henry Miller, Vladimir Nabokov, Malcolm Lowry, and Jack Kerouak. And Self's path to self-destruction is not unlike the narrators of "Tropic of Cancer", "Lolita", "Under the Volcano", and "On the Road".

And the author's ability to take a complex, unlikely story filled with hyperbole and make it seem plausible is admirable, as is the humor with which he tells this story. Amis even inserts himself into the book, as the arrogant writer that John approaches to rewrite his screenplay. He may add himself as a character to convince the reader that he is not the vulgar anti-hero narrator.

It helped that I listened to the audiobook, which was expertly narrated by Graeme Malcom, who reminds me very much of Michael Caine

Money is a commentary on the excess consumerism of the 1980s; but it will remain relevant as long as humans value money over other aspects of their life.

GCast 87:

Logging to Azure Application Insights from a Java Spring Boot Application

With a few configuration settings, you can push your logs from a Java Spring Boot application into Azure Application Insights - even if the app is not running in Azure!

When working with Git, I find myself frequently typing “git status” - a useful command that shows me on which branch I am working and the number of uncommitted files that have been changed, added, and deleted. An example is shown in Fig. 1:

Fig. 1

As you can see, I am working on the "dgiard/posh-git-demo" branch, I have added 1 file, deleted 1 file, and changed 1 file since my last commit.

But what if I could always see this information? What if was appended to the command line, so I never had to type "git status"?

The posh-git tool provides exactly this functionality.

To install posh-git, run Windows PowerShell as an administrator.

At the PowerShell command prompt, enter  

PowerShellGet\Install-Module posh-git

and press "Y" when prompted for confirmation.

Then, enter the command 

import-module posh-git

Your command prompt will change to something like the one shown in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2

Notice the text in square brackets after the path. It lists the current branch no which I am working, followed by the number of files I have added, changed, or deleted (if any) since my last commit. The red text, indicates these changes not been added to my git rep repository. If I issue a "git add", the text will change to green to indicate they are ready to commit, as shown in Fig. 3.

Fig. 3

After I commit the files, I only see my current branch and no uncommitted files, as shown in Fig. 4.

Fig. 4

Of course, I can get more details by typing "git status"; but most of the time, this is all the information I need.

Thank you to Hattan for showing me this tool.

Episode 611

Nik Molnar on Visual Studio Codespaces

Visual Studio Codespaces (formerly Visual Studio Online) is a cloud-based development environment that you can connect to from Visual Studio Code, within a browser, and from Visual Studio (in private preview). PM Nik Molnar describes the capabilities and how it works.

Links:

https://online.visualstudio.com/

https://github.com/nikmd23/ballpark-tracker

It is the early 1960s at the height of the Cold War. Alec Leamas is the Berlin Station Head for the British Intelligence agency known as the "The Circus". Operations in Berlin have not gone well and Leamas is taking the blame.

When Leamas returns to England, the Circus chief - who goes by the name "Control" - gives him a new assignment. Leamas is told to pretend to leave The Circus under bad circumstances and lead a life of isolation, alcohol, debt, and bitterness. The Circus even circulates rumours of incompetence and embezzlement to make his despair more convincing. Sure enough, an agent of the Eastern Bloc approaches Leamas after he` is released from jail on an assault conviction.

Leamas defects to the other side and sows suspicion amongst his enemies. But is Leamas the manipulator or is he the one being manipulated?

John Le Carré is a master at building suspense. For a novel with very little action (much of it is interrogation), I found myself riveted to "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" - anxious to know what will happen next. He kept me guessing until the end - pointing the reader in one direction, before pulling back the curtain to reveal a new twist.

On the surface, this is a complex spy novel with espionage and double agents and double-crossings and triple-crossings.

But there is a subtext to this novel that elevates it from good to great. The Communists of the East and the Democracies of the West each hold to ideals that they believe are best for their society. Yet, the agents protecting these societies are willing to completely ignore those ideals to protect their societies. To them, values are meaningless when a war must be won. To protect the interests of the state, bad guys are protected, and idealists are destroyed. England may believe in democracy for its citizens, but The Circus will abandon all national principles to win the Cold War. Leamas has become almost numb to this hypocrisy. He strives to ignore the moral issues and just do his job. If it were not for the love story, he would have succeeded.

Long ago, in an isolated temple in the mountains near Kyoto, a magical fox falls in love with a monk. When the monk's life is threatened by a powerful rich man and his hired demons, the monk and the fox must choose whether to sacrifice themselves for the other.

They seek the help of Morpheus, the King of All Night's Dreaming - a character introduced in Gaiman's popular Sandman comic series.

Sandman: The Dream Hunters is a novella written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by Yoshitaka Amano. Amano is famous for his work on anime projects video games and he adds depth to this story with beautiful watercolor and charcoal images.

This is a simple fairy tale, with the feel of Japanese folklore. It does not add much to the Sandman legend, as Morpheus is a peripheral character here, but he helps to tie the story together with his advice and philosophy.

Immediately after reading this novella, I read P Craig Russell’s comic adaptation, which was a simplified version of the same story and also worthwhile.

The Dream Hunters is a beautiful tragic love story, told with Gaiman's lyrical charm.

The fourth and final keynote of Microsoft Build 2020 focused on Teams, Microsoft Graph, Windows, and the Fluid Framework. As has been the case for some time, Teams appears to be innovating at a rapid pace. I was encouraged by the unified Windows platform, which allowed developers to combine UWP and desktop apps – a source of frustration in the past.

