The holidays are a time of celebration and carefree living. We all tend to let go and let loose with the personal promise that we will make it up to our bodies with the arrival of the new year. The problem is, loosing 10 Kg is easier said than done and those who have tried it know the pain, difficulty, and frustration that comes with it. As such, most New Year's resolutions are given up on with the same speed that we mentally set them up.
To make these goals less elusive one simply needs to be SMART. I've come across this several times whenever the topic of personal development is brought up and there is no better time to echo it.
SMART is an acronym that stands for the following.
Specific, Measurable, Action-based, Realistic, and Time-bound.
Instead of saying I want to work out more, set specific dates and times with a way that fits your lifestyle and with milestones that are reasonable. Ex: Hit the gym Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 7PM for 40 minutes.
Tackling these will slowly build up confidence and develop habits and before you know it you've achieved your goals and more.
Come join us in Microsoft Lebanon on Thursday 29 September 2016 for a developer meetup. The community is managed on Meetup.com and updates will be posted there.
Hope to see everyone!
Update: Event created - https://www.meetup.com/Beirut-Developers-Meetup/events/234436302/
Address:
Microsoft Lebanon SARL
Berytus Park Building, BLOC B, 4th floor
Corner of Park Avenue & Avenue Francaise
Minet El Hosn
Beirut, Lebanon
Phone: 00961 1 98 33 44
https://www.microsoft.com/en-lb/contact.aspx
Several bloggers recommended Windows Live Writer for writing blogs. The second, and now open source, iteration of that software has been released dubbed Open Live Writer. You can get started with it here.
source: reddit.com/r/pics
Explanation from comments: This is a recreation by the public art fund of a Peter Fischli and David Weiss installation in conjunction with their current retrospective at the Guggenheim museum called "how to work better."
Microsoft uses standard level definitions to indicate the difficulty level of a course or material they publish. Each is explained below for reference (taken from ieitpro's TechNet Blog).
Level 100 Description:
Introductory and overview material. Assumes little or no expertise with topic and covers topic concepts, functions, features, and benefits.
Level 200 Description:
Intermediate material. Assumes 100-level knowledge and provides specific details about the topic.
Level 300 Description:
Advanced material. Assumes 200-level knowledge, in-depth understanding of features in a real-world environment, and strong coding skills. Provides a detailed technical overview of a subset of product/technology features, covering architecture, performance, migration, deployment, and development.
Level 400 Description:
Expert material. Assumes a deep level of technical knowledge and experience and a detailed, thorough understanding of topic. Provides expert-to-expert interaction and coverage of specialized topics.
The most important step when you want to start blogging is to actually get something up and running and just start writing. This may not be the best approach for everyone but I wanted to self-host and learn some code along with having the blog running. So here's how I got started:
- Get project from GitHub
- Unzip and open in Visual Studio
- Go to BlogEngine.NET>Web.Config
- Do these steps in Web.Config to set SQL Server as data source
- Go to Azure and create a new Db under the databases blade
- Go to Web Apps and create a new Web App. Don’t pick any templates, just a blank Web App
- Go to the properties of the Web App and find Data Connections
- In Data Connections add a connection to the database you created in step 5. When you get to pick a name for the connection string call it BlogEngine. If you followed the steps in 4 correctly, that’s what the project will be configured to find.
- Go to where you unzipped your project in 2 and go to BlogEngine.NET-master\BlogEngine.NET-master\BlogEngine\BlogEngine.NET\setup\SQLServer
- Open Setup.sql in Notepad and copy all the SQL statements
- Go to Server explorer pane in Visual Studio and login to your Azure account then go to your Db and right-click select open in SQL Server Object Explorer
- Alternatively you can get the connection string to your db from Azure and connect to it from SQL Server Management Studio(installed as separate software)
- Right click the Db and select New Query
- Paste all the SQL copied from 10 and Run them
- Go back to Visual Studio and right click the solution then select Rebuild Solution
- Right Click BlogEngine.NET in the projects and select Publish
- Select Microsoft Azure App Service
- In the prompt select the website you created in 6
- Keep all the defaults and just click Next through all the wizard till you get to the Publish selection
- Click Publish and wait for it to finish. When it completes it will automatically navigate to the published web page in your default browser and you should see the home screen with 1 post called Welcome to BlogEngine.NET using Microsoft SQL Server
- Login from the top right using Username: admin and Password: admin
- Go to Profile(which is the person icon in the top of the menu) and change your password
- Go to Custom and pick a theme you like and apply that
- Go to Settings and under Basic put your info to make the blog yours
I've decided to document my progress towards getting my 70-532 certification. My thought process is as follows:
"That which is measured improves. That which is measured and reported improves exponentially." - Karl Pearson
Through this blog I will be holding myself accountable for taking and reporting these steps towards getting the certification. I'll blog about the things I completed, what resources I used, and post any examples I build if the resources I used were insufficient on the topic.
When learning anything the first obvious step is to gather the learning resources. All the blog posts and videos I've seen recommended doing 2 things to get ready. First they recommended getting the list of things I will be tested on and putting them down as a checklist, then going through the items 1 by 1 and learning them. The second recommendation was to use more than one resource as a reference per topic.
First and foremost, the list I need to go through is here: https://www.microsoft.com/learning/en-us/exam-70-532.aspx under Skills Measured. This list also has a recommended resources section which is also a good place to get started on every topic. I've put this list on OneNote to tackle bit by bit and keep track of what I've finished.
Free resources I will be using:
MVA
Channel9
GitHub
Blog Posts
Official Documentation
The official documentation is a fantastic resource that also lists more resources so definitely worth going to when one gets stuck.
Instead of going for a long About section I thought I'd go for an About post and update periodically as my life and interests change. This blog is not dedicated to one thing but rather this will be my personal but public space and will be about anything and everything I am interested in. I'll probably throw in a couple of thoughts and rants. Everything, however, will be meticulously tagged so that as promised this will be a source of learning if you want to filter out just one topic of interest.
My wife is 8 months pregnant with our first baby. I also recently got into Forex as a hobby. My interest is in approaching the Forex problem as a commercial trader but with technical tools and as much automation as possible. I also collect motivational proverbs and images from things like reddit.com/r/GetMotivated and other random sources.
Basically now you can find posts about:
- Microsoft Azure
- Fatherhood tips and experiences
- Motivational posts
- Forex Algorithmic Trading - When I have some time to spare
Disclaimer: The content posted in this blog is my personal opinion and does not represent the thoughts, intentions, plans, or strategies of my employer. Products and services featured are things I use for myself and are not mentioned for advertisement purposes. Inappropriate comments will be deleted at my discretion