Here are my notes:

Teams

Changing the way people work and learn

Collaboration app

Extensible: Build apps using

Using Power platform

Bot framework

Graph API

SharePoint framework

New capabilities

Teams extensions for VS code and VS

Select type of app

Build app

Test in Teams with 1 click

Publish

To App Store

To your  tenant

Teams + Power Apps

Use templates or create from scratch

Customize Teams

Drag and drop

Multiple windows

GA this summer

AAD Single Sign on

Activity Feed API

Users can customize workspace with apps

Users can pop-out apps

Microsoft Graph

API to access mail, people,

Call via HTTP requests

SDKs for multiple languages

New

View and Modify permissions

Microsoft Graph Toolkit

Extend M365 (e.g., extend Teams)

Build your own apps

http://graph.microsoft.com

Publisher verification and certification

Apps verified/certified by MS

Increase trust

IT admins can set policies around this

Connectors

Move data in and out of MS Graph

e.g., Move data to/from Azure

Security and Compliance

e.g., Teams Chat webhook API

Knowledge Generation

Project Cortex

Knowledge network across org

e.g., show info about a specific topic

Fluid Framework

Content-centric collaboration

Built for end-users and developers

End-users

Components

Tables, lists

Can insert into email and chat

Rendered in-line

Developers

Web-based framework

Distributed data structures, data merge

Embed into other apps

http://fluid.microsoft.com

Low latency

Demo

Replace JavaScript Map with Fluid SharedMap

Listen to events on SharedMap

Framework is open source

Windows

Unifying App Development

Project Reunion

Unifying UWP and desktop apps/libraries

Decoupling from OS

Mix and match apps

No need to wait for users to update OS

New WinUI controls

Support for swiping gesture

Number control has ability to  do math

Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD)

Apps adapt when running on iPad, Linux, other platforms

GCast 86:

Logging in a Java Spring Boot Application

Learn how to add logging to your Java Spring Boot application and configure the level of that logging.

The third keynote at Microsoft Build 2020 was the most informative one that I’ve watched so far. It was hosted by Scott Guthrie, but included presentations and interviews by many other Microsoft experts, including Donovan Brown and CVPs Amanda Silver, Julia White, and Rohan Kumar. I’m most interested in exploring Codespaces (which was discussed in Keynote 2) and the new Machine Learning Studio.

Here are my notes:

95% of Fortune 500 companies use Azure

61 Azure regions

Sustainability

Carbon negative by 2030

By 2050, Remove all historical Microsoft carbon emissions

$1 billion climate innovation fund

Teams

75 million daily users

Built on Azure

Developing for the Cloud

Demo: Single Page App

Static Web Apps + Serverless Functions

Deployed from VS Code via GitHub

New Azure service; Static Web  App (Preview)

Github actions

Pull Request from VS Code, using GitHub extensions

Codespaces

Azure Static Web Apps

Currently in preview

Dynamic scaling

Github native workflow

Use JavaScript framework or static site generator to build app

You can Configure routing, auth, custom domains

Visual Studio Codespaces

Development environment in browser

Hosted in Azure

Extensions supported

VS or VS Code experience

Azure Serverless

Azure Kubernetes Service

Windows Server containers (new)

Azure Private Link

Spot pricing

cheaper, but allows for some interruptions

For more tolerant apps

Azure Cosmos DB

Free tier

Serverless pricing

pay only when used

May be cheaper for "spiky" workloads

Auto-scale

99.999% availability

Cognitive Services

AI in Azure

Built-in models

Customizable models

Personalizer

Rationalization service

Apprentice mode: Run along time existing service

New Speech voice styles

Enhanced container support

Power Apps

Developers and "Citizen Developers"

Demo: Covid-19 screening

VS Connected Services experience

Wizard to connect to Azure resources, such as CosmosDB

HTTPRepl

Browse and debug API

Command line

ls: List services in API

get: execute HTTP GET on API

Interview with Starbucks CTO Gerri Martin-Flickinger

Using MS collaboration tools (e.g., "Teams") to connect teams

Using Azure to  analyze COVID-19 and understand which stores to open, when, and how to ope

Azure Synapse Analytics

Data warehouse

Integration with Power BI and Azure Machine Learning

Azure Synapse Link

Cloud native implementation of hybrid transactional analytical processing

Links operation databases to Synapse

Data available in seconds

No need for ETL pipelines

Currently available for Cosmos DB (other databases coming)

[Synapse Link] button in CosmosDB "Data Explorer" blade

New Azure Machine Learning Studio

Notebooks

Designer: drag and drop

Wizard

Azure Machine Learning Responsible ML (announced)

Understand, protect, and control data and models

This year’s Microsoft Build conference was entirely online, which changed the format of the keynote presentations. In the second keynote, Scott Hanselman sat at his home computer and connected with others at Microsoft via Teams. They showed off some of the projects they were working on, including a Xamarin application and a dog-tracking application; but, these apps were just an excuse to talk about some of the newer technologies from Microsoft. Technologies covered included Codespace, Guthub mobile, Wingget, WSL2, and Windows Terminal.

The conversations were enhanced by Hanselman’s wit.

Here are my notes:

WinGet

Package manager for Windows

e.g.,

winget install terminal

aka.ms/winget

Coding in Teams

@codeconversations

Allows you to write code

Start with ``` to go into executable  code in the cloud

aka.ms/codeconversations

WSL2

Real Linux kernel

Docker desktop works

GIMP running in WSL2

GUI in Linux

currently in preview; Available later this year

aka.ms/wsl

Windows Terminal is now version 1.0 (finally)

Unicode characters

Background images

GitHub

Just acquired npm

99% of npm packages hosted on github

Github is now free - even for private repos with unlimited people

Enterprise features available for a fee

Github mobile app for iOS and Android

GitHub Mobile

Check on pull requests and issues

Comment on Pull Requests

Codespace

Development environment in the cloud

From github repository, click green [Code] button

From dropdown: Open in Codespace

Opens dev environment in browser

Similar to VS Code

Settings | Preferences Sync

Select settings

[Turn on]

Same theme and extensions on-premise as in the cloud

LiveShare

Connect and collaborate with others using Visual Studio or Visual Studio Code

aka.ms/codepaces

Visual Studio Code

21,000+ extensions

Xamarin

Hot reload: Changes reflected immediately in running app (no recompile / redeploy required)

Episode 610

Christine Matheney on Teaching Computer Science to the Next Generation

Christine Matheney is passionate about teaching science and technology to young people. She works with Girl Scouts and high school students and teachers, helping them learning Computer Science. She discusses her activities and what Microsoft is doing in this area.

What would happen if a plane crashed on a deserted island and the only survivors were a group of English schoolboys?

Would they form their own society?

Would they establish rules by which to govern themselves?

Would they be kind to one another?

William Golding describes this scenario in his 1954 novel Lord of the Flies.

It is a dark story.

After their plane crashes, killing all adults on board, the boys attempt to self-govern, but quickly devolve into savagery. The stronger boys seize power and bully the weaker ones.

Golding uses the boys on the island as a microcosm of society. Without the rule of law to govern them, the strongest take over and exert their way upon the weaker ones.

Not one of the boys is over 12 years old, but it is easy to forget this as they grow more violent and emotion overrides reason and groupthink overrules logic.

A power struggle takes place between Ralph, who tries to establish order and a set of rules to help the boys survive and increase their chance of rescue; and Jack, who appeals to their emotions and plays on their fear of an alleged monstrous beast on the island.

As their makeshift society collapses, they begin to worship the head of a pig swarming with flies (their "Lord of the flies") and even robbery and murder is no longer taboo to some of them.

I read this parable 20 years ago and again this week - and I loved it. Golding paints a dark picture of the chaos that results when rules are not enforced. We see ourselves in these young boys and it is not the best part of ourselves.

All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren tells the story of Willie Stark - a southern country lawyer who beat the system and became Governor.

Stark began as "Cousin Willie from the country". His first entry into public life was to fight against a back-room deal that handed a school construction project to an undeserving contractor - a deal that resulted in the deaths and injury of dozens of children when a fire escape collapsed a couple years later. Willie continued his fight against the political establishment and eventually became governor. But, as he accumulated more power, he lost the idealism of his youth. Eventually, he became known to all his associates as "The Boss".

Willie was charismatic and popular because he championed the common man. But he was also brutal and would not hesitate to destroy his enemies. He often resorted to bullying, bribery, and blackmail to accomplish his goals and maintain his power. He built and presided over his own political machine.

Eventually, Willie encounters problems against which he is powerless.

But All the King's Men is not just the story of Willie Stark. It is as at least as much about Jack Burden - Stark's friend and right-hand man and the narrator of Warren's novel. Like Willie, Burden abandons his ideals as he carries out Willie's plans - ignoring the consequences of his actions.

And the book is very much about the consequences of actions. Neither man has trouble rationalizing his choices. Stark believes that the ends justify the means - that it is ok to accumulate power by any means necessary because he is doing good with that power. He is convinced there is only evil in the world, so he must use that evil as a tool to make good. Stark is not a bad man. But, in his quest to do good, he ends up causing bad things.

Burton, in contrast adopts a nihilistic attitude in which he ignores any results of his action. He lives much of his life through Willie and abandons his own sense of responsibility.

Even many of the minor characters in  the novel compromise their principles at least once - invariably with negative unintended results.

This is a novel about the corruption of power and the hypocrisy inherent in American politics and the consequence of using the end to justify the means and the limits of that power once obtained. Although written in 1947 and chronicling a fictional southern state governor (presumably based on Louisiana governor Huey Long), one can find parallels in the current administration.

The Microsoft Build conference had a different feel this year as the global threat of the COVID-19 virus forced the company to host the entire conference online – mostly from the homes of the developers and managers. Of course, this affected me less than others because I have never actually attended Build in person.

I always make a point of watching the opening keynotes, as this is where one hears about new announcements and the things about which Microsoft is most excited.

The day 1 keynote featured Satya Nadella calling attention to the success of Azure, Office 365, and Microsoft 365. He invited a couple of guest speakers to demonstrate how they were using Microsoft technologies to improve their business.

Immediately after Satya’s address, the finals for Imagine Cup were held. This is an international student tech competition that included thousands of submissions from all over the world. The 6 semi-finalists were introduced; the 3 finalists presented their project, and a champion was announced. This event is close to my heart, since I was involved a few years ago. Team Hollo from Hong Kong won with a project that used AI to track mood by analyzing video and voice and comparing it to pre-built models, as a way of combatting depression and suicide.

Here are my notes from Day 1:

Satya Nadella

CodeSpace

Provision dev box in cloud, provisioned with VS Code

Work from any device

WSL 2

Linux on  Windows

Power Platform

95% of Fortune 500 use Azure

Cloud extends to edge

Azure Arc

Microsoft 365

Build apps or extend apps

Power Platform

Rapid App Dev tool for professional developers

Also for "Citizen developers" who don't write code for a living

3.5 million users

Extends M365

1-click: Add Power Apps to Teams

Distributed Infrastructure

95% of Fortune 500 use Azure

Most data regions (61)

"Project Reunion"

Unify Win32 and USP app development

Case Study: Folding@Home

Greg Bowman, PhD, Washington U St Louis

Studying how proteins fold

Distributed computing to home computers

https://foldingathome.org/

Case Study

San Francisco Conservatory of Music

App integrates with Teams

Use Teams to perform for and interact with audience

Tudor Fay, New Blue, Inc.

Imagine Cup

6 semi-finalists

3 Finalists

Tremor Vision

United States

Parkinson's

Azure Custom vision to detect tremors associated with Parkinson's

Team Syrinx

Tokyo

Lost voice

Device on throat. Generates vibration patterns.

Hollo (winner!)

University of Hong Kong

Mood tracking app

Use Azure to track face, voice. Use models to evaluate mental health

New features for education

Microsoft Learn Student Ambassador

New student hub on Microsoft Learn

Student Zone at Build

GCast 85:

Dependency Injection in Java Spring Apps

Learn how to declarative initialize services using the dependency injection features of the Java Spring framework.

Young Nick Carraway spent the summer of 1922 in East Egg Long Island, renting a home next to the mansion of the enigmatic Jay Gatsby. A plethora of rumours about Gatsby bounced around the small community: Gatsby is the son of European royalty; he was a German spy in the war; he once killed a man.

The two men become friends and Gatsby asks Nick to help him re-connect with his former lover Daisy Buchanan, who is now trapped in a loveless marriage.

There are many reasons why F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is a classic. It captures the spirit of the wealthy elite in the Jazz Age of 1920s America; it sings of lost love and unattainable love; and it is the kind of timeless tragedy that stays with the reader long after the novel is finished.

Gatsby represents the American dream of the self-made man, yet the old money of Long Island looks down on him. He cannot let go of the past, so he buys a mansion across the bay from his former lover; he throws lavish parties in the hope that she will attend. Gatsby reinvents himself; and he amasses a fortune, thinking it will win Daisy's heart and rekindle what they once had. He does not consider that Daisy is not the girl she was; or that she was never the girl he believed her to be. He is in love with a vision of her from the past - a vision that was never real.

Gatsby is likeable; Daisy's husband Tom is arrogant and unfaithful and violent. But Tom is from old money; born into a higher caste. And this makes a difference to Daisy.

It is a tragic story of the shallowness and arrogance of the financial and social elite. Gatsby idealized Daisy; in the same way, people overestimate the positive effect that money will have on their life. There is an emptiness inside so many of the characters.

"Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge. The bridge was being repaired: she went right through the Danger sign. The car fell a hundred feet into the ravine, smashing through the treetops feathery with new leaves, then burst into flames and rolled down into the shallow creek at the bottom. Chunks of the bridge fell on top of it. Nothing much was left of her but charred smithereens."

Iris was the daughter of wealthy industrialist in a small Canadian city. She and her younger sister Laura grew up in a small Canadian town with their widowed father and their housekeeper, until Iris's arranged marriage at 18 years to an ambitious businessman twice her age.

That is all gone now. Iris is an old woman telling the story of her life and her abusive marriage and her sister's suicide and her lost family.

Margaret Atwood's "The Blind Assassin" is a complex story, narrated in a nonlinear fashion by octogenarian protagonist.

The book's title comes from a story told by a character in a novel by Laura published by Iris after Laura's death. This story within a story within a story works because the characters in each narrative reflect the lives and feelings of those in the surrounding narrative. 

The story unfolds through Iris's writing, through newspaper clippings, through letters, and through the allegories of the embedded stories. Iris's tale jumps around in time and the book often cuts to Laura's novel and back again. This complexity allows Atwood to slowly reveal the tragedy of family. Through her reflections, Iris peels away the layers of a story to slowly reveal what drove her sister to take her own life.

Her reflections reveal her feeling of guilt and the regrets she carries.

I read this novel over a weekend - fearing that if I set it aside for long, I would lose the many threads balancing in my head.

It is a story of manipulation and blind pursuit of power and control
It is a story of violence against women
It is a story of women who sacrifice themselves to protect others.
It is a story of disappointment

When I finished, I was exhausted.

GCast 84:

Java Services

How to create and call services in Java

Episode 608

Christina Aldan and Jeff Strauss on Dev Around the Sun

Dev Around the Sun is a 24-hour online tech conference designed to raise awareness and funds to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

It begins May 12 at 12:00 UTC.

Organizers Christina Aldan and Jeff Strauss describe the goals of the conference and what viewers can expect.

Dev Around the Sun homepage

Donations

More interviews

Nobody Owens was a toddler when The Man Jack broke into his home and murdered his family. Young "Bod" survived because he wandered away from his home and into a nearby graveyard where the ghosts of the graveyard raised and protected him.

Neil Gaiman's 2008 novel The Graveyard Book tells Bod's story as he grows from a child to a teenager. The first chapter are a series of loosely-connected short stories, set about 2 years apart, relating Bod's encounters with the various ghosts and spirits of the graveyard and (occasionally) the living people of the nearby town. But, in the climax, the stories circle back on themselves: A childhood friend moves away, then returns as a teenager; an ancient guardian re-surfaces; and the Man Jack eventually returns to finish the job he failed to complete years earlier.

Gaiman proves again that he is a master storyteller. He takes some classic horror story ideas - ghosts, malevolent spirits, secret societies, werewolves - and breathes something fresh into them. Bod's mentor - the reformed vampire Silas - is an excellent example.

Graveyard is a coming-of-age story for a boy with an unusual childhood. Gaiman was inspired by Kipling's Mowgli and by the sight of Gaiman's own toddler riding a tricycle through a graveyard.

This is a dark, macabre tale; but it is filled with hope. It is aimed at young adults, but kids of any age will enjoy it.

This was my third visit to this story, as I have read the 2-part graphic novel adaptation; and a short story in the "M Is for Magic" collection. And each time, I come away with a new appreciation for Neil Gaiman and his imagination.

Saleem Sinai was born at the stroke of midnight on the day that India declared independence from Great Britain. 1,001 Indian children were born within an hour of midnight August 15, 1947 and each of them were gifted with some special power. Saleem's power of reading minds and communicating telepathically manifested itself when he was 10 years old.

In Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, Saleem tells the story of his life and his family. His parents and grandparents grew up in an age of colonial rule, but Saleem grew up with his country. Significant events in Saleem's life coincide with significant events in India's history. He and his country experience growing pains together. He is conflicted by the different aspects of his personality just as the new nation experiences the difficulty of coordinating the needs of countless cultures.
 
It is a complex novel with dozens of characters introduced in its 500+ pages.

The narrator (Saleem) often switches between relating his story in the first person and writing about himself in the third person.
He is quick to switch between the present tense and the past tense and the past imperfect tense; while recounting an incident, he will suddenly digress and recount a significant bit of family history; or he will hint about something yet to happen, promising to relay that story later.
He tells the story to his fiancée Padma. Occasionally, the author looks up from his narration and tells her (and us) what he is thinking at that moment or what is going on outside his window.  It is as if he is writing down the story as it occurs to him, rather than in any natural order.  His stream-of-consciousness narration reads more like an oral history than a novel.

Rushdie addresses love and fidelity and struggles for power and the dangers of centralized authority.

Despite the supernatural ability of many of the characters, Rushdie provides a sense of realism - even bringing in some historically significant characters in India's history. 

But the accuracy is not as important as the story and the characters and the way Rushdie weaves together multiple plots and fulfills prophecies and promises - sometimes long after they are made.

"What's real and what's true aren't necessarily the same, " proclaims the narrator.

Episode 607

Chris Klug on Software Development Up-Front Planning

Chris Klug embraces agile software development; but points out that this does not free us from the responsibility of up-front planning, which can help to avoid problems down the road.

5/3
Today I am grateful to discover a beautiful park just a couple miles from my home.

5/2
Today I am grateful for a birthday card and hand-painted watercolor from Abby and Rachel.

5/1
Today I am grateful to virtually hang out with Chris last night.

4/30
Today I am grateful to take a hot bath almost every day for the past 2 months.

4/29
Today I am grateful I made it home yesterday before the thunderstorms began.

4/28
Today I am grateful to clean and organize my second bedroom so it is now a guest bedroom instead of a storage room

4/27
Today I am grateful to play online games with my sons yesterday.

4/26
Today I am grateful for my new nightstand.

4/25
Today I am grateful to enjoy a bad musical last night with Kendall and Heather

4/24
Today I am grateful for a call from Kevin yesterday.

4/23
Today I am grateful to grocery store employees who work hard, putting their health at risk - often for low wages.

4/22
Today I am grateful to finish my taxes last night.

4/21
Today I am grateful for mostly empty streets and sidewalks, which makes it easy to maintain distancing while I ride my bike in the city.

4/20
Today I am grateful to live in a city with so much history.

4/19
Today I am grateful for the kindness and generosity of Christine and Carol, who care about my safety.

4/18
Today I am grateful for a Friday afternoon virtual coffee hour with my team.

4/17
Today I am grateful for a new Raspberry Pi my boss sent me yesterday.

4/16
Today I am grateful to Heba for helping me learn Java and answering my questions.

4/15
Today I am grateful for the people and technologies that make remote working easier than it would otherwise be.

4/14
Today I am grateful for a new headlight for my bike

4/13
Today I am grateful to celebrate Easter virtually with my family over Teams yesterday.

4/12
Today I am grateful that He is risen.

4/11
Today I am grateful to Patrick and Susan, who recognized my plight and shipped me some coffee.

4/10
Today I am grateful to Jesus Christ, who died for my sins.

4/9
Today I am grateful for an unexpected call from Greg

4/8
Today I am grateful for the years we had John Prine and the joy his music brought us.

4/7
Today I am grateful for my new reflective belt, which makes me feel safer riding my bike at night.

4/6
Today I am grateful that I finally fixed this table lamp that has been broken for 2 years.

Dave Ramsey has built a company that provides financial advice via seminars, a radio broadcast, a podcast, and numerous books.

His 2011 book "Entreleadership" is not about personal finance; but about what it takes to build and run a company. Ramsey coined the title word, combining "entrepreneur" and "leader" because he believes that one must embrace both roles in order to successfully build a small company.

He supports most of his advice with anecdotes from his own successes and failures as he grew his company.

The message running through this book is that a company is a team. As such, employees should be treated as team members; and the boss should think of himself as a leader; and you should hire candidates with a passion for what you are building, rather than those just looking for a job.

He talks about setting priorities: identify and perform the tasks that are important and urgent before turning to those that are important/not urgent or urgent/not important. Skip those that are neither important nor urgent.

He talks about the importance of a leader's ability to make a decision.

He talks about the importance of trust: "People will not buy from you if they don’t trust you, your product, and your company."

He talks about communication: it is important for a leader to share their goals with their team members, so they can make intelligent decisions.

He talks about debt, which he advises against - a philosophy I apply to my personal finances.

Much of Ramsey's thinking is based on his relationship with God. As a practicing Evangelical Christian, he looks to the Bible to lead him in his daily activities, including his business activities.

I was unfamiliar with Ramsey before reading this book.

I don't think I could work for him, primarily because he requires everyone in the company to spend their day at their desk in the office - a lifestyle I rejected years ago; and also because the following passage gave me pause: "privacy isn't a big deal to people who are living a clean life and doing the right thing."

But the book contains a lot of practical, common-sense advice, delivered in a straightforward manner.

GCast 83:

Supporting POST HTTP Requests with Spring Boot

Create a web service that supports HTTP POST requests using the Spring Boot framework

Episode 606

Layla Porter on Test Driven Development

Twilio Senior Developer Evangelist Layla Porter discusses Test-Driven Development and how you can use it to improve your code.

Links:

https://www.twitch.tv/laylacodesit

https://youtu.be/EcoIjf3RABI

I use Excel a lot - sometimes just to format a lot of text by applying the same formula to a bunch of strings.

The CONCAT function is great for this. It concatenates together 2 or more strings to create a new string.

The syntax is:

CONCAT(text1, [text2],…)

where each argument (text1, text2, etc., up to 253 arguments) is a string or a reference to a cell containing a strng.

So, if cell A1 contains the string: "Customer" and cell B1 contains the string "LastName" and you want to store the following string in cell C1:

Customer.LastName

You can do so with the following formula in cell C1:

=CONCAT(A1, ".", B1)

One challenge with the CONCAT function occurs when you want your new string to include double quotes ("). Because double quotes are used to delimit strings, this can cause confusion.

For example, you may want to take the inputs above and form a string like the following:

"Customer" : "LastName"

The following formula generates and error because Excel cannot tell where a string argument ends

=CONCAT(""",A1,"" : "", B1,""")

I've found 3 ways to approach this.

Use single quotes instead of double quotes. This is a compromise, but it can work sometimes, as double quotes and single quotes are considered the same in many contexts.

The following formula accomplishes this.

=CONCAT("'",A1,"' : '", B1,"'")

Use a double set of double quotes

Excel uses the special escape sequence "" to indicate double quotes within a string.

Here is an example of this:

=CONCAT("""",A1,""" : '", B1,"'")

Use CHAR(34)

Excel contains the CHAR function that returns the character associated with an ASCII value. A double quotation character has an ASCII value of 34, so you can use this instead of the character itself. It is perfectly acceptable to embed one Excel function within another.

Here is an example of this:

=CONCAT(CHAR(34),A1,CHAR(34)," : ", B1,CHAR(34))

The last 2 options are my preference. Which you choose depends on which you find more readable.

GCast 82:

Creating a RESTful Web Service with Spring Boot

Use the Spring Boot framework to create a RESTful web service.

Episode 605

Andrea Salterello on Accessibility

Andrea Salterello is a Microsoft Regional Director, software developer, university instructor, and the organizer of Accessibility Days in Milan. discusses ways that technology can help those with disabilities, how to build accessibility into your applications, and his upcoming conference, which focuses on developing accessible software.

Links:

https://accessibilitydays.it/2020/it/

https://globalaccessibilityawarenessday.org/

Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion tells the story of Maria. She is beautiful. She is a former model. She has had a moderately successful acting career. She is the wife of a successful movie director. She is sinking into depression.

Her situation is driven by an unhappy marriage, a series of meaningless sexual encounters, an abortion, an addiction to alcohol and prescription drugs, and an institutionalized daughter.

In a stream-of-consciousness narrative - told in the present and in flashbacks - Didion takes us inside Maria's head as she stumbles through months of self-destructive behavior.

Maria has no direction in her life; her nihilism is symbolized by her habit of hopping into an expensive car and speeding through the highways of Los Angeles. She is surrounded by the decadence and opulence of the 1960s Hollywood inner circle, but she is disconnected from it.

It's an emotional ride. I started reading in the evening and stayed up half the night to finish it.

Ebenezer Cooke was an 17th-18th century English poet, who traveled briefly to Maryland as a young man; then returned later in life to take possession of his inherited estates in the British colony. In 1708, Cooke published "The Sot-Weed Factor, or A Voyage to Maryland, A Satyr" - a poem based on his travels.

All the above is true.
 
In 1960, John Barth published The Sot-Weed Factor - a novel of Ebenezer Cooke's life. Almost all of this book originated in the imagination of Mr. Barth.

The "Eben" Cooke of Barth's novel is forced to leave England in the 17th century when he falls in love with a prostitute and is confronted by her pimp for non-payment. He sails for Maryland to take over a family estate there. Upon arrival, Governor Charles Calvert appoints him Poet Laureate of Maryland.

During the years after his exodus from England, a comedy of errors causes him to lose his estate, his family, his friends, and the woman he loves. At the beginning of the novel, Cooke is arrogant and cowardly, but those are not the faults that cause his misfortunes. Often, others take advantage of him because of his naivety.  By the end of this bildungsroman, Cooke's numerous misadventures have transformed him into a mature and honorable man.

The story itself is written to sound like a 17th century novel. The author frequently employs words like forsooth, anon, and suchwise to transport the reader to colonial times. It is farcical and satirical and funny and sad. It is a complicated plot, but so many of the seemingly extraneous stories introduced early return to prove relevant to Cooke's life.

The events of the story consist of a string of coincidences so unlikely that they border on the absurd. Many characters are not who they seem - particularly Eben's tutor Henry Burlingame, who crosses paths with Eben multiple times wearing a different disguise almost every time. Cooke is captured by pirates and by Native Americans during his quests to regain his estate and to find his lost love. While pursuing his quests, Eben is determined to maintain his virginity, despite numerous temptations. But this is not only the story of Ebenezer's quest. It is also Burlingame's quest for his identity and the Native Americans' quest for vengeance on the invading Europeans and the New World's quest for an identity.

Unlike some long, complicated novels I've read recently, I had no trouble keeping track of all the characters in this story.

The Sot-Weed Factor is an enjoyable story for anyone who craves an adventure.

Episode 604

Sarah Lean on Adjusting to the Pandemic

As a Microsoft Cloud Advocate, Sarah Lean used to travel around the world speaking to IT professionals. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has forced her to accomplish her goals while staying at home. She talks about the adjustments she has made.

Henry Green's Loving opens with "Once Upon a day..." and closes with "...and lived happily ever after", but it is not a fairy tale.

The novel takes place in the castle home of the rich Tenant family, but the story focuses on the servants.

It is the middle of World War II and the butler has just passed away. Footman Charley Raunce is promoted to butler, so the Tenants stop calling him "Albert" (which wasn't his name anyway) and start calling him Mr. Raunce. The position goes to his head and some of the other servants resent him for it, but it does not deter Edith the maid from falling in love with him.

Then the servants catch one of the Tenants in an adulterous act and Mrs. Tenant loses a valuable ring and the servants are left alone in the house for days and the ring is found and people argue and they laugh and they gossip and they fall in love.

"Loving" is just a story about ordinary life among a particular class of people in a particular place and time. Nothing much happens. The War rages throughout Europe, but not in neutral Ireland. Instead of action, we get a lot of dialogue and a peek into personalities and prejudices (everyone seems to dislike and distrust the Irish and the Catholics) and lonely people craving affection and the tension between the ruling class and serving class.

It is a small story, but it's a good one.

While not a fairy tale and not the classic that some claim, I enjoyed Mr. Green's novel.

GCast 81:

Spring Boot Quick Start

Learn how to quickly generate a Java application based on the Spring Boot framework.

Episode 603

Brent Stineman on Remote Recording

Brent Stineman talks about an internal podcast he produces for Microsoft and the challenges of interviewing people hundreds or thousands of miles away from him.

4/5
Today I am grateful my ankle is now healed after I twisted it last week.

4/4
Today I am grateful for the singing and cheering and flashing lights every evening in my neighborhood

4/3
Today I am grateful for a lunchtime virtual meeting yesterday with old friends and to Jeff for inviting me.

4/2
Today I am grateful I have started interviewing people for my show again.

4/1
Today I am grateful that Donald Trump is an honest, humble man, who puts the interests of our country above his own profits and insecurities and that he is totally not a racist.

3/31
Today I am grateful to all the teachers who put their health at risk going to a crowded classroom full of potentially sick kids every day and have quickly shifted to online teaching when it became necessary.

3/30
Today I am grateful for a virtual lunch with Nick, Tim, Adriana, and Nathale yesterday.

3/29
Today I am grateful to successfully complete a project with a customer last week.

3/28
Today I am grateful to Stephen for giving me a Postmates credit.

3/27
Today I am grateful for an online chat yesterday with David, Kevin, Joel, and Richard that included lots of puns and laughter.

3/26
Today I am grateful to be a guest on Jeffrey's live Twitch stream yesterday.

3/25
Today I am grateful to all the health care workers who are working even harder than usual this year and putting themselves at greater risk to help us.

3/24
Today I am grateful to Carl for playing his guitar and singing from his living room every night for those of us listening all over the world.

3/23
Today I am grateful I was able to set up 2 wireless old printers, 2 old PCs, and a scanner this weekend.

3/22
Today I am grateful to try a food delivery service for the first time.

3/21
Today I am grateful to those who trust me enough to tell me their problems.

3/20
Today I am grateful for spring and the hope that it brings.

3/19
Today I am grateful for a hot bath before going to bed last night.

3/18
Today I am grateful that I'm used to working from home.

3/17
Today I a m grateful for good health care.

3/15
Today I am grateful that I had plenty of toilet paper at home when the madness struck.

3/14
Today I am grateful for dinner last night with Rob and George and their families.

3/13
Today I am grateful to have a working printer in my home for the first time in years.

3/12
Today I am grateful to Adam for picking me up at the hospital and driving me home yesterday.

3/11
Today I am grateful to attend a Windy City Bulls G-League game last night for the first time.

3/10
Today I am grateful for birthday gifts that arrived in the mail last week.

3/9
Today I am grateful for a third straight Big10 championship

3/8
Today I am grateful to speak at the Global Integration Boot Camp yesterday

3/7
Today I am grateful to see They Might Be Giants in concert last night.

3/6
Today I am grateful to work at Microsoft.

3/5
Today I am grateful to Tim for taking me out for an excellent Italian dinner for my birthday last night.

3/4
Today I am grateful for tacos.

3/3
Today I am grateful for books

3/2
Today I am grateful for all the birthday wishes yesterday - particularly those that included an extra kind message.

Author Christopher Isherwood lived in Berlin, Germany in the early 1930s. In 1939, he published a fictionalized collection of short stories about his life during that time.

This collection - published as Goodbye to Berlin - is often packaged with Isherwood's earlier semiautobiographical novel Mr. Norris Changes Trains as a single volume under the title: The Berlin Stories. But unlike the earlier novel, the Goodbye narrator explicitly identifies himself by name. And the latter novel has much more depth than Norris. Whether we are hearing about two gay men in a doomed relationship or a struggling working-class family living in a condemned attic or a wealthy Jewish family under attack from fascists, the reader understands the people with whom we interact. They are real to us.

The stories sometimes cross one another's timelines, but each concerns Isherwood's relationship with a person or group of persons.

The most interesting character is Sally Bowles - a charming gold-digger who tries to sleep her way to a successful acting career. Christopher develops a fondness for her and a friendship, despite his jealousy of her many lovers.  This story inspired the popular musical "Cabaret" in which Liza Minelli starred as Sally.

In the final chapter, the author leaves Berlin to escape the brutality of the new regime, and the changes to the atmosphere, culture, and safety of the city he loves. But many of the other characters say "Goodbye" to this city throughout the novel - they either depart suddenly to travel abroad or they disappear mysteriously.

Goodbye to Berlin shines as a study of human relationships and the ways we interact with one another and communicate day to day. It shines as a commentary on the roles of men and women in society. And it shines as a study of the oppression experienced by Jews and other minorities during the rise of the Nazis to power in Germany.

The author put it best when he wrote:

"It is strange how people seem to belong to places — especially to places where they were not born…"

Isherwood belonged to Berlin - but it is a Berlin that ceased to exist after he left.

GCast 80:

Conditional Logic in Power Automate

This video shows how to add conditional logic to a Microsoft Power Automate workflow.

On a train heading to Berlin, two English expatriates strike up a conversation that later evolves into a friendship. William Bradshaw and Arthur Norris spend many days and evenings together over the coming months - dining out, visiting at home, and patronizing a local brothel.

Norris is the title character of Christopher Isherwood's 1935 novel Mr. Norris Changes Trains, which was published as The Last of Mr. Norris in the United States.

Norris is eccentric and charming and there is something untrustworthy about him. He is broke but leads an extravagant lifestyle; he claims to be in the "import-export" business but is vague about what exactly he imports and exports; and his wealth is suddenly increased after a mysterious business trip to Paris. Norris is also vain (he regularly wears makeup and a wig); and a sexual deviant (he pays a prostitute to beat and humiliate him); He has a combative relationship with his servant Schmidt and the two spar frequently and hold one another in contempt.

Norris's many flaws complicate his life, but they do not discourage William's friendship.

Isherwood paints a picture of 1930s as the Weimar Republic comes to an end and the Nazis and Communists vie for power. He brings together an interesting set of characters, most of whom seem to be insincere and dishonest. William (a surrogate for the author) narrates the novel, but interjects very little of himself into the story, which focuses on Mr. Norris and his flaws.

There isn't a lot of action in this book; but the characters and the dialogue make it worthwhile. We see the frivolity of high society and we see relationships damaged and repaired and we see the political conflicts in the days before the rise of Hitler and the start of the Second World War.

When Norris persuades William to help him with a mysterious business venture, his dishonesty is exposed.

In his later years, Isherwood dismissed this novel as too shallow. I don't dismiss it. It works well for its length and Isherwood can be forgiven for not predicting the Nazi atrocities when he wrote this story in the 1930s; and for not revealing his own sexuality in the narrator.

Mr. Norris Changes Trains is not a classic but is a good story with good characters.

GCast 79:

Creating a Workflow from Scratch in Power Automate

This video shows how to create a workflow in Microsoft Power Automate without starting from a template.

Bigger Thomas was scared, and he was angry. He had reasons to be scared and angry. He was a 20-year-old black man living in the ghetto of segregated 1930s Chicago.

In Bigger's new job as a chauffeur for businessman / philanthropist Henry Dalton, he was told to give a ride to Dalton's radical daughter Mary. Mary and her Communist boyfriend went out of their way to show kindness to Bigger, which only angered him more.

24 hours later, Bigger had killed two women - one accidentally and the other to protect himself.

There are no heroes in Richard Wright's 1940 novel Native Son.

The protagonist is decidedly unsympathetic and in no way likable. Bigger is a bully, he is self-absorbed, and he is an unrepentant criminal. He spends most of the book rationalizing his terrible actions. He was quick to anger and quick to turn to violence and he blamed all his problems on others, even physically attacking his friends when it suited him. At one point, he tried to frame an innocent man for his crime. His own weaknesses make him angry; But he directs that anger toward others and punishes everyone around him. He is amoral and self-unaware and he has been that way most of his life.

But Wright reminds us that society must shoulder a share of the blame for Bigger's fate. Economic and educational opportunities are denied to the young negro and to all his people, because of the color of their skin.

The kindly Mr. Dalton gives money to black charities and treats the black people he meets with kindness and respect; but he owns apartment buildings across the city and he refuses to rent white neighborhood apartments to black tenants and he charges higher rents in the black neighborhoods.

Others exploit Bigger's crimes to their own agenda. The right-wing racists point to Bigger as an example of the danger of allowing too much freedom to blacks; the left-wing Communists point to his situation as the product of an unfair social and economic system. Each side uses the case to amplify their own agenda.

The police and the press pile more charges on top of the ones to which he confesses. Of course, they treat the killing of a rich white girl as far more serious than the murder of a poor black girl.

Still, the reader feels for many of these characters, despite their flaws. Our heart aches for the Dalton family who lose their only daughter; and for the Thomas family who lose their son. I even felt the panic rising as the police closed in on Bigger.

Although this story took place over 80 years ago, much of the segregation and polarization still exists. And though the vast majority of blacks never turn to the extreme violence of Bigger Thomas, many still feel the pressures of a system that is often oppressive.

Bigger is a tragic figure - alone and isolated, he cannot connect with society or with his family or even with other blacks. He lashes out in the only way he knows.

His violence serves as a warning to us all.

GCast 78:

Creating a Workflow from a Microsoft Power Automate Template

Microsoft Power Automate (formerly Microsoft Flow) allows users to create workflows without writing any code. Learn how to create a workflow from one of the many templates shipping with Power Automate.

Episode 602

Jaidev Kunjur on Azure Integration Tools

Jaidev Kunjur of Enkay Technology Solutions discusses some of the integration tools available in Microsoft Azure, such as Logic Apps, API Management, Azure Functions, and Event Grid.

He describes the capabilities of these tools and how his company is using them to solve integration problems for their customers.

In Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook, protagonist Anna Wulf serves as a surrogate for Lessing, expressing the philosophies and doubts of the author; And the fictional Wulf is a writer who injects herself into the Ella - the protagonist of her own novel.

Notebook tells Anna's story in a non-linear fashion, switching between a third person narrative of the life of Anna and her social circles and the contents of her four journals. The journals are organized by topic, rather by time. Anna hopes to better understand herself by writing down all her thoughts. But she recognizes the different aspects of herself and decides to capture each aspect in a separate notebook, organized (in her own words) as follows:

"A black notebook, which is to do with Anna Wolf the writer;
a red notebook, concerned with politics;
a yellow notebook, in which I make stories out of my experience;
and a blue notebook which tries to be a diary."

The book jumps around in time and in perspective, making it fragmented and sometimes difficult to follow. But it is fragmented because Anna is fragmented. She realizes she has contradictions in her life and she separates them, unsuccessfully trying to minimize her anxiety.

She struggles with her political beliefs. The idealism that led her to Communism is challenged by the corruption of the Stalin regime and her commitment to the party wanes.

She is confident and sexually liberated, but she struggles with her relationship with men, often entering into destructive relationships with men who mistreat her.

She challenges the role of women in society but allows herself to be controlled by others.

She wrote a successful novel and writes almost daily but has no interest in publishing again or allowing her novel to be adapted to film or TV.

There is a lot to absorb in The Golden Notebook. It is about feminism and politics and sexuality and control. But it works for me. And although I grew up in a different world than Anna and Lessing and Ella, I often saw myself in her and recognized her struggles.

GCast 77:

Connecting Azure Synapse to External Data

Azure Data Warehouse has been re-branded as Azure Synapse. Learn how to add data from an external system to an Azure Synapse database.

Episode 601

Don Ward on Flutter

Flutter is an open source framework from Google, designed to help you build cross-platform applications. Don Ward tells us what it does and how to use it.

It has been 30 years since the release of "Flood" - the breakthrough album by iconic nerd-rock band They Might Be Giants.  To celebrate, the band is touring the United States, vowing to play every song from this album at each show.

Friday night, they played The Vic Theatre in Chicago to a sold-out audience that braved the cold weather and threats of coronavirus to cheer on the kings of the 2-minute song.

For almost 3 hours (including an intermission), TMBG rocked the Vic while the audience sang along to songs they grew up with.

Few bands have the kind of cult following enjoyed by TMBG. TMBG has never had a top-40 single and only a handful of their songs have cracked the alternative rock charts. But their audiences love them and flock to their concerts and memorize their lyrics.

Technically, TMBG consists of only two members: John Flansburgh and John Linnell. But, for this tour they were joined by 3 others to fill out their songs. Linnell looks like a computer science student and Flansburgh looks like Linnell's dad. The point is that both project nerdiness - in their appearance and in their music, which consists of cerebral lyrics, catchy melodies, and experimental electronic sounds. And a trumpet.

In addition to performing every song from "Flood" (in no particular order), the band played numerous songs from their 22-album catalog.

Highlights included

• an extended version of "Spy"
• an acoustic guitar intro to "Istanbul"
• high-energy performances of "Birdhouse in Your Soul", "Doctor Worm" and "The Mesopotamians".

They even played one song ("Sapphire Bullets of Pure Love") backwards!

I've been listening to TMBG since their "Flood" days and this is the first time I've seen them in concert. I was lucky to get a ticket to this sold-out show from someone selling his last ticket outside the venue. I'm so glad I did.

Set list

When Dan's Uncle Jim died, he left Dan one thing: a belt that allowed Dan to travel backward and forward in time. His first instinct was to use the device to make himself rich via gambling and investments.  But then, he uses it to correct mistakes - either in his own life or in history. His actions sometimes result in unpleasant side effects; but he can always go back a bit earlier and undo his "corrections". Dan has it all. His godlike powers allow him to build a life to his own suiting; and he spends most of his time with past and future versions of himself, because they are the only people he understands and who understand him.

But the world becomes confusing the more he alters his timeline. He becomes more isolated and less certain of what is reality. Eventually, he must confront the responsibility that comes with the power he has inherited.

Dan laments:

"But when you can erase your mistakes in a minute, you tend to get careless.
Until you make one you can't."

There is a twist at the end, but it was one I saw coming halfway through the novella. But this story isn't about plot twists. It's about the character of a man who can do anything for himself - one who needs no one else.

The Man Who Folded Himself is about self-identity; and personal responsibility; and cause and effect; and what it means to have it all. And it covers these topics in a mere 116 pages. This might be the most amazing thing about the book - no small feat for a story that deals with time travel.

GCast 76:

Creating an Azure Synapse database

Azure Data Warehouse has been renamed to Azure Synapse. This video walks you through the creation of a Synapse database.